November—December, 2010 (Vol. 26, No. 1-2)

African independent churches (AICs) are among the fastest growing sector of Christianity in South Africa, but it is only recently that their significant role in development is being grasped, writes Barbara Bompani in the current issue of the Journal of Religion in Africa (No. 40).

AICs, representing one-third of the population of South Africa, blend African traditions with Christianity, particularly of the Pentecostal variety, including large denominations, such as the Zion Christian Church, as well as independent congregations. Scholars and theologians have tended to view AICs as backward and apolitical, with poor members and few resources (many AICs are based in private homes), but Bompani argues that these churches have pragmatically developed structures and organizations that meet members’ social needs.

Savings and investment clubs, usually started up informally by AIC members and featuring prayers and hymn singing and charitable services, not only increase participants’ financial resources, but also teach them how to budget their expenses.Eligibility in these mutual aid clubs is determined by the public recognition by other members of a person’s reliability. The independent churches “act as groups that focus on the reformation of the individual and family life, and are political in the way they concern themselves pragmatically with local community issues like housing, unemployment, health care and education …. These issues are at the center of sermons and teaching in the churches,” Bompani writes.

She further argues that AICs are “bridges that allow modernity to be represented in older cultural forms,” as can be seen in the call for members to “discover [their] Africaness through the Bible” and retain African traditions of childbearing and family life.

(Journal of Religion in Africa, Brill Publishers, http://www.brill.nl)

In recent years, Pakistan has been especially associated with terrorist activities allegedly motivated by Islam. However, a recent analysis published in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (September) shows that most Pakistanis do not approve of such actions, although those with extreme Salafi views tend to show more understanding of Islamically motivated acts of violence.

Co-authors Karl Kaltenthaler, William J. Miller, Stephen Ceccoli and Ron Gelleny outline the different source of jihadi terrorism in Pakistan: sectarian groups (Sunni jihadis attacking minority groups such as Shi’a and other “heretical” Muslims seen as “unbelievers”); anti-Indian groups (aimed at ending Indian rule in Kashmir and attacking targets in Kashmir and India itself); and Pakistani Taliban (Pakistani Pashtuns sharing the same ethnic background with Taliban and originally reacting to Pakistani military operations to root out Al Qaeda fighters who had found refuge on Pakistani territory).

The proliferation of jihadis (though originally supported in several cases by Pakistani intelligence) has led to a rise of violence in the country, which first targets the Pakistani state. However, it is difficult for Pakistan’s leaders to eradicate the jihadis entirely: for instance, the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence services) relies on them for a proxy war against India in Kashmir, a very popular cause in Pakistan, the authors note. Surveys show that average Pakistanis are concerned about the problem: 79 percent of them rank terrorism as a “very big problem” in their country, nine percent as a “moderate problem”, while only one percent say it is not a problem at all.

This pattern is seen most strongly in cities. Only three percent of Pakistanis believe that Islam sanctions attacks on civilians, while 83 percent say that Islam opposes such actions. Regarding the issue of terrorism in general, 55 percent say that terrorism is never justified, while 7 percent believe it is often justified, 8 percent sometimes justified, and 11 percent rarely justified. When questions are asked about specific targets, there is a low level of support for attacks on civilian targets in general; however, attacks against Indian targets are “often justified” (government institutions, 15 percent; public places, 11 percent; families of Indian military personnel, 13 percent) in the eyes of more Pakistanis than attacks against Pakistani targets such as Shi’a (only 5 percent).

An analysis of the situation shows that support for terrorism is driven by ideas more than by material interests. Mainstream religious Pakistanis are not supportive of terrorism, but extreme Salafis are. The research shows that dislike for secularism and advocacy for a greater role of sharia in society among mainstream Pakistanis are not correlated with a greater support for terrorist activities. Thus, it is not Islamic religiosity itself that shapes attitudes toward terrorism in Pakistan, but specific views on Islam, including extreme Salafi orientations.

(Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Taylor & Francis Group, 325 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19106)

Membership in state churches in Europe, often involving paying a church tax, is sometimes portrayed as a static condition that one escapes only in death.

