Saturday, January 3, 1998

Religion News Briefs

Prison parish offers hope through prayer

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- A newly ordained Baptist minister and inmates searching for hope are building a congregation of faith at the South Dakota women's prison in Pierre.

"No matter what your circumstances are, you can find some peace through faith," Deb Jenner says. Jenner is serving a life sentence for the 1987 murder of her daughter. "Faith gives you a place to belong. It gives a sense of family within the institution."

The congregation is led by the Rev. Michele Bradley, serving her first parish.

"Their circumstances are different, it's true, but their needs are similar to anyone else's," Bradley says. "They need to hear about God's love. It gives them something to hang onto when everything else seems lost."

About a third of the 140 inmates attend Saturday evening services.

Bradley says that inmates, with a lot of time to think, get serious about religion. "They stop blaming others and realize that something is wrong in their life," she says, "and they try to find answers."

Throughout the country, prison systems are putting more emphasis on faith or spiritual programs, says Ed Nesselhuf of Vermillion, who directs Prison Congregations of America.

"The corrections system have been pretty good about punishment," he says, "but they don't know a thing about hope."

Church fires not fueled by prejudice

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Arson at Indiana churches rose to 13 incidents in 1997, compared with an average of three or four in past years, and federal investigators are stumped for a reason.

The only similarity seems to be that 12 of the 13 fires were set in churches with predominantly white congregations. And four arrests seemed to involve youngsters looking for a thrill.

"There are just more church fires, for whatever reason," said Charles Petersen, who helps coordinate the investigations as head of the Indianapolis office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Church break-ins and arsons, which Petersen called crimes of opportunity, are easy. He said Indiana's targeted churches were sitting ducks: rural, on grounds poorly lighted and hidden from passersby; often with flimsy locks and without alarms.

Nationwide, only 16 percent of all arsons are solved, and juveniles are implicated in more than half. Arrests in church fires run about 35 percent. In June 1996, during a rash of church fires throughout the South, President Clinton formed the National Church Arson Task Force to coordinate local and federal, including ATF, involvement.

Mormon ranks grow in New Mexico

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- A leader of the area Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints says the Mormon church in New Mexico is growing by 300 members a year.

Stan Hatch, president of the local Mormon church government, attributes the increase to a revival of spiritual pursuits. "People are looking for an anchor," he says.

In the spring, New Mexico may open its first Mormon temple, a 30,000-square-foot building in northeast Albuquerque, to serve the state's 55,000 Mormons.

In 1980, the Mormon Church had 19 temples worldwide, most of them in Utah. Since then, it has built 30 temples and, within two years, plans to build 15 more.

Alien ideas of Genesis?

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- Members of the Raelian Church, which claims 40,000 followers worldwide, preach their gospel on the beach: That aliens will come if humans build them an embassy.

"They are from a planet in our galaxy, but not in our solar system," says Marie-Helene Parent, a church member from Miami. The church, she says, has raised $7 million for the embassy, to be built in the Jerusalem area before 2035.

"If not there, then in a place where people respect human rights and where there's beautiful weather," Parent says. "Maybe one day it will be in Miami."

She says a model embassy was built of sand on fashionable South Beach, known more as a hangout for models than aliens.

The church, said to be founded by French journalist Claude Vorilhom, now known as Rael of Quebec, believes that, on return, the alien race will unite all religions.

As Parent explains, aliens created human beings in their image -- with the true story "mistranslated" in Genesis. All of the prophets from Jesus to Mohammed were also aliens, she says.