=== Aum Shinrikyo
1. Don't forget Tokyo subway gas attack: survivors and bereaved families
2. Subway staff remember victims of 1995 AUM gassing

=== Scientology
3. Tom Cruise Ends another Affair
4. Update: Cruise Still With Scientology
5. Cruise Dumps Scientology - NOT!
6. [harassment has become so commonplace that it is no longer newsworthy]
7. A Thorn in the MPAA's Side

=== Buddhism
8. 'Vietnam Buddhist burns herself to death'
9. Vietnam sect leader allowed home, status unclear

=== Islam
10. Cows slaughtered over delay in Buddha statues destruction
11. Taliban Explains Buddha Demolition
12. Muslim destroyers reach for the heart of Jewish holy sites

=== Mormonism
13. Visiting Reporters Complain Venues Tour Turned Into a Pitch for Church, State
14. Mormons under pressure on drink

=== Hate Groups
15. More teens buying white power music
16. Speakers with anti-Semitic ties coming to B.C. rally
17. Klan Highway Sign Isn't Welcome, Say Potosi, Mo., Residents

=== House of Prayer (Atlanta)
18. Church disputes claims of abuse
19. DFCS to take 10 more kids from members of Atlanta church in wake of abuse probe

=== Other News
20. French Sect Members Tried for Baby-Killing
21. Ex-dean of BU chapel on leave for illness
22. Families seek help from dangers of cults
23. 'Volatile' Prophetic Writings Set to Stir Further Controversy (Rick
Joyner)

=== Noted
24. False Prophets in Poland
25. Christian ministers to embrace Rainbow
26. The Work, the FBI and a habit of silence (Opus Dei)

=== Books
27. Religion researcher's 40-year quest to tabulate every believer on earth



=== Books

27. Religion researcher's 40-year quest to tabulate every believer on earth
Associated Press, Mar. 17, 2001
http://beta.yellowbrix.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- When Britain's Royal Aircraft Establishment reassigned David B. Barrett from airplane design to missiles and warheads in 1952, it became a turning point -- and not just for him.

The aeronautical engineer quit to train for the Church of England priesthood, expressing hope the church could make use of his mathematics expertise and pioneering computer work.

``Forget science completely,'' his bishop advised. But Barrett could not.

Since adding a religion doctorate from Columbia University to his technical background, he has spent 40 years systematizing information on world religions, a calling he discovered while assigned as an Anglican missionary in Africa.

Now 73, Barrett recently culminated his oddly remarkable career with publication of the second edition of his global accounting of faiths and the faithful -- trends, detail and his best estimated count of believers of all religions in each of 238 nations and territories.

Never has there been such a thorough reference as the two large volumes, running 1,699 pages, of the World Christian Encyclopedia, published by Oxford University Press.

Barrett has doggedly visited most of the lands in person, collecting raw material, including national census figures and United Nations data, and recruiting the 444 specialists who feed him material. Among them: Vatican missions librarian Willi Henkel and editor J. Gordon Melton of the ``Encyclopedia of American Religions.''

Barrett's encyclopedia sought to count each human being in each religion and religious subcategory in each country as of 1900, 1970, 1990, 1995 and 2000, with projections to 2025.

The 2001 edition, successor to his 1983 first edition which took a decade to compile, identifies 10,000 distinct religions, of which 150 have 1 million or more followers. Within Christianity, he counts 33,830 denominations.

Barrett also calculates religious populations for the Encyclopaedia Britannica Book of the Year, standard estimates that are used in turn by the World Almanac and innumerable journalists.

Such numbers are always debatable, but they're the best available. ``We don't really have any rivals,'' Barrett says. ``That's the problem.''

Why the title World Christian Encyclopedia, when it covers faith groups from Afghan Zoroastrians (304,000) to Zimbabwean animists (3.52 million)? Though Barrett says he publishes factual, unbiased data, he readily acknowledges it has a purpose: to serve as an informational undergirding for Christian mission work.

``I don't have the gift of evangelism through personality. I don't have the gift of traditional preaching,'' explains the soft-spoken Barrett.

Is he a missionary, then? ``Certainly, but not the shouter on the street.''

He calls his blend of religion and science ``missiometrics.''
(...)

Both Barrett and Johnson call themselves Charismatic, part of the Holy Spirit movement in old-line denominations, and their estimate that the related Pentecostal and Charismatic movements encompass 524 million believers will be one of their work's more controversial statistics. No one else has attempted such an estimate.

The encyclopedia is interested in material as well as spiritual needs. It calculates that only 44 percent of the world's people are living comfortably, with 10 percent ``scraping by,'' 28 percent ``poor and needy'' and 18 percent ``destitute.''

Among its other claims:
--The full Bible is available in 1,943 languages and the New Testament in an additional 2,897.
--Christians baptize 122,000 new members in the average day.
--Organized Christianity spends $270 billion a year on all causes. Barrett and Johnson arrived at this estimate by collecting news clippings and questioning experts in church finance.

As the encyclopedia documents, Christianity's population center is inexorably shifting. Growth is in the Southern Hemisphere especially, notably in Africa.

Johnson, who may succeed Barrett as the world's top soul-counter one day, looks ahead. He sees that Christianity started out the past century 81 percent white and ended at 45 percent. And he knows that's not going to stop.

``This is a huge change, not just ethnically but in what Christianity is all about. Christianity is steadily moving from this Caucasian, European-dominated, modern way of life, even beyond Christianity as an institution,'' he says. ``There's no central, unifying narrative.''
------
On the Net:
Global Evangelization Movement: http://gem-werc.org
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


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