But the practice of opting out of membership and church taxes is not only becoming easier, but more people are exercising a degree of choice on the matter. The Helsinki-based newspaper Helsingin Sanomat (Oct. 14) reports that a “record number” of Finns resigned from the Evangelical Lutheran Church over a two-day period after a gay rights panel discussion on TV featuring a church bishop was aired.

During and after the show, called Gay Night, which dealt with gay rights issues, including the rights of same-sex couples to marry in church, up to 2,633 people resigned from the church. The resignations were made on a website designed for this purpose. About 90 percent of all resignations from the church now happen through the Internet. Meanwhile, Italians are not dropping out from paying church tax as much as redirecting their donations.

The Tablet (Aug. 28) reports that a growing number of Catholics dissatisfied with their leaders in Italy are rewarding the Waldensian Church with their church tax money. The Waldensians, an Italian Protestant group with roots in the Middle Ages, showed a record 14.8 percent increase in people paying their church taxes to them, while the numbers of people designating sending their tax donations to the Catholic Church dropped for the second year running.

Conflicts over the suspension of a popular bishop may be bringing the Serbian Orthodox Church close to the brink of schism, according to several reports.

The former Orthodox bishop of Kosovo, Artemije, who was deposed from his position last May, has been reduced to the status of a monk by a decision of the majority the Holy Synod in November (21 voted for, six against and seven abstained, according to German newspaper TAZ, Nov. 25).

But Artemije has refused to accept the decision and has attempted to take control of a monastery in Kosovo along with a group of monks supporting him. Before being expelled by police, he celebrated the liturgy (despite his suspension) and declared that his goal was to restore “order, peace and unity” in his (former) diocese, Serbian channel B92 reported (Nov. 20).

Artemije was suspended and deposed from his position earlier this year on the basis of accusations of financial mismanagement. He strongly rejects the accusations and claims political intrigues are the actual cause of his deposition. He describes the sanctions taken against him as devoid of any canonical basis. His opponents say that Artemije’s actions are breaking the unity of the church. The situation is a complex one, reports Jean-Arnault Dérens on Religioscope (Nov. 24).

In contrast with several other bishops, Artemije consistently opposed first the communist regime and then Milosevic. In Kosovo, where Serbs have become a minority, he was among the few who advocated cooperation with the provisional authorities and ethnic Albanians after the 1998– 1999 war. However, after the severe riots in March 2004, during which many churches and monasteries were damaged or destroyed in Kosovo, Artemije refused to cooperate with international organizations for rebuilding purposes, stating that rebuilding without guarantees of a return to a normal life for Serbs in Kosovo was meaningless.

This irritated the government in Belgrade, which was eager to strengthen relations with the international community. Artemije’s independent attitude toward political authorities earned him the respect of many of the faithful. His charisma also attracted many young intellectuals. Observers note that there may be a serious possibility of a schism, although the church apparatus is out of Artemije’s control. It is difficult at this point to assess the extent of support for Artemije: a group of 80 monks is said to be at the center of the pro-Artemije movement. Whatever the impact Artemije and his followers will have, it is quite interesting to see how support for him has developed: Serbian monks in Kosovo became Internet-savvy quite early, and websites and forums have over the past few months become a major tool for Artemije supporters to spread their views (B92, July 4).

(Religioscope, http://www.religion. info; B92, http://www.b92.net; TAZ, http://www.taz.de; Courrier des Balkans, for translations from Serbian media into French, http://balkans. courrier.info)

Europe may be secularized, but a paradox is that religious music by members of the clergy or religious orders seems to be enjoying wide popularity, reports the Catholic news agency APIC (Nov. 19).

A group of three French priests stayed at the top of French hit parade for nine weeks and sold 500,000 CDs. In Ireland, a music group called “The Priests” has sold two million recordings since 2008. Not only “modern” music is presented. Gregorian singing attracts an audience well beyond the pews of Catholic churches, although few people are familiar with the intricacies of Gregorian songs. A recording from a Cistercian monastery in Austria has sold one million copies since 2008.

