Protestant Church

A traffic study of Sand Canyon Road in Canyon County has been ordered by Los Angeles County supervisors after area residents protesting the building of a Mormon church there referred to the winding, two-lane rural highway as "a death trap." To give time for the study, the Board of Supervisors on Thursday postponed until March 26 a decision on whether to allow the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to build a 17,000-square-foot church at Sand Canyon and Condor Ridge Road.

New tensions are developing between the leftist Sandinista government and some Protestant churches here, after three years of calm. Three Protestant ministers are in the custody of state security agents for undisclosed reasons, and at least 11 others have been detained two to three days and questioned in the past three weeks. The tension began Sept. 29 when evangelicals here celebrated World Bible Day in a small stadium after obtaining the required permission from local police.

Now at its 25-year mark, a grand-scale plan to unite American Protestants still is moving ahead, but on an altered tack that seeks a loosely knit form of unity. Participating denominations for the last two years have been evaluating a preliminary draft of the proposal, called "Covenanting Toward Unity," and submitting responses to it. "So far, they've been quite promising," said the Rev. Gerald L. Moede, general secretary of the Consultation on Church Union, with offices in Princeton, N.J.

About 100 chanting feminists held a one-hour candlelight demonstration Monday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, contending the hospital might eliminate reproductive medicine services when it falls under Catholic ownership. Hospital administrators said the demonstrators' fears were overstated; that few changes will be made.

Pope John Paul II flew into the open arms of an adoring Mexico on Friday, returning to the site of his first papal trip 20 years ago on a mission to recharge the Catholic Church in the Americas for the new millennium. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of this sprawling capital after waiting for hours--and some for days--to catch a glimpse of el Papa. At one point, the crowd surged past the line of volunteers, almost blocking the street before motorcycle police pushed them back.

VICTOR CASTRO IS TALKING about his past sins, his catholic education and how, after a loyal but unexamined allegiance to that church, he left it to find his faith. "My parents raised me as a Catholic, but I never put my faith in it," says the 37-year-old Echo Park fabric worker, who eight years ago forswore Catholicism for an evangelical Protestantism. "This is not just religion; it's an experience with God." That experience came quickly for Castro, he says.

An undercurrent of Christian excitement is stirring amid the mosques and minarets of Istanbul as black-robed Greek Orthodox priests swirl back and forth in preparation for the enthronement today of the new leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church. His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeo I of Constantinople--the Greek name for Istanbul--also feels the new spirit in his sumptuously restored Orthodox patriarchate overlooking the city's historic sea inlet known as the Golden Horn.

The sexual abuse scandal that dogged the Roman Catholic Church throughout 2002 has driven public confidence in organized religion overall to its lowest level in six decades, a new poll by George H. Gallup Jr. has found. Only 45% of Americans had "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in organized religion in 2002, compared with 60% who did so in 2001 before the sexual abuse scandal erupted.

A new spirit of unity is taking hold in American Protestantism, thanks to a swell of ecumenical initiatives around the nation, proposals that could see millions of Christians put aside divisions on many topics, including how Holy Communion is understood. For many Protestant leaders, the move is long overdue. "The scandal of the broken church is that we cannot eat together," said the Rev. Daniell Hamby, an Episcopal priest and longtime ecumenical leader, referring to sharing Holy Communion.

In a year of intensified interest in the issue of abortion, "pro-choice" churchgoers looking for moral encouragement are finding little leadership in mainline Protestant congregations. Leaders of Operation Rescue quote the Bible as they blockade clinics and defend their civil disobedience in court. The Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese observed "Respect Life Sunday" throughout the region Oct. 1 with homilies on the urgency of protecting the unborn.