Page 4932 – Christianity Today (2024)

Genesis, a new musical composition for chorus and orchestra, based on the biblical account of Creation, is being hailed by critics as one of the most important concert works of the late twentieth century. Yet tor its composer, the five-movement, 34-minute work’s primary audience is the Creator himself. “It’s addressed to God,” says Charles Wuorinen, considered by many professional musicians to be one of the finest contemporary composers at work in this country. “And the public, the audience, is invited to listen as well.”

Wuorinen, who grew up in an agnostic family, found religion on his own as an adult. He calls Genesis “a hymn of thanksgiving for our existence.” “Since I believe that my ideas are given to me, and my capacity to compose—if I have any—is given to me, the act of composition is an act of worship as much as any service or prayer could be,” he explains. “It’s simply the old monastic idea of work and praying—this work being, for me, composing. How could it not be addressed to the deity? Everything else is secondary.… Unless art is addressed to a higher power, it really doesn’t mean very much.”

In September Genesis received its world premiere by the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus. Both Wuorinen and Herbert Blomstedt, music director of the symphony (CT, Mar. 3, 1989, p. 62), are outspoken about their personal faith. It was a comment by Blomstedt—“Wouldn’t it be nice if someone wrote a new setting of the Creation?”—made while Wuorinen was composer-in-residence for the symphony during the late 1980s, that prompted the composer to write Genesis during a six-month period in 1989.

Wuorinen chose his text from the biblical account and from Gregorian canticles that have texts appropriate to God’s creative nature and activity. The text is in Church Latin—a more singable language and a more “stable” translation, he says.

Rather than tell the creation story in a narrative or descriptive way, Genesis presents the creation of the world as having happened in a rational, orderly manner. Structured somewhat as a worship service, it opens with numerous invocations to God as creator, and reaches its focal point in “Creation History.” The final movement, “Doxology,” ends in a celebratory dance, “Sing unto the Lord a new song, for the Lord has done marvelous things, Hallelujah.”

Wuorinen’s dense compositional style stands opposite the minimalist trend evident in so much concert music today. The music is polyphonic, characterized not by a tune with harmonic background, but by many lines to listen to at once, all of equal importance.

The style makes heavy musical demands on both performers and listeners. “My music is not necessarily intended for those who pay the price of admission,” Wuorinen says. “I am delighted when people like what I do, [but] the act of composition is too hard work to do for some trivial result like trying to be popular with people.”

By Richard Dinwiddie in San Francisco.

When Gen. Francisco Franco won the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39, with considerable help from the Nazis, he instituted an era of rigorous repression against his political adversaries, including many Protestants. Churches were closed, literature, including Bibles, was impounded, and proselytism was strictly forbidden.

Evangelicals in Spain have faced an uphill battle ever since. A recent census estimated Spain’s evangelical population at about 71,000. About 30,000 of those belong to the Philadelphia Church, a Pentecostal movement among Spain’s Gypsies that started from seven believers in 1965. And in an increasingly secular society, most Spanish think of Christianity only in relation to Roman Catholicism. “Ninety-five percent of Spaniards know absolutely nothing about Protestantism,” says Luis Fernando Garda, a Roman Catholic priest who studied in a Protestant seminary in France.

All that could begin to change, however, because the Spanish national parliament, the Cortes, is considering legislation that would grant unprecedented new religious rights to the nation’s Protestant minority.

A Spanish Accord

The proposed bill, known as the Accords of Cooperation between the Spanish State and the Federation of Evangelical Entities of Spain, recognizes Protestantism’s “manifest rootage” in Spanish society and gives status and prerogatives that the dominant Roman Catholic confession has enjoyed for centuries. The new concessions that are granted by the proposed pact’s 13 articles deal with such issues as taxes, professional ministry, and education.

For the first time, churches and affiliated organizations would be exempt from property and corporation taxes. Evangelicals could also deduct contributions to churches and church-related, not-for-profit organizations from their income-tax bill.

Also, for the first time in Spain’s history, “Protestant minister” would be recognized as a legal profession, equal in status with “Roman Catholic priest.” This means ministers could serve as chaplains in the military forces and in public institutions such as hospitals, retirement homes, and schools. Ministers would also enroll in the national social-security system and receive a pension upon retirement.

