C U R R E N T N E W S S U M M A R Y by the Editors of ReligionToday

January 10, 2000

Violence against Christians is getting worse in Lebanon, where three Christian women, including a nun, have been reported murdered. Officials suspect the killers are militant Muslims, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (see link #1 below), a London-based human rights group, said. …The body of Sister Antoinette Zaidan, 60, was discovered Jan. 3 in East Beirut. The Marionite nun was sexually assaulted and strangled as she made her way home to her convent in Kfarchima, reports said. ….Al-Takfir Wal Higra, a radical Islamic group, is to blame for the murder of Sarah Yazbek and her mother-in-law, Selma, in the North Lebanon village of Kfar Abou, CSW said. Members of the group beheaded the woman, who was pregnant, and dismembered her, CSW said. …A bomb exploded in the Christian village of Kolaia on New Year’s Day, causing at least one death, CSW said. Islamic militants attacked four Catholic and Orthodox churches in November, using rockets, machine-guns, and bombs, the group said. Several parishioners were wounded and one church member died. …As Israel withdraws its troops from South Lebanon’s security zone in accordance with a peace treaty, Christians worldwide must focus their attention on the 110,000 Lebanese Christians remaining, CSW’s Mervyn Thomas said. Their plight “will become intolerable” unless Syria withdraws its 30,000 forces from the Lebanese territories they inhabit, he said. …Christians in South Lebanon say that without parallel Israeli-Syrian withdrawals, by July they will be exposed to more persecution from Syrian guerrillas, Hezbollah forces, and Lebanon’s own Beirut regime. They are asking for United Nations forces to be deployed in the area while they work with the international community to establish a local civilian government.

About 33% of the world’s people are Christians, at least in name, American missions statistician David Barrett says. The Global Evangelization Movement (see link #2 below) said that 2,015,743,000 of the Earth’s 6,091,351,000 people believe in some form of Christianity. Church members total 1.898 billion, and 1.3 billion attend services. Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity is growing fastest; 482 million belong to such movements and 680 million can be described as “Great Commission Christians,” Barrett said. …Muslims comprise the second-largest faith group. Followers of Islam number 1.215 billion, followed by 786 million Hindus, 362 million Buddhists, 225 million members of tribal religions, and 102 million members of “new religions.” ….The world also has a large number of unbelievers. A total of 774 million consider themselves “nonreligious” and 151 million say they are atheists, Barrett said. …A sobering statistic: It is estimated that 165,000 Christians will be martyred for their faith in Christ this year, Barrett said. …There are 24,000 missions organizations worldwide, which collect $120 billion a year. The income of all church members is $12,700 billion, of which $220 billion is spent on Christian outreaches including Christian radio and TV stations. There are about 4,000 Christian radio and TV stations, and they can reach 2.15 billion people with the Gospel this year, Barrett said. …Large cities are key as mission fields of the future, Barrett said. An estimated 2 billion people live in poor urban areas, 1.3 billion of them in slums. The world has 410 cities with more than 1 million inhabitants and 4,100 with at least 100,000 residents.

Christians are being arrested for listening to the radio in Laos. It has become such a serious problem that the central Evangelical Church of Laos warned Hmong churches to stop listening to Far East Broadcasting Company programs to avoid trouble, the ministry said. “We know that they still listen and we will continue broadcasting in spite of persecution from the government,” Far East Broadcasting’s Hmong director said. The Hmong are a people group. …Government informants are infiltrating the churches, said the director, whose name is not used for security reasons. Some of the government officers who attend services sincerely become Christians, but others may be reporting church activities, he said. A sample audio clip of the broadcast is available at the site (see link #3 below). FEBC has broadcast to the Hmong since 1960. Seven hours of programming a week are broadcast in two Hmong dialects.

The World Baptist Association elected a new president. Korean Baptist Billy Jang Hwan Kim was chosen to lead the group during the 18th Baptist World Congress in Melbourne last week. A search committee chose the conservative pastor and broadcaster, who was later ratified by the BWA’s governing body, the general council, Ecumenical News International said. ….More than 6,000 Baptists attended the World Congress, held every five years, which concluded Jan. 9, ENI said. Evangelism was a main topic. Leaders agreed that outreach is central to the faith, but diverged on tactics for seeking converts. Randy Springer of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board told delegates about opposition to an evangelism campaign in Chicago. Baptists must continue to reach out, “even if it’s politically incorrect and even if other don’t want us to,” he said. …Baptists comprise the world’s largest Protestant denomination, figures show. There are 43 million Baptists worldwide, compared with 33 million nine years ago, Tony Cupit, an Australian pastor who directs evangelism activities for the Baptist World Alliance, said. The Baptist community worldwide numbers 100 million, including children who have not been baptized, he told ENI.

The site where Jesus was baptized has been opened to tourists. Thousands of Jordanians came to Wadi Kharrar along the Jordan River Jan. 7 for a ceremony that included sermons, hymns, and dozens of baptisms, news reports said. The site is a centerpiece of celebrations ahead of Pope John Paul’s visit to Jordan March 20. Jordanian archaeologists and Christian clerics say a cluster of old Byzantine churches and mosaics recently unearthed prove the site is where Jesus was baptized. The country hopes the site will attract tourists. Christians make up 4% of Jordan’s population.

Methodist churches, please call home. United Methodists are compiling a list of their 36,000-plus congregations because they don’t know where they all are. The denomination has mailing addresses for all of the churches, but there is no way of locating about 40% of them because they are post office boxes, United Methodist News Service said. …Churches will receive a Find-A-Church packet this month asking for basic information. Once the data has been gathered, the names, addresses, pastors, phone numbers, and a map will be available to anyone looking for a UMC church by logging onto the denomination’s Internet site (see link #4 below).

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RELATED LINKS:

1: (Link removed)

2: http://www.gem-werc.org

3: http://asia.ibb.his.com/rms/sounds/bang/febc/catalog.html

4: http://www.umc.org