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Mennonite Central Committee is trying to collect 23,000 relief buckets for communities in Venezuela affected by 15 landslides in December. About 30,000 people are dead, and thousands continue to suffer due to massive flooding. Many live in temporary shelters. One stadium has been home to 1,200 people for over a month. Over the next six months, MCC and its partners in the region will provide $44,500 for local purchase of food, toys and basic supplies; 10,000 health kits; and the relief buckets. Each bucket should include: four bars of antibacterial soap; one bottle of shampoo (450-830 ml) in a plastic bag; 10 cups of powdered laundry detergent (double bagged in a four-litre resealable plastic bag); one tube of toothpaste (min. 130 ml); four adult-size unwrapped toothbrushes; four new medium weight (not white) bath towels; one hairbrush; one wide-tooth comb; one fingernail clipper; one box of adhesive bandages (min. 40, assorted preferred); and one package of 18-24 sanitary pads (thin maxi or ultra thin). MCC will repack the contents in a five-gallon bucket for shipment. Donors should also give MCC a cheque for $15 to purchase a Spanish Bible for the bucket and to cover shipping costs. In cooperation with Venezuelan Mennonite churches, Eastern Mennonite Missions and Mencoldes, an MCC partner in Colombia, MCC has formed a preliminary plan to spend $469,500 for relief for Venezuela. – Mennonite Central Committee
Amnesty International has documented numerous massacres of unarmed civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Forces of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD, the Congolese Rally for Democracy) and those opposing them are engaging in deliberate and arbitrary killings, “disappearances”, arbitrary arrests and torture of civilians almost on a daily basis. For instance, at least 50 civilians were massacred by RCD troops in October 1999 near Sange, South Kivu; many of the victims were shot dead as RCD soldiers fired indiscriminately at vehicles. In Kisangani, about 300 people, many of them unarmed civilians, were killed in August 1999 during fighting between Rwandese and Ugandan troops. In Goma and Bukavu, there have been widespread arrests of anyone suspected of opposing the RCD, including journalists and human rights defenders. Many of the detainees have been tortured, whipped or beaten, and female detainees have been raped. The war in Congo began in August 1998 when sections of the Congolese army, backed by troops from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, launched a rebellion – the RCD – to overthrow President Kabila. Troops from Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola supporting Kabila are fighting against the RCD. In 1999, the RCD split into two factions, one backed by Rwanda and the other by Uganda; each faction controls different regions in the east of the country. – Amnesty International
Critical comments about Hinduism by Christians have apparently angered Hindus in India. For instance, Ralph Winter of the US Center for World Mission, said in a 1994 article posted on the Web site of Mission Frontiers that “The Hindu world is the most perverted, most monstrous, most implacable, demonic-invaded part of this planet. . . . The perversion of Satan in this part of the world is just absolutely legendary.” Indian Christians say that “Hindu” can refer to culture as well as religion. The article has now been withdrawn from the Web site. Luis Bush, international director of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement, is also fielding complaints because of “sensitive references to India” made in the reports of 10 North India statewide consultations held in July 1998. The reports were published on AD2000’s Web site, but all sensitive references have since been removed. Many Indian Christians say that bombastic slogans, militant language and the general demeaning of Indian culture may have ignited attacks by Hindus against Christians in recent years, including the murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons by Hindu extremists in January 1999. – World Pulse
Police in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh watched as Hindus attacked the Christian nephew of Arun Shourie, a prominent journalist and member of India’s upper house of Parliament. Chandrakant Shourie, his wife Rebecca, their son Ashish and some friends and neighbours were allegedly attacked by six members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on Dec. 31 in Nagod, a remote town about 1000 km southeast of New Dehli. During the attack, the six men, armed with sticks, shouted: “Kill this Christian. We will make Nagod another Orissa” – a reference to the murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons last year. Chandrakant was abused and beaten, Rebecca suffered a wound on her hand, and Ashish needed five stitches on his right hand. The VHP has denied being involved in the attack. Some Hindu groups claim Hindus are being forced to convert to Christianity, but Chandrakant says he became a Christian of his own accord. His uncle Arun, a member of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janatha Party, has been at the forefront of a campaign against Christians and has not spoken with his nephew since his conversion to Christianity. Chandrakant is a member of the National Forum for Reconciliation, Religious Liberty and Social Justice, organized by the Evangelical Fellowship of India, and has investigated attacks against Christians. The Shouries moved to Nagod over 20 years ago to establish a school for the disadvantaged. – Compass Direct