In the realm of education, schools—public as well as private—would be obliged to provide Protestant religious instruction to students who request it. Furthermore, the Accords would pave the way for evangelical schools, universities, and Bible institutes to apply for official accreditation.

The pending legislation is the fruit of four years of negotiation between Spain’s Ministry of Justice and the Federation of Evangelical Religious Entities (FEREDE). José Cardona, executive secretary of FEREDE, expected the bill to pass the Cortes quickly, possibly in time for Reformation Day, October 31.

“The agreements have been approved by all the proper legal channels,” Cardona says. “Everything has been resolved from the technical point of view.”

“There is a lot of interest on the part of the state to complete this [legislation] rapidly in order to do away with existing religious discrimination,” adds Juan Lopez, administrative assistant at FEREDE’s headquarters in Madrid. “Religious liberty in Spain is perhaps the broadest that exists anywhere nowadays, after that of the United States. It is very, very broad.”

One catch in the newly proposed pact is that it grants the respective legal privileges only to those evangelical entities who join FEREDE.

“Obviously, there is now a small problem,” Cardona admits. “A few, small churches exist that, for reasons of principle, cannot become associated with others. They remain outside the association and, for that reason, will not have the benefits of the Accords.”

Cardona estimates that 90 percent of the evangelical bodies known to exist in Spain have already become members of FEREDE. He says it is unlikely that any Protestant group that seeks membership in the FEREDE will be excluded. In spite of the political progress, promoters of the Accords entertain no illusions about their immediate impact upon the religious complexion of Spain’s traditional, Roman Catholic society. “The Catholic church still carries a lot of weight in Spain,” Lopez points out. “You cannot say that, overnight, Spain has ceased being Catholic. The average citizen still thinks that to be Protestant is to be a second-class citizen.”

By Dave Miller, News Network International, in Madrid.

Riots between angry Muslims and Christians in the historic Islamic city of Kano last month left at least 8 people dead, though some estimates of the death toll range as high as 300. Some of the reports said more than 100 shops and residences were damaged.

Last April thousands were killed in interfaith strife in the state of Bauchi. The violence there was touched off when Muslims reportedly burned down churches, and Muslims were killed in retaliation. High-level meetings between Christian and Muslim politicians had quieted tensions.

The recent violence was apparently touched off when Nigerian government officials granted permission for a crusade by German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, while denying approval for public meetings by a prominent Muslim leader. On the eve of the October 15 Bonnke crusade, thousands of Muslims from the ethnic Jausa group marched through the city, burning and looting shops and churches. The following day, members of the largely Christian Ibo tribe retaliated by attacking Muslim shops, homes, and mosques. The crusade was then cancelled.

Bonnke noted that weeks prior to his arrival in Bauchi, cars had driven through the streets of Kano with loudspeakers, announcing the dates and location of the rallies, without incident.

Since his first African crusade, which drew more than 10,000 people to Botswana in 1975, Bonnke has often publicized his mass conversions of Muslims. A crusade in Kaduna, Nigeria, in October 1990, claimed a crowd of 500,000 in one night.

Despite the riots, which brought on a declaration of martial law, Bonnke last month announced plans to hold his crusade in November. “The Kano Christians are united as never before, and they are already anticipating the day when we can return for a victorious campaign,” Bonnke said in a statement following the mid-October crusade’s cancellation.

Former missionaries to Islamic peoples, however, warn that mass evangelism in Muslim countries is an invitation to violence.

“I think that the Bonnke crusade in Kano was very ill-advised, and I can’t imagine who set him up to do that,” said Dean Gilliland, professor of contextual theology and African studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Gilliland, a United Methodist, lived in Nigeria from 1956 to 1976 and was principal of a theological college in Bukuru.

J. Dudley Woodberry, associate professor of Islamic studies at Fuller, said in an interview that growth of the Christian population in Nigeria has heightened tensions. In the past, Muslims thought of themselves as a majority, but in recent years, the proportions have become nearly equal.

“Muslims have been very upset at high-profile evangelism,” Woodberry said. “The same is true in Southeast Asia, where in Singapore there have been big evangelistic crusades in stadiums. Muslims find that kind of thing very offensive because it publicizes the number of conversions.”

By Darrell Turner, Religious News Service.

