"Of Satanic Symbols, Donations, Numbers, and Other Things that Aren't Really Satanic"

Procter & Gamble is fighting back against Satanism rumor The next time you forward that horrible e-mail message about the president of Procter & Gamble supporting the Church of Satan, you might want to think twice. You just might get sued for it. The company’s lawsuit against Amway Corporation for propagating the rumor, dismissed in 1999, has been reinstated by the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Amway insists that it has tried to quash the rumor itself, but that some of its distributors have fallen for the ruse. Amway officials say that no fraud was ever intended, and that the company wouldn’t be responsible for it anyway. “The suit deeply troubles First Amendment advocates,” reports The New York Times.

Speaking of non-Satanic associations … Route 666 in Morris County, New Jersey, is being cast into the bottomless pit, and shut up, and set a seal upon, that it should deceive the nations no more. Back in the 1970s, New Jersey ruled that all country roads had to have three digits, so Route 66 became Route 666. But that led to all sorts of evil. Well, one sort of evil, anyway—sign theft. “This thing has got me crazy,” Joe Stuppiello, a general supervisor in the county road department, tells The Star-Ledger. “Every time we put one up, it doesn’t last a day or two before it’s stolen. Gone. … Six six six. It’s the devil, isn’t it? That’s what they say.” Other Routes 666 have been changed around the country: U.S. Route 666 is now U.S. 191, for example.

UPI’s religion correspondent attacks National Council of Churches for Sudan silence The National Council of Churches of Christ seems to relish causes that are not theological by any stretch of the imagination,” writes Lutheran theologian and journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto. “Lately, it concentrated its energies on campaign financing, a topic not covered anywhere in Scripture. While promoting forcefully the McCain-Feingold bill in public pronouncements, the NCCC has been curiously mum about the most burning issue Christianity is facing in the entire world: the genocide perpetrated chiefly against Christians in southern Sudan. One should ask the question why an organization of 36 Protestant and Orthodox denominations does not cry out in protest when Muslim militiamen pierce and padlock the lips of black Christians so that they may not talk about the horrors they have seen and endured?” Ouch. Actually, one thing Siemon-Netto doesn’t even bring into his article is that the NCC has actually played down the persecution of Christians in Sudan, saying “civil war and racial hostility play a far larger role” than religious tensions. “What is reported as religious persecution is often understood locally as something quite different,” Associate General Secretary for Public Policy Albert M. Pennybacker said in a 1998 letter to the U.S. Congress as it was considering international religious freedom legislation.

Other articles about Sudan:

Key Republican urges U.S. action on Sudan | “We need to do whatever is necessary to stop this carnage that’s going on,” says House Whip Tom DeLay (Reuters)
Christians’ plight in Sudan tests a Bush stance | Evangelicals urge intervention (The Washington Post)
Free the people from Sudan slavers | As South Africa was to the ’80s, the loathsome nation of Sudan is rapidly becoming to the ’00s: an international pariah with whom no decent government or corporation does business. (Rod Dreher, New York Post)
Help with end of Sudan war sought | U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom calls African country “the world’s most violent abuser of the right to freedom of religion and belief.” (Associated Press)
Report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom on Sudan
Commission Issues New Recommendations on Sudan (USCIRF press release)

Eugene Rivers says he’s taking a breakBoston pastor EugeneRivers says he’s going to “disappear” from the public eye, reports The Boston Globe. “I don’t need any additional psychodrama,” he says. “I am not interested in being local news. … All I want to do is reduce my negatives and … wherever it is possible, promote good will.” Rivers caused a big stir a few weeks ago when he claimed white evangelicals were opposing Bush’s faith-based initiative because the beneficiaries would be “poor, black, and brown.” Will he really take himself out of the public eye? Weblog will believe it when it doesn’t see it.

