January—February, 2008 (Vol. 23, No. 3-4)

Although granted most favored nation status by the U.S. government, Kazakhstan, under the authoritarian president Nursultan Nazarbayev, is cracking down on Christians, particularly Protestant groups that have been established in recent years.

Chronicles magazine (December) reports that as the U.S. seeks to establish a strategic position in the Central Asian country because of its oil resources, the Nazarbayev regime has cracked down on nonOrthodox Christians, not only by forcing them to register with the government, but also by detaining church members, confiscating church property and other forms of official harassment.

The government has recently targeted Grace Church ministry, which has 13,000 members in 250 congregations, according to writer Wayne Allensworth. Government authorities leaked that police found “psychotropic” drugs during a search of Grace Church, “a move that smacks of Soviet-era KGB smear tactics,” Allensworth adds.

The regime expects religious affiliation to follow nationality, with Russians being Orthodox, and Kazachs and other Central Asian nationalities part of the officially controlled Muslim body. The state, however, is wary of “Islam breaking free of official channels and becoming a threat to the Nazarbayev regime.

So the crackdown on evangelical Christians—with particular emphasis on the harassment of converts from segments of the population that are traditionally Muslim—could also be part of an effort to appease Muslims.”

Extremist Muslims are seeking to reach and influence non-Arabic speaking audiences by setting up English-language pages on existing Arab websites, reports Memri (Dec. 4), an Israeli news service that monitors and analyzes Middle Eastern media.

One of the apparent goals of the Islamist forums and blogs in English is to erode support among the Western public for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The English-language Islamist forums and blogs also frequently quote reports from the Western media that cast doubt on the effectiveness of the war on terrorism and of Western policies in general, such as reports suggesting that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan could jeopardize, rather than promote, the security and prosperity of Western countries.

Occasionally, the English-language forums and blogs post messages addressed particularly to Muslims living in the West encouraging them to play an active role in online activity in support of jihad. One example is a message entitled “A Dream and Reflections,” posted Oct. 5, 2007 on the Al-Ekhlaas forum (http://ekhlaas.org/forum/) by an individual calling himself Anbar Bikr.

The message castigates Muslims in the West for being too passive in their support of jihad. It further states that visiting jihadist websites is not enough, and urges Muslims to establish “an Islamic media [network] that will slap the West in the face,” emphasizing that Western freedom of speech allows them to do so at no risk. The Islamists are not only recruiting Muslims in the West for media jihad; some of the postings in English explicitly call on Muslims in the West to carry out martyrdom operations. Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor (December 28) reports that terrorist specialists see jihadist groups increasingly targeting young people, including teenagers, for their cause.

Security analysts find that in both Western and Arab countries, younger jihadists are being recruited over the Internet, or inspired to act on their own—apart from a centralized group—through exposure to militant Islamic literature and videos. Jonathan Evans of MI5, the British security service, recently said that teenagers as young as 15 and 16 have been implicated in “terrorist-related” activities as a result of a deliberate strategy by radical Islamic groups. Shortly before Benazir Bhutto was killed in late December, a 15-year-old boy was arrested for allegedly trying to blow himself up at a rally for the ex-prime minister.

In November, the first minor to be potentially tried for war crimes was detained for killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan and conspiring with Al Qaeda. But analysts say that these youthful operatives are making the jihadist terror network more diverse and unpredictable. Some observers, such as Gabriel Weimann, who wrote Terror on the Internet, says there are more than 5,000 jihadist websites, though others say that “serious” Al Qaeda-inspired sites number in the hundreds.

(http://www.memri.com.)

In the wake of the peace settlement in Northern Ireland, secularism has advanced among both Protestants and Catholics, according to David Porter, director of the Center for Contemporary Christianity in Belfast.

Although Northern Ireland has always been at the top of the charts on belief and church attendance (both among Protestants and Catholics) and the churches were instrumental in peace talks, “every church has shown a rapid decline,” said Porter during a talk at Columbia University in New York in mid-November. He added that the “Presbyterians in east Belfast are collecting around super-congregations, for example. A small number of churches attracting a disproportionate number, who are evangelical.

More traditional forms are falling away.” Porter adds that there is a “religious weariness in Northern Ireland. Everyone is tired. Our energy is spent [by] religion. In the south it is gone. It is a totally secular, globally capitalist society.” Asked what will take the place of religion, he responded, “A hedonistic nightlife. Gangs. Drinking. Money. Materialism.” Yet Porter said that there is evidence that the younger generation in Northern Ireland is more radical and divided than older ones.

Today’s students are more Catholic and are more likely to vote for Sinn Fein, often angry at the discrimination and sometimes violence their parents faced. The number of intermarriages is still “very small,” and there is still de facto Protestant-Catholic segregation, even in schools that are officially integrated, Porter said.

The Danish cartoons caricaturing Muhammad that enraged Muslims around the world in 2005 may also have started a Christian backlash in Europe.

