interfaithnews

Rock the River rocks the rain

By Shara Lee

DESPITE the rain, mud and intimidating cloud cover, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) hosted some 7,970 people August 7 for their much anticipated Rock the River concert held at Millenium Park in Surrey, B.C. The line-up of artists included Tedashii, downhere, The Almost, Starfield and Skillet; interspersed between performances were several short messages from evangelist Franklin Graham.

Sixteen year old Braeden Melanson didn't mind the rain at all. "It's fine for me, I'm a sea cadet," he told CC.com as the event unfolded. While he said he would have enjoyed seeing Thousand Foot Krutch -- who had to pull out of the concert because of an injury suffered by one of the band members -- Melanson said he was definitely enjoying the day's performers.

Most of the other youth CC.com spoke to shared similar sentiments. For them it was all about the music. "My experience at Rock the River was fantastic," said Julie Tao. "I was in the front row of the pit, and I loved jumping and screaming for the amazing bands!"

Christian rapper Tedashii's hope for those who attended was that God's word would become active in their hearts. "I tell people when they come for concerts: 'You're coming for music; but I came to minister, and you just happen to get music along the way,'" he said. "I see myself as an urban missionary."

Tedashii's mother didn't allow him to listen to hip hop at home; she called it "devil's music." Despite this, he and his friends would often sneak into corners of bathrooms, or wherever else they could find a good reverb. Oftentimes they would get into trouble with school authorities. But for Rock the River, Tedashii was able to turn this clandestine activity into entertainment for thousands of energized teens. "It's a privilege to do what I used to get in trouble [for], and glorify God with it," he said.

Tedashii's foray into Christian hip hop started while he was volunteering at a juvenile detention centre. "We would make songs up and put them on a tape or a CD, and give it to the kids. Really it was just us putting scripture together in rhyme -- but they loved it. Not only did they love it, but it really helped them [to] learn their Bible and want to live holy," he said.

The rapper said this was when he and his friends started using hip hop for the glory of God. "We took that platform, and said: 'You wanna be like us, cause we can rap. But be like Christ -- cause that's who we're trying to be like," he said. "Once I saw the fruit from that, I was like: 'God, you can use this.'"

Throughout his performance, Tedashii would give quick words of encouragement. He even taught the crowd -- some of whom he said "lacked rhythm" -- to do an arm raise move to the beat. Members of the audience were seen doing this move well into the night.

The members of Canadian band downhere were glad to participate in the event, despite the rain. "We've had a great experience working with the Graham Association anytime we've worked with them. It's been really professional -- but also very focused on the gospel," said band member Jason Germaine.

"We're the band; we're not the speaker. We had all our songs; we played, and let God do the rest," added his cohort Marc Martel. The band felt that the BGEA's message and goals really fit nicely with their own.

"As a band, our mission statement is to create a soundtrack for authentic Christian living," said Germaine. "In some ways, we're modern liturgy writers. So to join someone who's really good at evangelism is a really good thing for us, cause we're not totally gifted in that department."

Band member Jeremy Thiessen admitted that, when traveling on the road, sometimes he's drowned with fatigue -- and it can be difficult to play the same songs over and over again. But he knows that for some people, this may be the only time they get to hear downhere.

"That's when the reality kicks in," said Thiessen. "I might be able to play these songs in my sleep; but this may be their only chance to hear [us]. As we strive for excellence in our performance and delivery, then that really allows the Lord to work in their hearts and minds -- and move them one step closer to him."

The group was also glad to be back in their own country, performing for a home crowd. "It's really cool to be able to come back home and have the BGEA come to our part of the world," said band member Glenn Lavender.

Between performances were video projected testimonies of individual band members. The Almost's lead singer talked about his struggle with purity before marriage; Skillet's lead singer discussed making good God-centred music.

Franklin Graham also delivered short invitations between each set. He shared short Bible-based messages, and asked anyone in the crowd to come forward for prayer -- and to receive Jesus Christ as saviour. According to the BGEA, 466 people made decisions for Christ that day.

Speaking to CC.com during the festivities, Graham said he was pleased with how the day was going.

"I think it has been a great day so far. Rain hasn't held the kids back [from giving] their lives to Christ. We're always worried: is the rain going to mess with the electronics? But I don't think it has. Is the rain gonna mess with the crowd? I don't think it has," said Graham, adding: "In B.C., people are used to the rain and drizzle -- so I was really encouraged to see how people came out in the rain."

According to Graham, this day was long in the making.

