wfn.org | ALC Noticias Nov 7 04 Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Mexico

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Correio-e: director@alcnoticias.org

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CONTENT

BRAZIL: Campaign against anti-ethical television programs enters new phase
ARGENTINA: Debate about sexual education in schools continues
MEXICO: Plurality of experiences in the arrival of Protestantism to Latin
America
COLOMBIA: Christians for peace formulate message of hope
NICARAGUA: Baptist leader calls for calm in the face of electoral violence

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BRAZIL

Campaign against anti-ethical television programs enters new phase

BRASILIA, Nov 4 (alc).	A campaign against those who fund anti-ethical,
offensive television programs will now include efforts to lobby Congress to
approve a legal bill that will create the Ethical TV Code, a Television
Program Monitoring Council and the National Ethics in Television Commission.

The bill is currently before the congressional Social Security and Family
Commission. The initiative is being spearheaded by the congressional Human
Rights and Minorities Commission, together with 60 groups from civil
society.

As well as publishing the list of the 10 most immoral and damaging programs
according to viewers, the campaign is now disseminating the names of
individuals or businesses that sponsor and advertise in these programs.

"It is the advertisers that maintain these programs on television and the
idea is to make this public so that people stop buying the products that are
advertised on these programs," said campaign coordinator Congressman Orlando
Fantazzini, of the Workers Party of Sao Paulo.

This year, the campaign received 500 complaints from viewers. The most
highly criticized program, given its explicit sex scenes, the fact that it
incites violence and is shown at an inappropriate time from May 7 to October
11 was a program hosted by Joao Kleber "Hot Afternoons," broadcast by Red
TV.

All of the Brazilian television networks came under viewer fire. Among
others there were complaints about three soap operas shown on Red Globo. The
complaints referred to sex scenes and the fact that programs incite violence
and mock people.

On October 17, National Day Against Immorality on TV, campaign organizers
called on people not to turn on their televisions between 15:00 and 16:00.
In Sao Paulo, television viewing declined 14 percent compared to the
previous Sunday according to an Ibope survey. The campaign took place at a
national level.

One of the objectives of the campaign is to demand respect for human rights
in television program. The campaign "Who funds Immorality and Offends
Citizens" began November 13, 2002 and has received more than 15,000
electronic messages including complaints and manifestations of support, said
press advisor Janete Lemos.

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ARGENTINA
Debate about sexual education in schools continues

BUENOS AIRES, Nov. 3 (alc). Debate about a Project to include a course on
integral sexual education in schools in Buenos Aires divides Evangelical
opinion

Claudia Lombardo, president of the Methodist Educational Institutions
Commission (CIEM) published a statement supporting Methodist Bishop Nelly
Ritchie, in favor of including the Integral Sexual Education as an
obligatory course in schools in the capital.

This statement, said Lombardo, is in line with our daily practice. She added
that their perspective tries to "be as inclusive and in solidarity as
possible, taking into account all the elements of reality to address the
needs and interests of our students."

The CIEM brings together all Evangelical Methodist Church educational
establishments Argentina, from early education to universities and maintains
close ties with similar organizations in Latin America and around the world.

We are aware that some responsibilities that belonged to determined social
settings have been displaced toward the school, she said. She underscored,
however, that this is work that should be carried out with the committed
participation of the family.

School should be a space to value the human being, to develop respect for
oneself and ones peers, to strengthen self esteem, the relationships we have
with each other, awareness and care for our bodies, responsible sexuality
and everything implied in an integral perspective.

On the other hand, Ricardo M. Bedrossian, lawyer, teacher and pastor,
specialist in issues of sexuality, shares the strong opposition that the
Christian Alliance of Evangelical Churches Federation of the Argentine
Republic (FACIERA) has voiced regarding the mentioned legal Project.

Bedrossian was one of the people who expressed his opposition to the Project
during a public audience held last month in Congress in Buenos Aires.

FACIERA maintains that children's sexual education corresponds to the
family, and must be based on the family's own convictions. It also believes
that establishing an obligatory sexual education course in school will make
it possible to present homosexuality as a valid option and Christian schools
will be obligated to impart this teaching by law.

Behind this Project there is an ideology that is attempting to incorporate a
"gender" perspective as a guiding principle. As a result, children will be
taught to choose their gender, regardless of their biological sex as the
"gender" ideology affirms that male and female behavior is imposed by
parents and culture, according to FACIERA.

This ideology is contrary to Christian doctrine. While each individual has
freedom of thought, an imposition of an ideology in education harks back to
totalitarian regimes like communism, fascism and Nazism, said Bedrossian.

