TruthBook Religious News Blog

"Spirituality is where people find meaning in their life. It's something higher than themselves, though not necessarily attached to religion," said Patricia Megregian, a board-certified chaplain and executive director of the Integrative Medicine Initiative at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

"Spirituality is what brings you peace and safety. It could be God or Goddess, or nature. Some people feel it with a beautiful sunset. Some people get it from meditation. For some, it's from their community. It's a feeling that you're connected to something greater, something larger than [yourself]. For some, that comes from their family," she said.

Wherever your spirituality or a positive outlook on life comes from, research indicates there are real health benefits:

• People with high levels of religious beliefs or spirituality have lower cortisol responses. Cortisol is a hormone the body releases in response to stress.

• Positive thinking produces nearly a 30 percent drop in perception of pain.

• Spirituality and the practice of religion recently have been associated with a slower progression of Alzheimer's disease.

• Those who regularly attend organized religious activities may live longer than those who don't. Regular participation lowers mortality rate by about 12 percent a year.

• People undergoing cardiac rehabilitation feel more confident and perceive greater improvements in their physical abilities if they have a strong faith.

• Increased levels of spirituality and religious faith may help substance abusers kick their habit.

What's not known is exactly how spirituality or a positive outlook can cause these changes. According to Torosian, there are two popular theories. The first is known as the relaxation response. When the body is relaxed, heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate all go down, which decreases the body's stress response. The other theory is that spirituality can affect immune-system function.

"Spirituality, faith, church attendance improves immune function in ways that can be measured, like an increase in white blood cells," he said.

"When it comes to health, when the body feels safe and is at ease, the nervous system is able to quiet and be more normal. Then the immune system is able to function better," Megregian said. "When the body is safe and feels safe, all of its other functions can help combat disease."

Megregian said it's important to not "wait till you're in the foxhole" to find your spirituality. She suggested doing whatever you can to increase your awareness of your spirituality by using what helps you, such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, walking in nature or attending religious services.

By SERENA GORDON
HealthDay

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Sunday, March 19, 2006

The God Factor : Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People

The God Factor : Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People
by Cathleen Falsani

Religion reporter Falsani dishes up a whimsical and absorbing collection of interviews with assorted literati and glitterati, dissecting issues of faith, ethics and personal spirituality. Since several of these profiles originated as columns in the Chicago Sun-Times, it is perhaps not surprising that many of the interviewees have a Chicago connection, like radio shock jock Mancow, Smashing Pumpkins lead Billy Corgan and Dusty Baker, the manager of the Cubs.

But the questions undertaken are truly universal. Some of the stars evince a fairly traditional stance on faith, including observant Muslim basketball star Hakeem Olajuwon, who prays in Arabic daily and runs all of his businesses according to the anti-interest tenets of Islamic law; novelist Anne Rice, who has recently returned to the Catholic faith and written a novel about Jesus' childhood; or Bush speechwriter and policy wonk Michael Gerson, a committed Protestant who like Falsani is a graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois.

Others, like musicians Annie Lennox and Melissa Etheridge, fall into the spiritual-but-not-religious crowd, borrowing creatively from both Eastern and Western religions to craft a personal spiritual practice that works for them. Still others—primarily writers like Studs Terkel, Tom Robbins and Jonathan Safran Foer—place themselves in the agnostic camp. Falsani handles the profiles with sensitivity, painting the book's diverse spiritual seekers with compassion and grace.

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Your Doctor May Be More Religious Than You Think

University of Chicago researcher Dr. Farr Curlin, an assistant professor of internal medicine and his fellow researchers surveyed 1,260 practicing physicians in the United States. They found that 76 percent of the doctors believe in God, and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife. The researchers also found that 90 percent of the doctors attend religious services at least occasionally, compared to 81 percent of adults in the general population. And 55 percent said their religious beliefs influence how they practice medicine.