Representatives from about 50 mission agencies of anabaptist churches around the world will meet together with the Mennonite World Conference General Council at the Global Anabaptist Missions Consultation in Guatemala, July 12-16, 2000. The theme of the consultation is “Seeking Vision for the New Millennium” and the motto will be “Pray that God may open to us a door for the Word, to declare the mystery of Christ”, based on Colossians 4:3. A survey of anabaptist church groups around the world revealed that 30 of the “newer”anabaptist churches in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe have sent out about 500 workers to do cross-cultural evangelism. The program for the consultation includes plenary addresses by Eloises Meneses (USA), Nzash Lumeya (Congo) and Johannes Reimer (Germany); and two leaders from broader mission networks: Phill Butler of InterDev and Luis Bush of AD2000 and Beyond Movement. – Mennonite World Conference, Council of International Ministries
Hundreds of Roman Catholic priests in the US have died of AIDS since the 1980s, according to a report by the Kansas City Star. The paper says that the rate of AIDS-related deaths among the country’s 46,000 priests is four times that of the general population. In a nationwide survey, 60% of priests said they knew at least one priest who died of an AIDS-related illness, and 30% said they knew a priest who has AIDS. In a confidential survey, 15% of priests identified themselves as homosexual and another 5% as bisexual. – Evangelical Press News Service
Robert Chapman, Africa area director of Wycliffe Bible Translators International, and his wife Ruth were aboard Kenya Airways flight 431 that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean Jan. 30. The plane was on its way from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to Nairobi, Kenya, when it crashed shortly after takeoff. Originally from Canada, the Chapmans have worked for Wycliffe since 1983. In 1999, Robert became director of Wycliffe projects in sub-Saharan Africa. – EPNS
The Global Church Sharing Fund of the Mennonite World Conference has grown to over $1 million US since its inception in 1998. Between January 1998 and May 1999, a total of $161,371 was sent to 52 Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches in Africa, Asia and Central and South America. The Mennonite Church Congo used most of the money it received to buy bicycles for evangelists. The Brethren in Christ Church in Nicaragua invested the money it received in cows; in return for caring for the cows, church members may have the milk from the cows. The fund was launched with $600,000 from Mennonite Central Committee and $300,000 from Mennonite Mutual Aid. It has since grown through interest earnings and donations from Mennonite congregations in North America. Churches receiving money from the fund have the freedom to decide how they wish to use it. The MWC General Council will evaluate the effectiveness of the fund at its next meeting in Guatemala in July 2000. – Mennonite World Conference
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the most important archaeological find of the 20th century, according to Gordon Govier and Keith Sohoville, hosts of the 15-minute weekly radio program, “The Book and The Spade”. The scrolls were discovered by chance in several stone jars in 11 caves along the Dead Sea by Bedouin shepherds. Other discoveries making the top 10 list were the remains of a 2,000-year-old boat found by the Sea of Galilee in 1986; an inscription at a Roman theatre in Caesarea Maritima mentioning Pontius Pilate; an inscription in northern Israel mentioning King David, the oldest reference outside the Bible to any biblical figure; and an ossuary, a stone box used for retaining the bones of a deceased person, inscribed with the name of Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest who presided over the trial of Jesus. Govier also edits the archaeology newsletter Artifax and frequently reports on archaeology for Christianity Today. Sohoville, former president of the Near East Archaeology Society, is professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin. – EPNS
10-15% of US military personnel attend church or chapel. – Holiness Today, The Mennonite
“Y Go 2 Waste” was the name of a campaign in the US encouraging people to donate their stockpiled “Y2K” supplies to food banks to help feed the poor. Running Jan. 15-Feb. 15, the program was sponsored by Kellogg’s and America’s Second Harvest, the largest domestic hunger relief organization in the US. – EPNS
