Politics
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 […]
NEWS ANALYSIS: Church-labor coalition forms in mushroom organizing effort
By Daniel Howell — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ More than two years after the largest mushroom producer in the Southeastern United States fired 85 of its 600-plus workers for demonstrating to form a union, the battle between Quincy Farms and its workers continues unabated. The company _ located outside Quincy, Fla., some 30 miles west of […]
NEWS PROFILE: At 88, Mormon church head says,“Future looks good to me”
By Cecile Holmes — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service SALT LAKE CITY _ The man millions honor as God’s”prophet, seer and revelator”on earth, is a skilled businessman facing the future with optimism. That trait, along with his faith and wit, is quickly becoming Gordon B. Hinckley’s hallmark as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A […]
EASTER FEATURE: The enduring symbol of the cross
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ For many Christians, the cross remains the central symbol of their faith, a sign of spiritual rebirth and renewal. But in Jesus’ time, the cross was a despised means of execution and symbolized betrayal. Only the lowest of criminals _ robbers, deserters, traitors and rebels _ were forced […]
NEWS STORY: Baptists to debate whether wife’s submission is key part of faith
By Kristen Campbell — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service UNDATED _ Nearly 2,000 years ago, when Paul, or one of his disciples writing in his name, penned the letter to the young Christian congregation in the Turkish port city of Ephesus, he included some family advice _ an admonition, even _ that has been generating fierce controversy ever since. […]
NEWS STORY: Pope calls on Cubans to embrace family values, condemns abortion
By Ira Rifkin — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service SANTA CLARA, Cuba _ Magnolia Martinez spent part of Thursday (Jan. 22) balancing on railroad tracks overlooking a dusty athletic field here listening to Pope John Paul II speak of the importance of family. And Martinez, a”believer but not a Catholic,”cried. Martinez, 66, who cleans government buildings for a living, […]
