Lausanne World Pulse – World Pulse Archives – World Pulse Archives

CHINA: A semiconductor company in Shanghai is offering Sunday worship to its employees. Worshippers of all ages gather in a nearby rented conference room for nondenominational services led by a Chinese Christian minister. The Taiwanese-born and US-educated CEO sees his company as a means to witness. He has already built a school, company housing and a recreation center, and plans on building a church for his workers and community members. Chinese officials, eager for the company’s multi-billion dollar investment, allow the religious activity as long as it doesn’t draw a crowd out front.

CUBA: Short-term missionaries to Cuba are training lay couples for marriage enrichment and counseling. The three-year program will equip believers for outreach in their communities and churches. Cuba has the highest divorce rate in the western hemisphere, some estimate as high as 85 percent.

INDIA: Modern medical technology has produced a serious social consequence in parts of India, affecting the male-female ratio among children. Thanks to ultrasound sex checks, many more female fetuses are being aborted. The illegal tests appeal to the cultural appetite for male heirs. The imbalance is especially sharp among children under seven. One consequence: increasing crime and violence against women by unmarried young men.

INTERNET: Internationals from 127 countries are taking English and Bible correspondence courses via a Web site that helps them improve their English. Forty percent of the students have started Bible studies via e-mail with volunteer teachers.

HAITI: In a recently released water-poverty index of 145 countries, Haiti ranked last. Even drought-stricken Ethiopia beat the Caribbean nation. Just a fifth of households have running water, making getting clean water a daily struggle. The shortage contributes to diarrhea, one of three leading killers of toddlers and infants. The island nation’s freshwater supply has diminished due to deforestation and haphazard development. Rainwater, instead of getting trapped in a tree’s roots and remaining in the soil, washes into the ocean, leaving many lakes and rivers dry. Of 30 of Haiti’s original natural reservoirs, only two remain.

HONG KONG: SARS patients and their loved ones got a boost when Breakthrough, a Christian media ministry, installed videocams in patients’ rooms, enabling them to communicate with their families outside. Because of the quarantine, no visitors are allowed on hospital wards and isolation may last a month or longer. A team of chaplains, counselors and volunteers are offering emotional and spiritual support to the families.

IRAQ: Doctors, nurses and patients are the losers in the squabble for control of Baghdad’s 34 hospitals. Iraq’s newly reopened Ministry of Health is canceling the elections of hospital administrators that had been organized by doctors and clerical militia members following Baghdad’s fall. Instead, previous administrators who held power under Hussein are returning. However, Shia militia squads have wrested control of at least five city hospitals. Doctors and nurses are failing to show up for work either because they fear for their safety or they haven’t received any pay.

ITALY: Islam has become the country’s second-largest religion in the last decade due to immigration from North African and Arab countries. Now Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisano is launching negotiations with Muslim leaders to sanction religious holidays, schools, weddings and the right to receive state funding. Pisano hopes to convene an “Islamic Italian Council” of Muslim leaders, echoing recent attempts in France to reduce the influence of funding and political propaganda from foreign countries. Most Islamic leaders in Italy back the initiative.

LATIN AMERICA: Last month the Latin American Catholic Bishops’ Conference met in Paraguay to address negative effects of globalization and inroads being made among Roman Catholics by evangelical Protestant denominations.

NIGERIA: Well-meaning foreigners need greater awareness of the hazards of using mobile communications to apply pressure to unjust situations in developing countries. A recent e-mail petition of mysterious origin was zapped around the globe to mobilize support for an illiterate Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for having a child out of wedlock. However, the woman’s advocates began sending their own electronic appeal to stop the petition. In trying to save the woman’s life they could actually be putting her at risk, they said. In 1999, an unmarried teenage girl who was guilty of fornication was sentenced by an Islamic court to 100 lashes by cane. International protest also followed that case. But the governor responded by having her sentence carried out before her lawyers could file an appeal.

RUSSIA: Muslims number between 11 million to 25 million or seven to 17 percent of the population, including those who are culturally Muslim but do not practice the religion. When published, last year’s census data will likely reveal that Russia has a higher ratio of Muslims than any western European country. Since the fall of the former Soviet Union, more than 1,000 new mosques and dozens of religious schools have opened.

SLOVENIA: Communist ideology has gradually loosened its grip on the Slovenian army since the country’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Soldiers recently got their own edition of pocket-sized New Testament and Psalms, books prohibited little more than a decade ago. The specially designed camouflage covers have generated a strong sense of ownership among the soldiers.

SPAIN: The Catholic Church’s lock on Spain is in serious jeopardy. Although recent surveys show than 80 percent of Spaniards still consider themselves Catholics, Madrid’s Cardinal Varela says it’s a label of national identity, not a way of life. Government researchers claim that regular church attendance has dipped to 19 percent, compared to 61 percent in 1975. In 1975 Spain had 77,800 priests; last year, 18,500. However, religious orders still run most private schools, helped by government grants.

June 13, 2003