BRAZIL

Protestant Growth

One thing became clear during Pope John Paul II’s recent visit to Brazil: He is serious about countering Latin America’s growing interest in the Protestant evangelical faith. While Brazil has the largest Catholic population of any country in the world, with 88 percent of the country’s 150 million people professing Catholicism, as many as 600,000 Brazilian Catholics are converting to Protestantism yearly. The Pope urged Brazilian bishops to make their teaching more plain to help counter “the seduction of sects and new religious groups” that offer “false mirages” and “distorted simplifications” to attract followers.

In addition to countering the movement toward Protestantism (about 16 million one-time Brazilian Catholics alone have affiliated with the Assemblies of God), the Pope also spoke strongly against liberation theology.

PERU

‘Disappearances’ Condemned

The Evangelical Council of Peru (CONEP) recently announced the disappearance of an evangelical pastor, the latest episode in which the church has suffered in the ongoing guerrilla war between government forces and leftist Shining Path rebels (CT, Nov. 11, p. 58). The announcement by CONEP in the daily newspaper La Republica charges that in October 1989 the Peruvian army apprehended and detained Jorge Parraga Castillo, pastor of the Peruvian Evangelical Church.

“During the last years, the evangelical community in Peru has suffered directly the consequences of forced ‘disappearance’ of many of its members and leaders,” read the announcement. “The use of this cruel and inhuman procedure, which directly violates many provisions of our legal order, means not only their radical rupture, but also implies crass abandonment of the values of human dignity and the deepest underlying principles of social life.” CONEP officials say the government still has not investigated the disappearance of Castillo.

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS

Mission Board Cuts Funds

European Baptists are upset over a decision by the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board (SBFMB) to stop providing funds to the Baptist Theological Seminary in Ruschlikon, Switzerland. In early October, the SMFMB voted 35 to 28, rerouting $365,000 in funds from the seminary to other ventures in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In doing so, some SBFMB members cited concerns that the seminary’s theological stance was turning too liberal.

Board members complained that the seminary, which is run by the European Baptist Federation (EBF), recently invited church history professor Glenn Hinson of Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, to teach during his sabbatical. Hinson has been critical of conservative control of the Southern Baptist denomination.

EBF general secretary Karl-Heinz Walter said the action amounts to “a breach of trust” with the federation and the 32 unions affiliated with it. He added, “We do not find the loss of the money to be the major issue. Rather, the decision destroys confidence in future partnerships with Southern Baptists.” Outgoing EBF president Peter Barber of Scotland said he was disturbed by the suddenness of the move, which cut 40 percent of the seminary’s income.

In its vote, the SBFMB ignored warnings from its president, Keith Parks, who said cutting the funds would endanger the board’s integrity and hinder Baptist expansion in Europe.

HUNGER

Hope For One-Half Billion

More than one-half billion people worldwide are hungry, according to a recent report by the Washington lobby group Bread for the World. While that number is larger than ever before, the percentage of hungry people worldwide is dropping. And, says Bread for the World president David Beckmann, the potential for reducing hunger has never been greater as demilitarization and the advent of new democracies free more resources to feed those in need.

The report notes some important advances in reducing hunger, including increased participation in grassroots-level food banks, food pantries, and hunger advocacy efforts in the U.S.; and the combination of new agricultural technologies with small rural enterprises in countries such as India. Beckmann calls for continued, well-directed efforts: “Lowering the interest rate on Third World debt by 1 percent could help hungry people as much as holding dozens of Live Aid concerts.”

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Elected: Metropolitan Bartholomeos, as the new patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians. Bartholomeos, 51, was the top aide to his predecessor, Dimitrios I, who died October 2.

Named: Jack Fortin, 46, as the new chief of staff of World Vision. He brings to his new job 20 years of experience in various management positions with Young Life.

J. Raymond Tallman, as new general director of Arab World Ministries, effective in January 1993. Until then, he will continue as the chairman of the Department of World Missions and Evangelism at Moody Bible Institute.

By all appearances, democracy emerged as the winner of August’s failed coup attempt by Soviet hardliners. But while Christians in the USSR rejoiced with the promise of greater religious freedom, they also noted with discomfort the resilience of their long-time nemesis: the KGB.

