Today’s Headlines:

POPE’S COMMENTS RAISE FEARS OF MORE REPRISALS AGAINST CHRISTIANS

BAPTIST CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR FREED IN DISPUTED AREA OF AZERBAIJAN

ACTOR GEORGE CLOONEY JOINS PLEA FOR U.N. ACTION IN DARFUR REGION

EVANGELICAL LAWYERS STRENGTHEN CHINESE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

ETHNIC MINORITIES SLOW CHURCH’S DECLINING NUMBERS IN ENGLAND

Today’s Top Stories:

POPE’S COMMENTS RAISE FEARS OF MORE REPRISALS AGAINST CHRISTIANS

Pope Benedict XVI’s controversial remarks on Tuesday, Sept. 12, which cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who said the teachings of Muhammad were “evil and inhuman” and denounced the Muslim “command to spread by the sword the faith” was taken as an insult to Muslims. Now the comments are causing fears of violence directed at Christians worldwide.

Five churches in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in Israel were firebombed last weekend, raising tensions for the already beleaguered Palestinian Christians. Somalia marked the first fatalities resulting from the Pope’s comments on Sunday, Sept. 17, when Italian nun Leonella Sgorbati, 70, was shot in the back as she left a class she was teaching at a pediatric hospital in Mogadishu. Her bodyguard was also killed. The nun, as she lay dying, said to those around her, “Forgive, forgive, forgive.”

Al Janssen with Open Doors is concerned the attacks against Christians will continue and is planning to visit some areas where Christians are a “severe minority” and “fear that their work could be attacked.” Radical Muslim groups continue stirring tensions, declaring jihad against the pope and calling for retaliation against both Christians and Jews. (Mission Network News/Religion Today/Assist News Service)

BAPTIST CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR FREED IN DISPUTED AREA OF AZERBAIJAN

A young Baptist military conscript in the unrecognized republic of Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus, officially part of Azerbaijan, has been freed from prison, ending a two-year jail sentence handed down to him for refusing to swear the military oath and take up weapons as a matter of conscience. After completing his jail sentence on Tuesday, Sept. 5, Gagik Mirzoyan, 20, was held for another eight days then reassigned to a military unit. Baptist Pastor Garnik Abreyan said, “No one is doing anything bad to him in the unit, but they are still pressuring him to swear the military oath and take up weapons.” The Baptists are uncertain if further action will be taken against Mirzoyan during the three months left of his required military service. He was beaten several times while in the hands of the army and while in prison. (Forum 18 News Service)

* HCJB World Radio, in partnership with Hosanna and local partners in Baku, Azerbaijan, has recorded the dramatized Azeri New Testament as part of the Faith Comes by Hearing project. The recordings, completed in 1998, have been made into a series of radio programs.

ACTOR GEORGE CLOONEY JOINS PLEA FOR U.N. ACTION IN DARFUR REGION

American actor George Clooney is calling on the U.N. to do more for those facing genocide in western Sudan’s Darfur region. Clooney visited the Darfur region with his journalist father in April and gathered stories of the death and suffering in the region. In an informal briefing to the U.N. Security Council organized by Holocaust survivor and humanitarian Elie Wiesel, he encouraged U.N. forces to replace the African Union (AU) forces that are slated to withdraw on Sept. 30. “After Sept. 30 you won’t need the U.N. You will simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones.” Clooney believes the exit of AU forces will leave no protection for these people and cause the aid workers to leave. “The 2.5 million refugees who depend on that aid will die,” he said. Powers within the Sudanese government are opposing the arrival of U.N. forces. (Assist News Service)

EVANGELICAL LAWYERS STRENGTHEN CHINESE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Lawyers, pastors, journalists and human rights leaders across China have united to form the new Human Rights Protection Movement (HRPM) to battle for positive changes in China. Using the strategies and examples of civil rights activists in the U.S., the group’s members travel at a moment’s notice to fight injustice, defend villagers and stand up for persecuted believers of any religion. HRPM leaders have said, “We pray that a Chinese Martin Luther King will arise from the church in China.” The HRPM began with only 24 members in 2002, but has now grown to 300. The group is the official legal counsel for the Chinese House Church Alliance which represents more than 300,000 members and receives an average of 30 requests for legal services each week. Human rights activism among Chinese Christians has arisen in recent years. The older generation believed suffering silently for Christ was more noble than actively opposing injustice. However, the link between activist change and Christianity in China appears to be strengthening. Even though many times the group’s legal actions do not effect change, one member said, “It is a grassroots way of building a rule-of-law culture in China.” (Christianity Today)

ETHNIC MINORITIES SLOW CHURCH’S DECLINING NUMBERS IN ENGLAND

A recent survey by British think tank Christian Research shows that long-term decline in church attendance in England has been slowed by people from ethnic minorities. Statistics show that up to one-third of churches are growing, especially those with predominantly black congregations. Worshipers from black communities now outnumber white churchgoers in London. While the growth of black churches has been recognized for some time, the figures show that it has been significant enough to affect overall church attendance in the U.K. Church attendance in England has been in decline since the 1950s and an estimated 1 million people gave up regular church attendance in the 1990s alone. The overall number of people attending church on Sundays has still dropped considerably since the last comparable research in 1998, but the decline has slowed as Britain becomes more ethnically diverse. Only 6.3 percent of England’s total population attends church. (WorldWide Religious News/BBC)