> Part 3
=== Noted
38. A Desire to Duplicate (Raelians)
39. Go forth ... by 2000? (AD2000 & Beyond)
40. Praise the Lord and gas up the Harley

=== Films
41. 'Left Behind' leaves the audience behind as well
42. Complaints Against Harry Potter Series Triple

=== The theme park critics around the corner
43. Christian theme park opens amid controversy


=== Noted

38. A Desire to Duplicate
New York Times Magazine, Feb. 4, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Last year, a 10-month-old baby boy died in the hospital after a minor operation went wrong. The baby's parents, an American couple, had two other children and probably could have had another if they wished; neither parent was infertile, and both were healthy and in their 30's. But they did not want another child. They wanted this child. And before long, they began to believe that the longing they felt was telling them something quite specific -- that their dead baby's genes were crying out, as a ghost might, to express themselves again in this world. The idea preoccupied them that their little son's genotype deserved another chance, that it had disappeared by mistake and could be brought back by intention.

Now if all this had happened, say, five years ago, their conviction might have soon faded away. The couple might have told their friends or family about this secret dream of resurrecting their baby's genes, and been talked out of it, or comforted in some other way. But it happened last year -- four years into the cloning revolution sparked by Dolly the sheep, at a moment when optimism about the miracles of biotech was running high and when it was not at all hard to find other people who shared a kind of metaphysical faith in the power of genes. One such group, a science-loving, alien-fixated religious movement called the Raëlians, for whom cloning is a central tenet, was particularly eager to put its faith into action. Last June, the grieving couple and the Raëlians found one another (on the Internet, of course) with results that could -- and should -- reopen the whole debate over whether human beings ought ever to be cloned, and for what purpose.

For it turned out that the couple, who had been well off to begin with, now had an infusion of cash: a promised malpractice settlement from the hospital where their baby died. They were willing to finance the Raëlians in an all-out effort to clone the boy from cells they had frozen after surgery performed two weeks before his death. And while they are not likely to succeed, the fact is that with at least 50 young female followers eagerly volunteering as egg donors and surrogate mothers, the Raëlians can't be ruled out, either.
(...)

''When you look at what would be critically required to clone a human being, surrogates and a large number of eggs are key ingredients, and the Raëlians have those,'' said Gregory Stock, the director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at U.C.L.A.'s School of Medicine. ''They certainly have what's necessary to make a solid attempt.'' Besides, said Stock, ''what they're doing is of symbolic significance. If they don't succeed, someone else will in the next five years.''
(...)

Moreover, it is not unprecedented for fringe groups to serve as incubators for concepts that would not be acceptable in mainstream science: think of the Aum Shinrikyo sect and its ventures in biological warfare. The Raëlians are not a tiny group -- they claim 55,000 members worldwide, though the number is probably closer to 25,000, according to Susan Palmer, a sociologist who has studied them. And they are not without resources. Since 1974, they have raised $7 million toward the construction of an ''embassy'' where alien visitors could be welcomed to our planet in style. Their followers, who hold fast to the ideal of everlasting life created through technology, are a devoted lot. Their leader has, in the words of Charles Cameron, a researcher with the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, ''done an extremely good job of placing himself astride a powerful tide of hope and fear -- the longings of people who want to find emotional and religious meaning in science and biotechnology.''

For all of these reasons, I decided to take the Raëlians and their cloning project seriously. It wasn't always easy. It was hardest when I waded into the teachings of Raël, a French-born former race-car driver who is the movement's leader. In 1973, Raël says, he had an encounter with a four-foot-tall alien (''his skin was white with a slightly greenish tinge, a bit like someone with liver trouble'') whose flying saucer had landed atop a volcano in southern France. From this creature, he heard the message that humans had been created in a laboratory by advanced beings from another planet who had mastered genetics and cell biology. Subsequent visits to the spacecraft, during which Raël enjoyed the sensual attentions of six ''voluptuous and bewitching'' female robots, convinced the fun-loving prophet that the aliens did indeed have a superior civilization.

It was easier to take them seriously when I met with Brigitte Boisselier, a French chemist who is the ''scientific director'' of Clonaid, the Raëlians' cloning venture.
(...)

