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Welcome! At Signs and Wonders we sift through the World Wide Web looking for evidence of emerging religious futures. Our mission is to provide our readers -- religious futurists, ministers, and just plain spiritual people -- with a guided tour of the web, stopping wherever we see the future of faith unfolding before our eyes. We update this site every three days or so, so come back again and join us on our next trip. If you want to comment on anything you read here or discuss religious futures in general, come over to our forum. |
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February 16, 2000 [social] -- White Supremacists recruit in East Texas by Cody Clark at 7:33 PM (EST)  According to ReligionToday, white supremacists from the "Christian Identity Movement" are actively recruiting new members in East Texas. Klan leader James Roesch and his wife have moved from Ohio to Jasper, Texas, believing it is fertile ground to recruit members. Their agenda is in part to infiltrate churches and Christian organizations. Since the infamous racial murders in Jasper last year, black and white pastors have been meeting together for prayer. The trend in the area's Christian churches has been toward interracial communication. An insurgency of the supremacist "Christian Identity Movement" will threaten that tenuous progress. [political] -- More religious/spiritual crackdowns in China by Cody Clark at 7:20 PM (EST) The Chinese government is shutting down a spiritual group similar to the banned Falun Gong. The Information Centre of Human Rights & Democratic Movement in China said on February 1 "that China has closed down 100 offices of the Zhong Gong spiritual group, which claims more than 10 million practitioners in the country. Zhong Gong, like the banned Falun Gong movement (with an estimated 100 million practitioners worldwide), is based on the traditional Chinese meditation practice of qigong." Chinese officials said earlier this month that they would step up monitoring of hundreds of similar health and spiritual groups, fearing that they might gain the kind of following that Falun Gong has attracted. This supports an unfortunate trend of official Chinese antagonism toward popular religious movements. This suggests basic insecurity related to democratizing forces which may challenge the government's authority. [political] -- Will the courts declare deep ecology a religion? by Cody Clark at 6:57 PM (EST) [Utne Online] -- Minnesota loggers, in an unusual federal suit filed last September, that when the U.S. Forest Service sides with environmentalists and limits logging, they are acting in support of a group motivated by a religion -- "deep ecology." This, loggers say, violates the separation between Church and State. They are seeking $600,000 in damages from the Forest Service. If the courts rule that "deep ecology" is a religion, then the trend of increasing connection between religion and environmentalism might actually hurt the environmental movement in the judicial arena. [social] -- Catholic Theologian Says He'll Ignore Teaching Rule by Cody Clark at 6:57 PM (EST) [beliefnet] -- An outspoken theologian, Rev. Richard P. McBrien, will refuse to seek approval from his local bishop to teach, as required under new rules awaiting Vatican endorsement. He predicts his colleagues will do the same. The regulations--aimed at controlling theologians and what they teach--won lopsided approval from U.S. bishops at a meeting in November and require that all theology professors receive a "mandate" from the local bishop. This supports a trend in mainstream religion, especially in the Roman Catholic Church, of increasing challenges to centralized authorities. |
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