News briefs Earth Religion Week proclaimed by mayor The Layman Online Tuesday, October 26, 1999 Christian ministers in Asheville, N.C., are protesting a proclamation by their city's mayor that declares Earth Religion Awareness Week. Some say the proclamation invites witchcraft into town. But Mayor Leni Sitnick, who apologized to clergy, said his decree stands and that it was not intended to offend. He said "earth religions" have "given us practical knowledge of herbal remedies, midwifery and alternative forms of healing." The brouhaha developed almost simultaneously after a Wiccan priestess presented a program at an area elementary school that, she says, was designed to dispel negative myths about witchcraft. In response, the Rev. Jim Dukes, chairman of the Community Council for Biblical Values, says he will ask city and county school systems for permission to present a historical account of the Christmas story. 'Rock 'n roll' welcome urged for young people The Layman Online Tuesday, October 26, 1999 Charisma's editor, J. Lee Grady, opened a recent issue with a call to Christians to be "ready to rock 'n' roll." "I believe we're on the verge of another youth awakening," Grady said. "Many of the kids who will come to our altars during this next revival will be wearing dark trench coats and black lipstick; they might have nose rings, pierced tongues and metal studs in their eyebrows; they might have orange or blue hair. . . . We must speak the message of Christ in their language, and sing it in a musical style they can relate to." Researcher: New Russian law limits religious freedom Newsroom Tuesday, October 26, 1999 CLAREMONT, Calif. -- There is less freedom of every kind in Russia than five years ago, but none is more threatened than freedom of religion, contends Lawrence Uzzell, director of the Keston Institute in Oxford, England. Corruption is eroding freedom of the press, but the Russian religion law enacted in 1997 denies basic rights to new religious groups simply because they are new, and effectively restricts religious speech, he contends. Uzzell lived in Moscow for eight years until he became director of the research institute that studies religious freedom in the former Soviet Bloc and China. "The religious freedom rollback (in Russia) is explicit in law; with freedom of the press it's implicit," he said in a speech at Claremont McKenna. Uzzell says the religion law was adopted at the urging of the Russian Orthodox Church, which felt threatened by foreign missionaries, indigenous Protestants, Pentecostals, and Jehovah's Witnesses. The Russian Constitution adopted in 1993 granted broader religious freedoms than in the U.S., Uzzell notes, and did not establish a state religion. That makes the 1997 statute illegal, Uzzell argues. It confers second-class status on all religious congregations less than 15 years old and guarantees the right of religious speech only when preaching to adherents of the religion of the preacher. So far, Uzzell says, the law has not been enforced, nor has it spread to other types of speech. Falwell to tone down rhetoric about gays The Layman Online Tuesday, October 26, 1999 After meeting with Mel White, a homosexual cleric, Jerry Falwell says he will tone down his rhetoric but not his views on homosexual activity. Falwell also disputed contentions that Christians promoted violent acts against gays. He said he knew of no documented cases where Biblical teaching had resulted in violence against gays. ``We have looked very carefully at and will look more carefully in the future at any kind of rhetoric in our writings or preachments or whatever, that might lead someone to have hostility toward anybody, and that includes gays and lesbians,'' he told Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, a program for public television. Torn Bible mends heart of a drunk Religion Today Tuesday, October 26, 1999 The remnants of a Bible helped two men become Christians. Two members of the Gideons, an international Bible distribution ministry, passed out dozens of New Testaments to schoolchildren in Joateca, El Salvador. When they returned in the afternoon they found about 25 New Testaments ripped up and the pages blowing along the ground. Discouraged, they distributed 200 more New Testaments at the school, then started home. Two miles outside the village they stopped for refreshments and saw a drunk man holding a New Testament page in his hand. "As he was reading this one page he was crying...obviously under conviction of the Holy Spirit," the ministry said. The two men spent time talking with the man and he later became a Christian. The man's estranged father saw the men praying with his son and asked if he could become a Christian, too. Later, the two men embraced and forgave each other of past sins against each other.

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