The year 2001 -
Presbyterians struggles with gay issue needs divine intervention,
Worldwide there are 10,000 distinct religions and 34,000 denominations,
Intelligent-design theory and creationism gangup on evolutionists,
Pope enters Mosque in Syria,
Southern Baptists target those who reject the Bible's principles,
Presbyterians decide Jesus is their Savior,
Pope gets shunned by Eastern Russian Orthodoxy,
Woman ordained by church in break from Catholicism.

• 3/5/2001 - Debate over gays splits Presbyterians - Issue threatens to dominate June convention - by Peter Smith, The Courier-Journal.
      The debate over homosexuality that has created deep divisions among Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) members, pastors and regions is threatening to dominate the church's June convention in Louisville instead of celebrating its role as headquarters of the 2.56-million member denomination.    Tensions have been aggravated to mar the convention, and no compromise is seen, unless they have a divine intervention of the Holy Spirit to lead them, and get back to the true business of ministry.
      "The sexuality question is beyond the capacity of human beings to deal with," said one pastor, who opposes same-sex unions.
• 3/8/2001 - Homosexuality no longer mental illness in China.
      Beijing -- China's 8,000 member Psychiatric Association is removing homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in a new diagnostic manual due out this year, concluding that it is not a perversion.    Previously homosexuality was defined as a "psychiatric disorder of sexuality."
• 3/17/2001 - Creationist museum will break ground by Peter Smith, The Courier-Journal.
      Most scientists say that the Earth is billions of years old, that life began evolving millions of years ago and that humans have existed in their current form for about 40,000 years.
      A $14 million museum planned in Northern Kentucky will say different - that Earth is 6,000 years young, that dinosaurs walked in the Garden of Eden and rode on Noah's Ark, and that the Bible is scientifically true in saying God created the world in six 24-hour days.
      Answers in Genesis Ministries, a Christian organization in Florence, Ky., will break ground for the Creation Museum and Family Discovery Center, to be located on a 47-acre parcel just off Interstate 275 near Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
      Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis' executive director is a champion of "scientific creationism" who considers the theory of evolution hostile to Christianity.    "The whole message of salvation is predicated on the account of Adam and Eve being true," Ham said, outlining a belief that resonates among millions of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.    "We can show you that the Bible does fit with real science, and therefore, you can trust its message of morality and salvation."
      Only a few miles away from the Creation Museum site, at Big Bone Lick State Park, paleontologists say mastodons and other Ice Age mammals tumbled into fossilized immortality up to 20,000 years ago.
      The evolutionist are angry because the DOE dropped the word "evolution" from revised curriculum guidelines and restored the phrase "change over time" issued in the existing guidelines.
      Ham says he agrees with the natural selection and variation within species, they just disagree with their interpretation of the time frame.
• 3/18/2001 - Religion researcher works 40 years to tabulate believers by Richard N. Ostling, The Associated Press.
      Richmond, Va. -- David B. Barrett, an aeronautical engineer quit to train for the Church of England priesthood, expressing hope his mathematics and computer experience would be useful.    Since adding a religion doctorate from Columbia University to his technical background, he has spent 40 years systematizing information on world religions, a calling he discovered while assigned as an Anglican missionary in Africa.    Now 73, Barrett is publishing a second edition of his global accounting of faiths and the faithful - trends detail his best estimated count of believers of all religions in each of the 238 nations and territories.    The two volume World Christian Encyclopedia has 1,699 pages, and published by Oxford University Press.
      This 2001 edition identifies 10,000 distinct religions, of which 150 have 1 million or more followers.    Within Christianity, he counts 33,830 denominations.    Although titled World Christian Encyclopedia, it covers groups from Afghan Zoroastrians (304,000) to Zimbabwean animists (3.52 million).
      World worship - Global representation of some major groups in 2000.
  • Christians - 33% (2 billion).
    • United States - The country is 84.7% Christian, and has the world's largest Jewish population at 5.6 million (4 million Jews in Israel), and 4.1 million Muslims and 2.4 million Buddhists.    Millions dabble in the occult.    Non-religious and atheistic Americans represent 9.4% of the population.
    • Brazil - has 153 million Roman Catholics, but 55 million may be claimed by Protestants or independent churches.    Spiritism is sometimes mingled with Catholic motifs with magic, conjuring of spirits, fetishism or animal sacrifice.