The findings surprised Curlin, who assumed patients would be more religious than their doctors. "Our study challenges that conventional wisdom," said Curlin, whose study was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Curlin's team also found that different medical specialists varied in their practice of and attitudes about religion. Family practice doctors and pediatricians were more likely to carry their beliefs into other aspects of their lives. Radiologists and psychiatrists were the least likely to do so.

Christian, Mormon and Buddhist physicians were the most likely to say their religious beliefs influence their practice of medicine, while Jewish and Hindu doctors were least likely.

"What this study does is beg some important questions," Curlin said, adding that he next wants to find out how physicians' beliefs affect their practice of medicine. That's a topic he is studying now.

"The most obvious areas we want to examine are those in which there are overt, moral controversies -- sexual and reproductive health, end-of-life care," Curlin said. He's curious, too, about whether religious beliefs affect the way a doctor might treat behavior disorders in children, for instance.

For now, Curlin said, patients should know their doctors may be more like them in terms of spirituality than they might think. And they might ask their doctors about it.

HealthDay News

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High ignorance of Islamic faith: survey

One third of Australians are completely ignorant of the Islamic faith, with women and people without tertiary training the most likely to lack knowledge, a new study shows.

The survey, conducted by Roy Morgan research, involved 1,300 Australians.

UNSW geographer Dr Kevin Dunn was commissioned to analyse the results, which have been published in the Journal of Islamic Studies.

The survey revealed only one in six Australians had a decent understanding of Islam, while one third claimed to be completely ignorant of it.

More than 55 per cent of respondents - mainly women, people with no tertiary training and those aged over 50 - reported having no contact with Muslims.

People who had no contact with Islam were twice as likely to be ignorant about the faith compared with those who were linked to it in some way, the study also showed.

It also found that whether people felt threatened by Islam depended on their knowledge of the religion.

A staggering 56 per cent of those surveyed, who admitted having no knowledge of the faith, reported feeling threatened by it, while 61 per cent of those with a little bit of knowledge still felt it posed a risk.

Even 46 per cent of those polled who claimed they had a reasonable understanding of the Islam faith still felt threatened.

The most common negative stereotype associated with the religion was that it was fundamentalist, with 27 per cent saying this was their belief.

Meanwhile 11 per cent said Islam was fanatical and hostile to women.

The published results come weeks after federal treasurer Peter Costello invited anyone who wanted to live under Islamic sharia law to find another country, prompting Muslim leaders to accuse him of Islamophobia.

It also follows the first meeting of Prime Minister John Howard's hand-picked Muslim advisory committee and Sydney's race riots last December, which involved Muslim youths.

Dr Dunn said he was not surprised by the results.

But he said they were alarming as education was the best weapon in the fight against discrimination.

"And going the other way, ignorance is further ground for any sort of ideas or stereotypes to take root," Dr Dunn said.

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Thursday, March 16, 2006

Richest grant goes to cosmologist who says religion best explains laws of universe

Cambridge University cosmologist and mathematician John Barrow was awarded $1.6-million yesterday to do research into whether God is sitting at the control panel behind the Theory of Everything about the universe.

He won the 2006 Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities, the world's richest individual scholarly research grant. Its initiator, mutual-fund investor Sir John Templeton, specified that it be worth more than the Nobel Prize (which is worth about $1.5-million) so the media would take it seriously.

Dr. Barrow, 53, author of 17 books and one play (about infinity), believes that monotheistic religious thought about God and creation offers a better explanation than anything else, including most science, of how the universe works.

He is one of the leading proponents of the anthropic principle of the universe, the dials-set-right idea -- the notion that the universe is, in Goldilocks's words, "just right" for life on Earth. Because if it were a little bigger or smaller, a little colder or warmer, a little younger or older, then life wouldn't exist.

His ideas and research fit to a T many theologians' underlying notions of the new cosmology, the idea that, because the universe did not create itself, it must have a cause separate from itself. Or as one of them, reading Dr. Barrow's acceptance speech for his award, said admiringly: "I wish I'd said that."