A group of Mennonites in Mexico is receiving a loan of $50,000 from Mennonite Central Committee Canada to purchase new heifers for their dairy cooperative. The group originally bought 200 heifers from New Zealand in April 1999 on the recommendation of the Mexican government, but milk production was lower than expected. The cows have produced only 14 litres of milk per day each, compared to the 20 litres per day expected. MCC’s Kanadier Program had helped design the $444,000 dairy cooperative on Campo 4 Colony, near Cuauhtemoc, and Mennonite and Amish investors had provided low-interest loans for the original cattle purchase. The project was designed to boost milk production and help the colonies in Mexico, which had suffered several years of drought, but the lower-than-expected production meant that the co-op was having trouble repaying the original loan. MCC Canada will deposit the money in the Mexican Mennonite Revolving Loan Fund, which will lend the money to the dairy co-op interest-free for a year, after which a 3% interest will be charged. 30-40 dairy cattle are expected to be purchased in Manitoba. Some of the New Zealand cows will be sold to cover the debt owing to the Mexican government for the original purchase. – MCC Canada
Russia’s Committee on Religious Organizations approved a proposal to extend the deadline for the reregistration of religious organizations there until Dec. 31, 2000. However, the State Duma (Parliament) must still approve the amendment by early December. A controversial new religion law enacted in October 1997 required all registered religious organizations in Russia to reregister by the end of 1999. As of Sept. 1, 37% of religious centres had registered on the federal level and 20% on the local level. The slow pace of reregistration is blamed on bureaucratic delays, technical mistakes by applicants and discrimination. Should the Duma not pass the proposal, thousands of religious groups will find themselves in violation of the law on Jan. 1, 2000. – Compass Direct
Mennonite Central Committee marked its 50th anniversary in Palestine with two receptions. At the Nov. 12 reception, Sulieman Noor, headmaster of Hope Secondary School, said, MCC “helped in education, agriculture and material aid. I believe that is the true church – not built of rocks and stones, but of ‘living stones’.” Zoughbi Zoughbi, director of Wi’am Conflict Resolution Centre in Bethlehem, thanked MCC for its support to Palestinians as they struggle for justice under Israeli occupation: “Individuals can resist injustice, but it takes a community to make justice.” At the Nov. 14 reception in Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini, a Palestinian official, said MCC did more than offer help to people who were suffering. “It helped them (the Palestinians) see that there are other people in the world who will work for justice.” Canon Naim Ateek, director of Sabeel Liberation Theology Centre, said that Mennonites “wanted to serve God by serving people. They came to us as a people of faith. There are many Christian churches I am not proud to associate with, who say they are Christians. I am not ashamed of the Mennonites.” – MCC
The use of depleted uranium by the US military during the Persian Gulf War has been documented by journalists, environmental groups, researchers and physicians. Most agree that 320 tons of depleted uranium were dropped on the deserts of Kuwait and southern Iraq in 1991, mostly in the form of bullets and missiles coated with the compound. The effects of depleted uranium on people are unknown. Parts of the battlefield are reported to register about 35 times the normal rate of background radiation. The US State Department denies any direct links between the use of depleted uranium and birth abnormalities, infertility and a rise in cancer rates in the Iraqi population and in Persian Gulf War veterans. In Basra, the major town between Iraq and Kuwait, the rate of birth abnormalities is said to have tripled since the War. An Iraqi pediatric oncologist estimates that cancer rates have risen by four to seven times, particularly for leukemia. Many Iraqi children are experiencing illness and hair loss. One in four Iraqi children are malnourished. Some show signs of chronic malnutrition, due to long periods without proper calories, proteins and nutrients, which leads to growth stunting and can have debilitating mental and physical effects. Others have acute malnutrition, caused by the body’s sudden inability to absorb food due to illness. – MCC
Turkish secret police raided a Sunday morning church service Oct. 3, arresting 40 adult members of Zeytinburnu Fellowship of Jesus Christ, along with 11 foreigners and their five children. Young mothers, their children and the elderly were not detained. Police say the church is illegal. About 30 of those arrested were allowed to drive their own vehicles to police headquarters when they could not all fit into police vans. The raid came three weeks after a raid on another church. On Sept. 12, police closed Izmir Fellowship of Jesus Christ after arresting 35 Turks and five foreigners. Cameras filmed that congregation singing hymns. The Christians were held overnight for questioning at the Terrorism Bureau. The group was released after the state prosecutor ruled the congregation’s activities were protected under constitutional guarantees of freedom of worship and belief. That evening, the TV station aired the arrests, and the next day a tabloid associated with the station devoted an entire page to the incident, calling the group a “pirate church” that met secretly and illegally under the leadership of foreigners. A Sept. 9 article in the tabloid announced that “missionary priests” were brainwashing and baptizing Turkish youth, tempting them with offers to furnish them jobs and a wife. However, several other newspapers have criticized the actions of the police and the tabloid, calling the police behaviour “unbecoming to our government”. – Compass Direct
