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Muslim prayer focus
Christians around the globe will lift Muslims to the Lord as Youth with a Mission holds its 10th annual 30-Day Muslim Prayer Focus, Mission Network News reports. The focus coincides with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, November 17 to December 16. Christians are called to pray for mobilizing new support and workers. For details, visit .

French translation unveiled
In an August ceremony in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, International Bible Society (IBS) unveiled its contemporary-language French Bible (similar to the New International Version in English). La Bible du Semeur is intended to help readers better understand biblical teachings. IBS is distributing it in 18 French-speaking African countries through bookstores, churches, launching ceremonies and in partnership with the Centre de Production Evangelique, a Christian publishing house.

Planting seeds to harvest translations
Wycliffe Bible Translators’ ministry, called The Seed Company, has a three-year strategic plan to increase the amount of Bible translation it’s doing around the world. Key to the plan is empowering nationals to translate Scripture, reports Mission Network News. “We believe that God, over the next three years, would have us impact a total of 400 languages, impacting about 110-million people in various ways through partnerships with other ministries to get people the Scripture for the very first time,” says The Seed Company’s Scott Fetteroff. He says this will have a huge impact on evangelism. The ministry is working with the Jesus Film Project in several languages to first translate the Jesus Film and then the Gospel of Luke.

Broadcasting in Bundeli
Trans World Radio (TWR) has begun airing programs in the Bundeli language, which is spoken by about 12 million mostly unreached people in India’s Bundelkhand region. Religion Today reports that the broadcasts are part of the cooperative World by Radio effort to make gospel broadcasts available to everyone in languages they can understand. TWR, HCJB World Radio, Far East Broadcasting Co., FEBA Radio and other Christian broadcasters are working together on this goal. Most Bundelis are poor farmers with literacy rates around 30 percent. About 1 percent of Bundeli speakers are Christians.

The Kota Kinabalu Statement
More than 450 Christian leaders from 21 countries and many denominations and Christian organizations attended the First Asia-Pacific Consultation on Discipleship, or APCOD 2001, 25-28 July in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. Graham McLennan, chairman of the National Alliance of Christian Leaders Australia, reports that in addition to plenary sessions on discipleship, a statement came from the meeting, which is posted at . The next APCODs will be in Sri Lanka in 2003 and Nepal in 2005.

International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church
The incredible events that took place in the United States on September 11 remind believers that evil is indeed at work in our world. “In this context, we would call your attention to the obvious need to pray for our fragile world,” said Mark Albrecht, moderator of World Evangelical Fellowship’s religious liberty conference. The 2001 International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, or IDOP, will be held for a full week this year, observed on two Sundays, November 4 and 11. The World Evangelical Fellowship has helped coordinate IDOP since its beginnings in 1996. For more information, see the IDOP site at or e-mail [email protected] and request information. Material is available in English, French, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Small loans change lives in China

More than 1,200 residents in remote villages in predominantly Muslim northwest China’s Gansu Province began receiving loans in 1999 to invest in small business-with the government’s blessing. The microcredit finance project is being done in conjunction with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and other organizations, reports MCC’s news service. It’s part of a larger poverty alleviation program in two counties in each of four of China’s poorest provinces. It includes many projects aimed at increasing agricultural production and ecological sustainability, improving basic health care services, increasing access to basic education and increasing economic diversification. In Gansu, the focus has been on economic diversification using small loans, which was seen as the fastest way to improve people’s lives there. “These are people with very little income,” says China Poverty Alleviation Program director Tony Enns. “They had ideas about how to improve their situation with access to a little more capital.” Most loan recipients, women who come from subsistence farming backgrounds, invested their loans in raising cattle, sheep or pigs.

WORLD BEAT

Thailand suffers rising AIDS rate
In response to Thailand’s thriving “sex tourism” industry, blamed for its skyrocketing AIDS and HIV rates that have left many orphans, the country’s interior minister is trying to close the red-light district, reports Mission Network News. The ministry He Intends Victory is partnering with Mercy International in Thailand to build houses for babies with AIDS.

