TODAY IN GOD:
RELIGION NEWS BITES FOR YOUR SNACKING PLEASURE
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Ruth Graham in Coma, Near Death

Ruth Graham, wife of evangelist Billy Graham, has lapsed into a coma and appears near death, a family spokesman said Wednesday (June 13).

Her failing health came just as the evangelist and his wife revealed their decision to be buried together at the newly dedicated Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, N.C.

“It appears she’s entering the final stages of life,” said A. Larry Ross, the Grahams’ spokesman.

Ross said Ruth Graham celebrated her 87th birthday on Sunday (June 10), was alert and was encouraged by the time with family, but she has declined since then.

“Two weeks ago she was treated for pneumonia and initially started to improve but, because of her weakened condition, her health began to decline rapidly and this morning she slipped into a coma,” Ross said.

He said the Grahams had planned to announce their burial decision after the library dedication “so they could better honor the Lord at the time of their death.”
Last December, The Washington Post reported on a family dispute about the Grahams’ burial site, with Billy Graham preferring the library and his wife wanting to be buried at The Cove, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s conference center in Asheville, N.C.

On Wednesday, Billy Graham said the couple had come to a decision.

“Earlier this spring, after much prayer and discussion, Ruth and I made the decision to be buried beside each other at the Billy Graham Library in my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina,” Graham said in a statement. “We have held this decision privately and only decided to announce it now that she is close to going home to heaven.”

In his statement, Graham, 88, said he has appreciated the prayers for him and his wife.

“Ruth is my soul mate and best friend and I cannot imagine living a single day without her by my side,” he said. “I am more in love with her today than when we first met over 65 years ago as students at Wheaton College.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (RNS VIA BELIEFNET.COM) CLICK HERE

UPDATE (4:40 P.M. CST 6/13):
Larry Ross, the Rev. Billy Graham’s spokesman, released the following update on Ruth Graham’s condition late Thursday afternoon:

Ruth Graham remained stable, but precarious, through the night since becoming semi-comatose on Wednesday. This morning, her condition began to deteriorate, with episodes of dropping blood pressure and irregular heartbeat as she has become less responsive to family and care-givers.

Mrs. Graham does not have a fever, but has steadily weakened and is receiving measures to relieve congestion related to a recent bout of pneumonia that began two weeks ago.

At her request, Mrs. Graham is being treated at home, with minimal artificial support. Earlier this week she indicated she did not want to be given any more food or fluids, though she is receiving medication to manage her pain.

She continues to have fluctuating levels of consciousness, but is resting comfortably, with her husband, Billy Graham, and their five children by her bedside.

Where Jesus Spent His Old Age
“Nanyadoyara! Nanyaonasareno! Nanyadoyara!” the elderly women chant, clapping and spinning in careful circles in their white kimonos with orange sashes. They are performing a bon odori ritual summer festival dance in the farming village of Shingo, northeast of Tokyo. The scene is typical of similar pastoral celebrations throughout the Japanese countryside, as the geriatric audience on the town green pay more attention to the free-flowing sake and the glad-handing candidates trawling for votes in next month’s legislative elections. But it’s their chant that marks the Shingo dance as unusual.

“Nanyadoyara! Nanyaonasareno! Nanyadoyara!”— there’s no translation, because even in Japanese, the words are gibberish. But, if local legend is to be believed, they express a secret that would rock Christianity to its foundations. The locals believe that Jesus wasn’t crucified on Golgotha, but instead came to live in Shingo, where his remains are buried. I visited his “tomb,” marked by a road sign that says “Tomb of Christ: Next Left.”

The legend has it that Jesus — or as they call him in Shingo, Daitenku Taro Jurai — came to Japan at the age of 21, during the lost years when he was supposedly carpentering in Nazareth. Like many an eager gaijin student, Jesus became entranced with his adopted land’s noble culture, learning the Japanese language and Shinto religion at the feet of a sage. At age 33, he went back home, where he preached about his experiences in Japan, which so annoyed the local authorities that he was promptly sentenced to death. From there, the story gets really weird. Instead of Christ being crucified, somehow his younger brother Isukiri ends up dying on the cross, while Jesus fled to Japan via Vladivostok and Alaska. (Such details as how Jesus had a younger brother and how the Romans got the wrong guy are not addressed in the legend.) Eventually he came to this tiny village, where he took up rice farming, married a local girl named Miyuko and produced three daughters before dying peacefully at the age of 106. In Shingo, Jesus kept a low profile — he didn’t multiply any loaves or fish, although when the villagers were dying of starvation he did travel far to find them food.