She said she had a lab up and running, ''not offshore, not in the Bahamas; somewhere in the United States.'' She wouldn't say where, except that it wasn't in one of the states that had outlawed cloning: ''I'm no fool.'' She had assembled a team of three -- a geneticist, a biochemist and an ob-gyn currently affiliated with an in-vitro fertilization clinic -- and she said that the first two were working on the project full time, experimenting with cattle cloning initially and then moving on to human cells sometime this winter.
(...)

In Montreal a few weeks later, I spoke to Cocolios and another surrogate, Sylvie Tremblay, a 38-year-old computer troubleshooter at Laval University. For shiny-eyed devotion to the cause, you could hardly beat these two. ''There is nothing else that is a higher priority in my life than this,'' said Tremblay. ''If my boyfriend didn't agree with my taking part, I would drop him like that.'' Cocolios, an arts student, smiled shyly and said that she had ''always been obsessed by having a baby -- to carry life, to give birth. But my life is so sped up I don't even have time for my cat.'' She sighed girlishly. ''I think it is so beautiful how this couple loved that child and wanted to bring back his genetics. I would offer this pregnancy as a gift to the whole of humanity.''
(...)

Clonaid has a list of a hundred people who have expressed interest in its services, most of them would-be parents with severe infertility problems, a handful of them homosexual couples.
(...)

Over the last few years, as human cloning has receded from legislative agendas and public discussion, it has become a subterranean fantasy for all kinds of people. But it seems to have most powerfully caught the imagination of certain people in mourning, people who find in it an outlet for the lacerating need just to have their beloved here again. Internet chat groups devoted to cloning help stoke their hopes, as do companies like Southern Cross Genetics, an Australian start-up that offers to store DNA for future cloning.

The Web site of a group called the Human Cloning Foundation is a reservoir of such longings.
(...)

Cloning for reproduction could be done, at least for a while, without most of us knowing it, said Mark Eibert, a lawyer who has submitted testimony to Congress in favor of cloning.
(...)

And if the Raëlians are the first to pull it off? So be it. ''From a P.R. point of view, I'd be happy if people like that weren't the first,'' he said. ''But then again, if a Hare Krishna scientist was the first to invent a cancer cure, I think other scientists would be interested enough to pay attention. After a while, the history books wouldn't even mention the religion.''

The fact is, for all of the Raëlians' eccentricities, there is something about them that is perfectly attuned to their times. The Raëlians are enthusiastic about e-mail and sex and down on smoking and homophobia. And most of all, they love, love, love genetic engineering. They find it, as they like to say, in their French pop singer way, ''very beautee-ful.'' In this sense, you could see them not as bizarros inflamed by a singular vision but simply as the most fervent proponents of a genetic essentialism that is fairly widely shared these days. To put it another way, the Raëlians are just a bunch of people who took literally the cliche that science is replacing religion.

The group's spiritual headquarters, where I visited Raël on a rainy November day, is a monument to its delirious scientism. Centre UFOland sits plop in the middle of rural Quebec, about an hour outside Montreal. Its neighbors are wheat and cattle farms; back down the sodden dirt road, on the main highway, are a smattering of trailer parks, a tractor factory and a couple of fast-food places specializing in gravy-soaked french fries. The building itself is shaped like a giant swoosh, and constructed, ingeniously, out of bales of hay slathered over with concrete. Inside is a museum devoted to extraterrestrial phenomena and to genetics -- a curious amalgam of sci-fi and science. The high-ceilinged main exhibit room contains a life-size replica of the flying saucer Raël boarded back in 1973 for his visit with the aliens. It's made of plywood spray-painted silver and is pretty much empty except for a couple of inflatable vinyl chairs. (When visitors are around, a propane torch, suggesting the sound of a landing spaceship, gives it a Vegasy sort of grandeur.) Nearby, a 26-foot-high model of a double-helix spins slowly, illuminated by a spotlight so that its Lego-colored molecules gleam. There are plenty of pictures of little green men at UFOland, but there are also accurate models of cells and straightforward explanations of the Human Genome Project, the cloning of Dolly and so on.

I got a tour of the place from an uncharacteristically saturnine Raëlian named Michel. We walked from one dark and chilly exhibit room to the next, throwing on the lights as we went. Michel explained that ''primitive man,'' which is to say everyone who lived before the age of genomics and of Raël, ''did not understand the chemical nature of life. They didn't understand that the DNA is the soul.''
(...)