  • Muslims - (19.6% (1.2 billion).
  • Nonreligious and atheists - 15.2% (918 million).
    • China - People follow folk religions, but mainly half the population are atheists (nonreligious).
    • Russia - Atheism is dying out here and being replaced by Russian Orthodoxy with 17,000 churches and 76 million members.    Independent churches outnumber Protestant and Catholic ones.
  • Hindus - 13.4% (811 million).
    • India - Hinduism has hundreds of sects and 3 million deities.    Many are animists who follow local spirit-worship.
  • Ethnic and folk religionists - 10.1% (613 million).
  • Buddhists - 5.9% (360 million).
    • Japan - 55% of the population are traditional Buddhist, where new religions are sects or schisms from Buddhism and Shintosim since 1945.
  • Minor religionists - 0.7% (Including 23 million Sikhs, 14 million Jews, 7 million Baha'is)
• 4/8/2001 - Intelligent-design theory joins creationism as evolution's foe by James Glanz, The New York Times.
      When Kansas school officials restored the theory of evolution to statewide education standards a few weeks ago, biologist might have been inclined to declare victory.
      This time, though, the evolutionists find themselves arrayed not against traditional creationism, with its roots in biblical literalism, but against a more sophisticated idea: the intelligent-design theory.    Proponents of this theory accept that the Earth is billions of years old, not the thousands of years suggested by a literal reading of the Bible.    They also dispute the idea that natural selection - the force that Darwin suggested drove evolution - is enough to explain the complexity of the Earth's plants and animals.    That complexity, they say, must be the work of an intelligent designer.
      This designer may be much like the biblical God, proponents say, but they are open to other explanations, like the proposition that life was seeded by a meteorite from elsewhere in the cosmos, or the philosophy that the universe is suffused with an inanimate life force.
      The Discovery Intitute, a research institute in Seattle that promotes conservative causes, organized a briefing on intelligent design last year on Capitol Hill for prominent members of Congress.    This group is skilled in analyzing evidence and ideas, and are making a determined effort to attempt to present the intelligent design theory, and ask that it be judged by normal scientific criteria.     This movement has gained support among a few scientists in other disciplines, most of them conservative Christians.
• 5/7/2001 - John Paul first pope to enter mosque by The Washington Post.
      Damascus, Syria -- Pope John Paul II became the first pope to enter a mosque with Muslim cleric, Mufti Ahmed Kuftaro, when he toured a 1,300-year-old Islamic house of worship and urged joint forgiveness by Christians and Muslims, whose faiths have warred for centuries over territory and spiritual primacy.    A connected courtyard also contains the tomb of Salladin, the Muslim warrior who reconquered Jerusalem from Catholic Crusaders.
      The pope's visit to the Omayyad mosque built in 705 in Damascus' walled Old City on a site once used for pagan sacrifice in honor of the Roman God Jupiter and later became a Christian basilicia, served as a recognition that the two religions share some ideas and prophets, even as they differ on theological issues such as the divinity of Christ and the nature of the Koran.
      The pope stopped for a minute of contemplation before a tomb reputedly housing the head of John the Baptist.    In deference to Muslim sensitivities, he said no formal prayer inside the worship area.
      John Paul is on a six-day, three-country tour that traces the footsteps fo the Apostle Paul, who was converted to Christianity on the road to Damascus.    In Athens the pope asked forgiveness from Eastern Orthodox churches for the schism that split Christianity 1,000 years ago.
• 5/14/2001 - Religious apologies for misdeeds of past becoming more common.
      Recent MEA Culpas by religious and political groups include:
  • 1995: Southern Baptist Convention apoligizes for past members who supported slavery, opposed civil rights and segregated their churches.
  • 1995: United Methodist Church apologizes for an 1864 massacre of Indians in Colorado by U.S. troops under the command of a Methodist lay preacher whose church honored him as a hero.
  • 1997: British Prime Minister Tony Blair apologizes for British indifference to the Irish potato famine.
  • 1997: President Bill Clinton apologizes to victims of the notorious Tuskegee experiment, in which black men were left untreated for syphilis so government researchers could monitor the disease.
  • 1998: Archbishop Silvano Piovanelli of Florence, Italy, laments the execution of 15^th-century Dominican monk Savonarola, who denounced papal corruption and temporarily turned the Renaissance city into a puritanical theocracy.
