April, 2001 (Vol. 16, No. 6)

The recent destruction of pre-Islamic Buddha images by Afghanistan’s Taliban regime suggests that this Muslim movement is reasserting its militancy after a period of tolerance and even cooperation with other nations on issues ranging from historic preservation to women’s rights, reports the Washington Post (March 20).

The widely reported destruction of invaluable Buddhist statues by the Taliban in early March after a religious edict was issued was followed days later by an animal sacrifice (100 slaughtered cows) by authorities. The action, far from repenting of the destruction, was meant to seek Allah’s forgiveness in delaying several days in blasting the statues. Unnamed sources say that following an internal struggle, moderates who tried to establish greater contact with the West during the last year have lost influence to hard-liners.

One source in an Afghan international agency says that the statue destruction was done to “show that they [the Taliban] are the purists, the real face of Islam.”

Although Afghanistan has not showed much change in its restrictions against women’s rights, it had allowed women to work in relief agencies run by foreign charities. But last summer Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s top leader, issued a decree barring Afghan women from working with foreign agencies. just as he reversed his earlier promise not to destroy pre-Islamic shrines.

Although the Taliban claim they destroyed the Buddhas for strictly religious reasons, analysts see the hardening stance of the regime as a reaction against the sanctions Western nations have imposed on Afghanistan because of the Taliban’s alleged links with terrorism.

The majority of  religious organizations that were required to re-register with the government in order to be recognized in Russia have done so, although a significant minority — from the Salvation Army to Buddhists — were turned away from such official approval and may face liquidation.

In 1997 Russia passed a measure requiring all religious groups that had registered prior to that year to re-register before December 31, 2000 or face losing status and possible liquidation by the authorities. Frontier (No. 1, 2001), a newsletter of the Keston Institute, a group monitoring religious freedom in communist and former communist lands, randomly selected various Russian regions to determine how the re-registration process had worked.

A majority of religious groups were found to comply with the law on schedule. For instance in the Kursk region, four groups had failed to re-register, compared to 282 which had done so.

Those groups failing to re-register either never registered at all, were too small to be required to register or had disbanded in the meantime, were in too remote a location to re-register (in Siberia, this was most often the case for not re-registering), or were refused registration or re-registration by the local authorities  This latter problem is most often the case with groups with foreign ties. The Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist order based in Moscow but with a Japanese leader attempted to re-register five times prior to June 2000 before deciding to exist on an unofficial basis.

Similar rejection has greeted Jewish, Baptist, and Jehovah’s Witnesses groups. In many cases, they are forced to accept legal status as a “religious group” rather than as a “religious organization,” which means they have fewer rights and more difficulties renting buildings for meetings.

(Frontier, Keston Institute, 4 Park Town, Oxford OX2 6SH, U.K.)

Churches in mission areas around the world are facing a “brain-drain” as their best and brightest church leaders often are lured to the U.S. for more prestigious positions, according to a missions specialist. Pastors, seminary professors and others in independent organizations are being lured to U.S. ministries because they can offer better pay and more comfortable surroundings, says Jim Reapsome in the missions newsletter World Pulse. 

Reapsome, whose article is cited in Charisma News Service (March 14), says that world missions are being gradually depleted by the flow of evangelical talent to the U.S., often because of Americans’ “predatory practices” of recruiment.

Reapsome cites the case of Sri Lankan evangelical leader Ajith Fernando as he is continually faced with enticing offers to leave his local ministry and join international agencies or to teach in the U.S. Despite personal risks and much lower pay and standard of living, Fernendo has declined such offers and has stayed in his war-torn country.

Religious participation in global policy planning gatherings is on the rise, although neither religious leaders nor policy makers have thought much about the long term role of religion in world affairs, writes Lawrence Sullivan in the e-newsletter Sightings (March 7).

The recent participation of religious leaders in the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland was a first. WEF organizer Klaus Schwab “has signaled a serious, civilized role for religious players in Davos . . . The WEF briefed all participants on religion’s relevance: in stabilizing and legitimizing political and economic systems; in reviving activism in the international system; in mobilizing against globalization’s deleterious effects; in building and consolidating peace; in providing critical and spiritual reflections from which emerge social, economic, and ecological values,” Sullivan writes.

The new recognition of the religion factor may be partly defensive. Such international agencies as the UN, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund have faced steady criticism from religious institutions on issues of religious freedom, women’s issues, immigration, poverty, and the environment. Another event that may have encouraged the WEF was last summer’s Millennial Peace Summit, which brought religious leaders, and such personalities as Ted Turner, to the UN to deliberate on world peace and interfaith cooperation.

But Sullivan adds that this “UN moment has yet to be followed up with constructive working agendas that involve religious leadership.” The problem lies partly with the religious leaders. Sullivan concludes that “Few religious leaders study the issues or express themselves in ways that engage policy makers in business, finance, science, and government.”

The Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC), a largely gay, bi-sexual and transsexual denomination, is gradually moving into mainline Protestantism, reports the Christian Century (March 21-28).

Although the MCC has been repeatedly rejected for membership in the National Council of Churches, the 44,000-member denomination is finding acceptance among mainline seminaries, such as Chicago Theological Seminary and the Pacific School of Religion, where an arrangement may include classes teaching MCC doctrine and church polity. Writer John Dart adds that the MCC’s ecumenical and interreligious officer was recently elected president of the California Council of Churches. The MCC also belongs to statewide councils of churches in Hawaii, Colorado, North Carolina and Oregon.

