Super bowl abortion ad: what do you think of the hype?

Much of the hype around this year’s Super Bowl pro football championship game focused on an ad by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family that featured college football superstar Tim Tebow and his mother Pam.

Several abortion rights and women’s groups had complained in advance about the reported content of the ad, which they said would have a strong anti-abortion rights message.  Reports suggested that the ad would focus on Pam Tebow’s decision to carry Tim to term despite a recommendation from her doctors that she have an abortion. The Tebow family is deeply evangelical and he was born in the Philippines where his parents were doing missionary work.

Several groups that oppose abortion rights came out in strong support of the ad. None of this is surpring given the highly polarizing nature of the issue in America.

Abortion rights issue lobbed into Super Bowl

U.S. women’s groups are urging television broadcaster CBS not to air an ad during next month’s Super Bowl football championship final because they say it has a strident anti-abortion rights message.

The plans to air the ad, sponsored by the conservative Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family and featuring college football star Tim Tebow, could see the polarizing issue of abortion rights dropped squarely in the midst of the National Football League’s premier event.

It would be the first time that Focus on the Family, a politically influential evangelical group founded by James Dobson, has bought air time during the Super Bowl — the ultimate prize of the advertising world with 30-second spots going for up to $3.2 million. The Women’s Media Center and over 30 other liberal and women’s advocacy groups sent a letter to CBS, the TV network to air the Super Bowl on February 7, saying: “… we urge you to immediately cancel this ad and refuse any other advertisement promoting Focus on the Family’s agenda.”

U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson says Haiti cursed by devil pact

Haiti's Presidential Palace after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, 12 Jan 2010/Reuters TV video grab

Controversial U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson said on Wednesday that earth-quake devastated Haiti was cursed because of a past pact that the island’s inhabitants had made with the devil.  The comments, which have spread like wildfire through the blogosphere and eslewhere on the Internet, were made during a broadcast of his Christian Broadcasting Network.

“They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’ True story,” Robertson said in a matter-of-fact tone on the broadcast. “And so the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal. .. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another,” he said.

Haiti’s slave revolt led to the establishment in 1804 of the first republic run by freed black slaves and has long been an inspiration for national liberation movements especially in Africa.

Mormon bean counting doesn’t always add up …

I just received my annual copy of the Church Almanac for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) and am struck by just how precise it is when it comes to counting its worldwide membership.

Let’s start with the statistical profile at the start. It says total membership as of Jan 1, 2009, was 13,508,509. That’s pretty specific for a headcount that exceeds the population of many of the world’s countries.

Membership in the United States — the birthplace of the Mormon faith — was put at 5,974,041. Mexico has the second largest national membership at 2,092,389. It would seem no rounding up or down with these folks though total membership in South America was a nice roundish 3,278,400.

Nigeria bomber’s home town blames foreign schooling

For residents in his home town, it was Umar Abdulmutallab’s foreign education, not his roots in Muslim northern Nigeria, that radicalized him and led him to try to blow up a U.S. passenger plane.

The 23-year-old London-educated Nigerian was charged on Saturday in the United States with trying to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 as it approached Detroit from Amsterdam on Christmas Day with almost 300 people on board.

The son of a highly respected banker, Abdulmutallab’s actions shocked Nigeria’s wealthy elite and residents in his family’s predominantly Muslim northern hometown of Funtua.

Read the whole post by Sahabi Yahaya here. For related stories click here and here.

Palestinians say Bethlehem wall Christmas spoiler

Christian visitors coming to Bethlehem this week to celebrate the birth of Christ will encounter a concrete wall with watchtowers, built by Israel between nearby Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity.

In a message to remind the world of the barrier’s existence, the Palestine Liberation Organisation said the wall symbolizes a “Christmas without hope” for the ancient city, where normal life is fragmented and stifled by Israel’s security measures.

Israel began building a major barrier in the occupied West Bank when the second Palestinian intifada (uprising) launched lethal suicide bomb attacks on Israeli cafes and buses in the early years of this decade.

Read the whole post by my colleague Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh here.

Some highlights from our religion file in 2009

Here at Faithworld we sometimes like to draw the attention of our readers to many of the fine pieces of reporting on issues of religion and faith found in the wider Reuters’ world. Here are just a few highlights from 2009 — and trust me, the list could be much longer:

FEATURE-Muslim revival brings polygamy, camels to Chechnya

Darwin debate rages on 150 years after “Origin”

Italian scientist reproduces Shroud of Turin

U.S. South remains undisputed “Bible Belt”

The U.S. South remains the undisputed “Bible Belt” of America and Mississippi is its buckle, according to a new bit of number crunching from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. You can see the interactive report here.

Pew has attempted a state-by-state ranking of U.S. religiosity using four measures that draw on polling data: the importance of religion in people’s lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer and absolute certainty of belief in God.

Mississippi tops all four rankings with 82 percent of its adult population saying religion is very important in their lives. In fact, the top 10 states by this measure are all in the South (some would say nine out of 10 as it includes Oklahoma. But many analysts lump Oklahoma in the southern category based on its politics and culture as well as its geography as it shares borders with Texas and Arkansas.)

Pew measures global religious restrictions

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has come out with a new report that tries to measure, country by country on a global level, government and social restrictions on religion. You can see our coverage of the report here and here and can download the whole report here.

The report, which Pew says is the first major quantitative study of the subject on a global level, ranks countries under two indices — one measures government restrictions on religion, the other social hostilities or curbs on religion that stem from violence or intimidation by private individuals or groups.

A damaged mosque in Onitsha in southeastern Nigeria

The Government Restrictions Index is based on 20 questions used by the Pew Forum to assess state curbs on religion at the national, provincial and local levels.

Most U.S. Protestant pastors see Islam as dangerous – survey

American Muslims at the Atlanta Masjid of al-Islam mosque, 9 Feb 2007/Tami Chappell

Here’s an interesting survey that was released on Monday by LifeWay Research, which is the number crunching arm of the South Baptist Convention, America’s largest evangelical group.

It says that two-thirds of Protestant pastors in America regard Islam as a dangerous religion. You can see their press release here. The full survey has not been posted on their site.

But in a nut shell, the survey of over 1,000 pastors of different Protestant denominations found that 45 percent strongly agreed with the statement “I believe Islam is a dangerous religion,” while 21 percent agreed to it “somewhat.”