RELIGION BRIEFING

EVANGELICAL COALITION

One Million Christians Are Asked To Question Global Warming Threat

A coalition of conservative evangelical leaders wants to enlist 1 million Christians to sign a statement questioning whether human-caused global warming is a real threat and arguing that restrictive environmental policies harm poor people.

Materials from the "We Get It!" campaign say that "recent, slight warming" is an unproven threat that could lead to restrictions in energy use and drive up the cost of energy and food for the world's poor.

Several leaders and groups on the evangelical right back the campaign, including James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Family Research Council, the Institute on Religion and Democracy and the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

The effort is a response, in part, to the 2006 launch of the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which acknowledges that people cause global warming and says that Christian moral convictions demand an urgent response.

-- Associated Press

CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES

Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem Burn Copies of New Testament

Orthodox Jews have burned hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.

The deputy mayor of a mostly Orthodox town said missionaries had recently distributed the New Testaments. When residents complained, he said, the books were collected, tossed into a pile and burned.

Israeli authorities and Orthodox Jews frown on missionary activity aimed at Jews, although in most cases it is not illegal. Still, the concept of a Jew burning books is abhorrent to many in Israel because of the association with Nazis torching piles of Jewish books during the Holocaust.