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I just finished counting up the many international visitors to this blog.  In alphabetical order, they are: Australia, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom, and (predominantly) United States.

These are otherwise known as:              

Mel Gibson's controversial "Passion of the Christ" will open in theaters nationwide on February 25th.  Ticket vouchers—good for any theater showing the film—are on sale now at the movie's website. There you can also get information about the film and watch a trailer.

Here are some interesting results from a Harris Poll I participated in today.  In response to the question of whether corporate mismanagement and fraud have been factors in the poor performance of stocks, 89% considered them contributing factors; only 11.4% considered the scandals to be a minor factor or no factor at all.  How well has President Bush handled the corporate accounting scandals? Over 50% said that his performance has been somewhat poor to very poor; 28% thought he's done well. The likelihood that you will buy stocks or stock mutual funds in the next year? 40.5% said they probably/definitely won't invest vs 35% who probably/definitely will invest; 24% weren't sure what the heck they were going to do.

The Christian thing to do.  This story started at the Duluth News Tribune and was picked up by Associated Press. I happened to find it in the UK as a "quirkie" at Ananova, although it's also a news story at Church Central, January 13, 2004.

Here's what happened, as far as I can tell.  In 1999, optician Marcel Mager, then head usher and board member at the Cloquet Gospel Tabernacle Church in Cloquet, Minnesota, gave an anonymous gift of $126,000 to the church, accompanying the money with a letter expressing remorse for past behavior. But apparently this was his life savings and he gave it to the church in the throes of depression over the breakup of his 18-year marriage. Five months later he tried to get the money back. The church board refused—they were using the money to fuel their building fund. Now, 5 years later, he and the church are headed to the secular courts for a resolution. Mager lost his optical business in 2002 and hasn't worked since, adding some urgency to his getting his hands on this money again. Says Mager: "It's my retirement. It seems the Christian thing to do would be to give the money back."

The church may not be able to give the money back, especially after 5 years and an annual operating budget of $400,000: that would be giving up close to 32% of its financial commitments. But that's not what's interesting here. Mager claims that to give the money back is the "Christian thing to do." We've heard this phrase before. Like "God helps those who help themselves," it's a phrase that seems to be of Biblical origin but really sprouts from a human poetic creativity and suggests that the practice of Christians is a direct sign of Christ's commands. It may indeed suggest it, but it certainly doesn't follow that what Christians do is always what Christ would have us do. (All the more reason why lifestyle evangelism, a practice invented by the apostolic church, continues to be the most effective form of evangelism—although, as we know, it also explains why people flee the church.)

Instead of heading to court, the Cloquet Church body and Mager need to get together in prayer—the church to seek the Spirit's guidance, especially as they work through their own corporate aim "to strengthen people crushed by the blows of life," and Mager to discover that the Christian thing is not a rubric but an aspiration. Both must struggle, and here really struggle, with what Paul himself said to the elders of the church at Ephesus: "In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' " [Acts 20:35]

Joyce Meyer's prosperity can't buy time.  Down in Missouri, Rev Larry Rice, who operates 9 television stations, 17 radio stations, and the New Life Evangelistic Center, an outreach program for the poor, has effectively distanced himself from Joyce Meyer's "Life in the Word" TV show after learning that security personnel at Meyer's annual Women's Conference were called to escort three homeless women from the conference. Rice told Meyer that he was cancelling her Sunday evening program on Channel 24 in St. Louis; in response the ministry pulled all of its contracts from the station. Concerned about the "excessive lifestyle" of Meyer and her family, Rice said: "She wasn't always like this. She's really drifted." Rice has also cancelled contracts with both Kenneth Copeland and Jesse Duplantis (their messages are not "true to our calling and true to what the gospel says"), and may cancel programs of all "prosperity ministers" who buy time on his stations. [Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 2, 2004; story archived on Religion News Blog]

Joyce Meyer is otherwise a woman with tremendous spiritual gifts. We should pray that she recovers from this temptation—before falling away with all of the other televangelists who've dropped into the pit of disgrace after following the magic lure of wealth, which may well be the sound of their own voices talking the prosperity talk. She needs to stop talking, return again to the "Word," and listen to the living Spirit of Christ.