Dr. Barrow is director of Cambridge's Millennium Mathematics Project and Gresham professor of astronomy at London's Gresham College, the world's oldest science professorship, founded in 1596.

He has been a popular writer in Britain since the publication of his 1986 book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, co-authored with mathematician Frank Tipler, and has lectured on cosmology at the Venice Film Festival, 10 Downing St., Windsor Castle and the Vatican.

His most recent book is The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless. His 2002 play, Infinities, was a smash hit for the two seasons it ran at Milan's La Scala.

Dr. Barrow said in an interview yesterday he is not sure yet how he will use the money. He also said he doesn't think the U.S.-based John Templeton Foundation, which oversees selection of the award's annual winner, had any particular expectations of what research he would do.

The essence of his research, as he put it, is the quest for the simple laws -- "perhaps just one law" -- that lie behind all the complexities of the universe, "like the laws of nature that are so impressively, beautifully symmetrical, but can have such highly irregular, asymmetrical outcomes."

What has attracted the Templeton Foundation is his engagement with the structure of the universe and its laws that make life possible, as well as the multidisciplinary perspectives he has developed on the limits of scientific explanation and the mysteries of nothingness and infinity.

"Over the past 75 years," he says, "astronomers have illuminated the vault of the heavens in a completely unexpected way."

They have found, he says, a universe not only bigger than was once thought, but getting bigger. They have found that life on Earth comprises complicated atoms of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen whose nuclei took almost 10 billion years to be formed by "stellar alchemy" before being blasted through the universe by the explosions of dying stars.

"So you begin to understand why it is no surprise that the universe seems so big and so old. It takes nearly 10 billion years to make the building blocks of living complexity in the stars and, because the universe is expanding, it must be at least 10 billion light years in size. We could not exist in a universe that was significantly smaller.

"The vastness of the universe is often cited as evidence for the extreme likelihood of life elsewhere. [But] while there may be life, even conscious life, elsewhere, sheer size is not compelling. The universe needs to be billions of light years in size just to support one lonely outpost of life."

Dr. Barrow says that astronomy's revelations -- that a big, old, dark, cold universe with its planets and stars and galaxies separated by vast distances is necessary for the creation and existence of pinpricks of life -- have "transformed the simple-minded, life-averse, meaningless universe of the skeptical philosophers.

"It breathes new life into so many religious questions of ultimate concern and never-ending fascination. Many of the deepest and most engaging questions that we grapple with still about the nature of the universe have their origins in our purely religious quest for meaning.

"We see now how it is possible for a universe that displays unending complexity and exquisite structure to be governed by a few simple laws that are symmetrical and intelligible, laws which govern the most remarkable things in our universe -- populations of elementary 'particles' that are everywhere perfectly identical.

"There are some who say that just because we use our minds to appreciate the order and complexity of the universe around us, there is nothing more to that order than what is imposed by the human mind. That is a serious misjudgment."

MICHAEL VALPY

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Wednesday, March 15, 2006

$1.6M prize to reward spiritual advancement

Today, a relative unknown will win the largest prize in the world for personal achievement. If the public comes to understand why he earned it, the donors figure it will be worth their $1.6 million.

The Templeton Award for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities might be best explained by past winners:

- 2005: Charles Townes, a Nobel laureate in physics, for his work in the convergence of science and religion. "Their differences are largely superficial, and ... the two become almost indistinguishable if we look at the real nature of each," he wrote.

- 2004: George Ellis, a South African professor of applied mathematics, who argued that deep ethical truths are not human inventions, but part of the physical universe.

- 2003: Holmes Rolston, father of environmental ethics.

Mother Teresa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Billy Graham, even Chuck Colson, who founded a Prison Outreach group after serving time for Watergate-related crimes, make an unlikely list for an unlikely aim in philanthropy.

Sir John Marks Templeton, a Tennessee boy who worked his way through school and went on to become a Rhodes scholar and billionaire, has challenged the world to ask: What would happen if we put religion under the same rigorous inquiry that so advanced science and technology? Would mankind benefit as much?