"There's been a lot of work and a lot of prayer. A lot of people prayed for this, a lot of people invested their life, their time -- and this isn't by mistake. We couldn't do it without prayer."

He was very appreciative of all the spiritual support they received. "We wouldn't see any of this if it wasn't for the prayers of people back home, and the people here."

Although the day was running smoothly, Graham said he was a little nervous about his own contribution. "There's always a little bit of fear, asking God to give us the words to say. I'm almost 60 years old; these kids are the age of some of my grandchildren," he said. "I come praying that God will use me according to his will, and that his purpose will be fulfilled. We're here just to give God's gospel."

The night concluded with a powerful performance by Grammy nominated hard rock band Skillet. They lit up the stage with pyrotechnics, and really got the crowd going.

Rock the River may be over for the Fraser Valley, but the tour will make its way to Alberta in the coming days. Rock the River Calgary will be happening August 21, with the festival traveling to Edmonton August 28.

Sex Scandal Has U.S. Buddhists Looking Within

By MARK OPPENHEIMER, The New York Times, August 20, 2010

New York, USA -- Sooner or later, every traditional faith has to confront sexual impropriety by its spiritual leaders: extramarital sex, or sex with the wrong people (members of the congregation, minors) or, for supposedly celibate clergy, any sex at all.

But there are great differences in how religions handle these transgressions. For Jews and many Protestants, it is the local congregation that decides what sins are too great to countenance, and what kind of discipline is needed. For Roman Catholics, a worldwide hierarchy decides, depending on reports from local representatives. And for Buddhists — well, the answer is not so clear.

The root of the problem, some experts say, is that the teacher/student relationship in Buddhism has no obvious Western analogy. Priests and rabbis know the boundaries, even if some do not always respect them. Doctors, too, have ethical canons they are supposed to honor. A spiritual figure like a priest, an authority figure like a teacher, a therapeutic figure like an analyst — the Buddhist teacher may be all of those, but is not really like any one of them. Even sanghas, or Buddhist communities, that discourage such relationships often have no process for enforcing a ban, and as one Zen society in New York is learning, that can lead to problems.

Since 1965, Eido Shimano, now 77, has been the abbot, or head spiritual teacher, of the Zen Studies Society, a Japanese Buddhist community with headquarters on East 67th Street in Manhattan and a 1,400-acre monastery in the Catskills. For much of that time, there have been rumors about the married abbot’s sexual liaisons, with his students and with other women. Such rumors could no longer be ignored when, in 2008, the University of Hawaii at Manoa unsealed some papers donated by Robert Aitken, a leading American Buddhist and founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

The papers included files about Mr. Shimano that Mr. Aitken kept from 1964 to 2003. Mr. Aitken, who died Aug. 5, met Mr. Shimano when both men worked in Hawaii in the 1960s, and for more than 40 years he kept notes on his colleague’s liaisons, based on conversations with women who had confided in him.

In a 1995 letter to the president of the Zen Studies Society’s board, Mr. Aitken wrote: “Over the past three decades, we have interviewed many former students of Shimano Roshi. Their stories are consistent: trust placed in an apparently wise and compassionate teacher, only to have that trust manipulated in the form of his sexual misconduct and abuse.” (“Roshi,” or teacher, is a Japanese honorific that goes after the name.)

The Aitken papers were soon circulating on the Internet. On June 15, Mr. Shimano’s board of directors, which exercises ultimate authority in the society, met to discuss the allegations. Mr. Shimano, who was then on the board, was not present, but most board members concurred that the charges most likely had some validity.

“I thought the sources were varied enough” to seem valid, said one board member, who asked not to be named. “I certainly didn’t think it was all a fraud.”

At that meeting, the board members began writing a new set of ethical guidelines for the society. In the text, they included an acknowledgment of past indiscretions by Mr. Shimano. Chris Phelan, another board member, said that Mr. Shimano saw the text of the statement and approved of it. “He didn’t step forward and say he was being libeled,” Mr. Phelan said.

Nonetheless, several board members told The New York Times that they believed that Mr. Shimano’s relations with students had ended long ago, and they saw no reason that Mr. Shimano could not continue teaching.

“As far as I knew, there had been a hiatus of 15 years,” said Joe Marinello, a board member who is the abbot of the Seattle Zen Temple.

But then, on July 19, the board announced that Mr. Shimano had resigned from the board after being confronted with allegations of “clergy misconduct.” The statement was sent in response to inquiries from Tricycle, a magazine about Buddhism. Since that time, the board has said that Mr. Shimano will continue as abbot until 2012, but a vice abbot has been appointed and Mr. Shimano will not be taking new students.