Raël admitted us, smiling a crinkly Clinton-like smile and wearing his characteristic samurai-style topknot, white pants, wide-shouldered white tunic and gold medallion. His sealed lair is dominated by a large white bed with a tiger-print throw on it. The walls are covered with photographs of his companion, Sophie, a stunning young redhead, in which she is usually bare-breasted and nibbling on a rose or some such. I kept wondering why it is that futuristic prophets so often have to wear jumpsuits and medallions and whether we'll all have to wear them in the future. (My hairdresser had specifically instructed me to ask what was up with the topknot, but I subsequently read in Raël's book that hair and beards are antennae helping the brain transmit messages, so I figure he just wanted taller antennae.)
(...)

In some ways, Raël is merely the surreal version of other more respectable biotech utopians -- academics like Gregory Stock of U.C.L.A., who told me that new reproductive technologies are the beginning of the end of sex as the way we reproduce. ''We will still have sex for pleasure, but we will almost certainly see our children as too important to leave to a random meeting of sperm and egg.'' Or Lee Silver, a molecular biologist at Princeton, who sanguinely predicted that parents will one day be able to choose for their children genes that increase athletic ability, genes that increase musical talents and ultimately, genes that affect cognitive abilities.
(...)

But more than anyone else, perhaps, Raël has hit upon a certain psychological truth: namely, that a common response to the disquieting feeling that science is accelerating beyond our capacity to comprehend it -- let alone control it -- is to declare oneself fervently, if confusedly, on its side. And that can also mean believing that somewhere, some wiser and higher force is guiding the latest discoveries and their uses, absolving us of the responsibility to judge them.

''Most traditional people are lost, spiritually lost, when it comes to space exploration, genetic engineering, genetically modified food, computers,'' said Raël. By contrast, the Raëlian movement was ''the most fanatically pro-science of all the religions'' and, therefore, ''the best adapted to the new century.'' He continued: ''Science and technology are beautiful, but if you don't link it to spirituality, you can easily become unbalanced or depressed and go to drugs and suicide. When you realize, on the other hand, that technology is not only technology but an extension of our spiritual life, it changes everything.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


39. Go forth ... by 2000?
The Gazette, Jan. 20, 1001
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Twelve years ago, a group of evangelical Christians founded the AD2000 & Beyond Movement with a bold notion: to reach every person in the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the end of 2000.

The organization's Web site even ticked down the seconds to the turn of the millennium on Jan. 1, 2001.

Time, as it happened, ran out. The mission went unfulfilled.

Does that mean the effort, based in Colorado Springs and involving several organizations here, was a failure?

That depends on how you measure it.

To supporters, AD2000 was unprecedented in bringing together different groups and inspiring people, the most successful effort yet toward fulfilling Jesus Christ's command to ''go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.''
That mandate is known as the Great Commission.

To critics, the movement was misguided and overly simplistic, a well-meaning effort with unrealistic expectations that focused too much on numbers and dates.
Regardless, most anyone involved in Christian mission work agrees that AD2000 was the driving force in the field for a decade.

Perhaps more than anything, the movement turned attention to the least evangelized parts of the world, a swath of Africa and Asia where other faiths dominate.

Now, a new mission movement is taking shape, one that meshes some of AD2000's beliefs with those of more established mission organizations. That group does not intend to pick a date for accomplishing its goals.

AD2000 & Beyond's seven-person office in Colorado Springs, meanwhile, will close in March. Only a large map and a few portraits of the people the movement reached - from Iran, Thailand, Malaysia and elsewhere - remain on the walls.
(...)

Though evangelical at heart, the AD2000 vision was endorsed early on by some mainline denominations.

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and the Reformed Church in America were among them.

But mainline involvement eventually slipped.
(...)

To track progress, AD2000 turned to a pair of British mission researchers.
They looked at growth in evangelical mission work in general, particularly that of charismatics and Pentecostals.

When AD2000 counts the spread of Christianity, it doesn't include mission work by Catholics or Mormons.

That's because AD2000's criteria for counting new Christians comes from two evangelical mission organizations whose beliefs are at odds with Mormonism and Catholicism.
(...)

Bush, in an e-mail interview from Jerusalem in December, said research shows the Christian Gospel is available to more than 99 percent of the world's population, in large part because of his organization's work.

