ANGLICANS ALTER COMMUNION RITUAL DUE TO FLU SCARE IN BRITAIN

LONDON — Two Anglican dioceses in Britain are changing how they handle Communion in an attempt to reduce the spread of swine flu.
Church of England parishes in Blackburn, northern England, and in Southwell and Nottingham, central England, made the switch in recent days, officials said Wednesday — as many houses of worship around the world have cut back on activities requiring close contact because of swine flu.
"Particularly where vulnerable groups are involved, we think it's important that reasonable steps are taken to minimize the risk of church worship activity facilitating the spread of the disease," church spokesman Ben Wilson said. He said the measures were precautionary, though he noted a high number of swine flu cases have been recorded in Nottingham.
Anglican worshippers in the two English dioceses will no longer drink from a communal cup of wine that is wiped with a cloth after each person sips during the Communion service. Anglicans believe the wine is consecrated as the blood of Jesus Christ.
Instead, the faithful will participate in Communion only by eating wafers consecrated during the service.
The changes, which are temporary, are allowed under the Sacrament Act of 1547, which gave the church discretion to change the service in cases of emergency. The act was created 200 years after bubonic plague swept through Europe to assuage concerns over sharing the communion cup.
The change does not represent the national church's position, however, and bishops in each diocese are making their own decisions on how best to handle the service, Wilson said.
Britain is the hardest-hit nation in Europe amid the swine flu pandemic — or global outbreak — with thousands estimated to be sickened and at least 30 deaths reported. Still, most people recover without needing medical treatment.
The decision follows similar changes made to religious services in New Zealand, Chile, Argentina and across the United States.
In New Zealand, the Roman Catholic Church has halted the sharing of Communion wine and banned priests from placing Communion wafers on the tongues of worshippers.
Church leaders in U.S. cities including Milwaukee, Washington, Miami and Austin, Texas, have advised that pastors and priests to use discretion in serving Communion wine, and that churches provide hand sanitizer and tissues for worshippers.
In Chile, authorities canceled a religious festival that typically draws tens of thousands to the northern town of La Tirana.

FIJI POLICE HOLD 7 METHODIST CHURCH LEADERS FOR QUESTIONING

The Methodist Church in Fiji has said that seven of its senior members are being held by police for questioning.
All those being held have been involved in discussions about the church's planned annual conference.
Fiji's military government has already banned the meeting once, accusing the church of being too political and setting conditions for future talks.
The Methodist Church is the largest in Fiji and hopes to hold its annual meeting next month regardless.
The church had hoped its leaders would have been released after a few hours, Radio New Zealand reported.
Instead, police, many of whom are themselves Methodists, were treating the churchmen well in detention, Radio Australia reported, with afternoon tea and a prayer.
But the interim military-led regime has banned the gathering unless the church hierarchy agrees to exclude two former presidents and remove any political discussion from the agenda.

Continuing crackdown
Among those arrested was former president of the Fiji Methodist Church, Reverend Manasa Lasaro; General Secretary, Reverend Tuikilakila Waqairatu, the Secretary for Pastoral Ministry, Tomasi Kanailagi and the Church's Finance Secretary Viliame Gonelevu. The general secretary was taken in on Tuesday night and others were detained the next morning.
The Chief of Rewa, Rotemumu Kepa, who was to host the conference, has also been arrested and detained.
The interim government authorities have not explained the detentions, but Reverend Waqairatu had earlier said that it was in relation to conference.
The church said it was planning to go ahead with the conference regardless of the interim government's stand.
Separately, Fijian police are reported to be holding on to the wands, compasses and a skull confiscated from a Freemasons' meeting in Denarau last week.
The police said all the 14 masons detained had been released but that investigations into their activities were continuing.
Fiji is currently ruled by Commodore Frank Bainimarama who took power in a coup in 2006.
Since then Fiji has suspended the constitution, detained opponents and suppressed freedom of speech.

IRATE JAFFA CHRISTIANS GET JESUS PLAY CANCELLED: PLAY POTRAYS MARY THE MOTHER OF JESUS AS A PROSTITUTE

The perfomance of Amos Kenan's play "Friends Talk about Jesus," scheduled for next week at the Arab-Hebrew Theater of Jaffa, have been canceled due to opposition from Jaffa residents.

The play was rejected by the state censorship board in 1972, when it was written, but was staged in February by the Tel Aviv University Department of Theater Arts, under the direction of Ro'i Hertz Russo.

Some Christian Arabs living in Jaffa claim the play portrays Jesus in a negaKenan's satirical play deals with the nature of being Israeli and with the occupation. In it, Jesus dies, returns to life and dies again, and is shown in various ways: as a child whose home is destroyed by the army, as a young man who is concerned about the security situation and as a reserve duty soldier who is sent to war.

After the play was banned by the censor it was also banned by the High Court of Justice. Igal Ezrati, one of the Arab-Hebrew Theater's two artistic directors, related that when the news of the play's production became public, it set off protests, and he was asked not to stage it. "I got phone calls saying, 'You should be ashamed of yourselves,' because the play hurts the feelings of Christians in Jaffa and throughout the world," the theater's head, Mohammed Desouki, related. "I talked to Igal Ezrati and together with the theater management we decided to cancel the show so as not to hurt anyone's feelings." tive light, as well as depicting Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a prostitute.