Moreover, the law also seeks to make the value of the family relative, as
the basic cell of our society. Parents, not schools or the media, are the
first educators of our children, he said.

Bedrossian admitted, however, that sexual education is necessary - but in
the appropriate framework, mainly the family. This education must not be
used to impose ideologies or to undermine the cement of society. It is
absurd to reduce sexual education to the use of condoms to avoid AIDS or to
stop teenage pregnancies.

The experience in other countries is clear, he said. In the United States
sexual educators struck fear in the hearts of legislators with statistics
about rising teenage pregnancy.

They said that better information about birth control would solve the
problem. However, after several years of this limited sexual education, the
number of people with AIDs and teenage pregnancies continues to rise,
according to Bedrossian.

Let us not be mistaken, he said.  There is a need for education in values.
People must be taught that love and respect are the foundation of human
relationships. That sex without love is a mere physiological act and nothing
else, that the family has been created by God to give its members a place to
develop in a healthy fashion.

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MEXICO
Plurality of experiences in the arrival of Protestantism to Latin America

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Nov. 1 (alc). "It is necessary to overcome the
historical vision that Protestantism in Latin America began with the arrival
of foreign missionaries in the XIX Century," said Mexican theologian and
investigator Carlos Mondragsn, during the II Symposium on Evangelical
Protestantism in Latin America.

Mondragsn made this statement during the event organized by the Latin
American Theological Fraternity (FTL) based in Mexico, the Study Center on
Mexican Protestantism, the Community of Christian Students and researchers
from the National University of Mexico in San Cristsbal de las Casas,
Chiapas in southern Mexico.

During his conference, Mondragsn made a distinction between Protestant
institutions, whose representatives reached Latin America after the wars of
independence, to found the first Churches and the literature, the ideas and
the European Protestant colonizers who reached these islands and coastlines
at different times during three centuries of Spanish domination.

According to the UNAM investigator and FTL member we must continue to study
the endogenous conditions of Latin American religious history as well as the
active role that Latin Americans themselves played in disseminating and
consolidating Protestantism in these lands.

He said there are cases in countries south of Rio Bravo, or regions where
groups of believers broke with the Catholic Church and met together to read
and study the Bible before representatives from historic Protestant
denominations arrived. They arrived to give a denominational name to these
groups, he said.

Mondragsn gave the example of the so-called "constitutionalist fathers" in
Mexico who tried to create a Mexican Catholic Church, independent of Rome,
in the second half of the XIX Century. When this project failed, the former
priests approached North American Protestant denominations, giving rise to
the subsequent formation of some of the first Mexican Protestant Churches.

"We must recognize the presence and work of the former priests in the
foundation of several of the first Protestant Churches in Latin America," he
emphasized.

This is not the only historical example. There were cases in which
missionaries gave the denominational name to already existing Churches or
groups of believers, yet in the reports and missionary historical accounts
these appear as the fruit of foreign missionary work. The role that Latin
Americans themselves played in disseminating the Bible and in Evangelical
preaching was lost, he said.

Returning to the concept of "polygenesis" that was mentioned by a previous
speaker, Mondragsn emphasizes the importance of being aware of historical
reality, such as the emergence of Protestantism in Latin America, which was
plural and diverse and has the active participation of national subjects,
without whom the work of foreign missionaries would not have borne the fruit
it did.

In his conclusions, Mondragsn affirmed that the "history of Mexican and
Cuban Protestants shows that the historic dynamic that is presented in the
dissemination of ideas and Protestant doctrines responds to multiple factors
that cannot be reduced to a single explanatory model."	(775/2004).

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COLOMBIA
Christians for peace formulate message of hope

BOGOTA, Nov. 1 (alc). The so-called community state and democratic security
project spearheaded by the current Colombian government is breaking down
collective land rights and the autonomy of the communities, according to the
Continental Meeting of Christians for Peace with Justice and held in this
city from October 30.

This government policy is only sustainable if backed by strong repression
against social and resistance movements expressed in recent years by a
paramilitary strategy that is leading to the massive displacement of entire
populations, attacking life, culture and the social fabric, according to the
final statement from the event.

This has led to a degradation of the armed conflict, which increasingly
affects the civilian population. Women are the victims of all armed actors,
submitted to all types of abuse; their bodies are considered the spoils of
war, regardless of their age. Moreover, young people, boys and adolescents,
are forced to join armed groups.