His foundation, now more than 30 years old, has sponsored boundary-breaking research such as the health benefits of forgiveness, science and the quest for ultimate meaning, even the "science of thrift." Does profound religious awe change the chemistry of the brain? A University of California symposium will grapple with the question in early April.

Past work has already found its way in the mainstream. U.S. medical schools are starting to include courses on spirituality. Research on forgiveness and its benefits is growing far beyond Templeton grants, and much of it is finding its way into popular wisdom and self-help groups.

Sir John, 93, does not expect to come to any right answers, just the right questions. "I grew up as a Presbyterian," he told Business Week magazine. "Presbyterians thought the Methodists were wrong. The Catholics thought all Protestants were wrong. The Jews thought the Christians were wrong. So what I'm financing is humility. I want people to realize that you shouldn't think you know it all."

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On the web: The winner of this year's Templeton Award for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities is to be announced this morning. Go to www.ottawacitizen.com today (look under Editor's Picks) after 11 a.m. to find out who has won, and to explore some of his or her ideas.

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Monday, March 06, 2006

How to prevent a clash of civilizations

Has the controversy over the Danish cartoons finally proved Samuel Huntington's theory of the "clash of civilizations" to be right? No, for civilizations are not players on the stage of world politics, nor do they wage wars; in many places, people of different cultures are living quite peacefully together.

World politics is a matter for states and their leaders, as it always has been. But they could make a mistaken theory come true through mistaken policies. A war of civilizations and religions must be prevented. The question is how.

De-escalation through dialogue. But are Muslims interested in serious dialogue?

Such a dialogue is taking place, between individuals, groups and faith communities in many places and at different levels all over the world.

As for the broad political scene, it was the former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, who as early as 1998 proposed to the UN General Assembly that the year 2001 should be a "Year of Dialogue among Civilizations." The fearful events of Sept. 11, 2001, for which neither Iran nor Iraq were responsible, tragically confirmed the urgency of this initiative.

The General Assembly session of Nov. 8-9, 2001 was devoted to dialogue among civilizations. However, the U.S. delegate was notable for his absence from this session. The public was virtually excluded from the debate for "security reasons." The media took hardly any notice of it. So we can turn the question round: does the West want a serious dialogue with Muslims at all?

Western self-criticism is called for. But isn't it the Muslims who primarily have cause for self-criticism?

More and more Muslims today are recognizing the difficult situation of the Muslim world and are engaging in self-criticism. Since the publication of three Arab Human Development Reports in recent years, commissioned by the United Nations and the Arab League and produced by around 50 Arab academics, no one can deny that the Arab world in particular is heading for a social, political and economic crisis.

But the West shares the responsibility for this situation. It should honestly reflect on itself instead of always pointing the finger at "Islam." In many cases Western states and companies have notoriously played a part in failed developments and abuses. We in the West have every reason for a self-examination which must go below the surface of current events.

Relaxing tension by recognizing deeper-seated causes. But wasn't the indignation of Muslims over the cartoons organized, and isn't every means being used by Muslim fundamentalists to stir up popular anger?

It is true that for radical Islamist organizations and individual governments the cartoons were a welcome confirmation of their caricature of a violent and immoral West. They are like the pictures of torture from Abu Ghraib, where human rights have been deliberately violated and Muslims deliberately shamed, and can be used to exploit popular anger.

But it is also true that this popular anger could not have been exploited had the West not created such a political tinder box that it took only a spark for the frustration and fury that has built up all over the Islamic world to explode. Every day, Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia see and hear about cruel military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Chechnya.

Press freedom in a responsible press. But mustn't the freedom of opinion and press freedoms be upheld at all costs?

Without free media there can be no democracy. But freedom of expression may not be abused in such a way that it deliberately violates central religious feelings and produces stereotypical hostile images - formerly of Jews, now of Muslims. Press freedom entails being responsible.

If it is not permissible to defame individuals and to violate their dignity, then one should also deal tactfully in the media with the great religious figures of humankind, whether it be the Prophet Muhammad, the Buddha or Jesus Christ.