The ease with which Western religious groups can travel into the Soviet Union today belies the fact that certain quarters of Soviet religious life have yet to experience freedom from intimidation. No longer is the state police force the monolith of Communist order often portrayed in spy novels. But by no means has it disappeared.

“It’s a mafia within a mafia structure now,” says KGB defector Peter Driabin. “[The KGB] has always been one big mob. Now it’s a bunch of little mobs.”

Soon after the failed coup, Russian parliamentary leaders such as dissident Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin and rebel KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin were pressuring Russian President Boris Yeltsin to remove the head of the so-called Fourth Department of the Directorate for the Defense of the Constitution, which for decades has intimidated and infiltrated the church.

Though the Fourth Department’s agents have harassed the church since Khrushchev’s era, only recently has the connection between the Fourth Department and the official All Union Council for Religious Affairs been exposed by noted glasnost-era journalist Alexander Nezhny of the periodical Ogonyek. And much of the KGB’s upper echelon has been removed by Vadim Bakatin, the moderate head of the vast Lubyanka prison complex (who recently opened his jails to Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship ministry).

The history of sergiansta, a synonym for the Russian Orthodox church’s collusion with the Kremlin, dates back to 1927 when Metropolitan Sergei signed a “Declaration of Loyalty” to the Bolshevik party. So critics were not surprised when Metropolitans Yuvenali, Pitirim, Kirill, and Filaret were silent as tanks rolled toward Moscow. They also complained that current Patriarch Aleksy II’s denunciation of the putsch came several days late and was couched in what Yakunin labeled “extremely diplomatic language.”

Though most of the republics have already banished their respective councils of religious affairs, the still vigorous KGB/party mechanism at regional and district levels remains a threat to believers. In the aftermath of the failed coup, Yakunin, Kalugin, and Nezhny plan to pry open KGB archives to reveal the names of local and regional agents who have worked against believers.

“It is very important to let everyone know the specific names of the agents within the church,” says Yakunin. “We will continue to demand, not only from the KGB but also the leaders of the Orthodox church, that those agents and traitors be jailed immediately.”

By Ted Okada in Moscow.

Not too long ago, representatives of Western Christian groups concerned about the state of religious freedom behind the Iron Curtain were routinely denied travel visas to the region. Bibles were smuggled in at the borders, and communication among most Christians in the East and West was strictly forbidden.

Today, Western Christian groups are setting up offices in Moscow, Bucharest, and Budapest. Bibles are being imported legally by the millions, and Eastern and Western Christians are launching scores of new joint evangelistic projects. As political changes rapidly overtake the lands once known as the Eastern Bloc, Western Christian groups are being forced to reshape their own identities and strategies.

Among the most striking changes are those at Keston College, which throughout the seventies and eighties was a leader in reporting about the persecuted church behind the Iron Curtain. Earlier this year the organization changed its name to Keston Research and in October completed a relocation to Oxford, England, where it will now be housed under university auspices.

Financial constraints have forced Keston to reduce its staff to 5 members, down from a high of 25 in the mid-1980s. It has also suspended its news service, which covered religious persecution in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but it will continue to publish two journals on the situation of the churches in the region: Frontier and the scholarly Religion in Communist Lands, to be renamed Religion, State, and Society: The Keston Journal in January 1992.

Keston founder and director Michael Bourdeaux said the group will continue to do in-depth studies of churches in the region while becoming involved in new arenas, such as selecting and assisting Eastern European theological students to study at Oxford and opening a Moscow office.

As another watchdog group, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), celebrated its tenth anniversary last month, the Washington, D.C.-based organization’s board of directors announced changes in its manifesto that “reflect the significance of recent transformations that have taken place in the world.” The revised manifesto urges renewed emphasis on nurturing democracy in formerly communist lands. To that end, IRD president Kent Hill will temporarily move to Moscow later this month and spend the next few months teaching about democracy in Soviet universities.

The manifesto also commits the IRD to helping authoritarian regimes in Africa, Asia, and Latin America make the transition to democracy, as well as encouraging democracy and religious freedom in Islamic countries. Hill said the group will continue “to challenge denominations and ecumenical organizations when they have been wrongly silent on matters of religious freedom … or unwisely vocal on behalf of highly questionable revolutionary movements.”

