In Brief
In Brief

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Interfaith Alliance Downplays Fears of Climate Change

A coalition of evangelical religious leaders has launched an education campaign to try to persuade pastors and churchgoers that dire predictions about global warming are overblown.

The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, supported by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and others, announced Wednesday that its Cornwall Network of Churches campaign will provide information that can be distributed to parishioners or used to influence sermons.

It's the latest salvo in an escalating political battle among evangelicals over the environment and global warming.

In February, a moderate evangelical group, the Evangelical Climate Initiative, was launched. It advocates personal, religious and commercial action to combat global warming, which it says could result in the deaths of millions of people. The Dobson-backed Interfaith Stewardship Alliance bases its beliefs on the 2000 Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship. The document, signed by more than 1,500 people -- including clergy, theologians, scientists and economists -- states that concerns about global warming, overpopulation and rampant species loss are unfounded.

-- Religion News Service

Malaysian High Court Takes Up Conversion Case

Malaysia's highest court has agreed to decide whether the country's Islamic court has the exclusive right to deal with Muslims who renounce their faith.

The Federal Court intervention is a rare step into the highly sensitive area of conversions and a test of religious freedom in the majority-Muslim country.

The Federal Court's April 13 announcement came in the case of Lina Joy, who converted from Islam to Christianity in 1998. She applied to the National Registration Department to change her Muslim name, Azlina Jailani, on her government identity card, which also identifies the cardholder's religion. The agency agreed to change her name but would not remove "Islam" as the religion, saying it needed permission from a Shariah court, which handles Islamic issues.

Muslims, who make up 60 percent of Malaysia's population of 26 million, are governed by Shariah courts on civil and family matters. Chinese and Indian minorities come under civil court.

But there are no clear jurisdiction guidelines about which court should handle a case such as Joy's.

-- Associated Press

Cante rbury Archbishop On 'The Da Vinci Code'

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the huge public appetite for stories such as "The Da Vinci Code" does not weaken the truth of the Gospel.

Williams, spiritual leader of the 77 million-member Anglican Communion, used his Easter sermon to take on the spread of conspiracy theories about religion.

Dan Brown's thriller "The Da Vinci Code" -- whose plot is based on a theory overwhelmingly rejected by theologians that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child -- has sold more than 40 million copies since it was published in 2003.

Williams said "saturation coverage of the 'Da Vinci Code' literature" and the recent rediscovery of the ancient "Gospel of Judas" were part of a widespread desire to trust conspiracy over authority.

"Anything that looks like the official version is automatically suspect," Williams told worshipers at Canterbury Cathedral in southern England.

He said such theories, though they may be appealing, do not help in "understanding what the New Testament writers are actually saying and why."

-- Associated Press