Save the Children: Ethiopia’s food crisis

The failure of crops and the loss of pasture for livestock is sufficiently widespread that, according to BBC, 6.2 million Ethiopians – one million of whom are children under the age of five – are expected to need emergency food aid between now and the end of the year.

In the photo above:

Thomas, 1, has his arm circumference measured at Tulla Health Center in Southern Ethiopia. His mother has brought him to Save the Children’s clinic to be tested for severe malnutrition.

Ethiopia faces food crisis because of prolonged drought. It comes 25 years after the world rallied to help country when about one million people died from famine.

The international aid group Oxfam argues “the humanitarian response to drought and other disasters is still dominated by ‘Band-Aids,’ ” when it can and should also help Ethiopians break out of the cycle of famine by developing local food sources.

According to the Associated Press:

In a report marking 25 years since Ethiopia’s famine, Oxfam said countries must focus on preparing communities to prevent and deal with drought and other disasters before they strike, rather than relying on importing aid.

Saturday religious news link farm

• Tampa Bay Online: Thousands of Churches celebrate this ‘International Day of Climate Action‘:
  

  Saturday is International Day of Climate Action. [The Rev. Sue] Sherwood’s church [Good Samaritan Church in Pinellas Park, Fla.] is among thousands of religious congregations and other groups worldwide that will take part in the 350.org initiative to draw attention to climate change.

• Christian Science Monitor: Where is the dog in the Obama family portrait?
  

  This image [Made by Annie Leibovitz] provided by the White House shows President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their daughters, Malia, second from left, and Sasha, sitting for a family portrait in the Green Room of the White House, on Sept. 1, 2009.

• Orange County Register: When did USSR-born former swimsuit model Orly Taitz become a citizen? No lawsuit filed.
• Baptist Press: Gay hate-crimes bill could punish Christians, foes say : This story is not quite a Family Research Council news release. Using an inflammatory headline and once more surveying Christian Right opponents, BP ultimately provides a relatively balanced account, correctly concluding:
  

  According to the hate-crimes language in the bill, it “applies to violent acts motivated by actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of a victim.”

  Christian Post gives almost the same survey of opponents a slightly different twist.

• USAToday: Celibacy a deal-breaker for some Anglicans: “I find the lack of a permanent provision for a married priesthood to be a serious obstacle to unity,” said Anglican Bishop Jack Iker of Fort Worth, who has considered joining the Catholic church in the past.
• Christian Science Monitor: University blasts in Pakistan and the future of Islam:
  

  Lund, Sweden – When the Taliban attacked the International Islamic University in Pakistan this week, many were shocked that militants were targeting an Islamic school. In fact, the double suicide bombers were going after a university that is at the forefront of changing the way Islamic and Western knowledge are brought together in the Muslim world.

• Associated Baptist Press: Next two CBF assemblies to celebrate 20 years of ‘Fellowship movement’

Global religious trends defy simple characterization

The study of global religious trends released Friday by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago revealed no simple cluster of trends.

Characterized as “the most comprehensive analysis to date of global religious trends, the study [.pdf] did find that a rising number of people report having no formal religious affiliation [much like the "Nones" of the American Religious Identification Survey], even as the number of Americans who say they pray regularly increases. In fact, “6 out of 10 Americans pray one or more times each day,” and views of God are complex:

“When asked simply about belief in God, most people include a range of God images, from a personal God to believing in a ‘higher power’ or a ‘spirit or life force,’” [study author Tom W. Smith, Director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago] said. People who don’t believe in a personal God but in a higher power of some kind rose from 5 percent in 1964 to 9 to 10 percent in recent surveys, the study found.

. . .
In the United States, belief in God has ebbed over time from about 99 percent in the 1950s to about 92 percent at present. Certitude about God also has diminished, but the vast majority of Americans still express a strong and close connection to God.

“People’s images of God are diverse, but they lean toward the traditional,” Smith said. The GSS has asked people for their images of God since 1984, and about half of the people have consistently referred to God as “father,” while others used terms like “master” or “judge” to describe their idea of God. The number reporting God as “mother” has stayed at about 3 percent.

The study, which used data from surveys all over the world, found religious participation strongest among older people, as the church attendance graph below suggests.

The survey found that 22 percent of people said they had never attended a religious service, compared with 9 percent in 1972. These trends toward reduced church attendance began in the mid-1980s, and have both spared no denomination and defied denominational attempts to reverse them.

The study does clearly indicate that these changes are the product of broad demographic forces. And we will explore those and other implications further in future blogs.

One hate-crime answer for the fearful

What must I do to be prosecuted under the hate crime law after Obama signs the recently passed legislation?

The Q&A document [.pdf] developed by Third Way answers clearly by way of dealing with the most pervasive myth about the legislation:

Could a pastor be prosecuted for preaching that homosexuality is an abomination, or saying that gay people will go to hell?

No. Unless a person actually causes ‘bodily injury,’ or attempts to cause bodily injury by using a gun, bomb or dangerous weapons, they cannot be prosecuted under the proposed hate crimes bill. This bill is not about thinking or believing, but doing and harming. In fact, sine 1968 when a parallel federal hate crimes bill was passed, there has not been a single successful prosecution based on speech. There have also been none in the 45 states that have hate crimes laws.

The entire .pdf is worth downloading and reading. Just for the sake of clarity.

A minority view on Afghanistan

Levellers blogger Michael Westmoreland-White is an academic theologian who is an adherent of Christian pacifism. He argues by way of video “that Obama’s heroes would not approve of his war in Afghanistan.”

Addendum

Westmoreland-White notes in a comment below that the video is the work of Derrick Crowe, who is part of the Rethink Afghanistan project.