Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 9, 1994 TAG: 9401080021
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's fun for us, maybe boring for you, and entirely inconsequential. I doubt that future historians will be swayed a whit by our choices.
In fact, our proximity to events makes the selections inevitable - in a word, predictable.
What would you guess? The Branch Davidian episode in Waco? Right. It was No. 1.
Others included the increasingly public charges of sexual abuse against clergy, the Roman Catholics' World Youth Day, the invocation of Scripture in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the World Congress of Religions, the World Trade Center bombing's link to Muslim extremists, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the firestorm over the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America study on sexuality.
Locally, we probably would add the stories of Elwood Gallimore's unusual definitions of Christian marriage and the sexual practices of the members of the Church of Light Universalist Church - the Bath County cult.
But in 50 or 100 years, when history can just begin to take stock of what happened in 1993, how big will those stories seem?
I suspect most of them will have been forgotten or, at best, worthy of only passing reference - footnotes.
The truly big stories - the ones I believe still will be ongoing a century from now - are the ones we really don't think much about. Sometimes we don't even recognize that they are being played out around us.
Here's my vote for some of the biggest religion stories of 1993 - even though none of them drew banner headlines on Page 1.
Most of the world's 1.7 billion Christians still believe the Bible is sacred, even in the face of scholarship that challenges its authenticity and denies the supernatural.
The veracity and applicability of Scripture has been questioned for centuries, yet the Bible continues to be the most respected - and best-selling - book on the planet.
Despite a seemingly indestructible animosity in many quarters, millions of Jews continue to practice the world's oldest monotheistic religion.
What some have called the oldest hatred - anti-Semitism - continues to thrive in some places. But, for yet another year, it fails to prevail.
Millions of Muslims devoutly practice their faith - without even considering firebombing a public building.
Not only do they eschew violence against non-Muslims, most Muslims want converts to be voluntary - not coerced - believers.
Thousands and thousands of Catholic priests do not abuse children - sexually or otherwise.
Remarkably, young men continue to be drawn to the priesthood and young women to Catholic religious orders despite incredibly severe societal distastes for the discipline they require - commitment, celibacy and often poverty.
Dozens of groups whose religions are considered cults by others - including Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses - spread their faith without stockpiling weapons or being threatened by law-enforcement officials.
The nation's commitment to religious freedom, in fact, fosters the peaceful unique expression of any individual's relationship to the divine.
Some American Indian religious groups use illegal drugs in worship without creating a new class of addicts.
Some religious groups even allow children to consume wine at religious functions - without contributing to the problem of juvenile delinquency.
Hundreds of thousands of homosexuals - mostly unrecognized and many unwelcomed - worshiped as Christians and Jews and Muslims and in other faiths without inspiring God to destroy their houses of worship.
Millions of youngsters moved freely, thoughtfully and willingly into full adult participation in their faiths - thus ensuring the perpetuation of religious expression.
by CNB