The worldwide Christian church is “characterized by superficiality”, according to John Stott, a leading evangelical in the United Kingdom. Speaking at the first “International Consultation on Discipleship” Sept. 21-24 in Eastbourne, Sussex, UK, Stott described the world Christian situation as “strange, tragic and possessing a disturbing paradox” in that in some places church growth is strong, but the growth has no depth due to a lack of proper discipleship. The discipleship conference, spearheaded by Cook Communication Ministries International, attracted 400 delegates from 54 countries. It featured Christian leaders from around the world, including Stott; Appianda Arthur of Ghana; Helene Ashby, Dann Spader, David Dawson, Ravi Zacharias and Stuart and Jill Briscoe, all of the US; John Earwicker of the UK; Danut Manastireanu of Romania; Tokunboh Adeyemo; Paul Ariga of Japan; and David Leong of Singapore. Delegates at the conference signed a 15-point statement of commitment which included preaching the gospel and making disciples in all nations; not watering down the cost of discipleship to increase converts; acknowledging the primacy of the local church in the discipleship process; and submitting to Christ as Lord in every area of life. Delegates also identified common problems that need to be tackled: low literacy rates in some parts of the world, the lack of contextualized materials, and the church’s low credibility among the non-churched. – Chuck Thomas Creative
Brother Andrew, known for bringing Bibles to countries closed to Christianity, is searching for the pastors he says betrayed him so that he can forgive them. Recently, he acquired a classified file on himself compiled by the secret police of communist East Germany. He learned that many of the Bibles he gave to pastors there never reached the people in their churches, but were turned over to the authorities, who then burned the Bibles. Brother Andrew says that many of these pastors are still communists and will not ask for his forgiveness. – EPNS
There are more students with learning disabilities than with all other disabilities combined, according to Carol McMullen, a learning disabilities specialist and attention deficit disorder coach from Guelph, Ont. She has worked in the field for nearly 30 years and works with Mennonite Central Committee Canada. “We are looking at three-to-six children in every classroom of 30, 10-20 people in every workplace of 100,” she says. “And, approximately 80% of young male offenders have untreated learning disabilities.” The National Institute of Health defines a learning disability as “a disorder that affects a person’s ability to either interpret what they see and hear or link information from different parts of the brain”. Dyslexia is an example. Famous people with learning disabilities include Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, Winston Churchill, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise and Cher. “Learning disabilities are a neurological condition, not an indication of intelligence,” says McMullen. – Dialogue On Disabilities
Albanian Christians report an unprecedented opportunity to share their faith with Kosovar refugees. In response, the Bible League is providing an additional 25,000 Bibles for Albanian Christians to use in their relief efforts. There are about 6,000 evangelical Christians in Albania. In 1989, the Bible League began providing Scripture materials to Albania and training Albanian Christians in evangelism. – The Bible League
The Crisis Pregnancy Centre of Winnipeg has taken over Alliance for Life’s Canada-wide toll-free phone number: (800) 665-0570. Alliance for Life, a pro-life education group, had to give up the line when it was de-registered in June by Revenue Canada. There are about 70 CPCs across Canada that provide counselling to women considering having abortions. The CPC in Winnipeg is run by Christians who offer free pregnancy tests, post-abortion counselling, clothing, furniture, food and housing. Its Web site is www.pregnancy.mb.ca. – Crisis Pregnancy Centre of Winnipeg
While the Canadian government’s 1998/99 budget restored $50 million of a planned $150 million foreign aid cut, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says Canada is not meeting its promised level of foreign aid contribution. Canada’s foreign aid contribution for 1997/98 was approximately 0.3% of its gross domestic product, down from 0.45% in the early 1990s, and short of the OECD average of 0.4% and the UN recommended target of 0.7%. The Canadian Council for International Cooperation says the ratio dropped to 0.27% for 1998/99. – MCC Ottawa Notebook
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Last modified May 4, 2000.
© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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