Being young and poor is to be stigmatized and criminalized, converted into
the victims of "social cleanup" actions, something that is worse if you are
Black. The displacement of populations in Colombia is of such a magnitude
that it is considered the second leading humanitarian crisis in the world,
it emphasized.

A significant group of brothers and sisters, from different places in
Colombia, Latin America and the Caribbean, met in search of mechanisms to
articulate a continental movement for peace with justice and dignity and
were able to witness the dramatic situation affecting Colombia.

The event was convened by the Religious Confederation of Guatemala, the
Presbyterian Church of Colombia, the Ecumenical Network of Colombia, the
National Social Communication Center (CENCOS) of Mexico and others in
Ecuador, as well as by Catholic bodies and other organizations.

The implementation of neoliberal and structural adjustment measures only
increases the gap between the few rich and an overwhelmingly poor majority.
As a consequence of these measures, in some places like Buenaventura, on the
Pacific Coast, unemployment is at 80 percent.

This same system depends on legal and illegal military strategies as a means
to expropriate peoples' land. Their natural resources are turned over to
national and multi-national private corporations. Such is the case of
indigenous, peasant farmer and African-descendants on the Pacific coast who
are losing their land to mega projects and African palm plantations.

A similar situation exists at a continental and world level. Human rights
are being submitted to the economic interests of the powerful, supported by
multi-lateral organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the
World Trade organizations and the World Bank, which determine the policies
that should govern countries, above and beyond national constitutions, the
document from the meeting stated.

One example of this is the Free Trade Agreement for the Americas FTAA, which
our governments have sought without consulting organizations and
communities.

Generalized administrative corruption has been a breeding group to
facilitate the imposition of these diabolic policies. The other instrument
is the militarization and Para-militarization of life.

This reality of sin makes us indignant as a people of God. The risen Christ
inspires us as Christians to reaffirm the absolute value of life, life in
abundance and to reject all human sacrifices and sacrifices of nature that
are committed by the forces of evil, it affirmed.

However, those of us who are participating in the event feel encouraged to
live a spirituality of hope. We have shared experiences in the recovery of
the political action of the people, the affirmation of the rights of
specific sectors, such as indigenous people, Black people, women, peasant
farmers, children, young people, Pentecostal Churches and others.

Indigenous marches in Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia, the social movement of
women against war in Colombia, organic farming, specific Bible readings from
the profound Abya-Yala cultures are, among others, the Karios of something
new that the Spirit has begun and which is growing.

And it produces fruits of colors, flavors, smells and textures that
emphasize life, weaving ties that are an anticipation of the fullness of the
Kingdom, where there is space for everyone, concluded the declaration.

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NICARAGUA
Baptist leader calls for calm in the face of electoral violence

MANAGUA, Nov  2 (alc).Arsenio Alvir, Baptist candidate for the National
Convergence alliance for the mayor of New Guinea called on people to remain
calm and to turn to dialogue in the face of rising electoral violence that
left its first victims in its wake.

Alvir is the favorite as mayor of New Guinea, some 300 kilometers southeast
of Managua in municipal elections to be held November 7.

Here last Sunday the remains of farmer Martin Zeledon Urbina were buried.
Urbina was shot October 28 but two alleged adversarial activists.

It is presumed that the target was his wife Gladys Espinoza Ramirez,
political secretary for the Sandinista Nacional Liberation Front in Colonia
Union, in the same municipality.

Alvir called on the government, the police and the Supreme Electoral Council
to hold a clear and swift investigation of the crime and to take immediate
measures to calm down the situation. The FSLN also called for an
investigation into the attack.

On the other hand, in Las Naciones, also in Nueva Guinea, two unknown
assailants set fire to German Espinoza Urbina's store, a FSLN militant,
causing material damages.

In the San Francisco Community, activities from the Liberal
Constitutionalist Party beat members of the Resistance Party. Two people
were injured, one hospitalized.

Moreover, the legal representative and president of the Christian Way Party
(PCC) Francisco Masis denounced that in Juigalpa, a city located 146
kilometers from Managua, in the center of the country, FSLN activities
destroyed propaganda and poster for their candidates.

Church of God Pastor William Gonzalez lamented the incidents and commented
that these events stain the elections, something that should be a civil
fiesta. The Evangelical leader called for calm, dialogue and to avoid
confrontation, which only leads to violence as took place in Nueva Guinea.
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Agjncia Latino-Americana e Caribenha de Comunicagco (ALC)
Apartado 14-225 Lima 14 Peru
Tel. (51 1) 462 0189 - Telefax (51 1) 463 2496
Correio-e: director@alcnoticias.org
http://www.alcnoticias.org/portugues