Politics
NEWS STORY: Christian agreement ends Israeli anti-missionary law threat
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ An unprecedented statement by Christian groups in Israel has virtually derailed proposed anti-missionary legislation that would have criminalized the possession of materials intended to induce religious conversion. The legislation _ aimed primarily at evangelical Protestant missionaries _ had caused consternation among Christians in Israel, some of whom argued […]
NEWS FEATURE: Scholar says single prose narrative forms core of Hebrew Bible
By Ira Rifkin — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ In the beginning, says Bible scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, came”In the Day”_ a single author’s epic prose narrative that was later folded into nine books of the Hebrew Bible, from Genesis through the rise of King Solomon. Depending upon one’s perspective, the narrative was”the first novel”or the”first history,”Friedman, […]
NEWS ANALYSIS: New Vatican statement: `repression’ or `just housekeeping’
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ As Roman Catholic activists and theologians sort out the meaning of last week’s Vatican crackdown on dissent, they’re caught between characterizations of the new document ranging from”repressive”to”just another piece of housekeeping.” The truth, as with all such actions in Rome, is likely to depend on how individual bishops […]
NEWS STORY: Relief worker: Church growth `exploding’ despite crises in Sudan
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ In war-ravaged, famine-plagued southern Sudan, the only crop thriving is the number of Christian converts, but the escalating crisis there makes it nearly impossible to keep tabs on church growth.”What makes it hard to work with figures is that the church is exploding but the people are dying,”said […]
NEWS STORY: Presbyterians reject another sexuality debate, urge gun control
By Carl Anderson — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Delegates to the 210th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) did pretty much what their leaders pleaded with them to do, taking up the divisive issue of homosexuality and ordination only long enough to say they didn’t want to deal with it in the coming year. By […]
NEWS STORY: Relief worker: Church growth `exploding’ despite crises in Sudan
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ In war-ravaged, famine-plagued southern Sudan, the only crop thriving is the number of Christian converts, but the escalating crisis there makes it nearly impossible to keep tabs on church growth.”What makes it hard to work with figures is that the church is exploding but the people are dying,”said […]
COMMENTARY: The Clinton scandal: It’s not about us citizens
By Tom Ehrich — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Do I feel safer now that President Clinton has been badgered into admitting his personal failings? No, the lurker in the brown sedan who cruises our neighborhood is still out there. Do I feel honored as a citizen now that the president has stared into one camera to […]
NEWS STORY: Jewish leaders disappointed in Vatican Holocaust document
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Jewish leaders in the United States and Israel expressed general disappointment with the long-awaited statement on the Holocaust released Monday (March 16) by the Vatican, arguing it failed to adequately address the role played by Pope Pius XII, the church’s World War II-era leader. Many renewed calls for […]
NEWS STORY: Faith groups go local in global warming debate
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Efforts by the U.S. religious community to generate American support for an international global warming treaty are moving from national denominational policymakers to state and local leaders and activists. On Monday (Oct. 26), as they concluded a two-day training and strategy conference in Columbus, Ohio religious leaders unveiled […]
NEWS FEATURE: Cuba’s other Christians: Island’s Protestant population climbing
By Ira Rifkin — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Lois Kroehler can remember what it was like for Protestants in Cuba in the late 1950s: Roman Catholics would cross the street rather than walk past the Presbyterian-affiliated school she ran in Cardenas, about 90 miles east of Havana. “The local Catholic priest taught that Protestants were the […]
NEWS ANALYSIS: Auschwitz cross crisis reveals tensions in Polish Catholic church
By Christiane Gruber — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service ROME _ The crisis over a forest of crosses placed by militant Roman Catholics near the gates of Auschwitz over the past few weeks has raised echoes of the bitter conflict between Poles and Jews over the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz in the late 1980s and early ’90s. A leading […]
NEWS FEATURE: Remembering Eleanor Roosevelt _ `mother’ of U.N. human rights declaration
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Eleanor Roosevelt is remembered for many humanitarian contributions to the nation and to the world, but she is being remembered this year as the”mother”of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a touchstone for faith groups as they are increasingly involved in international human rights issues. Pope […]
NEWS FEATURE: Minister Max Lucado reaches millions with his heartfelt books
By Steve Rabey — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Max Lucado was a missionary in Brazil when he began writing in 1985, and that’s where he might be today if he hadn’t become a bestselling author. Since his literary debut 20 books ago, however, the 43-year-old Lucado has become a publishing phenomenon, selling more than 11 million […]
NEWS FEATURE: Camp helps Polish Jews rediscover their roots
By Chris Smith — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service RYCHWALD, Poland _ Zbigniew Siwinski never understood why, as a boy, the Polish Catholic woman who raised him taught him Jewish folklore and Hebrew. It could be useful someday, she would say. But she never told him what he was too young to remember: Siwinski had been rescued from a […]
NEWS FEATURE: Replacing reconciliation with coexistence
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Eugene Weiner might not describe himself as”hopeful,”but that does not stop him from working for peace in the Middle East and around the world.”The challenge is to be a pessimistic activist,”said Weiner, the editor of the recently published”Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence”(Continnuum), the first scholarly volume devoted to the […]
