c. 1996 Religion News Service
Relief workers’ efforts curtailed in Liberia, but officials plan to return
(RNS)-Some relief groups that were aiding Liberia have had to pull out of the region, now torn with newly erupted factional violence, but hope to restart their work when the crisis ends.
World Relief, the international assistance division of the National Association of Evangelicals, expects to shift the focus of its work with local churches in the region. The relief agency had been granting small loans to help residents start businesses, but World Relief spokeswoman Linda Keys expects that many of those businesses have been lost in the violence.”At this point, it’s not stable enough to continue to do development work,”she said.”It’s going to be back into the phase of disaster relief work. As soon as things are stable enough, our Liberia country director is going to be back.” Rebels, thieves and government troops were exchanging heavy-weapons fire in the streets of Liberia’s capital of Monrovia Friday (April 12), the Associated Press reported. Renewed fighting began April 6 when troops tried to drive rebel leader Roosevelt Johnson from his home in the Monrovian suburb of Sinkor.
World Vision spokeswoman Melinda Wood said the Christian relief organization is monitoring the situation, with its staff evacuated to Sierra Leone.”There are people in need in that country (Liberia) and so we absolutely would want to go back and assist,”she said.
World Relief, World Vision and Lutheran World Relief officials reported that equipment, including relief vehicles, had been stolen in the violence.”Even when the fighting stops, there is now no organized way to bring in relief,”said Tanya Bernath, a Lutheran World Federation worker recently evacuated from Liberia.
Since 1989, an estimated 150,000 people have been killed in factional fighting in Liberia.
Moscow’s Orthodox Christians to attend Easter Mass in resurrected church
(RNS)-Moscow’s Christians celebrating the Orthodox Easter will attend Easter Mass in a new cathedral, considered a symbolic victory over the communist system that repressed the Orthodox faith for decades.
One thousand people are expected to attend Easter Mass in the Christ the Savior Cathedral on Sunday (April 14), the holiest day of the Orthodox calendar. It falls one week after the Roman Catholic and Protestant observance of Easter.
Patriarch Aleksy II will conduct the service, and President Boris Yeltsin is expected to attend, Reuters reported.
The cathedral is a replica of the original edifice that was flattened by dictator Josef Stalin in the 1930s. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, installed a year-round, open-air swimming pool on the site.
Yeltsin’s Kremlin decreed that the site should again be used for holy purposes, and its foundation stone was laid in early January 1995. The cathedral is still under construction and is scheduled to be completed by late 1997.
Although many groups other than the Orthodox Church support the project, some have criticized its expense, saying the money used to rebuild the cathedral should have been given to the city’s poor.
It is estimated that the new cathedral will cost between $200 million and $300 million.
Soon, airline passengers can gamble in mid-air
(RNS)-At a time when gambling is hotly debated as a moral issue, two airlines are planning to install electronic gambling machines on some of their jetliners.
British Airways and Singapore Airlines plan to make poker, blackjack, roulette and slot games available to passengers wishing to play the games from their seats. Travelers 18 years and older will be able to use their credit cards to play the games, the Associated Press reported.
Officials of both companies said the main purpose of the machines will be to provide additional entertainment for passengers, but the machines could earn millions of dollars a year for the airlines, two of the most profitable in the world.”Our objective is to entertain passengers rather than give them an opportunity to win large sums of money,”said Rick Clements, Singapore Airlines spokesman.
British Airways plans to spend $120 million on machines. The airline will limit betting to $300 in first and club classes and $110 in economy class, said spokeswoman Heather Harris in London. Single wins could not exceed $3,500.
Singapore Airlines, which has not determined its betting limit, plans to launch the games early next year. British Airways will test its gambling machines next year.
The plans come at a time when grassroots organizations in the United States are working to defeat state initiatives for casinos and off-track betting. In Great Britain, which introduced a lottery in 1994, church groups have criticized the national lottery for enticing the poor and vulnerable, and charities have claimed that donations are down because people are spending their extra money on the lottery.
American Society for Yad Vashem gets new director
(RNS)-The American Society for Yad Vashem, which supports the work of an international center for Holocaust remembrance and research, has named a new executive director.
Don Adelman, former executive vice chairman of the American Zionist Youth Foundation, will hold the post.
The society supports the work of Yad Vashem, the international center located in Israel.
Quote of the Day: Ted Traylor, president of the Florida Baptist Convention
(RNS)-Ted Traylor, pastor of Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., and president of the Florida Baptist Convention, spoke recently at a chapel service at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., about Time magazine covers dealing with religion, reported Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention. He noted that the April 1966 edition of the magazine was published without a picture-the first time in the magazine’s history-and with the words”Is God Dead?”Thirty years later, the April 1 edition of the magazine featured a picture of Jesus Christ and the headline”The Search for Jesus.””Evidently God is not dead and they’ve started looking for him again,”Traylor said.
MJP END RNS