More stories:

Church and state:

‘In God We Trust’ stays off state flag | Proposal will be studied (The Tennessean)
Blessing brings protest at VMI | Group of cadets, ACLU join forces (The Washington Post)
Also: VMI ready to defend tradition of prayers (The Washington Times)

Popular culture:

Believe it or not, it’s a Bible course ‘Castaway’ | British television program will show nonbelievers in Alpha Course (The Daily Telegraph, London)
Exorcist banned for Good Friday in Victoria, Australia (The Age)
Also: Church welcomes ‘Exorcist’ ban (The Age)
Catholic women’s college silences ‘Vagina Monologues’ | Play “raised questions of appropriateness,” says administrator (Chicago Tribune)
Christian salsa stars are making a joyful noise (Chicago Sun-Times)
Carman: Garden Crowd Boos the Devil | Despite his Satan shtick, Carman comes off as an everyday, television- ready character, equal parts Ted Danson, Tom Jones and Al Martino. His singing is proficient but never spectacular and, despite all the pyrotechnics, the show is still not nearly as exciting as an hour in, say, Al Green’s rickety little Baptist church in Memphis. But that said, if music fans go to concerts to feel part of something, to belong, then there are few concerts that accomplish this better than the arena Christian rock that Carman specializes in.
Bible thumpers | Rap-metal pounders P.O.D. wrap their messages of faith in an unholy racket (The Winnipeg Sun)
Think tank: As definitions change, the moral turns trivial | A new little book called The Dictionary of Dangerous Words, compiled by Digby Anderson, contends a decline in the old virtues, identified in this book as “honesty, especially frankness of speech, loyalty, trust, self-sacrifice and permanence of character.” (The New York Times)

Christians in the media:

Anchor finds way to keep the faith while reporting the news | Ken Rosato of Miami’s CBS affiliate, WFOR, becomes a priest in the Catholic Apostolic Church in North America (The Miami Herald)
A mogul broadcasts his morals | John Rigas has stuck to his beliefs as head of Adelphia, helping residents in the cable company’s rural hometown. But his refusal to carry adult channels in L.A. has sparked controversy (Los Angeles Times)

Politics and law:

Court throws out harassment award against AME church | But $1 million judgment upheld against elder who reportedly harassed and groped pastor (The Kansas City Star)
Copyright infringement charges dismissed against ‘Bible Code’ author | Software maker claimed use of matrix was unauthorized (New York Law Journal)
Kid porn act gets buffed up | House holds hearings in anticipation of legal challenges (Wired News)
Government limits abortion pill coverage (The New York Times)

Catholicism:

Evangelicals invited to discuss role of Pope | Ecumenical group received at Vatican (Zenit)
Why the clergy should still keep faith in celibacy | Was Jack Chick right about priests and nuns? (David Quinn, The Sunday Times, London)
Catholic magazine accuses Vatican of modern ‘inquisition’ | America says methods used by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are obsolete and do not respect human rights. (BBC)

Eastern Orthodox confessions:

Teen-age monk confesses to killing nun, police say | Nude body of the 39-year-old nun found stabbed to death at the Eastern Orthodox Church school where she lived and worked in near Miami (Associated Press)
Romanian priest confesses misdeeds | Eugen Jurca, a professor at the Orthodox Theology Faculty in Timisoara, Romania, says he was an informer for Romania’s communist-era secret police (Associated Press)

Other stories of interest:

Two drown in baptism ceremony (The Mail and Guardian, Johannesburg, South Africa) (Also see Ananova)
Putting God on hold in a high-tech world | More than 80 million Americans own a cell phone or pager, so the odds are pretty good that one or both will find their way into worship. (The Charlotte Observer)
In a Kenyan preacher’s prayer, an instant AIDS cure (The New York Times)
‘Be prepared’ for a war in the troops | The Boy Scouts struggle with a ban on gays (U.S. News & World Report)
Christian leaders make Easter peace plea | Message, signed by the heads of 13 churches, including the Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Latin patriarchs, the Franciscan custos, and the Anglican and Lutheran bishops, appeals for “determined effort to respect each other’s rights whilst affirming the dignity and worth of every human life.” (The Jerusalem Post)
The Samson syndrome | School shootings are suicides akin to that of biblical judge. (Madison Shockley, The Boston Globe)
Program leads the faithful to home ownership | Working with five predominantly black churches, Boston’s Emmanuel Gospel Center is pioneering a program to help low-income people realize a dream of making a down payment on a house, an education, or a business of their own. (The Boston Globe)

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