AFRICA BISHOPS TALKS OF OBAMA IN RELIGIOUS TERMS

VATICAN CITY- African bishops attending a Vatican meeting are speaking about the election of Barack Obama in divine terms—putting them very much at odds with many of their U.S. counterparts.
Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle of Accra, Ghana said Wednesday that there was "a divine plan behind" Obama's election.
"It's like the biblical story repeating itself," he told reporters, citing the Old Testament figure Joseph, who after being sold into slavery in Egypt ends up becoming a top official.
"We believe God has his own plans. God directs history," he said of the U.S. election. "We pray that it (Obama's presidency) brings blessings for Africa and the whole world."
He acknowledged that Obama has earned the wrath of many conservative American bishops because of his support for abortion rights. Earlier this year, dozens of U.S. bishops denounced the leading U.S. Catholic university, Notre Dame, for giving Obama an honorary degree.
"We are definitely aware of it," Palmer-Buckle said. "But we feel it our duty to meet him and find out what are the things that unite us more than divide us."
Earlier this week, the Ghanian prelate leading the three-week meeting on the Church in Africa, Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson of Cape Coast, Ghana, cited Obama's election in saying he didn't see any reason why there couldn't now be a black pope.
And the archbishop of Kinshasa, Congo, Monsignor Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, told the formal synod itself that it would be wise to not ignore what he called a "primordial event" in recent times.
"If the election of a black as head of the United States of America was a divine sign and a sign from the Holy Spirit for the reconciliation of races and ethnic groups for peaceful relations ... this synod and the universal church would gain from not ignoring this primordial event of contemporary history which is far from being a banal game of political alliances," he said in his speech.
Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria gave more tangible reasons for praise in meeting with reporters.
"Obama has the authority to talk straight to our bad leaders and tell them they are messing up our countries," he said. Besides, he added, "In Africa we are always happy when our brother is big."

SOUTH INDIA FLOODS AFFECT MILLIONS, KILLS ATLEAST 222 ; PRAY FOR THESE STATES

Days of torrential rain in southern India have left vast tracts of land devastated and displaced million of people, officials said Monday as the death toll from flooding rose to 222.
In Karnataka, the worst-hit of two Indian states, 172 people have been reported dead and more than 50,000 are staying in relief camps, according to government spokesman R.V. Jagdish. Hundreds of thousands more have sought shelter in the homes of friends and relatives.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Andhra Pradesh, state chief minister K. Rosaiah said 50 people have been reported dead and around 1.5 million have been displaced and were sheltering in 100 relief camps.
“We have never experience anything like this before. It is the worst flooding in 100 years,” reported Ambrose Christy, south zonal manager for anti-poverty group Caritas India. “The situation could become even more severe as the rains get worst. If the Krishna River bursts its banks, millions more will be forced from their homes and a huge area of land will be underwater.”
With scores of villages in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka submerged by the floods, whole villages have already been forced to seek shelter in crowded government-run relief camps.
Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social service groups, estimated that over 2.5 million people have been forced from their homes due to heavy rains and flooding in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
World Vision, meanwhile, reported that the South India floods have destroyed crops and impacted some 20 million people, with scores of villages cut off.
“What is needed is a massive coordinated response involving the federal and central governments, and local and international NGOs to make sure food aid gets through," commented Dr. Jayakumar Christian, National Director for World Vision India.
World Vision is hoping to raise $2 million to ramp up its response to meet the immediate needs of 100,000 flood survivors who have been driven from their homes into relief camps.
"Rates of malnourishment are already extremely high in India. Almost half of all under-fives are malnourished and these droughts and floods are pushing families to the very edge,” Christian stated.
According to the World Vision leader, the organization is witnessing its development work and efforts to combat poverty set back by years.
"India is now entering a period of severe food vulnerability," he reported.

