Indonesian Christians in Danger as Laskar Jihad Leader Freed

Indonesia frees head of Laskar JihadJaffar Umar Thalib, the radical Muslim head of the paramilitary group Laskar Jihad, was acquitted by an Indonesian court today on charges of inciting Muslims to attack Christians. Judge Mansur Nasution said the prosecution didn’t prove its case, though there was evidence that he told his followers “to prepare our bombs and ready our guns” two days before they killed 13 people in the Christian village of Soya.

“The real mistake was in not charging him with some of the really serious acts of violence of Laskar Jihad,” Sidney Jones, director of the International Crisis Group, tells The New York Times. “Thousands of his followers were perpetrating violence against Christians from early 2000 to early 2002. We’re talking about thousands of people killed by both sides in the Malukus.” Reliable estimates put the death toll above 5,000.

“The verdict could give renewed vigor to Islamic radicals who have been on the defensive in Indonesia since the terrorist blast in Bali last October,” the Times reports.

“The lack of resolve at this time is probably all the worse because of the situation in Iraq,” Ken Conboy, head of security risk company RMA Indonesia, told Reuters. “So with his acquittal, that is probably sending all the wrong messages.”

The acquittal is even more unjust than it seems. Only two days ago, two Christian leaders were sentenced to three years imprisonment merely for campaigning for an independent state in the Malukus—something they say is needed because the Indonesian government is not protecting them from attacks by Laskar Jihad.

Alex Manuputty, who was tried in absentia, told the Associated Press he would “resist the verdict in a nonviolent way.” But Jafar Umar Thalib says Manuputty’s sentence is unjust in a different way: “He should have been jailed for 15 years,” he told the BBC. Prosecutors had requested only a one-year prison sentence for Thalib.

Meanwhile, pastor and peace activist Rinaldy Damanik, general secretary of the Protestant Church of Central Sulawesi Synod, is being held for allegedly carrying weapons even though reports say there’s no evidence to support the claim. Damanik was reportedly encouraging Christians not to retaliate against Muslims at the time of his arrest.

AIDS in Africa:

Unlikely allies influenced Bush to shift course on AIDS relief | Christian evangelicals and liberal activists joined forces (The Washington Post)
Many surprised when Bush urged war on AIDS in Africa | Political, spiritual dynamics guided decision, some say (San Diego Union-Tribune)
How Bush got wise to world AIDS crisis | His treasury secretary, his spiritual counsellor, his most trusted security advisers, his Republican colleagues, all urged him to make history (The Globe & Mail, Toronto)

Faith-based initiative:

Bush’s agenda walks the church-state line | President Bush’s State of the Union address underscored a striking element of his presidency: the extent to which he is influenced by his Christian faith. (USA Today)
Faith-based funding abuses the Constitution | This proposed policy change in the Department of Housing and Urban Development should not see the light of day (Editorial, The Detroit Free-Press)
Faith-based treatment already gets federal funds | “We license faith-based organizations all the time,” says Donald Eubanks, director of chemical health for Minnesota’s Department of Human Services (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
Two faith-based proposals may face legal challenge | Civil liberties groups said yesterday they are weighing legal challenges to two proposed new twists in the Bush administration’s faith-based initiative: the use of vouchers to fund religion-oriented drug rehabilitation programs and the use of federal housing funds to pay for construction of buildings where worship is held (The Washington Post)
Major escalation in church-state fight | Jewish groups split on new proposal to fund building projects for religious institutions (The Jewish Week)

Politics and law:

Why the U.S.’s International Religious Freedom Commission is harming its status in the world community | We need to learn when to speak, when not to speak, and when to speak only softly and subtly on that most delicate of issues: religious liberty (Marci Hamilton, FindLaw.com)
Lake Elsinore a no-prayer zone | Church leaders beg off on invocations after the City Council bars religious references (The Press-Enterprise, Inland California)
Request for religious reference in planned Euro constitutional treaty | European Church representatives have asked the Greek European Union presidency to include a religious reference in the future European constitutional treaty (The Times of Malta)
Justice Scalia’s lament | In contemporary America, governmental neutrality on religious matters should be true neutrality (Editorial, The Washington Post)
Bush’s moral rectitude is a tough sell in old Europe | President Bush’s State of the Union address was shot through with a quality that has come to mark his presidency: an unblinking brand of public moralism that most politicians would shrink from in a largely secular age (The New York Times)
Moluccan Christian leaders sentenced | Alex Manuputty, 55, and Samuel Waileruny, 45, were on trial in absentia in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, for campaigning for an independent state in the Moluccans. (BBC)
The President rides out | George Bush’s foes see him as an inarticulate bully. Friends say that evangelical faith underpins his every action (The Observer, London)

Religious freedom and discrimination:

Religious freedom debate in Samoa | Village chiefs have used traditional custom to exile people who professed belief in new denominations (Radio Australia)
Wiccan teacher says religious beliefs led to loss of job at Osceola school | Aaron Perry said that shortly after he was hired, students at Neptune Middle School peppered him with questions about the black clothes he wears and about a small Wiccan tattoo of eight arrows on his temple (The Orlando Sentinel)
Woman sues ex-employer over religious hostility | Rozanne Sonneborn, a nonreligious Jew, says she lost her job after asking that WJMK Television Productions of Boca Raton stop putting the Bible verses in her pay envelope (Palm Beach Post)