Finally the international community is taking notice of what is happening in Uganda—it's only taken 17 years to do it.  All Africa reported yesterday that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, has begun collecting evidence of atrocities by Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) for a possible indictment. The ICC has asked for photographic and video images of Kony's atrocities, witnessed by journalists and others. Given the large body of ghastly photos of LRA butchery already on display in the print media, this evidence shouldn't be hard to gather. Last year, in November, October, and August, I mentioned the psychotic Kony and his brutal rebel war in which children are routinely abducted and either killed, mutilated, or made to serve in the LRA itself—boys as soldiers, girls as sex slaves. Children are mutilated by having their lips, nose, ears, hands, or feet hacked off. The LRA wants to rule Uganda according to the Biblical Ten Commandments.

The ICC, you will remember, is the same independent court (not affiliated with the UN) from which the Bush administration has been trying to get its friends to distance themselves—at least where US personnel are concerned. In July 1998, at a diplomatic conference in Rome, the international community adopted the Rome Statute of the ICC, providing for the creation of a permanent international criminal court for prosecuting perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Amnesty International, among many others, has been calling on all governments to ratify the Rome Statute of the ICC. In response, the Bush administration has asked its allies and international trading partners to approve bilateral impunity agreements which forbid them from surrendering American nationals to ICC jurisdiction: In August 2003, Congress enacted the American Servicemembers' Protection Act, which incorporated an "invasion of the Hague" provision authorizing the President to "use all means necessary and appropriate" to free US and allied personnel detained or imprisoned by the ICC, punishment (by withholding military aid) for countries that join the ICC treaty, and a prohibition on US participation in peacekeeping activities unless immunity from the ICC is guaranteed for US personnel. Human Rights Watch has been running around asking countries not to sign these US impunity agreements.

Dear God, please bless this young Christian surfer girl, Bethany Hamilton, who returned to the Hawaiian waters after a shark bite took her left arm ten weeks ago.  This amazing girl has remained positive, refuses to blame you for the terrible loss of her arm, and in print and on television continues to convey her love for Jesus Christ.

13-year-old Bethany came in fifth in her age group in the Open Women Division of the National Scholastic Surfing Association meeting in Hawaii on Saturday, January 10, and she did this with the only arm left after a life-threatening shark attack.  She returned to the water for the first time on Thanksgiving Day. Surfers know how difficult it is to catch waves with two arms, so it's a phenomenal feat for her to have placed in the competiton at all—let alone take 5th place. According to the news report, "Hamilton began with a modest 2-foot wave but caught a 6-footer during her quarterfinal heat. She kicked her left leg to help propel her 6-foot-2 surfboard into waves and occasionally struggled when pushing off the board with one hand." She refused any special treatment throughout the contest. [Source: CNN.com, January 11, 2004]

Chicago priests oppose Vatican language on cannibals:

CHICAGO, Jan. 10 2004 - A group of Chicago-area priests wrote a letter to the Vatican last month protesting what they view as the Roman Catholic Church's use of demeaning language toward cannibals, one of the priests said Saturday.  The letter, signed by 23 priests, was drafted in response to a Vatican document released last summer that prompted Catholic politicians and other leaders to oppose any measures that could legalize the eating of human flesh, the priests said.

''Examples from the most recent Vatican document show all too clearly the demonization of these children of God, referring to cannibals as a 'troubling moral and social phenomenon,' 'a serious depravity,''' said the letter dated December 19.  ''The language was so awful and so disrespectful and insulting to people,'' Rev. Riley Peterson, one of two priests who drafted the letter, told the news service of the Vatican doctrine.

Copies of the letter were sent to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which sets Vatican policy, to Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and to Chicago Cardinal Francis George, he said.

The issue of cannibalism in mainstream religions has recently reached a boiling point.  Last year, the Episcopal Church elected its first openly-human-flesh-eating bishop, setting off a firestorm of protests by other Episcopal bishops.  After the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in November that adults could legally cook and eat other human adults in that state, President Bush said he would not oppose a constitutional amendment codifying "the other white meat" as "any nonhuman flesh, really."

The Chicago priests' letter joins similar actions in recent months including requests from priests in Boston asking for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law in the wake of a human-flesh abuse scandal and a letter by Milwaukee priests asking for reconsideration of Catholic doctrine stating that only men who do not eat human flesh can be ordained into the priesthood.

Satire using a barely re-written, slightly altered news article by Deborah Cohen, Reuters, January 10, 2004. Used with permission.