c. 2008 Religion News Service

Christian school gives all freshmen iPod or iPhone

(RNS) Abilene Christian University will be the first university in the nation to provide all incoming freshmen with an Apple iPhone or an iPod touch, according to school officials.

“We are not merely providing cutting-edge technology tools to our incoming students,” said Kevin Roberts, the school’s chief information officer, according to the university’s Web site. “We are also providing the Web applications that ensure these tools will become critical to the students’ learning experience.”

The school in Abilene, Texas, which is affiliated with the Churches of Christ, said 93 percent of students already bring a computer to campus.

iPhones or iPods will be distributed beginning this fall and will allow students to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, and check their meal and account balances, along with more than a dozen other web applications, Roberts said.

The demand for mobile content is growing and is “an opportunity for higher education to reach its constituents wherever they may be,” according to the annual 2008 Horizon Report, which was produced by the New Media Consortium _ of which ACU is a member _ and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative.

In past years, ACU’s faculty and technology staff have researched ways to use handheld devices in higher education, said Roberts. For the past six months, ACU focused on more than 30 projects that explore new mobile learning strategies that would harness new technology.

The university is among dozens of colleges, such as Duke University, Stanford University and Yale, that are using iTunes U. Apple introduced iTunes U last May as a way for students to access course material and lectures using their iPods.

“This is exciting to me, not only because we’re giving students new tools, but because we are transforming the learning environment,” said Dwayne VanRheenen, ACU provost, in a press release.

_ Brittani Hamm

Poland renews citizenship for Jews who fled in 1968

(RNS) Polish officials have announced that they will allow Jews who fled the country four decades ago to reclaim their Polish citizenship.

After anti-communist protests erupted in Warsaw and other cities in 1968, the authorities blamed “Zionists” for the social unrest and expelled about 20,000 Jews. They were stripped of their citizenship and passports.

Many of them were survivors of the Holocaust, which claimed 3 million Polish Jews, and were forced to flee their homeland for Israel or the United States. Today, no more than 30,000 Jews live in Poland.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the uprisings and the government’s new policy, Polish President Lech Kaczynski renaturalized 14 people at a ceremony on Saturday (March 8) at Warsaw University, where the protests originated.

His office said that expelled Jews can have their citizenship reinstated by sending a letter to a Polish embassy.

Piotr Kadlcik, president of Poland’s Union of Religious Jewish Communities, applauded the decision, which his group had advocated for several years.

He told the JTA News Agency that he did not expect a large number of Jews would reclaim their citizenship. However, he said Poland’s offer was a positive development in a country that has had a troubled history with Judaism.

“(It) shows that we as a Polish Jewish community can have dialogue with the Polish government,” he said.

_ Ian Wilhelm

Theologian urges greater sensitivity to suicide

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) Churches can be a major factor in preventing suicide if they are willing to learn about the problem and reach out with compassion, says a theologian who specializes in pastoral care related to suicide.

“People who attend church have a lower suicide rate than people who don’t,” said Loren Townsend, a professor of pastoral ministry at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. “Churches provide caring relationships that can help protect people from suicide.”

Townsend, author of the book “Pastoral Care in Suicide,” recently spoke here to address ways to help people at risk of suicide and the families of suicide victims.

About 32,000 suicides occur each year in the country, a rate of about 11 per 100,000 population, according to the Suicide Prevention Action Network.

“Oftentimes times it’s a relational breakdown,” Townsend said. “They’re isolated in the world. Church relationships can provide a buffer for that.”

In the early Christian church, some ardent believers threw themselves off cliffs to demonstrate their devotion, Townsend said. The problem became so acute that St. Augustine addressed the issue, equating self-killing and murder.

Later, theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote that since suicide victims could not ask for forgiveness, it was an unforgivable sin, Townsend said. “In our cultural thinking, there’s still an idea that it’s an unforgivable sin,” he said.

While churches have turned to a more compassionate view as more has become known about mental illness, there remain wrong stereotypes about suicide, Townsend said.

“There’s an idea Christians don’t do that,” Townsend said. “Christians are as vulnerable to mental health problems as anybody. Suicide almost always is a result of intense pain that doesn’t go away.”

_ Greg Garrison

Quote of the Day: Mormon official Robert Fotheringham

(RNS) “We have a history of people doing things like this to us, so we’re mortified that our missionaries would do it to someone else. It’s beyond embarrassing. It’s inexcusable.”

_ Robert Fotheringham, a regional missions official for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, reacting to photos of three Mormon missionaries defacing a Catholic shrine in Colorado. He was quoted by the Associated Press.

KRE/LF END RNS