Associated Press - December 22, 2005

Fifty-two percent of respondents said they were troubled by the commercialization of the holiday, while just 35 percent expressed concern about opposition to public religious displays.

In fact, 56 percent of respondents said they were not concerned at all about the controversies surrounding the displays, according to the poll.

If given the choice, a majority of those surveyed said they would prefer being greeted with "Merry Christmas" rather than "Season's Greetings" when they entered stores over the holidays. However, 45 percent said the greetings were of little consequence to them.

The telephone survey of 1,502 adults nationwide was conducted Dec. 7 through Dec. 11 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

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Police in central China detain underground church leaders for holding illegal gathering

BEIJING (AP) - Police in central China detained 29 underground church leaders who allegedly held an illegal meeting to discuss helping local peasants with AIDS, a U.S. based monitoring group and a police official said.

"We had a report that 70 or 80 people were having an unauthorized gathering," said a man who answered the phone at the Xincai County Public Security Bureau in central Henan province. He would only give his surname, Hu.

"Police went there and took some of them to the police station for questioning but now they are all free," Hu said earlier this month, without giving further details.

China's officially atheistic, communist government allows worship only in tightly controlled state churches. Those who meet outside are frequently harassed, fined and sometimes sent to labor camps.

A news release from the U.S.-based China Aid Association said 40 police raided the meeting of about 100 underground church leaders while they were discussing plans to help peasants who contracted AIDS through blood transfusions.

Tens of thousands of people in Henan were infected through an unsanitary blood-buying industry in the 1990s, when dealers bought blood from villagers and pooled it, mixing healthy and HIV-infected blood.

The China Aid Association said 29 church leaders were detained by police, who also confiscated three bicycles, a mobile phone, luggage and winter blankets. According to witnesses, police showed a search warrant and said the meeting was an "illegal religious gathering," China Aid said.

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Judge: Free speech rights not violated by order to remove banners

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A minister's free speech rights were not violated when Madison police told him to remove anti-homosexuality banners from highway overpasses, a federal judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge John Shabaz told the Rev. Ralph Ovadal of Monroe, chairman of Wisconsin Christians United, that testimony in the trial stemming from his lawsuit against the city showed that the "spectacle" created by the banners Sept. 2, 2003, created a hazard from slowing traffic.

Ovadal's sign said "Homosexuality is a sin."

"There is nothing that suggests it was the message" that caused the dangerous slowdown or caused police to ask the demonstrators to leave, Shabaz said Dec. 12. "It isn't the message we (motorists) don't like, it's the fact that we can't get home on time."

Attorneys handling his case are planning an appeal.

"The bottom line is, based on traffic congestion caused by a minor accident up the road, and based on angry reactions to our message, we were banned from sharing our message. I believe the appeals court will see that," Ovadal said. "I think the city very skillfully manipulated the facts."

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Chicago Presbyterians divided over divestment as tactic to bring about Mideast peace

CHICAGO (AP) - The Chicago region of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) said the national denomination should pressure corporations that benefit from Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories, but members disagreed over whether the body should go as far as divestment.

The Chicago Presbytery took up the issue at a Dec. 13 assembly, but put off a decision on divestment until another meeting in February, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) in August accused four large companies of contributing to the suffering of Palestinians by selling products such as night vision goggles and helicopters used by the Israeli military in the territories. The denomination also singled out a fifth company it said handled money that wound up in the hands of Mideast terrorists.

The denomination said that if its lobbying efforts failed, it would withdraw its multimillion-dollar stock holdings in the corporations.

The movement has outraged Jewish groups, who say the strategy is biased, anti-Semitic and fails to recognize Israel's right to defend itself against terrorist attacks.

The top Presbyterian church official in Chicago further angered Jewish leaders after he met with the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which has fought a cross-border conflict with Israel.

The Rev. Bob Reynolds, head of the Chicago Presbytery, said the meeting in southern Lebanon in early November was part of an educational tour of the Middle East.

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Russian Orthodox Church bristles at Council of Europe resolutions

MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian Orthodox Church has expressed anger at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, saying its recent resolutions concerning religious issues could foment instability and conflict.

The church criticized the assembly's recent "Women and Religion" resolution, saying a call to fight "religiously motivated stereotypes" of female and male roles represented "contempt for views shared by millions of believers."

Russian Orthodox leaders claimed that the resolution amounted to an attempt to establish "an ideological control over people's beliefs, ideals and way of life. Such an approach could only lead to a growing instability," the church said in a Dec. 13 statement.

The European group, which held its first session in 1949, promotes democracy and human rights.

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