CHRISTIAN AGENCY APPEARS ON MTV'S PREGNANT TEEN SERIES

A Christian adoption agency appeared on an MTV series last week that chronicles the lives of several pregnant 16-year-old girls.

“16 and Pregnant,” the new MTV documentary show, aired an episode this past Thursday night that followed a Detroit-area pregnant teen who goes through Bethany Christian Services to give her child up for adoption to a North Carolina family.
Bethany explains that it agreed to be part of the program on MTV, which is “notorious for morally questionable programs,” because it felt the show was “a great opportunity to educate pregnant teenagers to its services” so that young women viewers would consider “adoption as an option over abortion.” The agency also hopes the show will increase awareness about the many children who need loving parents.
Bethany Christian Services is the nation’s largest private adoption agency. In addition to adoption services, it also offers foster care and counseling to children and families. With over 75 locations nationwide and international ministries in over a dozen countries, Bethany affects the lives of more than 30,000 people each year.
In Thursday’s episode, high school junior Catelynn and her boyfriend of three years, Tyler, decide to give their baby up for adoption. The episode chronicles the different reactions of their family members to the idea of adoption – from anger to support – and the couple’s difficult process in deciding to give up their baby.
Through the help of Bethany Christian Services, the teen parents find a couple they think would be the perfect match for their child. The episode ends with the adoptive parents giving Catelynn a bracelet and telling her that the baby has the same one. Catelynn and the adoptive parents agree that the biological mother and baby will wear the bracelet forever.
Bethany acknowledges that working with MTV to get the word out about adoption is a “progressive approach” for a “generally conservative organization." But it sees the cooperation as a beneficial opportunity to the ministry’s mission.
In addition to Bethany Christian Services, several other Christian organizations in the United States are working to care for orphans and helping with the process of adoption. Among these Christian orphan care ministries is Show Hope, founded by award-winning CCM artist Steven Curtis Chapman who has adopted three girls from China.
Show Hope, originally founded under the name of Shoahannah's Hope, seeks to reduce the financial barriers to adoption, among other objectives. It has helped over 2,000 orphans from 40 countries find homes since its founding in 2003. The non-profit organization was recognized this year at a banquet organized by Children’s Hunger Fund.
In America, half a million children are in foster care, and approximately 120,000 of these children are waiting to be adopted. There are more than 130 million orphans and fatherless children in the world who have lost one or both parents, according to UNICEF.

FIRST HOLY COMMUNION IN THE MOON

First Communion on the Moon
As we remember the first men on the moon, let's not forget the first supper on the moon -- the Lord's Supper, served and received by an elder in the Presbyterian Church, Apollo 11 astronaut Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin.
"This is the (lunar module) pilot," Aldrin said on July 20, 1969. "I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." Aldrin's way was to serve himself communion, using a kit provided by the pastor of Houston's Webster Presbyterian Church.
Aldrin's brief and private Christian service never caused a flap, but it could have. Aldrin has said that he planned to broadcast the service, but NASA at the last minute asked him not to because of concerns about a lawsuit filed (later dismissed) by atheist Madelyn Murray O'Hare after Apollo 8 astronauts read from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas.
Did NASA do the right thing by making Aldrin keep his religious beliefs to himself?
As an elder in the Presbyterian church, Aldrin had the authority to conduct what is called an "extended serving" of the Lord's Supper. But Aldrin was representing the United States of America that day, and in many ways, all of his fellow earthlings. Should he have even conducted a private religious service?
"In the radio blackout," Aldrin wrote in Guideposts magazine in 1970, "I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, 'I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.'
"I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements."
One small sip for man, one giant leap of faith for mankind.
The small chalice Aldrin used for the wine went back to Webster Church. Each year on the Sunday closest to July 20, the congregation celebrates Lunar Communion. "Communion can be celebrated anywhere," senior pastor Mark Cooper said Sunday. "Even cramped up in a lunar module on the moon."
Aldrin wasn't the only person to bring his faith to the moon that day. The astronauts left behind a tiny silicon chip containing a message of peace from four U.S. presidents and 73 other world leaders. Seven of them made references to God -- the presidents of Brazil, Ireland, South Vietnam and Malagasy, the king of Belgium, Pope Paul VI -- and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, who wrote:
"On this occasion when Mr. Neil Armstrong and Colonel Edwin Aldrin set foot for the first time on the surface of the Moon from the Earth, we pray the Almighty God to guide mankind towards ever increasing success in the establishment of peace and the progress of culture, knowledge and human civilisation."
UPDATE: I asked On Faith panelist Richard Mouw about provisions for self-serve communion. Mouw is president of Fuller Theological Seminary. He also is representing the Presbyterian Church-USA as co-chair of the official Reformed-Catholic Dialogue. Mouw's response:
"For our Reformed theology, communion is something that necessarily takes place in a congregational context, with two requirements. It is tied to--accompanied by-- the preaching of the Word and it requires at least one elder assisting the minister. Two exceptions: chaplains in military and other settings are given a blanket approval to conduct a communion rite without an elder. And a minister and elder may bring the elements to a sick or shut-in person--with the understanding that this is an extension of the congregational rite that has recently taken place. There is simply no provision for a solitary self-serving of communion. It is difficult to think of a theological rationale even as an unusual event."