State orders fired worker be rehired:

State orders cemetery to rehire honor guardsman | Man fired after saying ‘God bless you’ (Associated Press)
Jersey’s on God’s side (Associated Press)
Job offer for honor guardsman | Patrick Cubbage, fired after blessing bereaved families, is not satisfied by the latest proposal (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Evolution and creationism:

Many in state support teaching creationism | Despite split, poll shows room for religious thought (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)
Justice Department probes Texas Tech professor’s policy | He refuses to write letters of recommendation to students who don’t believe in the theory of human evolution (Houston Chronicle)

Education:

Tolerance and hypocrisy on gay-straight clubs | Clubs that bring gay and straight students together can teach tolerance, but they can also let loose a flood of double-talk from reluctant school officials (The New York Times)
William Jewell votes down anti-discrimination clause | Proposal would have added ‘sexual orientation’ to Baptist school’s policy (KMBC, Kansas City)
Earlier: Proposal to include gays and lesbians in Jewell student bill of rights draws fire (The Kansas City Star)
Bible club likely OK’d | Boulder Valley school board to vote on possible policy changes (The Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.)
Churchgoing Hispanics do better at school, study finds | Hispanic immigrants who regularly attend church are more likely to do well in school and reverse high drop-out rates, especially in impoverished school districts, according to a study released yesterday (The Washington Times)

Life ethics:

Pushing life | Facing the greatest moral issue of our generation (Peter Bronson, The Cincinnati Enquirer)
Abortion issue threatens Polish admission to EU | Government fears that Roman Catholic demands could fuel No vote in referendum to join union (The Guardian, London)
Virginia panel passes pro-life bills | The bills, including a ban on “partial-birth” abortion and requiring parental consent for minors, will go to a full House vote as early as Friday (The Washington Times)
A price to pay, church has said | Ads to blast officials, like Gov. Davis, who back abortion rights (The Sacramento [Calif.] Bee)
Debate about cloning returns to Congress | Senate Considers Ban Affecting Human Embryos (The Washington Post)
Also: Brownback again tries bill to ban cloning (The Wichita Eagle)

Crime:

Man damaged church because he couldn’t light candle | his lighter wouldn’t work, so he allegedly decapitated nativity statues, destroyed about 100 candles, and splintered a marble lectern with a 4-foot brass candlestick (Ananova)
Priest’s family awaits news on remains | For 19 years, the family of a missing St. Louis priest has traveled tens of thousands of miles and besieged elected and military officials in two countries in search of answers to the disappearance of the Rev. James Carney (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Minister accused in ID theft | Being a single mother and multiple amputee have tested Karen Belton’s faith many times. But the ultimate test came last year, said Belton, 42, when she suspected her pastor of fraud. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Honduras: Remains are probably priest’s | Honduran officials said they believe they have located the remains of a Jesuit American priest who disappeared during the government’s campaign against leftists in the early 1980s (Associated Press)

Money and business:

Let us now pray … for Accu-Fab | Three years ago Gregg Page and Dennis Zullig decided that spreading the glory of God—not making money—would be their company’s top priority. They had no idea how deeply the experience would test their faith (Inc.)
Jesus sells | What the Christian culture industry tells us about secular society (Jeremy Lott, Reason Online)

War:

Diversity in faith, unity in peace | Religious leaders offer clear and somber plea (The Boston Globe)
Parsons should give war a chance | The churches’ position is troublesome not because it opposes war in Iraq – there are plenty of respectable reasons for not going to war – but because it signals a complete hand-over of moral decision making to the UN (Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian)
Methodist bishop to appear in anti-war commercial | Melvin Taubert says a U.S. attack on Iraq would violate “God’s law” (Associated Press)
The bishops’ position is morally bankrupt | The bishops do recognize that the only plausible response to the challenge posed by Saddam’s weapons programs is regime change (Clifford Orwin, National Post, Canada)
Women put faith to work for peace | From around the world, 250 gather for a prayer breakfast in the district (The Washington Post)
Church offers classes on Islam, believers | The Rev. Dave Weidlich of Cooper Mountain Presbyterian Church wouldn’t necessarily describe himself as antiwar, but he is (The Oregonian)

Other religions:

Jewish group asks Christians for support | The American Jewish Committee is asking Christians to send dollars along with prayers to Israel (Palm Beach Post)
Major corporations matched employee donations to Muslim charity prosecutors say tied to bin Laden | Microsoft, Compaq, UBS-Warburg among companies who gave (Associated Press)
Saladin, the Noble Prince of Islam | Few westerners know Saladin, the courageous and honorable king who united the Muslim armies and captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187 (The Sacramento Bee)
Superman’s Scientology ‘truth’ | Christopher Reeve didn’t like the “e-meter” machine much (Jeannette Walls, MSNBC)

Missions and ministry:

Church leaders propose a plan to create the broadest-ever U.S. Christian alliance | The steering committee of the budding effort, tentatively called Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A., will invite a wide range of national church bodies and agencies over the next several weeks to join them (Associated Press)
The force multiplier | Rick Warren is preaching, selling millions of books, and changing American culture. And you’ve probably never even heard of him (The Weekly Standard Online)
Church under fire over homes for elderly | The Uniting Church’s aged-care program is under scrutiny, with the Federal Government imposing sanctions against a Brighton hostel run by the church (The Age, Melbourne, Australia)
Cross purposes | Federally funded missionaries threaten a Southeast Asian culture (Village Voice)

Anglicans:

The Anglican Church is too nice for its own good | Especially in a world where less tolerant faiths throw their militant weight around (Jonathan Meades, The Times, London)
Halt cruel Williams campaign, says bishop | A senior Church of England bishop has condemned a “cruel campaign” against the new Archbishop of Canterbury (The Times, London)

Church life:

Church pays tribute to a man whose home was its steps | It was not easy for Arthur Cafiero to die. It took some effort and, even then, an obliging thermometer (The New York Times)
Senate, clergy battle over ecumenism | Pastors differ over use of Jesus’s name in prayers (The Washington Post)
Greece’s rebel monks in mountain stand-off | More than 100 Greek Orthodox Christian monks are refusing to leave their monastery in north-eastern Greece despite being ordered out by the authorities after accusing the patriarch, their spiritual leader, of heresy (BBC)
Church loses bid to dismiss lawsuit | A couple who has challenged their church’s stand not to disclose its financial records won their first scrimmage in court Monday when a judge denied a motion to dismiss the lawsuit (The Durham [N.C.] Herald-Sun)

Sexual ethics:

Catholics push gay-cure tour, critics lash ‘harmful effect’ | The support of Sydney’s Catholic Archbishop, George Pell, for an American psychologist who claims homosexuality is a curable disorder will only result in “untold grief, anxiety and confusion”, a leading Australian psychologist has warned (The Sydney Morning Herald)
Baptist church embraces lesbian minister | Sometime soon, the church probably will be disfellowshipped from the Southern Baptist Convention, which has taken similar action against about a dozen other churches since 1988 that acted to ”approve, affirm or endorse” homosexual behavior (The Tennessean)

Clergy sex abuse:

16 priests named for first time in sexual abuse lawsuits | At least three still active; total of accused at 130 (The Boston Globe)
McCormack says trust in church is ‘strong’ | A day after Bishop John B. McCormack met with alleged abuse victims of a Massachusetts priest, the bishop disputed their account that he told them he had lost trust in the Roman Catholic Church (The Boston Globe)
Also: Despite crisis, Lennon has faith in church’s strength (Boston Herald)

Art, media, and culture:

Am I anti-gay? | Activists are upset with an ad my magazine accepted, but advertising and editorial are two different things. (Robert Epstein, Psychology Today)
Evangelicals produce American religion’s classiest magazine | Books & Culture, sister publication of evangelicalism’s quality middlebrow voice, Christianity Today, has established a solid niche as a spiritual equivalent to The New York Review of Books (Associated Press)
Also: Books & Culture‘s website
Bill Viola coaxes new meaning from old masters | As you stand in the darkened room at the Getty Museum before Bill Viola’s “The Quintet of the Astonished,” you might at first think it’s a still life (Long Beach [Calif.] Press Telegram)
‘Christian rockers’ no oxymoron | One of the most promising new groups of guitar slingers is Sanctus Real, which released its first major-label record, “Say it Loud,” a few weeks ago (The Orange County Register)

Obituaries:

Christian feminist Monica Furlong dies | Was a leading figure in the successful campaign for the ordination of women priests in the Church of England (Associated Press)
Tolkien son accused of sex abuse dies | Had suffered from dementia (Birmingham Post)
‘Conscience of the nation’ dies at 91 | Alan Walker was the Methodist founder of the Lifeline phone counseling service and superintendent of the Wesley Mission from 1958 to 1978 (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Other stories of interest:

State wants to fix its ‘highway to Hell’ | New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson wants to change the number of the route officially known as Highway 666 (Reuters)
Living longer with religion | Does faith really help people live longer? Some say it’s more helpful than you think (Wilmington Star)
Drought defeats Hutterites | Dry, sandy soil forces Hardisty colony to declare bankruptcy, shut down (The Edmonton Journal)
Tackling life with faith | Randy Gradishar says Christianity is more important than Hall of Fame (The Denver Post)
Controversial bishop fights on in retirement | In 1989, the Right Rev. Paul Moore Jr. retired as the Episcopal bishop of New York, ending a 17-year, often controversial, tenure as an eminent embodiment of theologically and socially liberal Christianity (The New York Times)
A patron saint for hopeless clickers | Vatican turns to cyberspace in its search for protector of users of the Internet (The Washington Post)

Vatican guard was “driven” to kill commander, says book | Volume accuses the Vatican of a shameful “conspiracy of silence” to conceal sordid details about life in the Swiss Guard and “hide the the fatal failings that make the force unfit to protect the Pope” (Reuters)