Although denied official membership, a half-dozen MCC officials sit on NCC and World Council of Churches committees. Another unprecedented step took place last fall when the United Church of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and the MCC jointly planted a new congregation in Berkeley, Calif., that seeks to bring together Christians regardless of sexual orientation.

MCC pastors regularly attend the Robert H. Schuller Institute for Successful Church Leadership, a well-known church growth seminar. Along with such cooperative efforts, Dart finds that the church also has a more confrontational side. It has moved from performing same-sex unions to being on the front lines for gay marriage. The denomination works closely with the interfaith group Soul Force — which is headed by MCC clergyman Mel White — which regularly engages in protests against denominations and congregations that oppose full gay rights.

Dart notes that the MCC is growing and becoming more diverse (with now about an equal percentage of lesbians), with congregations holding a mix of evangelical, liturgical and even New Thought and Unitarian teachings, with churches in the Bible belt being the largest. The MCC still sees itself as a sort of spiritual Red Cross for gays and others, helping people discover spirituality during life crises even if most eventually move on to other churches and traditions.

(Christian Century, 407 South Dearborn, Chicago, IL  60605)

Although evangelicals have been involved in self-help groups for several years, “sexual recovery ministries,” appear to be striking a strong chord among such believers.

The Los Angeles Times (March 30) reports that a “small but growing number of evangelical and Pentecostal churches across the U.S. are starting sexual recovery ministries” for those addicted to pornography and prostitution. Although most churches are uncomfortable with admitting that their members could be addicted to pornography, “anecdotal reports suggest that growing numbers of church members and pastors are being ensnared by addiction to pornography, in large part because they can easily access it anonymously on their computers,” writes Larry Stammer.

For instance, the evangelical men’s ministry Promise Keepers reports that one out of three men who attended its conferences in 1996 admitted that they struggle with pornography. Several programs have been launched to deal with sexual addiction in evangelical churches over the years and most of them are reporting upswings in interest. They include Pure Desire, RSA (Renewal from Sexual Addictions), and the Minneapolis-based Faithful and True.

These programs are similar to secular sexual addiction self-help groups except for the Christ-centered dimension and the “biblical model” that one can be healed of this problem — a belief that is criticized by psychotherapists who hold that an addict is always recovering but never cured.

Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, is currently seeking to strengthen his movement’s ties with black churches, an effort meeting with mixed success.

In the San Francisco Chronicle (March 13) Don Lattin reports that Moon’s recent 49-city tour of the U.S. is showing a new interest in building a coalition between black churches and his movement, now going by the name the Family Federation of World Peace. Although some black church leaders have gravitated to Moon-backed social organizations (such as CAUSA) since the 1980s, Moon’s recent involvement with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan during last year’s Million Family March and his current tour show a new effort in this direction as he seeks religious unity.

Lattin reports that at an Oakland meeting, black leaders and other clergy defended Moon against charges that he is a dangerous cult leader as they cited his leadership on moral and social issues.

The independent news service Alternet (March 13) reports that Moon has recently surrounded himself with black church leaders, such as Dr. Tony Evans, head of the Texas-based group, The Urban Alternative, and confident of President George W. Bush, as well as with Christian right leaders including Jerry Falwell. But the effort to draw black leaders into the Family Federation’s new ecumenism has run into some roadblocks, reports David Crumm and Alexa Capeloto in the Detroit Free Press (March 13).

In Detroit, a pair of nationally known African-American leaders denounced Moon and his organization for claiming their support of his crusade. Prominent ministers Eddie Edwards and Frederick Sampson claimed they were listed as co-sponsors and supporters of the Detroit crusade when they had no such involvement. The FFP later apologized for using their endorsements.

The pair, plus television minister Glenn Plummer also criticized Moon’s theology claiming he is a new messiah.

The attempt to fund faith-based social services through the government is revealing deep fissures between white and black as well as suburban and urban churches, according to two reports.

The Washington Times (March 26) reports that minority religious leaders who work with the urban poor tend to back the government’s call to expand a 1996 law that allows ministries to use federal welfare funds, while academics and other clergy concerned about church-state separation oppose the measure as merging public money and religion.

“The debate also is highlighting a difference in outlook between suburban houses of worship, which are predominantly white and focused on doctrine and membership, and in black and Hispanic urban ministries,” writes Larry Witham. Surveys on church-run welfare ministries show that black congregations and more liberal churches are far more likely than conservative ones to run such services and accept government funds.

At the same time, the strongest criticisms of government supported faith-based welfare have come from lawyers and lawmakers with “predominantly white mainline Protestant or Jewish constituencies,” Witham adds. In the New York Times  (March 26),  Laurie Goodstein writes that black clergy are “confronted daily by the needs of the poor [and] are more willing to consider government assistance.” As one black minister said, “. . . if I have to remove the Bible, remove the cross from the wall, remove the Ten Commandments to get that government money, I’ll do it. God is in me, that’s good enough.”

White suburban clergy, meanwhile, are more concerned about freedom from government interference. Goodstein notes that the Bush administration has recognized the emerging gap between these faith groups and, in speeches and a presidential visit with black clergy, has started to frame the initiative as an antipoverty issue.