Slovakia: Just say ‘ohm’
Catholic and Protestant clergy in Slovakia have fought a government plan to teach yoga to school children, saying it promotes Hinduism. The government has nixed the plan, reports Ananova.com. Catholic bishops there described it in a letter to churches as “a path to total atheism” that “rejects faith in God the creator…. (and) rejects Jesus Christ, the whole act of redemption and Christianity,” reports the Boston Globe. While the government wanted to teach yoga for fitness and to help breathing and back problems caused by poor posture, the bishop of the Evangelical Church of Augsburg Confession says, “Yoga is not gymnastics. It leads to individualism which further leads to belief in reincarnation.” Yoga was born in India of Hindu tradition and beliefs, such as karma. In Slovakia, the Globe reports, churches have great influence in education. A proponent of the program says the school proposal had no religious content. Obey the law, Bible Society says The Dominican Republic has a law requiring Bible reading in both public and private schools before beginning class. Now, the country’s Bible Society head Ramón Cornielle is calling for compliance with it. ALC News Service reports that Law 204, passed in 1984, requires that the Day of the Bible be observed September 27. Cornielle said that each day there are more people interested in learning about the Bible and cited as an example a Catholic diocese that bought 10,000 Bibles to give its parishioners.

Domestic violence rampant
Almost a third of women in Khabarovsk, Russia are victims of physical abuse at home, reports the Slavic Gospel Association’s InSight. Research also shows that one in two women is subjected to emotional or psychological trauma. A non-governmental organization called A Chance for Hope plans to open a center of battered women in Khabarovsk and will create a hotline for abused women to call. Domestic abuse is often driven by alcoholism or drug use, and Russia’s precarious economic situation may also be a factor. About a tenth of Moscow residents use drugs.

Mormons mark 100 years in Japan
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) observed the centennial of the church’s presence in Japan by unveiling a pair of bronze plaques for a new chapel, reports MormonsToday.com. The LDS church grew in Japan by 1970 to 12,500 and has since grown to include more than 110,000 members.

Hard winter, hard choices
Lawmakers in Russia’s Kam-chatka region must decide whether to cut social programs to pay for winter fuel. Kamchatka’s governor says proposed cuts would affect medical and education programs, as well as housing construction for poor, large families. Last winter, which was also hard, economic problems in Russia’s easternmost area forced long power outages. The Slavic Gospel Association provided warm clothing and other humanitarian aid and plans to send more to help relieve suffering this winter.

Kidnap targets: Just about everybody
Kidnapping is one way that Colombia’s leftist rebel groups fund their insurgency, and the groups snatch four non-Colombians every month, Reuters reports. Colombia’s army says that topping the list of victims are citizens of Venezuela, Italy and the United States. Around 4,000 people were kidnapped in Colombia last year. Since 1996, 232 foreigners have been kidnapped; 12 died or were killed while being held and 30 are still hostage. Ransoms were likely paid in more than half of the cases.

Food and the world until 2020

In the next 20 years, earth will be home to 7.5 billion souls who want more meat and grains, especially in China. At the same time, water and new farmland are becoming more scarce, reports The Economist. Already more than 1 billion suffer malnourishment around the world. But that doesn’t mean that hunger necessarily will increase, says a recent study by the food-policy think tank International Food Policy Research Institute. “If current trends hold, the report sees cereal consumption rising by more than 33 percent and meat consumption by 57 percent,” The Economist reports. “But only 9 percent more land will be used for cereal production in the developing world, and the average annual growth in cereal yields worldwide will fall by more than a third compared with rates in the 1980s and 1990s.” What would help? More trade between rich and poor countries, for one. The report called for countries to increase investment in factors that affect “food security”-from agricultural research and rural roads to education.

Christians in jail, in court, in trouble…

Saudi Arabia police holding Christians
At least 13 foreign Christians have been arrested since mid July in Jeddah, where Saudi Arabia’s religious police apparently are trying to track down Saudi nationals thought to have contact with expatriate house churches in the city. Compass Direct reports that the detained Christians, who are nationals from India, Ethiopia, Nigeria, the Philippines and Eritrea, belong to house church groups within Jeddah’s expatriate community. A gathering of about 400 Christian foreigners in a rented hall in late June may have triggered the wave of arrests. A report filed with police complained that the party was “a Christian meeting in a public place,” which is strictly forbidden under Saudi Arabia’s Islamic laws.