You can read the story yourself, in Christ’s last will and testament — which was supposedly discovered in nearby Ibaraki Prefecture in http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif1935. A copy of the will is on display at the Village of Christ Legend Museum, just a few steps away from the tomb itself. The final resting place of the Son of God might strike many as a bit of a letdown, just a humble mound of earth topped by a large wooden cross of suspiciously recent vintage, facing Isukiri’s identical grave. (In addition to a lock of Mary’s hair, Jesus supposedly brought his brother’s severed ear back to Japan.)
FOR THE FULL STORY (TIME MAGAZINE) CLICK HERE

Vatican urges end to Amnesty International aid
The Vatican has urged all Catholics to stop donating money to Amnesty International, accusing the human rights group of promoting abortion.

The Vatican, which regards life as sacred from the moment of conception, said it was an “inevitable consequence” of the group’s policy change.

Amnesty said it was not promoting abortion as a universal right.

But the group said that women had a right to choose, particularly in cases of rape or incest.

“No more financing of Amnesty International after the organisation’s pro-abortion about-turn,” said a statement from the Roman Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The Church’s request covers funding from Catholic groups, non-governmental organisations, parishes, schools and individuals.
FOR THE FULL STORY (BBC NEWS) CLICK HERE

Slaves to the goddess of fertility
In a village in southern India a child has just been born. A group of women gather round the cradle, wishing the baby a life full of riches, rubies and pearls.

“You’re lucky the child is a boy,” the women tell the mother. In this society girls are valued far less.

The women are all devadasis, literally slaves of the goddess.

As children their parents gave them to serve Yellama – the goddess of fertility. Her cult is thousands of years old, her followers spread across southern India.

At the temple to Yellama in Saundatti women dance and praise the goddess.

The practice of dedicating young girls as devadasis has been outlawed for over 50 years, but still it happens.

Anti-slavery campaigners estimate that there are at least 25,000 devadasis in the state of Karnataka alone.
FOR THE FULL STORY (BBC NEWS) CLICK HERE

Religion Finds a Home On TV, Then Adds On
A kosher cook-off, hip-hop entertainer Russell Simmons discussing anti-Semitism, Hebrew lessons, Talmud study and the “Jewish Mr. Rogers.”

They’re all part of the lineup on Shalom TV, a Jewish-oriented cable television channel that expanded last month into the Washington-Baltimore region, its second market.

The channel is the latest outgrowth of the burgeoning religion-oriented cable and satellite television business, which has spread beyond its evangelical Christian roots into what the industry calls “faith and values programming” that includes other faiths and cultures.

To be sure, the granddaddies of the industry, such as Trinity Broadcasting Network, the Eternal Word Television Network, Inspiration Network and the Christian Television Network, continue to reach millions of viewers nationwide.

But new stations and programming are proliferating. In the past few years, more than a dozen start-ups have been launched. Some are aimed at niche Christian audiences, such as a digital network from Trinity Broadcasting that shows church services 24 hours a day. Others, such as Shalom TV, focus on non-Christian faiths and cultures. A few are gaining success by focusing on a variety of faiths.

“The content has changed and widened,” said Tim Kridel, who has covered faith-based programming for Multichannel News, a cable TV trade publication. “The distribution has changed and widened. They’re really getting hip to different ways to reach their audience.”

Young viewers are one new target audience. Last year, Trinity created a kids’ network, Smile of a Child, which is available on Verizon FiOS TV in parts of the Washington area. And the NRB Network, launched in 2005 and available on DirecTV, is a Nashville network aimed at younger Christian viewers that includes such features as “The Christian Angler” and “Spiritual Outdoor Adventures.”

Interfaith fare is also growing in popularity as faith-based networks seek to draw in bigger, more secular audiences who might be turned off by hard-core religious programming.

The Faith and Values Media Association, a coalition of about 30 Jewish and Christian faith groups, offers a varied menu of music, worship, talk shows and movies on the Hallmark Channel. Among its programming, singer Naomi Judd hosts a Sunday morning talk show that focuses on spirituality. Less frothy shows have included a documentary hosted by actress Lynn Redgrave on the global water crisis and the theological significance of water to Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Channels aimed at ethnic and cultural groups are catching on as well.

Trinity Broadcasting recently started TBN Enlace USA, for Spanish-speaking viewers, featuring some well-known Christian speakers such as Joyce Meyer but mostly high-profile preachers and other religious programming from Latin America.

Channels such as Shalom TV, which offer religious and non-religious programs centered on a particular faith, are also growing.

