Politics
NEWS STORY: Non-Orthodox Jews edge toward Israeli recognition
By Elaine Fletcher — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ While their war for recognition is hardly over, religiously liberal Israelis and non-Orthodox American Jewish denominations Monday (Jan. 26) appeared closer to winning a major battle in their months-long campaign for recognition from Israel’s state-sanctioned Orthodox rabbinical establishment on the controversial”Who is a Jew”issue. A bill that would […]
NEWS STORY: Russia’s religious minorities give mixed reaction on U.S. persecution law
By Christa Brown — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service MOSCOW – A new U.S. law aimed at punishing governments which restrict religious freedom has met with a mixed response from leaders of minority faiths in Russia. “Our feeling is that it is better to work quietly in the background with influential thinkers and opinion makers and help them understand […]
NEWS FEATURE: Israel debates drafting Jewish ultra-religious students into army
By Elaine Fletcher — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ You can see them by the hundreds in the study halls of this city’s great yeshivas _ ultra-religious young men in their late teens or early 20s, dressed in black, bent over large books of Talmud, or Jewish law, engaged in animated discussion with a study partner; or […]
NEWS STORY: Jehovah’s Witness trial set to begin in Moscow
By Christa Brown — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service MOSCOW _ A civil trial pitting the Jehovah’s Witnesses against a municipal prosecutor and anti-cult activists is set to resume here Tuesday (Nov. 17) in what could be a major test of Russia’s new law on religion.”It is a very serious human rights question,”said Sergei Vasilyev, a Jehovah’s Witness administrator, […]
NEWS STORY: Jews, Muslims, Christians seek to untangle divine intentions in Iraq crisis
By Elaine Fletcher — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _”Does the Messiah need a gas mask?”wondered Jerusalem writer Rolinda Shonwald, as she pondered the religious meaning of the current U.S. standoff with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Just miles away, in West Bank Palestinian towns, fundamentalist Muslims urged Hussein to hit Israel with chemical weapons while in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish […]
NEWS STORY: Russia’s economic woes fueling upsurge in Jewish emigration to Israel
By Christa Brown — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service MOSCOW _ After sticking it out here through the collapse of the Soviet Union, through the hungry winter of 1991-92 and through President Boris Yeltsin’s violent conflict with parliament in 1993, Larisa Tikhonova has had enough. She is going to Israel, leaving behind two sons, an apartment, a car, a […]
Israeli kibbutz tries to accommodate religious and secular members
By Elaine Fletcher — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service KIBBUTZ KETURA, Israel _ Two years ago Sharon Ben-Haim found her spiritual home in Israel, one far from the stone monuments and synagogues of Jerusalem. She came instead to this remote desert kibbutz near the Red Sea where young Israelis are trying to hammer out new patterns of cooperation between […]
NEWS STORY: Russia’s religion registration law challenged in court
By Christa Brown — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service MOSCOW _ In the first significant legal challenge to Russia’s controversial new law on religion, a group of lawyers representing four Protestant congregations have filed a complaint in the country’s highest court. The long-awaited suit, submitted June 10, takes issue primarily with the part of the law denying religious groups […]
Israeli kibbutz tries to accommodate religious and secular members
By Elaine Fletcher — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service KIBBUTZ KETURA, Israel _ Two years ago Sharon Ben-Haim found her spiritual home in Israel, one far from the stone monuments and synagogues of Jerusalem. She came instead to this remote desert kibbutz near the Red Sea where young Israelis are trying to hammer out new patterns of cooperation between […]
NEWS STORY: Synagogue opening masks concerns of Russian Jews
By Christa Brown — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service MOSCOW _ President Boris Yeltsin’s appearance Wednesday (Sept. 2) at the opening of a newly built, $10 million synagogue at Moscow’s huge war memorial complex was an unqualified triumph for Russia’s Jews. The money for the project came entirely from the Jewish community, and Yeltsin _ who shoehorned the opening […]
NEWS FEATURE: Under new regime, Congo pastor discovers the cost of discipleship
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service KINSHASA, Congo _ In a grassy field a few dozen yards from the banks of the Congo river, pastor Theodore Ngoy gazed out across hundreds of hopeful Congolese faces eight months ago and preached to the soul of a troubled nation. Worship not the power and authority of human government, […]
NEWS STORY: Pilgrims setoff on yearlong `middle passage’ trek against racism
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service LEVERETT, MASS. _ A year ago, Mariah L. Richardson was a Master of Fine Arts student looking for someone to direct the play she had just written. A friend suggested Ingrid C. Askew, who agreed to take on the project. But two weeks later, the play was shelved _ at […]
NEWS STORY: Britain grants funding for Muslim schools
By Robert Nowell — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service LONDON _ After years of campaigning by the nation’s 1.5 million-member Muslim community, the British government has agreed for the first time to provide state funding for Islamic schools. The decision, announced Friday (Jan. 9) by Education Secretary David Blunkett, was quickly welcomed by leaders of England’s Muslim organizations.”Such approval […]
NEWS STORY: Archbishop of Canterbury urges debt relief for new millennium
By Robert Nowell — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service LONDON _ Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, spiritual head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, saying the poor of the world are getting poorer as a result of international economic policies, has called for using the coming millennium observances to”remove the chains of indebtedness”that continue to”enslave”Africa.”We have to draw attention to […]
NEWS STORY: British church leaders urge `economic justice’ for Third World
By RNS Blog Editor — January 1, 1998
c. 1998 Religion News Service LONDON _ Top British church officials sought to use last weekend’s meeting of the leaders of the world’s top industrialized nations _ the Group of Eight _ to press their case for debt relief for impoverished Third World nations. For the most part, their efforts failed.”The G8 summit provides the […]