So what had changed?

A week after beginning work on new ethical guidelines — which in their final form forbid “sexual advances or liaisons” between teachers and sangha members — the board was confronted with a new revelation.

In interviews over the past two weeks, four board members, including Mr. Marinello, said that on June 21 a woman — whose name he would not reveal — stood up during dinner at the Catskills monastery and announced that for the past two years she had had a consensual affair with Mr. Shimano, who was at the dinner. Several board members have said that Mr. Shimano later admitted the affair in conversations with them. On Wednesday, the society issued a statement acknowledging that “in June of this year, a woman revealed that there was an inappropriate relationship between herself and Eido Roshi."

Mr. Shimano did not return several phone calls.

In two ways, this small, symbolic statement — Mr. Shimano’s resigning from his own board — reflects how American religion has changed in the last 15 years.

First, this more recent affair occurred in a different news media culture. Clerical impropriety is a hot topic, of course. And on the Internet, where several bloggers were scrutinizing the Aitken papers, the new affair was sure to be mentioned. “The Internet was turning the heat up,” one member said. Board members had to act; they could not afford to be seen as indifferent.

Second, there has been a shift within the American Buddhist community, which has become more concerned about relations between teachers and students.

Historically, because that relationship is considered sacrosanct, affairs were not always condemned, or even disapproved of.

“Unlike the therapeutic environment with analysis, with Buddhist teachers and students there are debates about what is appropriate and what isn’t,” says James Shaheen, editor of Tricycle. As to sexual relationships between teacher and student, “most people would come down on the side of ‘Let’s just not do it.’ ”

But there has also been a cultural aversion among Zen Buddhists to seeming censorious about sexuality. In a 2002 review of “Shoes Outside the Door,” a book by Michael Downing about Richard Baker, the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center in the 1970s and ’80s, Frederick Crews wrote that Mr. Baker’s “serial liaisons, hardly unique in the world of high-level American Buddhism, could have been forgiven, but his chronic untruthfulness about them could not.”

Sex, alcoholism and drug abuse by major Buddhist leaders have all been tolerated over the years, by followers who look the other way, or even looked right at it and pretend not to care. For example, the Tibetan Buddhist master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who founded the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) in Boulder, Colo., was often publicly drunk. The Buddhist journalist Katy Butler wrote a 1990 article called “Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America,” in which she described the public alcoholism of Mr. Trungpa Rinpoche, Mr. Baker and another Buddhist leader in Los Angeles.

“We habitually denied what was in front of our faces, felt powerless and lost touch with our inner experience,” Ms. Butler wrote.

Clark Strand, who led Mr. Shimano’s Upper East Side zendo from 1988 to 1990, said that on American soil, Asian Buddhism’s sexual ethics, in particular, had to change.

“What you see in America is a lot of Asian Buddhist teachers coming into contact for the first time with spiritual communities that include women,” Mr. Strand said. “And they weren’t necessarily prepared for that.”

“To be blunt about it, a Japanese Zen monk could go over the wall and visit a prostitute and a blind eye could be turned to that.” In America, he added, “it wasn’t as easy to turn a blind eye to going over the wall in his own monastery.”

Pakistani Flood Spares Places of Worship, Villagers Say It is a Miracle

August 22nd, 2010

Source: pakistannewsblog.com

KARACHI, PAKISTAN, August 22, 2010: Divinity triumphed over disaster, claimed the people of Ghouspur after seeing what they called a miracle. One temple and one mosque were completely unaffected amid the ravaging flood that hit Ghouspur.

The town in Kashmore district is completely submerged. However, local residents report that floodwater could not reach the Hindu temple and the local mosque constructed by two saints, Baba Gharib Das and Ghous Shah, respectively.

Skeptics said that both structures were simply on higher ground. But devotees retorted that four to five feet of water filled up houses and other adjacent structures, which were constructed at the same level as the places of worship.

The Hindu temple, built around three hundred years ago, is the central point of worship for Hindus living in Kashmore, Kandhkot, Shikarpur and Jacobabad. According to Hindu prayer leaders, many followers of Baba Gharib Das have made small temples in his name in different provinces of India and they visit his shrine annually. “Every corner of the city is filled with eight feet deep of standing water, which did not even reach the gates here,” said Mukhi Sarvanad, chieftain of the area’s Hindu community.

Dr Suresh Kumar of Civil Hospital Karachi, who hails from Ghouspur, said “When houses started inundating many Hindu families took shelter in the mandir. Now people have been moved to other places, but the army, engaged in rescue operations, is still there.

