Information Related to "World News and Trends - Mar/Apr 2000"
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An Overview of Conditions Around the World
Church attendance declines while interest in God increases
A recent New Yorker feature article states that "God and the afterlife still do well in polls, clocking affirmative ratings of around 90 per cent for belief in God and 80 per cent for the afterlife. In fact according to a 1999 study by Mark Chaves, a sociologist at the University of Arizona, belief in the afterlife is going up, even as church attendance drops. Attendance and membership have been drifting lower ever since the baby boomers . . . started to wander away again" (emphasis added).
Statistical information is always subject to manipulation, but Chaves also claims that, on average, only 28 percent of Catholics attend Mass on any given weekend and about one in five Protestants attend church on Sunday. In general these downward trends have been confirmed by other sources.
Wrote Los Angeles Times religion writer Margaret Ramirez: "Church attendance is declining in the United States and other industrialized nations . . . At the same time, however, in both the United States and elsewhere, the percentage of people who report that they think about spiritual issues is holding steady or on the rise."
Those polled also showed considerable interest in the meaning and purpose of life itself. One member of the Michigan team "believes that the findings show that while allegiance to religious institutions declines, spiritual concerns remain strong but are displayed in different outlets from the Church."
Dan Wakefield put it this way in his recent book, How Do We Know When It's God? He wrote: "I haven't lost faith in God, but I've lost faith in words." The impression given by these various lines of thought is that God mainly reveals Himself in other ways than through the Bible and churches.
However, other observers have expressed serious misgivings about ungoverned spiritual expressions divorced both from the Bible and the church. They point out that this phenomenon reflects a move toward "cafeteria Christianity" in which believers pick and choose for themselves doctrines from different denominations and even New Age groups.
To further understand these important issues, please request our free booklets What Is Your Destiny?, The Church Jesus Built and How to Understand the Bible. (Sources: The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times.)
British Christianity in crisis
Over a 10-year period Anglican and Roman Catholic church-attendance figures are down in England and Wales. Baptisms and church marriages are also in decline. The Anglican Church in Hereford is a case in point. Even with some 1,000 parishioners, weekly attendance averages only about 60.
At the same time, adherents of other religions (not including Judaism) have tripled in number. One in four people in Leicester (a city in the British Midlands) is now a Hindu. But, countrywide, Islam is the fastest-growing religion.
The implications are troubling. According to The Sunday Telegraph: "Belief in a personal God has declined from 43 per cent in the 1950s to 31 per cent in the 1990s." (Sources: The Times, The Sunday Telegraph, TV program Tempting Faith (all London).)
Battling over the Ten Commandments
Conservative American churches and political leaders seek to preserve the primacy of Christianity as well as give children daily reminders of right and wrong. So they are determined to see the Ten Commandments displayed in schools. Proposed laws have been brought before state legislatures and even the U.S. Congress to make it a requirement.
But civil-liberty groups and non-Christians are determined that this practice come to a halt once and for all. Eventually the Supreme Court will probably rule on the question. In the meantime, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has begun legal proceedings in Kentucky against two counties and one school district that already display the Ten Commandments.
However this question is eventually resolved by the courts, God's law should be taught to everyone-beginning in the home. To better understand how and why these laws are the supreme and ideal guide for human behavior, please request our free booklet The Ten Commandments. (Source: The Guardian (London).)
Media a full-time job for children
It's no secret that American children spend a lot of time with TV, computers, music and video games. But how much time do children tune in to non-school-related electronic-media sources? According to a recent study, it's about 51/2 hours a day, totaling more than 38 hours a week.
"Watching TV, playing video games, listening to music and surfing the Internet have become a full-time job for the typical American child," concluded Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducted the national study of media habits of children ages 2 to 18. "This study really underscores the importance of paying attention to the messages and the information kids are getting from the media, both good and bad."
The amount of time spent using this type of media varied by age. Those in the 2-to-7 age-group averaged 31/2 hours daily, and the study found that a third of youngsters of this age have a TV in their bedrooms. For those over 8, media use averaged almost seven hours a day, and two thirds of this group had a TV in their bedroom.