Historian Philip Jenkins writes in the conservative magazine Chronicles (January) that since the cartoon controversy, “the prospects for Christianity in Europe seem better than they have for decades.” It wasn‘t so much that Muslims challenged Christians as that the debate over Islamic militancy, religious tolerance and multiculturalism brought up old questions of religious identity and common European values. Just as the secularists went on the defensive, the “more directly Christian ideas and institutions are challenged, the more need there is to justify and defend these, to think more, say, about why Catholic schools maintain crucifixes on their walls.”

Even in Denmark, where few care about the People’s Church, “most deeply resented the challenge to its role in national life. And some asked why Danish high schools required pupils to read the Koran but not the Bible.” The right in Britain may also have been invigorated by the controversy. In recent years, the “growing independence of the different components of the United Kingdom has encouraged a new sense of English identity, using as its flag not only the old Union Jack, but the Red Cross of Saint George, and the related celebration of St. George Day.

Although few English people currently use the new cult as an explicit token of religious confrontation, extremists exploit its Crusader associations,” Jenkins writes (St. George allegedly appeared to Christian forces during the Crusaders’ siege of Antioch in 1098). Even the establishment Church of England has become more forthright about reminding Europeans about their Christian roots.

In 2006, a report by the church charged that multiculturalism tended toward “privileging Islam,” and suggested that “there is an agenda behind a claim that a five percent adherence to ‘other faiths’ makes for a multi-faith society.”

(Chronicles, 928 N. Main St., Rockford, IL 61103.)

A new breed of therapist is seeking to heal “the mentally ill not with talk and drug therapy but by releasing troublesome or malevolent spirits who have attached themselves to their victims,” writes California State University professor Stanford Betty in the National Catholic Reporter (Dec. 28).

These therapists are not religious healers, but secular and often licensed psychologists and psychiatrists, “who have discovered, often by accident, that this new therapy works better than what they learned in medical or graduate school.” What is called “spirit release” therapy teaches that drugs only mask symptoms and talk therapy does not solve deeply rooted problems. The bible of the movement, William Baldwin’s 1995 book, Spirit Releasement Therapy: A Technique Manual, deals with spirits in a more conciliatory manner than religious exorcists, seeking to heal both these entities and the victims to whom they are attached, writes Betty.

Such spirits may come in the form of “earthbound” entities, which are departed ones still attached to people or vices they have left behind or “dark force entities” that have evil intent towards their victims. But both kinds of entities can be coaxed out of their victims and then “released into the light.” Betty writes that the proponents of spirit release therapy believe that everyone at one time or another has been inflicted with spirits. This claim is made on the basis of hypnosis sessions with their patients. The therapists often say that they discovered these entities by accident during the normal course of therapy, and some, such as West Virginia psychiatrist Shakuntala Modi, are not even sure that they actually exist.

Yet all the therapists agree that treating spirits as if they were real is “often the key to a startlingly quick recovery,” writes Betty. Spirit release therapy is said to be practiced by the credentialed and non-credentialed therapists and healers. William Woolger, a well-known transpersonal psychologist, sees the movement as the “next and essential stage in the development of psychology, a kind or return to the source.”

A long-expected split within the ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavich Jewish movement over messianic beliefs may be in the wings, and politics as much as religion may be the most immediate cause of such a schism, reports Forward.com (Jan. 9).

A long-standing conflict in the Chabad-Lubavich ranks over the status of its leader, Menahem Schneerson, with a group holding that he is the messiah, came to the surface recently when one of the leaders of the dissidents declared that, were Israel properly run, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would be “hanged from the gallows.” Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe, the most popular leader of the messianic strand of the movement, made this statement, along with other critical remarks, when speaking about negotiations with the Palestinians at a right-wing gathering.

The Chabad is said to occupy a privileged place among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox groups, being the only major Hasidic group whose members serve in the army. Its rabbis are also considered informal chaplains. Wolpe’s comments have raised the ire of Chabad leaders and spokesmen, with one claiming that his remarks have done such damage to the sect’s reputation “that it could be necessary to publicly declare that the messianists cannot act or speak on its behalf,” reports Nathan Jeffay. Immediately after Schneerson’s death in 1994, a rabbinical court ruled that the movement should not split in two, nor should the two factions undermine each other.

In the wake of Wolpe’s remarks, an Israeli politician has urged all Chabad activists to be banned from Israeli army bases. Such threats to Chabad activity could force the group to declare the messianists separate from the movement. The organization might be willing to expel the messianists if it means retaining its influence in Israel. And if the Israeli heads of the international movement made such a statement, the U.S. Chabad would likely fall into line.

The messianists have tended to promote hardline and right-wing positions in Israel, holding that such views are integral to their belief that the rebbe is the messiah.

(http://www.forward.com/articles /124444.)

Frustrated with the refusal of the Vatican to discuss the ordination of women, a growing number of women are taking matters into their own hands and ordaining themselves as priests, and in the process are drawing disaffected and marginal Catholics to their ministries.

The National Catholic Reporter (Dec. 7) notes that the organization sponsoring such ordinations, Roman Catholic Womenpriests, “has grown exponentially since it began just five years ago with the ordination of the Danube 7 (seven women ordained on a boat in the Danube River).” With its leading edge in North America, there are now about 50 priests, including six men, who have been ordained through the organization, with another 100 or so in training for ordination.

