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Twenty-six families from Germany with Russian Mennonite roots have been helped to resettle in southern Manitoba. Adele Dyck, a real estate agent in Winkler, Man. helping families with this task, reported on the resettlement project at a Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society meeting in Winnipeg on Jan. 23. She said that another 60 families have been accepted under the sponsorship program and 85 families under the nominee program. Most immigrants are nominally Baptists, but have a Mennonite background, speak Low and High German and have been in Germany for 8-20 years. Immigrants need financial resources, a minimum of $10,000 per applicant and $2000 for each dependent. Under a four-year agreement Manitoba has with Canada, up to 200 families a year can immigrate to Manitoba to meet a demand for skilled labour. At first, approval for the immigrants was slow, but in 1996-97, with help from the Canadian immigration department and the Manitoba government, a relationship was established with the Canadian embassy in Bonn, Germany, and close to 30 applicants were processed at that time.
Water hyacinth is a weed that grows quickly on open waters in tropical regions. In East Africa, this plant was virtually unknown a decade ago, but it has recently become an environmental and economic disaster for many communities around Lake Victoria. Large clusters of hyacinth have altered the lake’s ecology, hindered navigation and fishing, and choked dams, harbours and water intake facilities for power installations, irrigation pipes and municipal water systems. East African attempts to eradicate the weed using biological and chemical means have been expensive, hazardous and unsuccessful. In Bangladesh, people have lived with water hyacinth for many years, and, with help from Mennonite Central Committee, a number of groups have established businesses that manufacture the plant into paper products and furniture. By adapting the Bangladesh information, a Kenyan MCC partner group, Kisumu Innovation Centre Kenya (KICK), developed its own paper and furniture prototypes in 1998. However, further work is needed to perfect the manufacturing proms, and Bangladeshi and Kenya MCC partner groups hope to collaborate on this effort through visits to exchange ideas and resources.
A dove carrying an olive branch will be the symbol of the new integrated Mennonite Church. The joint General Board executive committee of the three merging conferences (Mennonite Church, General Conference Mennonite Church and Conference of Mennonites in Canada) approved the symbol at a meeting Feb. 12-13. The symbol, which is green, is intended to reflect Jesus’ baptism, life and ministry; the Holy Spirit; biblical history; and the mission and values of the new Mennonite Church, including the Anabaptist vision of peace and renewal.
Iraq was the destination of a Mennonite Central Committee peace delegation Feb. 26 – Mar. 12. Ted Koontz, a Mennonite theologian from Elkhart, Ind., and a member of the delegation, said he wanted to assure Iraqis that “not all American Christians support bombings and sanctions.” Other delegates include Dale Taylor of MCC Canada; John Rempel of MCC’s UN office in New York; Iris de Leon-Hartshorn of MCC US; and James Kwantes, a journalist from Abbotsford, B.C. Fay and Greg Foster and Jan and Rick Janzen, MCC workers in the Middle East, were also expected to join the delegation.
Fears of religious persecution in Nepal were sparked after two Christian men in police custody were gunned down Nov. 20. Both were known Christians and recent graduates of Ebenezer Bible College, a school run by the Nepal Churches Fellowship. In December, Beni Bahadur Karki, a Nepali government leader, claimed that Christians deceived people by praying for the sick in hospitals while quietly giving them medicine and then claiming miraculous healings, and that Christians administered wrong medicines to some patients. A Nepali branch of the Indian Hindu extremist group, Shiv Sena, opened on Jan. 5; its president revealed that the priority of the party would be to oppose the changing of a person’s religion in Nepal. Nepal’s population of 17.1 million people is primarily Hindu. Nepal became a multi-party democracy in 1991, but its constitution still proclaims the country to be Hindu. Christians have grown from a few thousand to between 300 and 400 thousand in recent years. Some Nepali Christians, fearing that a new militant Hinduism designed to combat Christian evangelism will grow, are bracing for violence.
The number of malnourished people in poor countries has fallen from 918 million to 841 million since 1970, reported the Bread for the World Institute. The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group noted that, despite population growth of 2 billion people, better nutrition has resulted from economic prosperity, the spread of democracy and more government-sponsored social programs for health and education. Average daily calorie intake worldwide is 2760 kilocalories. The US average is 3620 kilocalories. In contrast, Africa has eight of the world’s 10 worst-fed countries. Countries where food supplies are least adequate:
| Average kilocalories available daily |
Somalia
Eritrea
Burundi
Afghanistan
Mozambique
Ethiopia
Comoros Islands
Haiti
Democratic Republic of Congo
Djibouti |
1,580
1,640
1,710
1,710
1,720
1,780
1,830
1,830
1,880
1,890 |
An estimated 23% of Zambia’s children under age 15 have lost one or both parents, many of them because of AIDS. Three-fourths of households care for at least one orphan. The number of homeless children is rising. In Lusaka, the number of street kids has jumped from 35,000 in 1991 to 90,000. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 1.5 million children were orphaned by disease in 1997. In 13 sub-Saharan countries, HIV has infected at least 10% of adults, including 25% in Botswana and Zimbabwe. The worldwide HIV infection rate is 1% of adults, including 0.76% in the US.
Coca-Cola says its business grew by 305% in ex-Soviet Central Asia in 1996; in 1997, it grew 137%.