ITALIAN SCIENTISTS REPRODUCES ' SHROUD OF TURIN '

ROME – An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake.
The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ.
"We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.
A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, Garlaschelli made available to Reuters the paper he will deliver and the accompanying comparative photographs.
The Shroud of Turin shows the back and front of a bearded man with long hair, his arms crossed on his chest, while the entire cloth is marked by what appears to be rivulets of blood from wounds in the wrists, feet and side.
Carbon dating tests by laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, Arizona in 1988 caused a sensation by dating it from between 1260 and 1390. Sceptics said it was a hoax, possibly made to attract the profitable medieval pilgrimage business.
But scientists have thus far been at a loss to explain how the image was left on the cloth.
Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.
They placed a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbed it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face.

PIGMENT, BLOODSTAINS AND SCORCHES
The pigment was then artificially aged by heating the cloth in an oven and washing it, a process which removed it from the surface but left a fuzzy, half-tone image similar to that on the Shroud. He believes the pigment on the original Shroud faded naturally over the centuries.
They then added blood stains, burn holes, scorches and water stains to achieve the final effect.
The Catholic Church does not claim the Shroud is authentic nor that it is a matter of faith, but says it should be a powerful reminder of Christ's passion.
One of Christianity's most disputed relics, it is locked away at Turin Cathedral in Italy and rarely exhibited. It was last on display in 2000 and is due to be shown again next year.
Garlaschelli expects people to contest his findings.
"If they don't want to believe carbon dating done by some of the world's best laboratories they certainly won't believe me," he said.
The accuracy of the 1988 tests was challenged by some hard-core believers who said restorations of the Shroud in past centuries had contaminated the results.
The history of the Shroud is long and controversial.
After surfacing in the Middle East and France, it was brought by Italy's former royal family, the Savoys, to their seat in Turin in 1578. In 1983 ex-King Umberto II bequeathed it to the late Pope John Paul.
The Shroud narrowly escaped destruction in 1997 when a fire ravaged the Guarini Chapel of the Turin cathedral where it is held. The cloth was saved by a fireman who risked his life.
Garlaschelli received funding for his work by an Italian association of atheists and agnostics but said it had no effect on his results.
"Money has no odor," he said. "This was done scientifically. If the Church wants to fund me in the future, here I am."

BIBLE VERSES BANNED FROM Ga. SCHOOL FOOTBALL FIELD

FORT OGLETHORPE— The Warriors of Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High took the field on Friday night without any Bible verses written on the cheerleaders' banner. Instead, the football team ran through a banner that read "This is Big Red Country" before each bent on a knee to pray on the field of Tommy Cash Stadium.
The spirited display comes after the school district banned the banners last week over concerns they were unconstitutional and could provoke a lawsuit, angering many in the deeply religious north Georgia town of Fort Oglethorpe.
"I'm just kind of unnerved about it," said 18-year-old Cassandra Cooksey, a recent graduate who often prayed with her fellow marching band members before football games. "It seems like the majority of people in our community want this and they don't have a problem with it, so I think they should be allowed to have the signs if they want to."
The move has galvanized the community. Hundreds of people attended a rally this week supporting the signs, which included messages such as: "Commit to the Lord, whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." Many students attended class Friday wearing shirts with Bible verses and painted their cars with messages that read: "Warriors for Christ."
During the game, several other messages were visible in the packed stadium. Some people stood with signs that read "You Can't Silence Us" and some young men had Bible verses painted on their chests.
"When you get a whole bunch of teenagers mad, this is what happens. We stand up for what believe in," 16-year-old Shelby Rouse said over the roar of a pre-game pep rally.
Cheerleader Taylor Guinn said she is disappointed about the banning of the signs on the football field and believed there was nothing wrong with displaying them.
"It's done good because it brought a lot of glory to God," the 17-year-old senior said.
Players at the 900-student school began running through the Biblical banners shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and school Principal Jerry Ransom said he enthusiastically supported it then. But Catoosa County schools Superintendent Denia Reese banned the practice after a parent complained.
Reese said the school board's attorney advised her the signs violated federal law because they were being displayed by the cheerleaders during a school-sponsored event.
"I regret that the cheerleaders cannot display their signs in the football stadium without violating the First Amendment," Reese said in a statement. "I rely on reading the Bible daily, and I would never deny our students the opportunity to express their religious beliefs."
The Anti-Defamation League, a human rights group, sent a letter to Reese commending the ban.
"There are legal ways for students to have religious observation in a school context and there are illegal ways, and we believe Reese is correct that the football game crosses a line," said Bill Nigut, the group's southeast regional director.
Tom Rogeberg, a spokesman of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, said he can understand banning cheerleaders on the field from displaying religious banners. But he said spectators in the stands must be able to continue expressing their beliefs freely as they did in Fort Oglethorpe on Friday.
"It's been long seen at sporting events with banners like John 3:16 being put up by fans," Rogeberg said.