Tzu Chi sets up shop in atheist China

Indian Express, Aug 21, 2010

Suzhou, China -- A Taiwan Buddhist charity set up shop in China on Friday, a sign of the atheist Communist rulers growing but still limited religious tolerance and part of a drive to win the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese.

The Tzu Chi Foundation opened its China chapter in the form of a bookshop-cum-tea house in the historic eastern city of Suzhou in Jiangsu province, a popular investment choice for the Taiwanese companies which have pumped billions into the country.

Officials say Tzu Chi is the first overseas non-governmental organisation to receive the blessing of the Ministry of Civil Affairs to operate in China. Normally they have to register with the Commerce Ministry as businesses.

But it is barred from preaching and cannot raise funds from the ordinary Chinese without government approval on an ad hoc basis.

We will not make it a point to preach when we do charity work on the mainland, but if people ask me my religion, I will say I am Buddhist, foundation spokesman Rey-sheng Her said.

Politics, alleged fraud disturb Jerusalem cemetery

By Matti Friedman and Dalia Nammari, Associated Press Writers | August 23, 2010

JERUSALEM --A political battle over a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem that began with charges of insensitivity leveled at plans for a museum of religious tolerance at the site has spread into a more curious fight about whether hundreds of nearby tombstones are even real.

The Mamilla cemetery had its peace disturbed this month by Israeli bulldozers demolishing gravestones in the middle of the night and by Muslim protests. The once sleepy plot of Muslim gravestones in Jewish west Jerusalem has become a flash point for rival claims to the holy city at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Since early this year, activists from Israel's Islamic Movement have been cleaning and restoring graves at the cemetery, where tradition says famous Islamic scholars are buried beside warriors who fought the Crusaders alongside Saladin.

But Israeli authorities say the activists went beyond restoration and manufactured hundreds of graves in a political attempt to cement their hold on the site.

In August, municipal crews arrived at night with power shovels and erased around 300 low, coffin-shaped tomb markers that Israeli officials and archaeologists say were fake and contained no human remains.

The Islamic Movement protested. "The graves are not empty and the graveyard is not fake as they claim," said Nuha al-Qutob, 35, who attended a mid-August demonstration. She said her grandfather was buried nearby.

The cemetery first drew attention in 2004 with the beginning of work on the Museum of Tolerance. Undertaken with the stated goal of promoting coexistence, the museum is a project of the U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish organization named for a famous Nazi hunter.

A century ago, the cemetery was a rural plot sprawling outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. Today it is hemmed in by luxury hotels, a high-end shopping mall and a cluster of clubs and bars. Some of the unused cemetery's land was rezoned by Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, with part becoming a park and one corner a municipal parking lot.

In a reflection of how even the best intentions can go awry in the holy city, the tolerance museum turned into a public relations debacle when it became clear that the plot of land slated for its construction -- the parking lot -- contained human remains.

The cemetery has not shrunk since the 1960s and Israel denies that any more land will be rezoned. But Muslim activists fear parts of the plot, which is already a fraction of its original size and includes swaths of land with no visible graves, will be severed and consumed.

When the attempts to block the museum in Israeli courts failed in 2008, the Islamic Movement began concentrating its efforts on the rest of the cemetery, outside the security-camera-mounted aluminum walls of the museum construction site.

The movement began bringing in volunteers and contractors to clean up the land and restore the graves with the city's permission, investing about $100,000, according to Mahmoud Abu Atta, a foundation spokesman.

A few months passed, Israeli officials said, before they noticed a dramatic increase in the number of graves. A pathway that city gardeners regularly used with their pickup truck was suddenly blocked by headstones, and a row of gravestones mysteriously appeared over an underground sewage line and on top of one manhole cover, according to Shlomo Chen, an inspector with the Israel Lands Authority in charge of the graveyard.

By August, city crews began arriving at night to demolish the gravestones. Restored graves that the city deemed genuine were left untouched.

"It is important to note that this is one of the biggest frauds perpetrated in recent years, and its sole goal was to illegally take over state land," the Jerusalem municipality said.

The new gravestones, typically constructed with old stones set in fresh concrete, also scrambled the physical record at an important historical site, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which termed the graves "fictitious."

The Islamic Movement's Abu Atta said all of the markers were constructed atop genuine graves, though in some cases nearly nothing was left of the original. He also indicated that the precise location of the graves was beside the point.

"If you dig a few meters down anywhere here you'll find bones," he said. "We just want to guard the cemetery."