Bridges TV, a three-year-old digital television channel calling itself a Muslim lifestyle network, recently expanded into Virginia on Verizon TV and, shortly, will be available on Cox cable.
FOR THE FULL STORY (WASHINGTON POST) CLICK HERE

In a City of Power Brokers, a Young Visitor Who Is Truly Worshipped
WASHINGTON — Even by the standards of the luminaries who sweep through Washington, the little girl in front of Lafayette Elementary School almost six miles north of the White House was special.

Politicians, power brokers and the occasional celebrities who come through town hope to be respected and maybe, in a childlike place in their grown-up hearts, genuinely liked. Sajani Shakya, 10, is worshipped.

In Nepal, Sajani is a living goddess, one of about a dozen such goddesses in her homeland who are considered earthly manifestations of the Hindu goddess Kali.

Sajani arrived in Washington on Monday to help promote a British documentary about the living goddesses of the Katmandu Valley and to see a bit of the United States. She is the first of the Nepalese living goddesses to come to the United States because the girls live mostly in seclusion.

What does a young goddess do in Washington? Unlike some visitors, Sajani had no plans to ask anyone for anything. Instead, she will go on a private tour of the White House with an interpreter. She hoped also to go to the zoo, perhaps ride a roller coaster, possibly visit a Hindu temple and, in places like the Lafayette school, learn how others live and to show them, however shyly, something of her little-known world.

“There’s nothing I don’t like about being a goddess,” Sajani said through an interpreter. Then, thinking about her typical day, when she has to rise early for her family and others to pray to her, she added, “It was difficult when I was younger to get up at 4 to bathe for the morning prayers.”

The children in Blake Yedwab’s third-grade class thought it would be cool to be a god or goddess, though some might argue that American children have already been elevated to that status.
FOR THE FULL STORY (NEW YORK TIMES) CLICK HERE

‘Yes sir,’ Bush says to His Holiness in Vatican gaffe
VATICAN CITY — US President George W. Bush drew gasps at the Vatican on Saturday by referring to Pope Benedict XVI as “sir” instead of the expected “His Holiness,” pool reporters said.

They could clearly hear the US leader say “Yes, sir” when the pope asked him if he was going to meet with officials of the lay Catholic Sant’Egidio community at the US embassy later during his visit.

A handful of pool reporters were on hand as Benedict greeted Bush at the door of his private library ahead of a private audience of about half an hour.

On his way to see the 80-year-old pontiff, the US leader apparently recognised someone he knew, and could be heard greeting the person with a casual “How ya doin’?”

The pool reporters also noted Bush’s relaxed posture, crossing his legs “Texan style” while facing the pope across his desk in the private study of the apostolic palace.
SOURCE: AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE VIA YAHOO NEWS

Tony Blair attacks Sony for use of Manchester Cathedral
The Prime Minister Wednesday gave his backing to the Church of England in the row over Sony’s use of Manchester Cathedral as a setting for a gory computer game.

Tony Blair told Parliament there was a need for large organisations such as Sony to have both “some sense of responsibility and some sensitivity to the feelings of communities.” He said there was a need for recognition that “there is a wider social responsibility” that goes beyond simply the “responsibility for profit” whatever the cost.

His comments came as the Dean of Manchester, he Very Reverend Rogers Govender, disclosed that Sony had made no formal contact since the row was disclosed by The Times last Friday night.

Virtual images of the interior of the cathedral feature prominently in a violent shoot-out in the flagship PlayStation 3 game Resistance: Fall of Man.

Manchester Cathedral has called for all copies of the game to be pulled from shelves and Sony make a “substantial donation” to church charities. The game has sold more than one million copies and depicts a fictional 1950s world where the Second World War never happened and alien Chimera are trying to take over the planet.

At a press conference in Manchester this afternoon, the Dean thanked the Prime Minister for his comments and repeated that the cathedral as a backdrop for the bloodthirsty game was “highly irresponsible”.
FOR THE FULL STORY (THE UK TIMES ONLINE) CLICK HERE

Christian Reformed Church lifts barrier to female ministers
GRAND RAPIDS — History came quietly to the Christian Reformed Church on Tuesday night, but progress remains to be made.

That was the feeling of longtime advocates of women’s ordination who watched the CRC Synod remove the word “male” from its requirements for church office.

After 37 years of back-and-forth struggle, delegates opened the way for women to become ministers in any of the CRC’s 1,000-plus churches. If other proposed changes are approved as expected today, women also will be able to serve as delegates to the Synod for the first time.

The decision came two days after the CRC celebrated its 150th anniversary — and not a moment too soon for Carol Rottman and Claudia Beversluis. Both began working for women’s ordination in the mid-1970s.