In many cases, the women who have come forward to be ordained were active in the leadership of mainstream Catholic structures, and their action has brought them swift censure and expulsion from their positions by the hierarchy (although the Vatican has not responded to this issue). These women, who are mostly in their 60s, were encouraged to take such actions by developments such as the decision by the Greek Orthodox Church to ordain women as deacons, and the decision of a few bishops (active and inactive) to support the movement.

In fact, the leader of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, Patricia Fresen, a South African nun and theologian, claims to have been recently consecrated as a bishop by three active Catholic bishops in Europe; as might be expected, their identities are a closely guarded secret. Fresen said that support of the women priests from Catholic clergy and laity is more likely to come from Europe than the U.S. Because many of these ordinations have taken place on boats—partly to put participants outside of the jurisdictions of local bishops—there have not been many conflicts.

But that is changing as the ordinations move to land and churches (and synagogues) of other denominations. In some cases, the congregations hosting the ordinations were pressured by their denomination not to hold the events because of concerns about ecumenical relations with the Catholic Church. Patricia Schaeffer reports that so far the women priests are attracting (usually to home-based services) those who also feel excluded from or disenchanted with the church—fellow feminists, gays and lesbians, pro-choice people, and divorced and remarried Catholics.

(National Catholic Reporter, 115 Armour Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64111.)

The rise of blogs and websites and the decline of print media tends to favor amateurs and volunteers over professionals—a tendency that may eventually have a significant impact on religious institutions and their public image.

Writing in the conservative Catholic magazine New Oxford Review (December), journalist Tom Bethell mainly focuses on Catholic publications when he notes how the Internet revolution is squeezing out the traditional print media. Among other publications, in the last year, the conservative Crisis magazine has ceased publishing its print version, and the influential liberal National Catholic Reporter announced that it is reducing its publication schedule to 24 issues a year, 18 fewer than at present.

What all this means in both the secular and Catholic media is that as the “high-maintenance professionals retire, often without being replaced, and as the newsrooms begin to resemble ghost towns, flotillas of amateurs are taking up the slack” in the form of “hundreds of bloggers” and websites.

Already, Bethell notes, magazines are letting online amateurs take over certain areas of their work.

For instance, once influential magazines such as the Latin Mass have taken a back seat to bloggers and websites in driving up interest in the Tridentine (or Latin) Mass (and listing available Masses) now that the pope has allowed its more frequent use. Bethell adds that in Catholic press, the “professional/amateur divide roughly corresponds to the liberal/conservative divide. For reasons that are hard to fathom, conservatives are temperamentally uncomfortable with the idea of reporting.”

This could be seen in the liberal National Catholic Reporter employing paid staff and correspondents while the conservative Wanderer relies on unpaid volunteers as correspondents. But ironically, the Wanderer may be the model of the future, “in which unpaid volunteers who love their subject will find themselves better placed to tell us what is happening than once well-paid professionals who are rapidly becoming unaffordable.”

(New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.)

A hate-crime trial taking place in California may also be revealing a new and more global front in the culture wars.

The trial concerns the assault and eventual killing of a man by Slavic immigrants that prosecutors charge was motivated by anti-gay sentiment. The Christian Science Monitor (Jan. 4) reports that gay leaders in Sacramento say that the incident followed several years of escalating tensions with Slavic immigrants who are largely evangelical Baptists and Pentecostals. Sacramento has a Slavic community of about 100,000, many of whom gained entry to the U.S. as Christian asylum seekers after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Gay activists and hate-crime monitors particularly focus on a group known as Watchmen on the Walls, which is led and promoted by American and Slavic evangelicals, such as Scott Lively and the charismatic Latvian-based New Generations Church. Lively is the author of The Pink Swastika, an anti-gay book with a wide circulation among Slavic evangelicals in the U.S. and abroad. The group has led street demonstrations in response to gay parades in Sacramento A gay rights demonstration in Oregon has likewise met counter-protests from Slavic evangelicals, mainly Russians and Ukrainians, though they are not necessarily connected with Watchmen on the Walls.

Watchmen conferences in the U.S. and abroad often feature anti-gay themes, sometimes using militant language, calling Christians to fight anti-Christian influences in their countries. The New Generations Church, which has branches in the U.S. and other countries, belongs to a network of charismatic megachurches that has emerged in former Soviet nations, particularly Ukraine (the church has close ties with the Kiev-based megachurch, the Embassy of God).

These churches are increasingly seeking to influence their respective societies. Spokespersons say the Watchmen does not teach hatred or approve of violent actions against gay people. Observers say that some in the Slavic community in Sacramento who grew up persecuted in the Soviet Union and see their children’s progress thwarted by officials feel that U.S. educators look down on their Christian children, Ben Arnoldy writes.

The Intelligence Report (Fall), the newsletter of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors far right (and increasingly Christian right) groups, cites an editor of a Russian newspaper in Seattle who claims that God is bringing Slavic evangelicals to West Coast cities to fight gay influence.

(The Intelligence Report, http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?a id=809).