The irony of a Jewish-sponsored Museum of Tolerance going up partly on a Muslim graveyard has made the project an irresistible target for critics. Legal action by the Islamic Movement and other groups snarled the project for years.

The 2008 Supreme Court ruling in the museum's favor noted that in Israel, where there are more archaeological sites per square mile than in any other country in the world, buildings are often built on graves.

And when the British ruled the city before 1948, it emerged, the local Islamic leaders at the time granted a religious dispensation to move graves in the cemetery to clear the way for a business center, hotel and park.

Clark Pinnock Dies at 73

From biblical inerrancy to open theism, the systematic theologian was not afraid to change his mind.

Doug Koop | posted 8/17/2010 12:14PM

Clark H. Pinnock's life journey is over. The influential and often controversial evangelical theologian died unexpectedly August 15 of a heart attack. He was 73. In March, the long-time professor of systematic theology at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, had announced he was withdrawing from public life and revealed that he was battling Alzheimer's disease.

It was a difficult admission for a man whose mercurial mind and openness to the Holy Spirit led him to stake out theological positions that challenged evangelical orthodoxies. Renowned for exploring the frontiers of biblical truth, he was reputed to study carefully, think precisely, argue forcefully, and shift his positions willingly if he discovered a more fruitful pathway of understanding. He said he preferred to be known, "not as one who has the courage of his convictions, but one who has the courage to question them and to change old opinions which need changing."

Born in Toronto in 1937, Pinnock's mind was changing from his youth: His parents were liberal Baptists, but at age 12 converted to the more conservative evangelical faith of his grandmother and Sunday school teacher. After years of involvement in Youth for Christ, the Canadian Keswick Bible Conference, and Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, Pinnock graduated from the University of Toronto. He went on to study under F. F. Bruce at Manchester University, where he earned his Ph.D.

"My early interest on scholarship came about from an interest in foreign missions, specifically the Wycliffe Bible Translators and therefore the biblical languages being translated into new tongues," he said. "That led me into Hebrew and Greek."

He also came under the influence of Francis Schaeffer and worked for a time at L'Abri. Pinnock came to the United States in 1965 and taught at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he became an influential figure in the Southern Baptist Convention's battles over biblical inerrancy. From 1969-1974 he taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and from 1974-1977 at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

He arrived at McMaster in 1977 with great hopes of becoming an agent of biblical renewal in what he described as a "comfortable mainline seminary." In his inaugural lecture, he said that evangelical theology must be both conservative and contemporary. "We should strive to be faithful to historic Christian belief taught in Scripture, and at the same time be authentic and responsible to contemporary hearers."

The blend of intellectual theological rigor and emphasis on practical application of Christian principles in daily practice and church life was a hallmark of his personality. He was extremely courteous and engaging in person, keen to worship in almost any setting (including the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship in its holy laughter heyday, which he described as gentle, with people just "blissing out"). He was eager to equip people in the churches with the theological tools they needed to engage in mission.

His career goal was to help the church worship God "with freedom, to experience the truth of the Bible in fresh ways, and to be able to share the gospel in a more effective and natural manner."

The late Stanley Grenz once observed that Pinnock "has been lauded as an inspiring theological pilgrim by his admirers and condemned as a dangerous renegade by his foes. Yet no story of evangelical theology in the 20th century is complete without the inclusion of his fascinating intellectual journey from quintessential evangelical apologist to anti-Augustinian theological reformist." In his own account of his spiritual journey, Pinnock recounts how he started right, moved left, and then ended up in the center

Pinnock's evolving position on the authority of Scripture was one of the early indicators of his questing mindset. His early A Defense of Biblical Infallibility (1967) argued for the necessity of belief in the Bible's authority, inspiration, and inerrancy. But he did not remain static on the issue, and came to understand that the biblical text can be fully trusted in what it intends to teach and to affirm, even if it may err on matters of detail tangential to the intention of the text (The Scripture Principle, 1984).

The trajectory of his thinking also took him from a Reformed to a neo-Arminian view of salvation. Early on he had maintained "that Calvinism was just scriptural evangelicalism in its purest expression." But by the late 1990s theologians like R.C. Sproul and J.I. Packer were denouncing him. Pinnock kept pushing the envelope, championing the concept of "open theism," which emphasizes God's self-limitation in dealing with humans, including his vulnerability. He argued that God could be surprised by events and persuaded to change a decision.