Other ministries, too, are focusing on new parts of the world. Christian Solidarity International (CSI) executive director Steven Snyder says China and the Islamic world will be key areas for his group, which monitors human-rights abuses. CSI has established the Institute for Christian Minorities in the Islamic World, which the group says will “serve as a research arm … as well as helping to coordinate international efforts in dealing with the problems that face Christians in these countries.”

Mark Elliot, editor of the East European Missions Directory, told CT that several other ministries appear to be shifting emphasis from Marxism to Islam, including Issachar and the Illinois-based Society of St. Stephen. He noted that Brother Andrew’s Open Doors Ministry, once known for smuggling Bibles into the Eastern Bloc, more recently has been focusing on the Islamic world. Another organization “in for a major overhaul,” Elliot says, is Biblical Education by Extension, which concentrated on nonresidential seminary training programs for Eastern Europe.

Elliot’s own organization, based in Wheaton, Illinois, has changed its name from the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Marxism to the Institute for East-West Christian Studies in order to avoid creating discomfort within the Soviet Union. “Many ex-Marxist officials were frankly suspicious of what I was up to until they got to know me better,” Elliot said. “It’s a new era.”

An attempt by the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) to purchase bankrupt television station WTGI in Philadelphia has failed.

Trinity’s efforts to buy the station had been challenged by Dan Borowicz, president of the Ethnic Programming Legal Defense Fund and manager of operations and engineering at WTGI. In May, Borowicz petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to disallow TBN’S bid for the station. At issue was who would truly control the station should the network purchase it. FCC regulations limit to 12 the number of full-power stations one corporation may own but allow ownership of two additional stations if they are controlled by racial/ethnic minorities.

According to TBN, which owns 12 stations, control of the Philadelphia station was to be held by National Minority TV (NMTV). Borowicz has maintained that NMTV is a “sham organization,” citing the fact that of its three voting board members, two are high-ranking TBN employees, including president Paul Crouch (CT, Aug. 19, 1991, p. 52).

An FCC inquiry into the relationship between TBN and NMTV has delayed the process beyond the bankruptcy court deadline for the proposed purchase, explained a TBN spokesman, Washington attorney Colby May. Though the purchase deal is off, the FCC’s inquiry into the relationship between TBN and NMTV continues. May said he regards the FCC questions as “routine” and added that TBN has always complied fully with similar FCC requests.

Author Troy Lawrence, who attracted the interest of Christian readers with the anticult message of recent books such as New Age Messiah Identified and The Secret Message of the Zodiac, has himself become the subject of an exposé. Lawrence’s books have been released by several well-known Christian publishers and endorsed by several evangelists. But Lawrence recently admitted that his real name is Darrick Evenson, whom cult watchers allege has been an ardent supporter of Mormonism, and author of a book refuting Christian ministries to Mormons.

Huntington House Publishers of Lafayette, Louisiana, has stopped publication of New Age Messiah Identified, which sold approximately 10,000 copies. Mark Trosclair, a Huntington House executive, says his company ceased publication after Evenson admitted he was operating under an alias and had concealed his Mormon background.

CT could not reach Evenson for comment. But in a statement sent by telefax last May to Huntington House, Evenson said he actually wrote The Gainsayers as a “Trojan horse” to reveal Mormon secrets that “rank and file Mormons never see.” He also insisted that “rumors of me being a Mormon have been greatly exaggerated!”

However, Cornerstone magazine reports that in March of this year, the day after “Troy Lawrence” had lectured on the threat of the New Age movement at a Baptist church in Phoenix, Evenson spoke in front of the Mormons’ Arizona temple in Mesa, promoting Mormon doctrine. In addition, the Missionary Department of the Mormon church confirms that Evenson was a full-time Mormon missionary from July 21, 1983, to January 19, 1985, stationed in San Jose, California.

In New Age Messiah Identified, Evenson describes his upbringing and eventual disillusionment with the New Age, leading to his becoming a Christian in 1984. In the book, Evenson claims that while digging through the files at the Tara Center, a New Age group, he unearthed the probable identity of the coming Antichrist.

Evenson’s story of the coming Antichrist played well in some church circles. The Southwest Radio Church featured Evenson on its nationwide broadcast and asked him to speak at its annual prophecy conference. And in May of this year, New Age Messiah Identified was offered by evangelist Jack Van Impe to his donors.