Seventy percent of Chinese men smoke. Over 12% of male deaths in China are related to smoking, and there are 2,000 smoking related deaths every day. Without new public health measures, the number of deaths related to smoking is expected to jump to 8,000 a day by the middle of the 21st century. Over 50% of Chinese think smoking does little or no harm, and over 60% don’t know smoking can lead to lung cancer.
In Russia, 44 million people live below the poverty line, and 8.4 million don’t have jobs. Young people are more likely to be impoverished than older people because young people don’t have access to government income supplements and lack education. There are 148 million people in Russia.
Many Mennonites in the US do not fully support the often politically liberal positions of Mennonite Central Committee’s Washington, D.C. office. Seventy-one percent of Mennonites in the US who take a political position side with Republicans (35% of five Mennonite groups – including 55% of the Mennonite Church – chose not to vote in 1989). Few Mennonites come from groups which tend to vote Democratic such as union members (6%), African-Americans (0.9%) and Hispanics (0.4%). In contrast, 73% of Mennonites reside in rural or small city areas, and 37% hold professional or managerial jobs – characteristics common among Americans voting Republican. However, Democrats have often done better on the MCC Washington Office’s biennial Voting Record because they have supported small military cuts (even if the cuts are not as great as MCC would like), while attempting to preserve spending for social programs. The mission statement of MCC’s Washington Office identifies four biblical themes: justice for all, with a special concern for poor and oppressed people (Deut. 24:17-22); nonviolent peacemaking (Matt. 5:9, 38-48); care for the earth (Gen. 1:28-50; Ps. 8:5-8); and religious freedom (At L=Bible T="Acts 5:17-42">). MCC says it feels free to be out of step with its constituency because it seeks to be faithful to the Bible; it seeks to be accountable to its partners around the world; it has more experience and has done more research than its constituency; and it is following Anabaptist principles and Mennonite confessions of faith.
Chosen People Ministries is an evangelical ministry committed to sharing Yeshua (Jesus) with Jewish communities around the world. Four days before Christmas, CPM ran full-page ads in the Ontario and Quebec editions of The Globe and Mail asserting that it is reasonable to be Jewish and believe in Jesus. Several Jewish community organizations, including the Canadian Jewish Congress, protested, calling the ads “disturbing and insensitive.” CJC is also challenging CPM’s right to use a stylized menorah (a candlestick with 7 candles) as its official trademark. CPM has used the menorah as a logo on its stationery and newsletters for more than a decade. CJC maintains that the menorah is a Jewish symbol and the attempt to adopt it by a group that works “specifically to convert Jews to Christianity” is “scandalous and immoral.”
Eugene Robinson of the National Football League’s Atlanta Falcons said Feb. 4 that he will return the “Bart Starr Award” he received from Athletes in Action Jan. 30. Robinson, who was honoured by the Christian ministry for “high moral character,” was arrested hours later for allegedly soliciting an undercover police officer for a sexual act.
Books which question the validity of evolution will be added to the junior and senior high school libraries in a Detroit-area school. The Melvindale-Northern Allen Park School Board approved the addition Feb. 8.
A suburban Detroit high school is being sued by one of its students for banning pentagrams. In October, the school introduced a policy forbidding symbols of white supremacy groups, gangs and Satanism. A pentagram is a five-pointed star used in the Wiccan religion. Student Crystal Seifferly, who calls herself a witch, says it is discrimination to ban her symbol when the school does not ban Christian crosses or Jewish stars of David.
Elizabeth Clare Prophet will retire this summer as spiritual leader of the Church Universal and Triumphant, an apocalyptic cult based near Yellowstone National Park in the US. Prophet, 59, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in November. She said she wants to spend more time with her family, including her 4-year-old son. The cult combines elements of Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism.
Cult expert Walter Schmidt said there are 1,500 small, violence-prone sects in Europe today. He said that number will likely rise as apocalyptic fever sets in with the coming of the new millennium. Speaking at an Evangelical Alliance conference, Schmidt noted that many groups seduce their members into committing suicide to escape the end of the world.
A survey by the German magazine Parents interviewed 1,823 children ages 7-17 at 70 schools, asking them: “If Jesus were here today, what would you tell or ask Him?” Questions about why God allows evil led the list (68.5%), followed by a question about why there are rich and poor people in the world (53.4%); 45.4% said they would ask Jesus to do something for the unemployed; 34.6% would ask how the world was made; and 31.1% would ask what God looks like. One 10-year-old pupil said, “I would ask Jesus if He wanted to be my friend.”
A government document has been signed by Christians in 15 villages of Luang Prabang, Laos renouncing their religious faith. The document indicates the Christians were tricked into believing in a foreign religion (Christianity, also known as “the Jesus religion”). It urges them to admit their error and confess their loyalty to the government, and states: “Should I be found to continue in the activities of the religion in question, I request the administrative authorities and the people to punish me according to the law.” Christian leaders are concerned the government could use the document to discredit Christians and that the entire incident could set a legal precedent. The Christians signed the document partly out of fear they would lose their food harvest, after originally refusing for several months.
Kenneth Nance, 58, was charged Sep. 18 with shooting his pastor, Andrew Lofton, after a Bible Study. Police arrested Nance for the murder of Lofton, 65, pastor of Christ Temple Apostolic Faith Church, Dayton, Ohio. Nance and his pastor differed on theological views. Nance reportedly killed Lofton after a Bible study on the Book of Revelation, during which Lofton urged his listeners to be prepared for the afterlife. Nance’s neighbours described him as a kind-hearted, devout man.
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Last modified August 31, 2000.
© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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