But, he allowed, just because the Gospel is available doesn't mean people have been exposed to it.

One of the movement's researchers, Patrick Johnstone, estimated that between 15 percent and 25 percent of the world's population has not had enough exposure to Christianity to make decisions about whether it's for them.
(...)

But in linking evangelization efforts to 2000, the movement was swept up in a wave of prophetic speculation linking the new millennium to the possible Second Coming of Christ.

''Some people accused me of orchestrating the return of the Lord by 2000,'' said Ron Cline, president of HCJB Radio in Colorado Springs and the head of AD2000's efforts to expand Christian radio broadcasts. ''We all know we can't do that.''

Bush said he doesn't think the movement implied it would hasten the Second Coming.

The group repeatedly distanced itself from those who viewed 2000 as the possible moment of Christ's return.

Jay Gary, a Colorado Springs religious futurist and consultant who wrote the earliest documents for the AD2000 movement, said AD- 2000 was overshadowed by hype in the Christian world about the Y2K bug and millennial prophesy.

Gary, who broke from AD2000 after it incorporated, criticized the group for not focusing on the ''and beyond'' part of its name and failing to realize the goal wasn't achievable.

''My impression of the AD2000 movement is they just started believing their own propaganda and didn't make plans for beyond 2000,'' he said.

''By 1998 or 1999, they couldn't steer the ship. They couldn't navigate the market clutter about the new millennium. The plain facts are, they played their cards wrong.''

Gary's chief complaint - one shared by others - is that AD2000 did not stress a message of personal transformation through Christianity because it was focused so much on numbers and deadlines.

A new mission movement beginning to take shape intends to offer such a message. A group called the Great Commission Global Roundtable is being formed with representatives from the World Evangelical Fellowship, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, AD2000 & Beyond and other groups.

The new group intends to be more inclusive of Christian traditions and adopt a broader focus, said John Robb, an organizer who was part of AD2000's leadership.
Robb said the effort will be more holistic, including relief and development programs and children's initiatives. No time target will be set to accomplish goals.
(...)

For a complete transcript of Luis Bush's e-mail interview with The Gazette, go to www.gazette.com/special/life20.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
For a list of reports and other documents on AD2000 & Beyond, go to www.ad2000.org/press.htm
To learn about the efforts of a new mission effort taking shape, the Great Commission Global Roundtable, go to www.gospelcom.net/lcwe/newsletter/9912a.htm
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


40. Praise the Lord and gas up the Harley
The Toronto Star (Canada), Feb. 4, 2001
http://www.thestar.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) Pastor Larry is an ordained minister, master bike mechanic and one-time leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang. Most of his Indiana parishioners are ex-bikers, too.

Documentary photographer Rich Remsberg tells their stories in Riders For God: The Story Of A Christian Motorcycle Gang (University of Illinois Press).

``Made up primarily of former bikers and drug dealers, ex-cons and recovering drug addicts,'' writes Remsberg, ``the Unchained gang is an outreach ministry going into Indiana prisons and jails, biker rallies and other places where people on the fringe are ignored by other churches and the rest of society.''

Formed in 1988, the Unchained is just one of many God-fearing biker clubs - the International Christian Motorcyclist Association claims 60,000 members in 500 chapters.
(...)

Remsberg spent five years earning the Unchained's trust, going to Pentecostal services and bike rallies while exploring ``two hidden worlds: that of outlaw bikers and spirit-filled Christianity.''

``When I began this project,'' he writes, ``I knew even less about Christianity than I did about bikers. At first, I saw only the ironic juxtaposition . . . .''

Remsberg recorded in-depth conversations with Unchained members as oral histories to accompany his 62 candid black-and-white photos.

Shalom, the gang's addiction counsellor and a self-described ``prayer warrior,'' tries to help Remsberg reconcile all the apparent contradictions.

``I think we're born with an emptiness inside, to find Jesus Christ,'' she tells him.

``I still think there's a correlation between the extremeness of folks. I think maybe those that were extremely on the dark side, we have this glorious excitement and the extremeness: We are extremely saved.''
(...)

Hardest for some Unchained members (harder than staying clean, sober and out of jail) is learning, or re-learning, to read. But reading is necessary for anyone involved in a deeply Scripture-based Protestant faith.