  • 1999: A Vatican commision says the church deeply regrets the errors of Catholics who failed to oppose the Holocaust strenously enough and laments the centuries of anti-Semitism preached from Christian pulpits.
  • 1999: Pope John Paul II expresses "regret for the cruel death inflicted on Jan Hus," a 15^th-century Czech reformer who was burned at the stake and is revered by Czechs and Protestants as a martyr.
  • 2000: Pope John Paul II marks the millennium with a sweeping Lenten apology for abuses by Catholics for abuses toward Jews, women, indigenous peoples, immigrants and the poor, though some observers were disappointed that he did not explicitly mention the violence of the Crusades and the Inquisition.
  • 2000: Lutheran Church of Australia ask its indigenous members for forgiveness for their suffering as a result of Australia's European settlement, two years after Prime Minister John Howard offered informal regrets for the forcible removal of aborigine children from their parents.
  • 2001: Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) apologizes for failing "to work or speak against the institution of slavery in the United States."
  • 2001: Pope John Paul II apologizes in Greece for sins by Roman Catholics against Orthodox Christians.
• 6/13/2001 - Southern Baptists target Christian divorces by Rachel Zoll, The Associated Press.
      New Orleans -- The denomination that sees itself at war with American culture over divorce, gay rights and the place of faith in daily life revealed plans to turn a critical eye on itself.    Disturbed by the high divorce rate among born-again Christians, the Southern Baptist Convention's Council on Family Life is developing a blueprint for churches on preparing couples for marriage and ministering to single parents.    The aim is to strengthen the church and have Southern Baptist families serve as models for non-Christian couples.    It is our conviction that a healthy God-centered family is a winsome testimony for the country's largest Protestant denomination at 15.9-million members.    The national divorce rate is estimated to be between 40 percent and 50 percent, even among born-again Christians, which will require a strong commitment to biblical principles.    They will continue to speak against the society at large, which they believe rejects the Bible.    They are accusing network TV shows of "making a mockery of Christians" and will try to oppose homosexuality and abortion.
• 6/15/2001 - Presbyterians: Jesus is 'uniquely savior' - Church faced debate on issues of faith, tolerance - by Peter Smith, The Courier-Journal.
      Presbyterians voted to affirm that Jesus Christ is Lord, which should be the obvious choice for a church convention, but delgates debated before confirming this, leaving open the possibility that non-Christians can go to heaven.    Assurance of salvation is found only in confessing Christ and trusting Him alone.    The debate was over whether Jesus is the only way to God.
• 6/24/2001 - Orthodox leaders shun the pope on his first venture to Ukraine by The New York Times.
      Kiev, Ukraine -- Setting aside objections from the Orthodox church that broke with Rome a millennium ago, John Paul II made his first visit to Ukraine, a nation of 50 million, and tried to placate his unwilling hosts.    "I wish to assure them that I have not come here with the intention of proselytizing," the pope said at a formal ceremony that no Orthodox religious leaders attended.    The pope urged both churches to "ask forgiveness" of each other and not let past errors hinder "mutual knowledge."    John Paul wants to mend the rift between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy that dates to the schism of 1054, and wants to celebrate the rebirth of the Greek-Catholic Church in post-Communist Ukraine, which has 5 million followers who observe Byzantine rites but are loyal to Rome.    The Greek-Catholics represents one of the main reasons the largest Orthodox church in Ukraine rejects his overtures.
      Metropolitan Vladimir, who heads the largest Ukranian Orthodox church, one that is subordinate to Moscow, was out of town and unable to meet the pope.    The pope was even warned not to come.    Kiev is a particularly sensitive destination for a pope, since it is where Prince Vladimir was converted to Christianity in 988, and is viewed as the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy.
• 11/18/2001 - Woman ordained by church in break from Catholicism by The Associated Press.
      Rochester, N.Y. - A woman, Rev. Mary Ramerman, who played a prominent role at the altar in a Roman Catholic congregation that was banished in 1999 for violating Vatican rules was ordained as a priest by an independent Catholic bishop, Peter Hickman, in defiance of Catholic traditions.    She will celebrate Mass at the breakaway Spiritus Corpus Christ Church, which claims 1,500 members.    In the United States, as many as a dozen women have been ordained as priest.
  
  

Last updated January 24, 2004.