STUDENTS ,FACULTY RALLY TO SAVE THE FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY RELIGION DEPARTMENT : PRAY & MAKE A DIFFERNCE...

As Florida International University trustees prepare to vote on budget cuts next month, students and professors are campaigning to save an ancient tradition: the study of religion.
FIU's religion department is one of three slated to close as the school faces a $27 million cut from its state general revenue allotment. Closing the department, which has about 125 undergraduate and graduate students and 12 full-time faculty members, would save $600,000 a year. FIU has a $642 million total operating budget.
''This is a very strange time to say the study of religion is dispensable when virtually every conflict in the world revolves around religion,'' said Christine Gudorf, the department chair.
The other departments scheduled to close are Recreation and Sports Management, and Athletic Training. Another 16 degrees that are mostly in the College of Education and have single-digit enrollment will also be eliminated, saving another $400,000 a year. Millions more would be saved by cutting academic affairs expenses, such as library purchases.
The religion department would phase out over three years and most undergraduate and all graduate students would be able to complete their degrees, said Kenneth Furton, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Some religion classes would be offered through other departments, where many faculty members would retain jobs, but teachers with less seniority could lose employment, he said.
There is a small chance the program can be saved, Furton said.
Since the plan was announced in early April, people such as Yanery Andreu, a recent graduate, have circulated petitions, campaigned through Facebook and made e-mail and in-person appeals to FIU leadership.
''Hate and misunderstandings come when we don't understand the differences in our beliefs. Learning about the comparative studies of world religions creates an atmosphere of respect throughout the world,'' Andreu, 24, wrote in a letter presented to FIU President Modesto A. Maidique during a town hall meeting Monday.
Jewish, Christian and Muslim clergy, many who have put their support behind the department for its interfaith work -- such as hosting the Dalai Lama five years ago -- also attended the meeting among more than 200 people.
FIU is not the only university cutting back. The University of Florida also plans steep reductions in its religion department. UF President Bernie Machen has said that more than 150 faculty and staff positions will likely be eliminated among $42 million in cuts that are pending approval.
In January at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, leaders proposed merging the religion and philosophy departments.
The merger is being reconsidered
''There is a remarkable amount of ignorance and illiteracy about world religions in the U.S. and all over. . .religious studies are vital to making global citizens,'' said Jack Fitzmier, executive director of the Atlanta-based American Academy of Religion, which has sent a letter to FIU's Maidique asking him to reconsider.
Dean Furton said the religion cut is ''not based on quality of the program,'' but based upon comparison to similar-sized schools that don't have religion departments.
FIU is not the only South Florida university to offer a religion program.
The University of Miami and St. Thomas University have undergraduate degrees, and Florida Atlantic University offers a certificate in religion.

CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY PUTS ATHEISTS AD'S ON 25 BUSES WITH THE HELP OF AMERICAN HUMANISTS ASSOCIATION

CHICAGO - For the past week, 25 buses from the Chicago Transit Authority have been bearing an unusual advertising slogan. The large ads read "In the Beginning, Man Created God," and they're scheduled to remain on the sides of the buses through June. They're part of an effort by the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign, with the help of the American Humanist Association.

The board that runs South Bend's city bus system recently agreed to allow ads on that city's buses reading: "You can be good without God." The group had hoped to have the ads installed on 20 South Bend buses before President Barack Obama's appearance at the University of Notre Dame last Sunday, but that move was delayed.

Bloomington, Indiana's city bus service recently rejected similar ads, prompting a lawsuit.

CHURCH OF SCOTLAND ABANDONS BIBLE - ALLOWS GAY PASTOR

LONDON - The Church of Scotland has approved the appointment of an openly homosexual minister - the latest case of tensions over sexuality to prompt division in the Anglican Communion.
The church's ruling body voted Saturday by 326 to 267 to support the appointment of the Rev. Scott Rennie, 37, who was previously married to a woman and is now in a relationship with a man.
Rennie was first appointed as a minister 10 years ago, but has faced opposition from some critics since he moved to a church in Aberdeen, Scotland, last year.
The case threatens to divide Scottish religious leaders and follows tensions within the worldwide 77 million-member Anglican Communion. About 900 elders and ministers took part in a debate on Rennie's case, but many chose to abstain from casting a vote.
Anglican have conducted lengthy debate over sexuality issues since the Episcopal Church - the Anglican body in the U.S. - consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire in 2003.
Rennie said he believed religious conservatives were behind attempts to oust him from his post. "The same talk was about when women were ordained and I think that argument suits those that don't want any change," he told Britain's Sky News television on Saturday.
Following the vote to back Rennie, Scotland's Equality and Human Rights Commission said the Church of Scotland had proven itself to be "a modern church for a modern Scotland."
Protesters had lobbied the Kirk - the Church of Scotland's ruling executive - over Rennie's case, saying his appointment was not consistent with the teachings of the Bible.
"We are absolutely opposed to that on the basis of what God has to say about homosexuality in the Bible," one opponent, Pastor Jack Bell of the Zion Baptist Church in Glasgow, Scotland, said.

RALPH.D.WINTER DIES AT 84 : HE WAS ONE OF AMERICA'S MOST INFLUENTIAL EVANGELICALS

Ralph D. Winter, a Christian missionary who was named one of America's 25 most influential evangelicals by Time magazine in 2005, died Wednesday at his home in Pasadena after battling multiple myeloma and lymphoma. He was 84.

Winter stepped onto the world stage in 1974 at the International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland. There he issued a call for other Protestant evangelists to proselytize to the world's "unreached people," those who had not been exposed to Christianity.

In identifying mission fields, Winter looked for "ethnic pockets," isolated areas where language, ethnicity, culture and social status as well as religion had hindered the spread of the Christian Gospel.