A solution to the Palestine problem: central to easing the tension. But mustn't Hamas first recognize the right of Israel to exist, renounce all violence and subscribe to international agreements arrived at so far?

The Palestinians can likewise demand that first Israel must withdraw from all occupied territories in accordance with UN resolution 242, refrain from attacks by the Israeli army and comply with all the UN resolutions which it has ignored.

However, that will not get us very far. More than 50 years of what in practice has been a partisan policy of "mediation" by the United States in favor of Israel has made the Palestinians, whose situation has constantly deteriorated, doubt whether the U.S. really is an honest broker for peace.

The Middle East conflict is not at root a terrorist problem but a territorial conflict. A beginning has been made with the Israeli evacuation from the Gaza Strip. Peace calls for concessions on both sides, but above all from the stronger. And today Israel, with U.S. support, is the strongest military power in the Middle East.

The vast majority of the Palestinian people voted for Hamas out of deep frustration at the corrupt and inefficient PLO regime, Israeli intransigence and American partisanship.

It is a tragic fallacy to treat the new Palestinian government as a terrorist organization and attempt to force the Palestinians back into a wretched situation by harassment and by illegally withholding the income from taxes and duties that is due them.

Strengthening Muslim forces for reform. But surely violent attacks on people by radical Islamists and the occupation of foreign embassies and cultural institutes are quite unacceptable?

Indeed such violence must be firmly resisted. Tirades by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran against Israel are to be condemned by both Muslims and non-Muslims. But the vast majority of the Iranian people voted for Ahmadinejad out of disillusionment with the previous regime of mullahs and in the hope that poverty and the lack of prospects would be overcome.

The United States fatally dismissed the reformist president, Khatami, as being the representative of an "axis of evil." So he did not have the courage at an early stage to bring the power of the overwhelming electoral vote to bear against the reactionary mullahs and their revolutionary guards. Here the U.S. played into the hands of the fundamentalist extremist Ahmadinejad.

Preventive dialogue instead of preventive war. In view of the Muhammad cartoons and the photographs of torture from Abu Ghraib, it is all the more important that we in the West should not only propagate shared values such as freedom and equality and great achievements such as democracy, human rights and tolerance, but fill them with life through an ethic of humanity, reverence for all life, solidarity, truthfulness and partnership.

On the whole the Muslims in the European Union and the United States have reacted with restraint to these painful events and have attempted to have a moderating influence on their fellow believers in Muslim countries.

I do not want the good relations between Muslims and non-Muslims to come to harm, but to become deeper, even if that has to be through shared negative experiences.

One possible way to prevent a clash of civilizations at local and regional levels would be to set up interfaith councils in as many cities as possible. Such councils have functioned well in Britain for years.

Composed of official representatives of the resident faith communities, they could tackle issues which directly affect relations between faith communities. In crisis situations they could act as mediators and prevent dangerous developments.

The Rev. Hans Küng, a Catholic theologian, is an adviser to the United Nations as president of the Global Ethic Foundation.
TÜBINGEN, Germany

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Saturday, March 04, 2006

Survey Show Professors Have Faith

Four out of five college professors across the nation consider themselves “spiritual,” according to a report released yesterday, countering the popular perception that college campuses are predominantly secular.

The Higher Education Research Institute at University of California at Los Angeles surveyed 40,670 faculty at 421 colleges and universities nationwide on their views about religion and spirituality.

Jennifer A. Lindholm, director of the project, said she was surprised by the results. “I wasn’t sure what we would find,” she said. “I would not have guessed [the number of professors identifying as spiritual] would be quite that high, perhaps because of stereotypical notions that professors are solely academically motivated.”

Other academics, however, said the results were not unexpected.

“I’m not really surprised at any of the numbers. That’s my general impression when I meet faculty members,” said Harvey G. Cox Jr., Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard. “I would say, yes, four out of five have some kind of spiritual orientation.”

