Word: christianize
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...deadly July 7 bombings in London exposed the Pope's desire to be heard on the topic of Islam. Within hours of the carnage, the Italian newswire ANSA reported that he intended to call the attack "anti-Christian." It seemed a harsh and narrow attribution, and indeed his actual statement replaced the term with "barbaric." Yet Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano subsequently muddied the waters by saying that "anti-Christian" had been intended to suggest that the attacks were inconsistent with Christian values rather than aimed at Christian targets. That in turn led to a careful clarification by Benedict...
...ministers caution against the tendency to boil Scripture down to a series of updated commandments about not listening to pop music or not hanging out with friends who swear. Gregg Morris, an Episcopal youth worker, remembers being an adolescent in an evangelical congregation. The stricter teachings kept him acting Christian outwardly, but God seemed like more of a "celestial bean counter." If God becomes just another parent to rebel against, says Morris, then the 13-year-old's spiritual journey may end before it even begins. Morris' search for a more inclusive Christian curriculum for adolescents led him eight years...
...Christian Smith, a co-author of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, says adolescent-specific church programs may be thriving, but his study of more than 3,000 teenagers left him wondering how deep the experiences were. "At 13," says Smith, "a lot of kids' mental and emotional lives are consumed by school, sports, media, maybe a boyfriend or girlfriend, so they don't have a lot of room for deeper thought." For many 13-year-olds, God is less an eternal truth than a friend helping them get through a really tough year...
...Explorers, whalers, traders and blackbirders snatching laborers for the canefields of Queensland all figure in the island's memory. Missionaries arrived in the 1840s; the sterner among them tried to stamp out the arranged marriages, kava drinking and other rituals that underpin Tannese kastom life. Today, a jumble of Christian groups still jostle for believers. But the history of contact is brief enough that the first local person to fly in a plane - a young woman sent because the chiefs were suspicious of the strange craft - is still alive. The world remains quieter here, the green-leafed silence interrupted perhaps...
...years before disappearing but promising to return - and says the blend makes sense on Tanna. "When Tannese first converted, we were in a dim light," he says, looking over the glistening sea. "But after John Frum came we knew our kastom should not be destroyed, that you can be Christian but know your culture as well." Which is perhaps why on Tanna, you will find pastors drinking kava, and kastom men flying foreign flags...