An earlier book by “Lawrence,” The Secret Message of the Zodiac, was released by Here’s Life Publishers, the publishing arm of Campus Crusade for Christ. Here’s Life broke off its relationship with Evenson soon after publication of the book because of repeated trouble with him, says Here’s Life president Les Stobbe.

Reports of Evenson’s true identity appeared first in the newsletter Saints Alive, from cult researcher Ed Decker. More comprehensive coverage followed in the August 1991 issue of the Salt Lake City Messenger magazine, run by ex-Mormons Jerald and Sandra Tanner.

By Bill Alnor and Eric Pement.

Given the literal Christianity that is portrayed in the new movie The Rapture, film-savvy evangelicals might be rejoicing: There is actually a motion picture in secular theaters that portrays heaven and hell as concrete realities, the rapture of the church as an actual event, sin as dehumanizing, conversion as a cleansing process, and salvation through Jesus Christ as the only path to eternal life.

Not all Christians who have seen the film are waxing rapturous, however; there are some mitigating circumstances. In short order, The Rapture also features group-sex scenes as explicit as an R rating will allow; the killing of a child by the heavenly minded, “born-again” protagonist; elements that strike some viewers as more cultish than Christian; and a disturbing climax in which the main character—faced with the choice of heaven or hell—chooses eternal darkness.

Described by its writer/director Michael Tolkin as a “theological film noir,” The Rapture stars Mimi Rogers as a phone operator who, following a series of reckless sexual encounters, reaches out to God and becomes born again. Her zeal for the end times, however, has tragic results. In a fashion, the provocative movie has it both ways: Rogers’s character is clearly deluded; yet the supernatural, biblical events she believes in take shape in a series of bizarre twists destined to stun believer and nonbeliever alike.

“That it unsettles people—that for me is the triumph of the film,” Tolkin says. Yet not everyone has seen it so triumphantly. Fine Line Pictures, the distributor, went so far as to hold test screenings for evangelicals months before the movie’s opening and, based on the results, decided not to court either controversy or support among Christians. No organized Last Temptation of Christ-style opposition has developed, although one theater chain in Atlanta refused to book the picture because of its controversial content.

Fine Line president Ira Deutschman says critics and viewers have lauded or denounced the movie for often-contradictory reasons—from some nonbelievers “who thought it was not only a pro-Christian movie but too pro-Christian,” to certain evangelicals who, he admits, found it “incredibly offensive and blasphemous.”

Los Angeles writer Todd Coleman, who set up an early screening for fellow evangelicals in the film industry, said the Christians he showed it to “actually really liked some of the film and thought it was protranscendental faith. But what was disturbing to people was the mix of what they considered biblical truth and wildly unbiblical ideas.”

Tolkin, who is Jewish, says he found liberal atheists more virulent in their hostility to the picture than any evangelicals who have engaged him in debate. “The anger that was coming from the non-Christians at the New York Film Festival was truly scary,” he recalled. “I think they were really offended that the film was about religion and that its position toward religion was never ironic, that it never winked. If anything, one of the premises that I started with was, ‘All right, so there is a God—then what?’

“Hollywood has always made movies based on Judeo-Christian—with a little bit of pagan—imagery, from Heaven Can Wait to Ghost. There are a lot of movies about angels and ghosts and heaven and hell, but you never hear the word Christ mentioned in them. They never want to get that specific. My favorite line in the movie is ‘He’s the Lord Jesus Christ, Vic, he’s the Son of God.’ Every time I see that line, I’m happy. I think, ‘I made a movie where somebody says that with a straight face!’”

Film critic Michael Medved, cohost of the PBS show “Sneak Previews,” often lobbies for portrayal of religious life on screen but wishes that Tolkin, for one, hadn’t taken a stab at it. In a speech last month, Medved called the film “the most clear example I have ever seen of many, many examples of the antireligious bigotry that thrives in Hollywood.… Every Christian that you meet in this movie is weird, has twitches, is crazy, is disgusting.”

Ironically, Medved, who is Jewish, appears to be more upset about the portrayal of Christians than Ted Baehr, who reviewed The Rapture in Movie-guide, his watchdog publication for Christian families.