The survey is part of an ongoing, national project investigating the development of spirituality in undergraduates during their college careers, and the influence professors have on their students.

This part of the study, entitled “Spirituality and the Professoriate,” focused on the spirituality of faculty and what role they believe spirituality should play in their universities.

According to the report, 81 percent of college professors identify as “a spiritual person.” Nearly two-thirds of faculty describe themselves as “a religious person,” either to “some extent” or “to a great extent.” Sixty-one percent said that they pray or meditate, and only 37 percent of professors said they are “not at all” religious.

Some students said that the study highlighted the significance of spirituality.

“[The report] shows that spirituality is definitely an important issue to students and faculty across the country,” President of the Harvard Interfaith Council Om L. Lala ’06 wrote in an e-mail.

“Though [Harvard] is a secular institution, as it should be, I think the issue of students’ spiritual growth is unnecessarily shied away from,” he wrote.

The study also broke down the data according to gender, race, and academic discipline.

Sixty-six percent of African-American faculty describe themselves as spiritual “to a great extent,” the report said, compared to 48 percent of Caucasian faculty and only 37 percent of Asian and Asian-American faculty.

Professors in the physical and biological sciences were less likely to believe that universities should concern themselves with students’ spiritual growth than professors in the humanities.

Slightly more women than men “integrate spirituality in [their] lives,” the survey found.

By ALLEGRA E.C. FISHER
Contributing Writer

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Life's "on-call butler": how teens view God

Teenagers no longer fear the existence of God, believing instead that a higher power is more like a "butler", to be called on whenever they are in strife.

Results of a phone poll of 809 young Australians, to be presented at a Salvation Army conference in Sydney today, show the consumerist attitudes of teenagers extend beyond mobile phones and iPods to religion.

"While many are vaguely aware of the demands that religion makes, the dominance of the consumeristic culture in which they live tends to shape the way they approach what they hear," researcher Philip Hughes says.

The Christian Research Association survey revealed an underlying assumption that the young would make up their minds about what to believe and what to practice when they were ready and in a way that suited them.

In his paper on the study, to be published in the association's next quarterly bulletin, Mr Hughes says the teenagers assigned God attributes such as being loving, nice, friendly, forgiving and caring, although in discussions with students at church schools the ideas of God being the creator and of obeying his commands arose more often.

"The idea of God as a 'butler' on call when help is needed fits more readily into the consumeristic framework," he says, borrowing the comparison from the author of a similar study of US teenagers published last year, Christian Smith.

According to the association's survey, about 15 per cent of young Australians are enthusiastically involved in religion and the rest are "not deeply concerned".

While 75 per cent agree there is an inner being within each of us that we can discover, only 49 per cent believe in God, 34 per cent are unsure and 17 per cent are atheists. Life after death is a certainty according to 55 per cent, while 21 per cent are unsure and 23 per cent do not believe in it.

According to the Anglican Bishop of North Sydney, Glenn Davies, one reason teenagers might have a relaxed religious attitude is that their view of God reflects their view of and treatment of their parents.

"Their parents were the late baby boomers and were in many ways laissez faire. Now they regard their parents as "on call", like butlers," Dr Davies said. The lax attitudes of their parents also meant teenagers had not necessarily had the opportunity to develop a "moral centre".

"And when you are young, death seems so far away - so when tragedies like the recent deaths of the Mildura teenagers happen it is cataclysmic for them," he said.

But if Christianity is not gripping, neither are the other major religions, the study found. Only small proportions of teenagers have explored other options such as Buddhism (6.1per cent), Islam (5 per cent) and Hinduism (4.3 per cent). Nevertheless, 51 per cent believe in reincarnation or allow for its possibility, and 42 per cent believe definitely or possibly in astrology.

Jill Rowbotham, Religious affairs writer

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Poll: Americans educated in pop culture, not civil liberties

If life were a university, Americans would do better majoring in popular culture than in history, a survey released this week shows.

The McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum poll found that Americans' knowledge of television shows such as The Simpsons and American Idol far surpasses their familiarity with the First Amendment.

Only one of the 1,000 adults polled in the telephone survey could name all five freedoms guaranteed under the First Amendment. Yet more than one in five (22 percent) could identify all five major characters in Matt Groening's cartoon family.

Similarly, only 8 people in 100 could name at least three First Amendment freedoms. Four in 10 surveyed (40 percent) could name two of the three judges on the star-making show American Idol, and one in four (25 percent) could name all three.

"These survey results clearly demonstrate that many Americans don't have an understanding of the freedoms they regularly enjoy,"Dave Anderson, the Chicago museum's executive director, said in a written statement.

The new museum, which will open its doors in April, wants to help people understand their constitutional freedoms, especially those protected by the First Amendment. There is a lot of work to do.

Survey respondents wrongly said that the First Amendment guarantees rights to own and raise pets (21 percent), to drive (20 percent) and of women to vote (36 percent). The first two are not rights at all, and women's suffrage was not enshrined in the Constitution until ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Grab your pen. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, the press, and religion, as well as the rights to peacefully assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

By CHRISTOPHER LEE
The Washington Post

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Friday, March 03, 2006

Chinese Police Detain 36 in Raid on School

A U.S.-based group reported that Chinese police on Wednesday raided a bible school run by an underground Protestant church, detaining 36 people amid a crackdown on Christians worshipping outside Communist Party control.

The school‘s owner, Chu Huaiting, was later arrested at his home, the group said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. It identified Chu as vice president of the Chinese House Church Alliance, which it said groups about 300,000 worshippers in unofficial congregations of religious literature.

China allows worship only in the official Three Self Patriotic Movement, set up following the expulsion of foreign missionaries and church leaders after the 1949 communist revolution. The party retains final say on the group‘s finances, leadership and doctrinal issues, and severely restricts religious education, especially among young people.

Millions of other Protestants worship in unregistered groups, often called house churches because they meet in private homes to avoid detection. Those groups have in past been tolerated to various degrees in different parts of China, with some even operating seminaries and printing houses.

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Cowboy Church: Cowboy Up for Jesus!

How about a church in a barn? This is exactly where one North Carolina pastor plans to hold church services. Jerry Beck, pastor of Sandy Grove Baptist Church in Bladenboro, NC will launch the Higher Plain Cowboy Church on Tuesday, March 14, 2006 at 7:00pm. Cowboys and country folks will meet in the old H. White Stables, 15427 NC Hwy 131 S, Bladenboro.

This old land mark is the barn that Mr. White used to sell and trade Horses, mules and donkeys years ago. Many adults will remember going there as a child with their father. Pastor Beck and other church organizers have been preparing the building for the grand opening since January.

The cowboy church will be the only church of this type in the area. The specific target group will be cowboys and those with a cowboy mind set. Cowboy hats, boots and jeans are welcome. When you attend the cowboy church you will be welcomed by greeters on horseback. After the service there will be free pony rides for the children.

Pastor Beck said, "Our desire is to reach people who are not comfortable in the traditional church. We are not interested in their clothes but rather their heart. We want them to feel free to come as they are."

Critics of the cowboy church movement point out that meeting in a barn on a week night gives cowboys an excuse to lay out of church on Sundays. Smith responds, "Cowboys don’t need an excuse. They are not impressed by our fancy sanctuaries and expensive clothes. They work all week anticipating the weekend when they will load the horses and hit the trail. They are not likely to trade their saddle for a pew. Therefore, we schedule the main worship service on a week night for their convenience."

Smith continues, "Jesus went to the people where they were. When He met the woman at the well He talked about water. When he met the fishermen by the seashore He talked about fishing. He focused on the interest of their heart and offered them eternity! In much the same way the cowboy churches are focusing on the interest of cowboys and offering them Jesus. The good news is many are accepting Him!"

Contact: Jeff Smith, Cowboy Church Network of North America, 704-888-2081, js@cowboycn.org