A recent recording by the choir of a French convent worshipping according to the pre-Vatican II rites had already sold 30,000 CDs ten days after its release. According to marketing experts interviewed by the French Catholic daily La Croix, we are currently witnessing the development of religious feelings and escape from the stress of daily modern life being turned into successful market niches.

(APIC, http://www.kipa-apic.ch)

With 75 percent of their members above the age of 51, the Knights of Columbus in Quebec are experiencing a slow decline—a trend that is also seen in other parts of Canada, reports the Swiss-based international Catholic news agency APIC (Nov. 28).

A Catholic fraternal organization with a worldwide membership of 1.7 million, the Knights of Columbus were founded in the U.S. in 1882 and have been present in the French-speaking part of Canada since 1897. They still number 100,000 adherents in Quebec, but around a third of them are nearing the age of 70 and there are only 4,000 members below the age of 30. Over the past three years, the organization lost 5,000 members in Quebec. The situation does not look much better in Ontario, where there are still 56,000 Knights, but new members cannot make up for the deaths of older members.

The aging of the movement is an issue of concern to the leadership of the Knights in Canada. They relate the situation to a decline of the interest in religion in general, but point out that the movement is flourishing in other areas of the world: for instance, the growth rate in California is said to be 200 percent per year.

(APIC, http://www.kipa-apic.ch)

The religious divide so evident in previous elections did not make much of an appearance in the recent U.S. mid-term political contests. The Christian Century (Nov. 30) reports that the Democrats’ strategy of inserting religion into the 2008 elections and capturing a segment of Catholics and some white Protestants was largely absent last month.

Liberal leaders say that Democrats “largely retreated to the same old wonky language to explain their policies and the same old strategies to drum up voters—with predictable results.” The faith outreach of 2008 was largely seen as a success, which is why activists are puzzled by its recent absence. The party’s gains among religious voters have been reversed, with 60 percent of religious voters opting for Republican candidates. Nearly seven in 10 white Protestants voted GOP—a six percent increase from 2008. Similar patterns were found among Catholics, with 54 percent voting for Republican candidates, compared to 42 percent in 2008.

Analysts cite the poor economy and weaker national networks (with many religious Democrat activists now working in the Obama administration) for the loss of the faith-based outreach. But on both sides, there was less deliberate political activism among religious groups. There was a sharp decrease of clergy promoting candidates to their congregations, and fewer voters encountered information on parties or candidates at their places of worship during the 2010 mid-term elections, according to a report from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Among registered voters who attend services at least once a month, only 16 percent said they found political information for the elections at their places or worship, compared with 25 percent in 2006.

Just six percent said that their clergy urged them to vote a certain way. Among white evangelical churchgoers, 16 percent said election information was available at their churches, down from 30 percent in 2006. Far fewer Catholics encountered such literature in their parishes, with the rate declining from 21 percent in 2006 to 10 percent in this past election. Of all religious voters surveyed, only six percent said they were contacted by an outside religious group about the election campaign.

(Christian Century, 407 S. Dearborn, Chicago, IL 60605)

The recent election of conservative Archbishop Timothy Dolan to the presidency of the U.S. Conference of Bishops (USCB) reveals a shift in the approach and strategies of the bishops that will have long-term effects on the American church, according to the liberal National Catholic Reporter (Nov. 18).

In what has been described as part of the anti-incumbency mood in American politics and religion, the Dolan election marked the first time in the history of the modern conference where the eligible sitting vice-president was not elected. Allen writes that the defeat of Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz. punctuates the “end of the ‘Bernardin era,’ a loose designation that honors the approach of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago … [which took] a broad and generally progressive outlook on the big cultural issues and enjoyed a conciliatory style within the church.” Under Bernardin in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, individual bishops tended to submerge their differences in order to provide a united front, often on social issues.

The newspaper adds that the close of the Bernardin era was in line with Pope John Paul’s desire for leaner national bishops’ conferences addressing a narrower scope of issues. In recent years, the U.S. conference has become more conservative and more splintered, often differing over an agenda dominated by internal matters, such as the liturgy and Catholic identity. Episcopal activity in the public arena has focused largely on abortion and homosexuality, with less attention to other social issues, as can be seen at the recent USCB, meeting where no mention was made of the state of the economy, unemployment or poverty, according to the article.