Remsberg's photos catch burly, leather-clad bikers dutifully marking up their Bibles with highlighter pens during Pastor Larry's sermon.

Ironically, Riders For God may not make it into the hands of other Christians.

The powerful Christian Booksellers' Association (CBA) declined to afford the book the publicity it normally gives to evangelical titles - on account of one photo showing a woman flashing her breasts (at a decidedly secular rally.)

``We have to look at how our market would receive the book,'' a CBA representative told the Bloomington Independent newspaper in Indiana. ``And we thought it was maybe a little bit inappropriate.''

The Unchained bikers hoped Remsberg's project would reach other seekers and ``give glory to God,'' but they'll have to console themselves with Jesus' own observation - that prophets are seldom welcomed in their own country.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Films

41. 'Left Behind' leaves the audience behind as well
The Orange County Register, Feb. 2, 2001
http://www.ocregister.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
In the public mind, the term ''exploitation film'' usually conjures images of soft-core porn and hot-rod flicks, an accurate enough impression that, unfortunately, leads to the misleading conclusion that the word ''exploitation'' refers to these low-budget movies' subject matter.

In fact, the phrase was originally coined by independent distributors to indicate that they weren't peddling general-interest films, but movies aimed at a particular segment of the audience.
(...)

Because the potential audience was limited by deliberate segmentation, the films, no matter at whom they were aimed, tended to share certain characteristics: They were shot quickly, with cast members on their way up or down the Hollywood ladder (but never at the top), and they tended to sensationalize their subject matter to gain as much attention as possible.
Under that definition, ''Left Behind'' is a run-of-the-mill exploitation picture.

Starring Kirk Cameron, the former TV teen personality, the movie is aimed at movie-goers who might be inclined to believe that the world will end according to a blueprint that they perceive in the biblical Book of Revelations. The movie's production values are so bargain basement that it looks much more suited to basic cable than to the big screen. But it does bring a tabloid-esque angle to bear on its story line, using contemporary Middle East tensions and the United Nations as modern objects for ancient prophecies.
(...)

The biggest injury comes at the end, when the previous 95 minutes turn out to have been a prelude to the real action. You've been watching a TV pilot all along.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


42. Complaints Against Harry Potter Series Triple
PRNewswire, Feb. 2, 2001
http://www.prnewswire.com
[Story no longer online? Read this]
CHICAGO, Feb. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- The best-selling Harry Potter series of children's books by J.K. Rowling tops the list of books most challenged for the second year in a row. Complaints against the book tripled during the past year. The complaints come from parents and others concerned about the books'alleged occult/Satanic theme, religious viewpoint, anti-family approach and violence, according to the American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom.

The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received 646 challenges in 2000,
up from 472 in 1999. A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint
filed with a library or school about a book's content or appropriateness.
Schools, school libraries and public libraries report the majority of
challenges.

Judith Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, estimates
that less than one-quarter of all challenges are reported and recorded.

The ''Ten Most Challenged Books of 2000'' reflect a wide variety of themes.
(...)

For more information about the most challenged books of
the decade, please see http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/top100bannedbooks.html
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== The theme park critics around the corner

43. Christian theme park opens amid controversy
CNN, Feb. 5, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TRAVEL/NEWS/02/05/christian.themeparkt/index.html
[Story no longer online? Read this]
ORLANDO, Florida (CNN) -- While Disney World transports visitors into Tomorrowland, a new theme park that opened Monday takes travelers back to ancient Jerusalem.

The Holy Land Experience is a $16 million Christian theme park, filled with such Bible-based attractions as a replica of Herod's Temple and a re-creation of the street Jesus walked along before crucifixion.
(...)

Although park founder Marvin Rosenthal says the goal is to spread Christianity, some critics take issue with the presentation.

Rosenthal grew up Jewish but is now a Baptist pastor. His ministry is called Zion's Hope, which critics say aims to convert Jews to Christianity.
(...)

Some Jewish leaders are concerned about the park's prominent placement of Jewish symbols, saying they encourage false links between Judaism and Christianity
(...)

To critics like Shapiro, Rosenthal says simply: If you don't like it, don't come.

But Shapiro said it's not so simple.

''Those of us who don't like it won't come,'' he said, ''but we're afraid that others who are not aware, who are not so sophisticated will come, will put down their money.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]