“This is the beginning of an opening I think is going to be monumental for the church,” said Rottman, a founder of the Committee for Women.

That includes women making policy as delegates to the Synod, a recommended change delegates did not address Tuesday.

“I think next year’s Synod is going to look remarkably different,” said Beversluis, provost of Calvin College. “There will be women sitting at these tables and the Synod will find out what they’ve been missing all these years.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (CHARLES HONEY IN THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS) CLICK HERE

Southern Baptists Approve Global Warming Measure
SAN ANTONIO — Southern Baptists approved a resolution on global warming Wednesday that questions the prevailing scientific belief that humans are largely to blame for the phenomenon and also warns that increased regulation of greenhouse gases will hurt the poor.

The global warming debate has split evangelicals, with some not only pressing the issue but arguing humans bear most of the responsibility for the problem because of greenhouse gas emissions. Other evangelicals say talking about the issue at all diminishes their influence over more traditional culture war issues such as abortion, gay marriage and judicial appointments.

The SBC resolution, approved near the end of the denomination’s annual meeting, acknowledges a rise in global temperatures. But it rejects government-mandated limits on carbon-dioxide and other emissions as “very dangerous” because they might not make much difference and could lead to “major economic hardships” worldwide.

Originally, the measure also backed more government-funded research into global warming’s causes and alternative energies to oil. But the resolution was amended to drop that language, in part over concerns that it would endorse strong government engagement in the issue.

The two-day annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which boasts 16.3 million members, ended Wednesday night. The gathering was highlighted by new steps to prevent child sexual abuse, calls for unity to reverse stagnant membership and a struggle over defining Baptist identity. About 8,500 “messengers,” or delegates, registered to attend.

The global warming resolution acknowledges humans bear some responsibility for rising temperatures while urging caution, said Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy and research with the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

“It does not deny there has been a recent warming trend in average global temperatures,” said Duke, who helped write the measure. “What it does do is call for more objective analysis in the data that would explain causes of the warming we’re experiencing.”

The resolution stands in contrast to a statement last year signed by 86 evangelical leaders that said human-induced climate change is real, and that the consequences of warming temperatures will cause millions of people to die, most of them “our poorest global neighbors.”
FOR THE FULL STORY (ERIC GORSKI FOR THE AP VIA ABCNEWS) CLICK HERE

OP ED: Atypical Evangelical
The presidential candidate was talking about the threat of outsourcing and the immorality of corporate chief executives getting huge bonuses while workers’ pension plans go bust.

“When CEOs are making 500 times the average wage of their worker, how can you justify that?” he asked. “I think a president ought to call out companies . . . in which the CEO leads his company into bankruptcy . . . and gets a $100 million bonus while the workers down below end up losing their jobs and have worked 20 and 30 years for pensions and they’re gone. . . . That’s immoral. . . . And that’s not free enterprise; that’s theft.”

Standard presidential primary fare, perhaps, except that the candidate speaking was a Republican, and a conservative Christian one at that: former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. A long shot for his party’s nomination, certainly, yet Huckabee, a Baptist minister, is not the cartoon Christian conservative of popular imagining.

He’s got, as he put it, “the purity of credentials,” but Huckabee’s menu of social conservatism offers more choices than implacable opposition to abortion and gay rights.

“Being a conservative is also about having a much broader agenda than the very narrowly focused one that sometimes conservatives are either accused of or — frankly — can be guilty of,” Huckabee said last week at a luncheon hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Huckabee, 51, has the air of the nice neighbor who wanders by to discuss your crabgrass problem. “I’m a conservative,” he said, “but I’m not mad at anybody about it.”

I am not now and never will be a Huckabee voter. There may not be a single major issue on which we agree, from stem cell research to Guantanamo detainees, from tax policy to immigration reform. This is, after all, a man who believes schools should teach creationism (alongside evolution) but not contraception. He has spoken of the need to “take this nation back for Christ” — though he says, “I’d probably phrase it a little differently today.”

But listening to Huckabee, I was struck by his interest in the bread-and-butter issues getting short shrift, especially from Republican candidates, in an Iraq-dominated campaign.

Not that you could tell from debates, when Huckabee tends to get so many God questions that, as he notes, you’d think he was running for Senate chaplain, not president.

“I’m happy to give my answer . . . but I’m thinking, you know, tonight, all over America, there were families sitting down to dinner, and I doubt that any of them . . . said, ‘I wonder what the next president will think about evolution,’ ” said Huckabee.
FOR THE FULL STORY (RUTH MARCUS IN THE WASHINGTON POST) CLICK HERE