Adventist News Round Up: NYTimes edition
Greetings Spectrum blog readers. We’ve got a solid round up of Adventist news.
Significantly, in the New York Times, Peter Steinfels reviews Samir Selmanovic’s book, It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian.
He writes:
But Mr. Selmanovic sympathizes with everyone who ever puzzled at Christians “so bent on denying grace outside the boundaries of Christianity”; and he asks whether boundaries need to be walls. “Why not windows? Why not doors?”
Metaphors like walls and windows only go so far, however, in addressing how individuals will actually form religious identities more meaningful than the spiritual-but-not-religious cliché that Mr. Selmanovic writes “can be frighteningly undemanding.”
About this process Mr. Selmanovic, even more in person than in his book, does not claim to have the answers. On the one hand, “particularity matters,” he said, and it is “no good to go two inches deep into 10 different wells.” On the other hand, he said, “religion is going to adjust to an interdependent world” where no faith can exist in isolation. That adjustment will take time and be painful, he said, but “life itself will find a way.”
Recently, Samir tweeted that there are now 50 reviews of the book at Amazon.com.
From our InFocus friends in Australia, here’s their weekly video Adventist news cast.
- An Adventist youth leader is stabbed whilst protecting the young people in his care
- Wikipedia removed an article about a new Bible translation
- More than 1 million people become Adventists in the last 12 months
- Revisions made to the Seventh-day Adventist Church Manual
- Adventist secondary schools commence trials of a new Bible curriculum
- A new director is appointed to oversee ADRA functions across the South Pacific
- A new website helps fund the purchase of motorbikes for church pastors in the Pacific.
Retired Atlantic Union College art professor Roger Preston explores the icon tradition with a show at the Museum of Russian Icons.
The Korean Adventist language school celebrates 40 years.
In Zambia, “Lusaka Province Minister, Charles Shawa has asked the Church to assist government in addressing the emerging alcohol abuse among youths in the country. . . .
Mr Shawa has since commended the Seventh Day Adventist Church for its robust social policy that has seen the opening of Universities, Hospitals and schools among many others that have benefited the less privileged in society.”
Many of the Ft. Hood shooting injured are being treated at the Metroplex Adventist Hospital in Killeen, Texas.
A rape case against a former Southern Adventist University (SAU) student, that received attention online due to the internet celebrity of the accuser, also a former SAU student, has been dropped.
Loma Linda University Medical Center reports: Using facial imaging and 3-D computer modeling technologies, they discovered that the pattern of facial skin aging between mothers and daughters is almost exactly the same because of their skeletal and cellular make up.
An Australian public school got into trouble after hosting an Adventist pastor in a biology classroom for a talk on “creationism.”
Botswana press reports on an anemia/expectant mother study conducted by midwifery students at Kanye Seventh Day Adventist Hospital.
Kettering Reproductive Medicine is reviewing its policies after a women was refused help in getting pregnant due her unmarried status.
In Jamaica, Adventist business leaders hold ASI-related conference. “Guest speakers at the expo will be Minister of Finance and the Public Service Audley Shaw, who will speak on ‘The Jamaican Economy and the Prospects for Growth’.”
Loma Linda University is the largest private employer in San Bernardino County.