This positioning was anathema to many in the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), who insisted God knows and has even planned the entire future, and that open theism undermines confidence in God. The controversy bubbled along for nearly a decade, and came to a head in 2002 when Pinnock was nearly expelled from the ETS. His membership situation was satisfactorily resolved a year later. Even his opponents acknowledged that Pinnock considered the Bible the primary source for theology, and that his arguments were anchored in Scripture.

He also challenged evangelical orthodoxy with A Wideness in God's Mercy (1992), in which he considered the inclusion of "holy pagans" in the Bible and argued for a more generous understanding of the destiny of the unevangelized.

Another important element of Pinnock's career was his emphasis on the Holy Spirit. While a cessationist early in his theological career, he later argued that Christology had been given much more attention "and the Spirit has been made a kind of junior assistant to Christ." Among the catalysts for his change of mind was the healing of one of his eyes, which had nearly gone blind with macular degeneracy. "I know from personal experience that one such incident can be worth a bookshelf of academic apologetics for Christianity (including my own books)," he later wrote. His Flame of Love (1996) was lauded by some as addressing an important neglect, and dismissed by others as "maverick theology."

"Here's an academic who was overstuffed in the brain and the heart cries out," Pinnock said of his passion for charismatic renewal. "It's possible that I like strong charismatic forms partly because it's so unnatural to me and it meets a deep need."

While he was courageous in his ability to adopt new ideas and positions, Pinnock did allow that theological change has its painful aspects. "Not only am I often not listened to, I am also made to feel stranded theologically: being too much of a free thinker to be accepted by the evangelical establishment and too much of a conservative to be accepted by the liberal mainline."

Pakistani Flood Spares Places of Worship, Villagers Say It is a Miracle

August 22nd, 2010

Source: pakistannewsblog.com

United Church Launches Emergency Appeal for Pakistan

Friday, August 20, 2010

The United Church of Canada announced today that it is launching an emergency appeal for donations designated for flood relief and reconstruction in Pakistan.

The United Church will receive donations to its Emergency Response Fund to be used by the ACT Alliance, a global network of 100 churches and church-related organizations that work together to provide humanitarian assistance and long-term development. ACT members in Pakistan are working diligently to deliver assistance including food, water, tents, kitchen kits, hygiene kits, mosquito nets, and emergency medical care.

Gary Kenny is The United Church of Canada’s Program Coordinator for Emergency Response. He says the United Church has a solid history of working with its in-country partners and organizations like ACT to deliver aid to affected communities in a timely, efficient, and effective manner. Delivering aid to the affected communities is extremely difficult, because they are in mountainous, remote, and hard-to-reach regions. Nonetheless Kenny says he’s confident that the initial emergency funds the United Church has sent – $65,000 from emergency relief funds and $75,000 through its membership in the Canadian Foodgrains Bank – has reached or will soon reach communities in need.

“Patience, ongoing consultation, and careful planning and monitoring are critical requirements in responding effectively to a humanitarian crisis as complex as that currently unfolding in Pakistan,” says Kenny.

Individuals are invited to contribute to the United Church’s Pakistan appeal either through their local congregations or directly to The United Church of Canada’s national office: 3250 Bloor St. West, Suite 300, Toronto, ON M8X 2Y4. Cheques should be made payable to The United Church of Canada and marked “Pakistan Flood Relief.” Online donations can also be made at www.united-church.ca/pakistan.

Additional background material related to the United Church’s Pakistan appeal has been posted on The United Church of Canada’s website (www.united-church.ca/pakistan). Please watch for updates as new information becomes available.

Church Vows to Burn Qur'ans Without Fire Permit

Thursday August 19, 2010

(RNS) Fire officials in Gainesville, Fla., have denied a permit to a church that wants to burn Qurans on Sept. 11, but church officials said they'll go ahead with the protest that has garnered worldwide attention.

Leaders of the Dove World Outreach Center say "Islam is of the Devil" and plan to burn copies of the Islamic holy book on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Gene Prince, interim chief of Gainesville Fire Rescue, told The Gainesville Sun that he informed the church on Tuesday (Aug. 17) that the protest violates local fire-prevention laws, which include rules against burning corrugate cardboard or office paper, which includes books.

"It wouldn't matter what the book is they're burning," Deputy Chief Tim Hayes told the newspaper.

Regardless, the church sent out an e-mail vowing to go burn the books anyway. "City of Gainesville denies burn permit -- BUT WE WILL STILL BURN KORANS," The Sun reported.

The church's website includes a list of 10 reasons to burn the Quran, including "Islamic Law is totalitarian in nature," Islamic teaching contains "irrational fear and loathing of the West" and that the Quran teaches that Jesus "was NOT the Son of God."