Ayub Masih’s last appeal
After nearly five years in jail, more than three of those years on death row, Pakistani Christian Ayub Masih is one step away from either Supreme Court acquittal-or the gallows. Masih, 34, is the highest profile Christian prisoner charged by Pakistan’s blasphemy law. In July, the Multan High Court confirmed the April 1998 guilty verdict against Masih by the Sahiwal Sessions Court. Under Section 295-C of the Pakistan penal code, anyone convicted of blasphemy against the prophet Mohammed must be executed. Masih’s neighbor, with an apparent interest in Masih’s property, filed the blasphemy case against him, claiming that Masih said, “If you want to know the truth about Islam, read Salman Rushdie.” The case is based solely on verbal accusations. Now Masih is down to the last appeal allowed within Pakistan’s judicial system: petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn the first two judgments. It is not known when the appeal will be heard. Masih’s lawyer, a Muslim, Minto told Compass he had “raised some legal and technical questions” about Ayub Masih’s case in his appeal, after studying the Multan High Court’s July 25 verdict.

The Friday Times of Lahore says the case against Masih is “absurd.” In an August 21 release, Amnesty International calls for his “immediate and unconditional release.” Mark Albrecht, moderator of the World Evangelical Fellowship’s Religious Liberty Conference, says that the campaign in Masih’s behalf has generated more response than any other he has seen. “This case has obviously hit a nerve and is quite important,” Albrecht says.

India clarifies anti-conversion bill as Hindus, Catholics meet
India’s pro-Hindu government is seriously considering a bill that bans religious conversion throughout the country, Compass Direct reports. The bill brought protests from opposition parties and Christian organizations all over India on July 27. The government clarified that the bill was not meant to prohibit voluntary conversions. The Global Council of Indian Christians has demanded the bill’s immediate withdrawal, saying it was an outrageous act that curtailed the constitutional guarantees of minorities.

Meanwhile, Compass reports, Catholic church leaders met August 21 with chiefs of the Hindu fundamentalist group Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in what is being seen as one of the most significant developments since the persecution of Christians in India began under the ruling Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) regime. During the hour-long meeting, both sides reiterated their stated positions. While the bishops stated that the charges of “forcible conversion” made against them by the RSS were wrong, the RSS denied any role in the attacks on church personnel and said they wanted an impartial and thorough probe into such incidents. Meanwhile, nine Protestant leaders of different Christian denominations planned to meet with top RSS leaders on September 12.

Delayed ruling holds up Salvation Army appeal
The Salvation Army’s appeal against a Moscow court ruling to liquidate that city’s branch has been delayed because the judge has not issued the ruling in writing, the ministry’s lawyer told Keston News Service on September 20. He said the Salvation Army would lodge its appeal with Moscow city court as soon as it gets the text of the ruling. The Salvation Army was banned as an anti-Soviet organization in Communist times but began operating freely in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Then in 1998 prosecutors sought to close it down, claiming it is a paramilitary group because of its uniforms, ranks and the word “army” in its name. After 2 1/2 years of legal action, the Salvation Army was finally closed down by Ministry of Justice claims that the group made a minor mistake in its application for re-registration. Throughout Russia, the Salvation Army runs soup kitchens, offers prison and home visits as well as other social services, and provides the main food supply for many children and homeless in Moscow. It has national registration, but lawyers fear it could also be liquidated in other cities where it operates. Vladimir Zhbankov, deputy head of the Justice Ministry’s Moscow directorate, made it clear to the Los Angeles Times that the ministry will aggressively pursue the organization. “He said the Salvation Army will be forced to give up all of its property and assets in Moscow to the state, including vehicles,” the Times reports. “It will not be able to rent property in Moscow or operate as a religious organization.”

Pressures mount for China’s evangelicals
Many key evangelical leaders in both registered and unregis-tered churches in China confirm that pressures have grown this year, reports the World Evangelical Fellowship. In Nanjing and Shanghai the “theological construction” campaign launched by Bishop Ding, former chairman of the official state Christian church called the Three Self Patriotic Movement, and the China Christian Council, has resulted in key evangelical leaders losing their positions. They include Ji Tai, a pastor who was being groomed by the bishop for a high position but has disagreed openly with his moves to “make theology compatible with socialism.”

October 26, 2001