He began his career as a Presbyterian missionary in Guatemala in 1956. Ten years later he returned to the United States to become professor of missions at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. At Fuller he trained missionaries, sharing with students his experiences working with the indigenous Maya people of Latin America.

In 1976 he decided to leave the classroom to become a strategist for Christian outreach, founding the interdenominational U.S. Center for World Mission on the former campus of Pasadena Nazarene College. A year after establishing a research institute there, he founded the related William Carey International University.
By 2005 he was included along with such figures as Rick Warren and James Dobson in Time's compilation of influential American evangelicals.Winter was born in South Pasadena in December 1924, the middle son of Hugo H. Winter, a prominent freeway designer with the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering, and his wife, Hazel.

He earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering at Caltech before serving in the Navy during World War II. After his discharge, Winter switched gears and studied for a doctorate in linguistics, anthropology and mathematical statistics at Cornell. He then attended Columbia, where he received a master's degree in teaching English as a second language, and Princeton Theological Seminary, where he was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1956. By then he was prepared for his missionary calling to Guatemala, setting out with his wife, Roberta, a registered nurse whom he had married in 1951. They had four daughters, all of whom became involved in missionary work. Roberta died in 2001.

Winter is survived by his second wife, Barbara; daughters Elizabeth Gill, Rebecca Lewis, Linda Dorr and Patricia Johnson; 14 grandchildren; one great-grandchild; and two brothers, Paul, a structural engineer, and David, president of Westmont College in Santa Barbara.A memorial service is scheduled for 3 p.m. June 28 at Lake Avenue Congregational Church, 393 N. Lake Ave., Pasadena. More information: http://www.uscwm.org/.

PASTOR CHARGED IN PARISH THEFT : ACCUSED OF TAKING $291,000 FROM THE CHURCH AND THE TRUST

The conservative Colorado Springs pastor who broke away from the Episcopal Church to form a new Anglican congregation in May 2007 now is accused of stealing $291,000 from Grace Church and St. Stephen's Parish.
The Rev. Don Armstrong was indicted on 20 counts of felony theft by an El Paso County grand jury Wednesday. He surrendered to authorities Thursday but was soon free on bond, according to the Colorado Springs Police Department.
Armstrong's spokesman did not return calls Friday.
Police and a special prosecutor conducted a two-year investigation into allegations of Armstrong's financial wrongdoings at the church.
In the indictment, Armstrong, 60, is accused of using the Clarice Bowton Trust, a scholarship fund for new ministers, to pay his own children's college expenses, including rent and tuition bills.
The trust was activated after Bowton's death in the late 1970s, and its terms were never amended.
The indictment further states that Armstrong's use of the trust was eventually questioned by a trust officer, who terminated its distribution to the church as of December 2001.
Once Armstrong's access to the trust was cut off, the indictment said, the pastor began using the general funds of the church to pay for his son's and daughter's educations. Court records say Armstrong siphoned $291,000 from the church and the trust over a 7 1/2-year period.
When Armstrong left the Episcopal Church, he said the split was over theological differences, such as his opposition to gay marriage and the church's ordination of openly gay clergy.
But Colorado Episcopal Diocese officials countered that they believed Armstrong, who had been Grace's pastor for 20 years, had left to escape reckoning for embezzlement uncovered by diocesan officials. The diocese notified police of its suspicions in May 2007.
In fall 2007, an Ecclesiastical Court in Denver found Armstrong guilty of financial and pastoral misconduct that included theft of almost $400,000.
Armstrong also was removed from active ministry in the Episcopal Church. The diocese would not comment further Friday.
In 2007, Armstrong affiliated his parish with the theologically conservative Convocation of Anglicans in North America.
Armstrong and his group kept possession of Grace Church and St. Stephen buildings on Tejon Street until an El Paso County judge ruled March 24 that the pastor must surrender the $17 million property to the diocese around April 1.
Armstrong and followers then moved to a new house of worship, St. George's Anglican Church on Fieldstone Road. Officials there issued a statement Friday expressing full support for Armstrong and belief in his innocence, according to The Gazette of Colorado Springs.
Convocation of Anglicans in North America Bishop Martyn Minns said Friday that the indictment was a painful but necessary step in Armstrong's journey of publicly proving his innocence.
The case will be prosecuted by Pueblo County District Attorney Bill Thiebaut because the El Paso County DA at the time the case was opened had been a parishioner of Armstrong's and recused himself.

TWO PEOPLE KILLED & 14 INJURED IN NEPAL CHURCH ATTACK

TWO people were killed, including a teenage girl, and 14 wounded when a bomb exploded today in a Roman Catholic church packed with worshippers on the outskirts of the Nepalese capital, police said.
A Christian leader said the attack, the first on a Christian church, marked the "saddest day'' in the history of the religion in the impoverished mountain nation.
The church - Kathmandu's only Roman Catholic place of worship - was jammed with 500 people when the device went off at the start of morning Mass, creating panic as people rushed for the exits, police said.
A pamphlet of an obscure Hindu extremist group called the National Defence Army was found at the blast site in Lalitpur, a district adjoining Kathmandu, police said.
But police said it was too soon to assign blame for the attack on the Church of Assumption which came hours before lawmakers were due to vote in a new premier after weeks of political instability in the world's newest republic.
"A 15-year old student, Celestina Joseph, and 30-year-old Pabitra Paitri died in the bomb blast.
Five of the injured are in serious condition,'' police officer Ram Brish Chaudhary said.
It was the first attack on a Christian church in the Hindu-dominated Nepal.
The bombing came as lawmakers were due to choose a new premier, three weeks after Maoist prime minister Prachanda quit, plunging the nation into a crisis triggered by a stand-off between his ex-rebels and the army.