JCC leader advising couple behind Islamic center

August 23, 2010

NEW YORK (JTA) -- The head of the Manhattan JCC is advising the effort to build an Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero and is calling on Jewish and Christian institutions to accept the couple behind the project.

Rabbi Joy Levitt, executive director of the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, discussed her institution’s connection to the project in an appearance Sunday on ABC’s This Week With Christiane Amanpour. Levitt appeared with Daisy Khan, the wife of Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, who is the religious leader associated with the controversial project, which will include a mosque.

“The JCC has invited Daisy and the imam to come speak at the JCC in September, and I hope that we'll be able to do that. They've certainly accepted our offer, and I hope that JCCs and other community centers in the Christian and Jewish community and in the secular world will come to do that, because clearly what this whole controversy has unleashed is a tremendous amount of misinformation, lack of knowledge about Islam that we need to address.”

Levitt confirmed that the JCC has been advising Khan and Rauf. “Well, we got a call from Daisy when they began to think about this project, and said we want to build an MCC just like the JCC,” Levitt said.

Many Republican lawmakers and several Democratic ones, a slew of conservative pundits and some people who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11 attacks oppose the project, saying that opening a mosque so close to Ground Zero is a slap in the face to those that died there and their families. Some of the opponents also argue that the symbolic location of the project will embolden anti-American Islamic forces.

Khan said that when she and her husband begin to raise money for the estimated $100 million project, they will be seeking more advice from Levitt and the JCC.

“Well, this is where my counselor on my right is helping us, because our funding is going to be pretty much follow the same way that JCC got its fund-raising,” Khan said. “First, we have to develop a board. Then the board is going to have a financial committee, fund-raising committee that will be in charge of the fundraising.”

Many critics of the project express concern that the money to pay for the Islamic cultural center might come from overseas sources with ties to terrorism. Khan said that she and her husband have pledged to work with U.S. authorities to alleviate such concerns.

In the interview, Levitt slammed former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich -- one of the most prominent critics of the project -- for comparing the project to Nazis putting up a site next to U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. She also invoked periods in early American history, when some colonies outlawed the building of synagogues.

Bid for Sharia Court in St. Petersburg Fails

20 August 2010

By Galina Stolyarova

ST. PETERSBURG — A Muslim lawyer's attempt to create St. Petersburg's first sharia court flopped just weeks after the court opened amid a storm of criticism from local Muslim leaders and human rights activists that climaxed with an order from prosecutors for its closure.

The court, which adhered to Islamic law, had no judicial power, and its activity was limited to civil disputes, such as reconciling members of estranged families, founder Dzhamaliddin Makhmutov said.

“Our resolutions have no judicial power; what we do would be perhaps best described as honor trials,” Makhmutov said before prosecutors intervened this week.

“We offer solutions and advice rather than punishment, especially in a physical form,” he told The Moscow Times.

Sharia law prescribes severe penalties for some crimes, such as the amputation of hands for theft and stoning for adultery.

"The solutions that we give to the people who come to us are based essentially on the ethics and principles of the Quran," Makhmutov said, referring to the Islamic holy book.

But local prosecutors saw things differently, announcing that the court was in violation of the law and Makhmutov might face extremism charges if he refused to close it.

Makhmutov subsequently backed off on his comments about the court, calling it a "tribunal" instead of a sharia court and saying he had been misunderstood by journalists.

But Makhmutov explicitly said it was a sharia court in his interview with The Moscow Times.

Many Muslim and non-Muslim leaders in St. Petersburg also understood it to be a sharia court and roundly condemned it.

St. Petersburg deputy mufti Ravil Poncheyev slammed the court as anti-constitutional. “We refuse to recognize this group,” Poncheyev said. “It was created by charlatans who do not have any rights to engage in such an activity. Besides, any decision by such a court does not have any legal power, which makes the court an unnecessary and artificial organization.”

St. Petersburg ombudsman Alexei Kozyrev also spoke critically of the court, calling it “inappropriate” and “potentially damaging to the climate of ethnic tolerance in town.”

“We have a stable judicial system in the country that works efficiently, and no substitutes are needed,” Kozyrev said. “In a multifaith country like Russia, it is especially important to adhere to the principles of an independent legal system where people of all religious beliefs are treated equally."

He said his office was looking into the court's work.

Makhmutov said criticism from the Islamic community might be motivated by reluctance to share power. He also said he had faced pressure to close his legal center and received anonymous telephone threats.