UNDER GOD : PRAYING FOR GLENN BECK FOX NEWSEVANGELIST

Fox Newsevangelist Glenn Beck might be the most prayed for man in America at the moment -- which could be good news for all of us.
A few weeks ago, Beck urged his conservative Christian followers to pray for his protection. "There is (billionaire George) Soros money now being funneled to stop me. The biggest names, the most powerful people on the planet on the left -- I've told you before, they're not going to go away easy . . . Please, keep me in your prayers, keep my staff in your prayers, for safety, for wisdom, please."
Meanwhile, over on the left, Jim Wallis is asking his fellow progressive Christians to pray for Beck. "It should be no surprise that we strongly disagree with many of Glenn's views, but we too believe in a God far greater than all of us. So on this point, let's take Glenn at his word and pray for him to have wisdom as he speaks out on these issues. Tell Glenn you're praying for him - that he'll choose hope over fear."
So maybe neither of those prayer requests are purely nonpartisan. But it does show that Red State Christians and Blue State Christians at least can pray for the same person, if not for the same reasons. That's progress, right? The culture war-weary among us appreciate any sign of progress among the faithful, especially after reading the new 2009 Religious Activists Survey, which shows just how deeply and fundamentally divided religious activists are in this country.
Here are just a few of the lowlights in the survey of 3,000 conservative and progressive religious activists.
Abortion: 95% of conservative religious activists say abortion should be illegal in all cases (60%) or most cases (35%); 80% of progressive religious activists say abortion should be legal in all (26%) or most (54%) cases.
Gay and Lesbian Issues: 82% of conservatives oppose both same-sex marriage and civil unions; 59% of progressives support same-sex marriage, and 33% support civil unions.
Health Care: 6% of conservatives think that the U.S. should have comprehensive national health insurance; 78% of progressive activists think we do.
Torture: 61% conservatives say torture can often (25%) or sometimes (36%) be justified; 79% of progressives say torture can never be justified.
Priorities: Conservatives said abortion (83%) and same-sex marriage (65%) are the most important issues; progressives chose poverty (74%), health care (67%), and the environment (56%).
We've known for awhile that some followers of Jesus veer to his right, others to his left. But why? The researchers from the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron and Public Religion Research drilled down through the tectonic political plates to get to the core of each side's belief system.
"Conservatives generally emphasize an individualist approach to solving problems, with an emphasis on personal morality," the researchers wrote. "Progressive activists are more likely to see the causes of America's problems in structural terms."
In other words, conservatives subscribe to a personal salvation gospel, progressives to a social salvation gospel. The difference can be summed up in two statements the researchers gave to activists on both sides of Jesus.
1. "If enough people were brought to Christ, social ills would take care of themselves."
67% of conservatives agreed, but only 13% of progressives agreed (and 61% of them disagreed).

2. "Social justice is at the heart of all authentic religious values."
77% of progressives agreed with that one, but only 37% of conservatives agreed.
I'm no theologian, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Jesus of the four gospels agreed with both of those statements.
So I have an idea. Maybe we can get the Glenn Beck Christians and the Jim Wallis Christians to form a book club. They all can read the same book each month and then discuss it. I'd suggest they start with the Book of Matthew. Then Mark, then Luke, then John.
Who knows? After four months of reading the same books, they all might find themselves on the same page, and start praying for each other.