“Christians will be upset by the extensive nudity and pornographic sex scenes,” Baehr said, recommending that his readers not see it for that reason. But, he asserted, this is “not a heretical movie” and it “does portray an honest attempt to present salvation.

“It forces the audience to make a decision,” Baehr told CT, going so far as to call it a “well-crafted film” that could be “a powerful witness to those who do not know God.”

By Chris Willman, with Heidi Campbell.

CANADA

Church Attendance Drops

The number of Canadians who attend church regularly is apparently dropping, while the number of those who claim no religious affiliation is climbing, according to a new study.

In a poll of 10,000 Canadians, those who said they attended church weekly between the years 1985 and 1990 dropped from nearly 27 percent to 24 percent, say authors Alain Barti and George Mori in Canadian Social Trends. The study, which was also reported in ChristianWeek, shows the sharpest drop in church attendance occurred among those living in Quebec, from 30 to 24 percent. Only 20 percent of the respondents from Western Canada said they went to church weekly, while 34 percent from the Atlantic provinces indicated weekly attendance, the strongest showing by any region of the country.

Meanwhile, the number of those who say they have no religion increased in the study, from 10 percent in 1985 to 12 percent in 1990.

BASEBALL AND BIBLE

Preacher Cries Foul

A Tennessee evangelist has filed a federal lawsuit claiming that his free-speech rights were violated during game two of last year’s World Series when security guards at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium stopped him from displaying a Bible sign. Guy Aubrey, 33, of Cleveland, Tennessee, says in a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati that he was walking to his seat holding a “John 3:16” sign, when a security guard grabbed him and told him his sign violated the rules of Major League Baseball and the Cincinnati Reds. Aubrey says in the suit that guards and city police threatened to throw him out of the stadium, so he relinquished his sign under protest.

The suit, filed with the help of the Rutherford Institute, claims a stadium is a “public forum” and therefore must allow signs as free speech. A similar case occurred in 1989 at Robert F. Kennedy stadium in Washington, D.C., in which stadium officials apologized.

LAWSUIT

Diocese Found Negligent

A Colorado woman who had an affair with her Episcopal priest has been awarded $1.2 million by a jury, which ruled the priest’s bishop and the Diocese of Colorado mishandled the matter once they learned of it.

Plaintiff Mary Tenantry said she became involved with the Reverend Paul Robinson in 1984 when she was seeking counseling from him. Tenantry originally sued Robinson, along with Bishop William Frey and the diocese, charging they were negligent. Robinson was dropped from the suit after he declared bankruptcy.

The jury found that Frey and the diocese were negligent in their handling of the matter once it came to light. In testimony, Frey, who left the diocese last year to become president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, admitted to jurors that he allowed Robinson’s promotion from curate of one church to rector of another, even though he knew of the affair. Frey said that he thought the priest deserved another chance, adding that Tenantry had told him she did not want the diocese to take any action that would “hurt” Robinson.

“I’m probably guilty of beïng naive taking Mary and Paul at their word, but I’m not conscious of being malicious,” Frey said, according to Episcopal Life magazine.

MICHIGAN

Education Plan Killed

After years of protest, thousands of Michigan parents appear to have won the battle to remove from the public schools an education plan they say advocated teaching that espoused New Age techniques and values clarification.

The plan, called the “Michigan Model,” was effectively killed when Gov. John Engler vetoed $2 million in funds for the program; two days later another $14 million in federal grants for drug education to be used for the program also fell through. Critics said its methods of “child choice,” in which students worked out problems by talking with their peers, could actually encourage drug use.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Torched: five churches in Gainesville and Ocala, Florida, bringing to 23 the number of arson-related church fires in the state since 1990. The fires have prompted local parishioners to stand guard overnight in their churches.

Offered: the Zondervan Radio Network, a new international public-affairs service of news, features, interviews, and commentaries. The service will be offered to radio stations to air within existing newscasts or at other times.

Refused: by a unanimous decision of the board of trustees of the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, a $50 million offer for the financially troubled school to affiliate with an arm of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church.

Acknowledged: by Gov. Guy Hunt of Alabama, a Primitive Baptist preacher, that he made eight state-paid trips to preaching engagements. Hunt said the flights were most often combined with business. He apologized for “an error in judgment,” but added that he and his wife had “no intentions of turning our backs on God or the practice of our personal religious faith.”