Before prosecutors stepped in, he sent a letter to President Dmitry Medvedev asking for protection from what he described as a “witch hunt,” and also sought the support of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov said in May that he considers sharia law to be more important than federal law.

Sharia courts were created in Chechnya in 1995, when the republic became a de facto independent republic, and the secular judicial system was only restored after the start of the second Chechen war in 1999.

More than 20 countries in Africa and Asia, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt, Libya and Sudan, currently base their legal systems on sharia law, although most of them incorporate elements from other judicial systems as well.

Some Western countries, like Britain, have sharia courts based in mosques that handle civil disputes.

Several dozen people, many of them newly arrived immigrants, sought the advice of the court, located at the Islamic Prayer House on Moskovsky Prospekt in central St. Petersburg, in the weeks after it opened, Makhmutov said.

Issues brought up had little to do with the intricacies of faith, he said. People came to complain about bribes demanded by local schools and kindergartens to admit their children, impeded access to qualified medical help and threats from non-Muslim neighbors.

Shukhrat Mavlyanov, a leader of St. Petersburg’s Uzbek community, welcomed the court as a way to help Muslim newcomers integrate into St. Petersburg life.

“Uzbek immigrants find it very difficult to adapt to their new lives in St. Petersburg,” he told the Gazeta.spb.ru news web site. “They have lived in an Islamic state all their lives, and here they find a civil country. I think that for many of them it would be easier to seek advice from a Muslim qadi [a sharia judge] than a magistrate.”

But the court could have just the opposite effect, by further isolating members of the Muslim community who already had problems adapting to city life, said Valentina Uzunova, a senior researcher with the St. Petersburg Museum for Anthropology and Ethnography.

“I would recommend an integration strategy, rather than locking themselves in seclusion,” said Uzunova, who often acts as a consultant on hate crimes in the city's courts.

No musical instruments please, Vatican asks Britons

LONDON | Mon Aug 23, 2010 1:28pm BST

LONDON (Reuters) - Pilgrims attending the large public events during Pope Benedict's visit to England and Scotland next month have been issued a long list of do's and don'ts including a ban on musical instruments and steel cutlery.

The list, on the official papal visit website, encouraged worshippers to bring sunblock, flags and folding chairs for the events in Glasgow, London and Birmingham, but said alcohol, gazebos and lit candles should be left at home because they "could pose a threat."

It did not specifically mention the vuvuzela, so popular among fans at this summer's South African World Cup, but the noisy monotone trumpet could be considered out of bounds under the category of banned instruments and whistles.

The four-day trip, from September 16 to 19, will be the first papal visit since Pope John Paul II's pastoral visit in 1982 and is the first-ever official papal visit to Britain.

Various protests are expected, including by secularists critical of the trip's cost, gay rights groups and those angry at the child-abuse scandal which has spread throughout the Roman Catholic church globally.

Nevertheless, tens of thousands of the Church's estimated five million followers in Britain are expected to attend the public events.

About 85,000 are due to attend a prayer vigil in London's Hyde Park, while 65,000-70,000 are expected at the beatification of the Victorian theologian and Anglican convert Cardinal John Henry Newman in Birmingham.

Up to 100,000 are due to attend a Mass at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow.

Worshippers will be able to take blankets, torches and cameras as well as picnics, but only plastic cutlery and non-breakable cups and plates will be allowed. Hampers and cool boxes should not exceed a certain size.

Last week the full itinerary was published, including details of when people would be able to catch a glimpse of the pope in his popemobile.

Poll shows Americans are confused on Obama’s religion

Aug 19, 2010 10:45 EDT

USA-POLITICS/OBAMA A year and a half into his presidency, Americans appear to be growing more uncertain about Barack Obama’s religion.

A Pew Research Center survey shows that nearly one in five Americans — 18 percent — believe Obama is a Muslim, up from 11 percent in March 2009. Meanwhile only about one third of Americans surveyed correctly describe Obama as a Christian, a sharp decrease from the 48 percent who said he was a Christian in 2009.

The survey was completed in early August, before Obama backed the controversial construction of a proposed mosque and Muslim cultural center near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York.

Obama said last week he believed Muslims had the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in the country and supported their right to build the center in lower Manhattan – comments that could add more confusion about his religion.

The Pew poll said the view that Obama is a Muslim is more widespread among political opponents than his supporters. In addition, beliefs about Obama’s religion appear closely linked to his job approval rating.

Among those who say Obama is Muslim, 67 percent disapprove of his job performance while a majority of those who think he is Christian approve of the job he is doing.

The poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life was conducted July 21-Aug 5 among 3,003 respondents.