Not surprisingly, the survey found that the bulk of children's daily media time-an average of 31/2 hours-was spent watching TV or videos. Listening to music on tapes, CDs or the radio occupied another hour and a half, and playing video games 20 minutes. In comparison, children spend an average of 44 minutes in recreational reading and 21 minutes using a computer for fun. About 60 percent of children said their parents had set no rules about TV viewing.
It's little wonder that families and societies suffer when children are so disconnected from their parents, when youngsters are fed a steady diet of mental junk food from the outside influences that so dominate their lives.
To better understand the principles that produce strong and stable families, be sure to request your free copy of our booklet Making Life Work. It's available from any of our offices listed on page 2, and you can download it from our Web site at . (Sources: Scripps Howard News Service, The Denver Post.)
Signor Prodi prods Europe
Romano Prodi, the new President of the European Commission (an integral arm of the European Union) has recently revealed the scale of his federal ambitions for a European superstate. Wrote David Hughes, political editor of The Daily Mail, "The President of the European Commission said Europe was creating its own government with its own military force. And he warned countries such as Britain that if they did not join in they would 'disappear from the history books.'"
In a recent interview with The Independent, Mr. Prodi warned EU members to sign up to his vision of a European superstate or suffer the consequences. He had no hesitation in describing the European Union as a single government.
Also Mr. Prodi also said that a key step in the emerging process of unity is the development of a European army-a development the United States government views with some concern. He added that he was not joking when he mentioned a European army, a proposal that the leaders of Britain's governing Labour Party have tried to minimize and downplay to American observers.
In a sharp reaction to this outburst, the chief Tory leader William Hague, countered that Mr. Prodi"has confirmed our worst fears. The European Commission is intent on creating a single state in Europe with its own army, currency and foreign policy. Yet despite the mounting evidence of the Commission's grandiose and undemocratic ambitions, (British prime minister) Tony Blair continues to mislead the British people. It is time he woke up to the dangers of a headlong rush to an unaccountable European superstate riding roughshod over the nation state" (Sources: The Daily Mail, The Independent, The Times (all London).)
AIDS epidemic spreads, orphans 11 million
More than 50 million people have been infected with the AIDS virus, of whom 16.4 million have died, according to a recent United Nations report. In 1999, according to UN estimates, another 5.6 million people were infected with the AIDS virus. The 2.6 million deaths from the disease in 1999 are the highest annual total since the disease was recognized almost two decades ago.
Although drug therapies have slowed AIDS death rates in the United States and Europe, such advances offer little hope in other areas where many such treatments are hopelessly unaffordable. More than 70 percent of those infected with the virus live in sub-Saharan Africa. The percentage of the population in the independent states of the former Soviet Union infected with HIV has doubled in the last two years, primarily from growing intravenous drug use.
"The epidemic is far from over," noted Dr. Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, the United Nations' AIDS program. "The crisis is actually growing."
More than 11 million children have been orphaned by the AIDS epidemic since it was first recognized in 1981, with another two million expected to be orphaned by the end of 2000, according to a recent United Nations report.
The UN defines an AIDS orphan as a child of 15 or younger who has lost a mother or both parents to the disease. In some African nations as many as one in 10 children are AIDS orphans. In comparison, before the AIDS epidemic about 2 percent of children in poorer countries were orphans.
Some 95 percent of AIDS orphans live in sub-Saharan African nations. In pre-AIDS days extended-family networks assumed care for orphaned family members. Now, however, "the traditional African extended family is breaking down under the unprecedented burden of the pandemic," said the report.
Dr. Piot said that orphans are "the most forgotten aspect of the AIDS epidemic." Left to themselves, many roam the streets or end up as child laborers, becoming "prime targets for gangs, militia and creating more child armies like those that participated in massacres in Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa." (Sources: The New York Times,The Los Angeles Times.)
-John Ross Schroeder and Scott Ashley
© 2000-2022 United Church of God, an International Association
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Keywords: children and media church attendance AIDS orphans Prodi, Romano
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