REVELATIONS

No Buddha Swimwear for Sri Lanka

Buddha bikinis are out this summer, at least in Sri Lanka.

The furor started when a Buddhist monk saw advertisements for Buddha swimming apparel and petitioned Sri Lanka's supreme court to ban the product. It was painful, he told the judges, to see bikinis "with Buddha's image on the breast and crotch areas," according to a report in the Daily Mirror.

The monk, Kusaladhamma Thera, argued that the swimwear offends the sentiments of the island nation's Buddhist majority, which makes up about 70 percent of Sri Lanka's population of 19 million.

The court responded by banning Buddha swimwear and adding a prohibition against the importation of candles with depictions of Buddha.

Amish Move Beyond Farming

An American religious group made business news with a recent study showing that the number of Amish involved in commercial business has surpassed those who farm for a living.

In some Amish communities, 80 percent of members work in factories or small businesses, according to the second edition of "Amish Enterprise: From Plows to Profits," written by Donald B. Kraybill and Steven M. Nolt (Johns Hopkins University Press). Overall, the figure could be as high as 60 percent -- 20 percentage points higher than a decade ago.

One of the most striking discoveries is the success rate of Amish entrepreneurs, 20 percent of whom are women. Only 5 percent of Amish small businesses fail, compared with the national default rate of 50 percent.

"These folks are not just making buckets and brooms," Kraybill said, adding that the most popular Amish products include fine furniture, lawn furniture, storage sheds, quilts and leather goods.

"Many of these firms are sizable operations with annual sales over several million dollars," he said. "The phrase 'Amish millionaire' is no longer an oxymoron."

Group Aims to Take Over S.C.

A Texas group wants conservative Christians to move to South Carolina -- migrating in waves of 12,000 at a time -- to form a biblically inspired government and secede from the United States.

Decrying a national tolerance of abortion and gay marriage, and the teaching of evolution, ChristianExodus.org hopes to achieve a majority of like-minded Christians in the state by 2016, the planned year of secession, according to the State newspaper in Columbia, S.C.

The leader of the group, 28-year-old Cory Burnell of Tyler, Tex., said South Carolina was chosen because it is a small conservative state.

Scholars say the group is symptomatic of a rise of separatist sentiment that is particularly strong in the South. But government and Christian leaders in South Carolina are less worried about the group achieving its goal of independence than about the movement's impact on the state's image.

"Doesn't South Carolina have enough problems already?" asked the Rev. Joe Darby, pastor of Morris Brown AME Church in Charleston. "Groups with strange opinions and strange beliefs pop up every once in a while. . . . I would tell these people to reevaluate their faith and get a life."