One explanation for the upset was that younger bishops are resisting the system that automatically elevates the vice president to the top position, while others cite allegations against Kicanas for mishandling sexual abuse charges (although somewhat similar charges have been leveled against Dolan). The article concludes that Kicanas’s defeat is a sign that more vocal conservatives are making their presence known; trying to moderate these voices may be next on the conference’s agenda.

(National Catholic Reporter, http://www.ncronline.org)

The idea of viewing one’s profession and education as a religious vocation and even an opportunity for Christian mission may have fallen out of favor in many Western societies, but no one has told this to the growing ranks of international evangelical students who are not hesitant about bearing witness to their faith while they work.

Union University sociologist Roman Williams has studied these new kind of Christian college students, often from Asia, and concludes that they may not be reviving Max Weber’s Protestant ethic as much as creating what he calls an “evangelical ethic and the spirit of globalization.” Williams, who presented a paper at the late October meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) in Baltimore, attended by Religion Watch, conducted interviews and other research in the Boston area among 46 international students from the five countries that send the most students to the U.S.—India, China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

About half of these students were Christian before coming to the U.S., but even those recently converted enthusiastically embraced the idea that their educations and future occupations should be based on evangelism and Christian service. Aside from the formal interviews, students were asked to document their daily lives by taking photos of important places, activities and objects in their lives. The missionary impulse was evident in the way many kept maps in their rooms showing the nations and areas they were praying for and eventually wanted to help evangelize.

Williams finds this fervor for combining mission with their vocation as being nurtured through groups back in their home countries, such as the China-based Back to Jerusalem movement and Issachar’s Seed, both of which actively encourage participants to use their professional skills to create opportunities to evangelize China and other countries.

Williams gives the example of a head researcher in China who uses her position to share her faith “with the people who work in my lab. They often leave as Christians.” Williams comments that “such use of workplace power for religious ends clearly runs counter to Western standards for employer conduct, but it is an example of how religious and cultural resources are mobilized and deployed by those who have embraced sacralized occupational identities in this particular context.”

He notes that his sample of students reflect wider trends among American international students. “On a national level, similar methods, programs, and goals are found among organizations that cater to international students. These similarities were observed at the annual meeting of the Association of Christians ministering to International Students and through conversations with students and leaders in the international student track of the Urbana 2006 [evangelical missions] conference.”

Europeans outnumbered other cardinals recently elected by Pope Benedict XVI, making it look “more and more likely that his successor will be a European, if not an Italian,” reports the British Catholic magazine The Tablet (Oct. 30).

In late November, Benedict gave the red hat to 11 new European cardinals, as well as four Africans, two Americans, two Latin Americans and an Asian. Eight of the Europeans are Italian and a high number of 13 currently work or have worked in the Roman Curia. Veteran Vatican affairs observer Giancarlo Zizola said that “[o]ne cannot recall in the last decades of the 1900s such an impetuous affirmation of the ‘Roman Party’.”

Since his election in 2005, Benedict has given a “disproportionate number of Europeans top positions in the Vatican and red hats in the college of cardinals,” writes Robert Mickens. Because cardinals (under the age of 80) elect, and are usually elected as, successors to the papacy, the high numbers of Europeans are not insignificant, although Mickens notes that the 23 voting cardinal positions that will open up in the next two years could change things. Most of those recently elected are moderate conservatives, although there are doctrinal hardliners, such as Raymond Burke, a strongly prolife American bishop who denied communion to pro-choice politicians.

The more conservative and Rome-based magazine Inside the Vatican (November) breaks down the ideological divide as follows: nine conservatives, seven on the more liberal side, with the remaining number not placed firmly in any camp. The magazine notes that most of the conservatives favor restoring the Latin Mass to greater prominence in the church.

(The Tablet, 1 King Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0QZ, UK; Inside the Vatican, PO Box 57, New Hope, KY 40052-0057)