Religion The Prince George Citizen - Wednesday, December 27, 2000 - 19 TWO GREAT CHOICES ON VIRTUALLY ALL 2001/2000 MODELS Down Payment Payments Interest (General Motors pays the interest) Purchase Financing up to 48 months Lease rates as low as 1.9% available and fora limited time NO SECURITY DEPOSIT REQUIRED on 2001 models. 2001 CHEVY SILVERADO EXTENDED CAB RELIGION IN BRIEF Minister strikes chord OTTAWA (CP) — In September, Rev. Ellie Barrington urged Ontarians to donate their tax-rebate cheques from the Ontario government to those most affected by government cutbacks. And they did, reports the United Church Observer. “It grew much bigger than I imagined,” says Barrington who lives in Ottawa and ministers part-time at St. An-drew’s-Norwood United Church in Montreal. Barrington says she was besieged by e-mails, phone calls and letters after she lashed out at the province’s rebate scheme, which gave taxpayers a dividend of up to $200 as part of its tax-cutting program. Barrington called the cheques a “political bribe” which took money from those who need it most to reward those who need it least. She put her “Don’t Endorse It, Donate It” idea on the Internet and “let the Spirit carry it the rest of the way.” The message spread to community groups, congregations, individuals and politicians, including Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty who donated his cheque to a Toronto food bank. Pastor goes online WELLAND, Ont. (CP) — For parents who want to learn how to communicate better with their children, resources from various Christian agencies are available online, reports the ChristianCourier. One recent addition is a free online course put together by Gary Screaton Page, an author, minister and parent based in Welland, Ont. Page’s course, Being the Parent YOU Want to Be, is based on his book of the same name. The course is available on the Parenting Today’s Teen Web site at www.par-entingteens.com. Click on classes. Parentingteens.com, based in Olympia, Wash., describes the course as teaching parents how to encourage their kids’ interests, understand their points of view, how to overcome their resistance to parents’ ideas, how to solve kids’ problems and help them to make responsible decisions. Leaders target racism WASHINGTON (AP) — A broad coalition of U.S. religious leaders has issued a statement calling racism “an evil that must be eradicated from the institutional structures that shape our daily lives, including our houses of worship.” The endorsers represented, among others, the Roman Catholic bishops, National Council of Churches, Southern Baptist Convention, Greek Orthodox archdiocese, National Congress of Black Churches, Judaism’s three major. branches, national Muslim organiza-. tions and Native American religions. The participating groups have long opposed prejudice, but they rarely act jointly on social issues. The interfaith National Conference for Community and Justice, which organized the effort in response to a call from President Clinton, released a directory of 27 religious programs working for racial inclusiveness. The group also issued specific guidelines to help local congregations and religious organizations foster racial justice. Scholar wins prize LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — James Kugel of Harvard University has won the annual $200,000 Grawemeyer Award in. Religion for his 1997 book The Bible As It Was, which treats ancient interpretations of the Bible’s first five books. The award recognizes “outstanding and creative works that promote understanding of the relationship between human beings and the divine.” It is presented by Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville. Kugel, an Orthodox Jew, is a professor of Hebrew literature and directs Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies. —^ m The General Motors Holiday Hate Break Chevrolet 2001 CHEVROUET CAVALIER COUPE 2001 CHEVROLET MAUBU FOR 12 MONTHS * Purchase Financing up to 48 months1* Oldsmobile ■■ mm m n 2001 ALERO BY OLDSMOBILE 2001 INTRIGUE BY OLDSMOBILE CHEVY TRUCKS 2001 CHEVROLET VENTURE Down Payment Payments for 90 days Interest for 90 days (General Motors pays the interest) SEE WHAT 0.9%f FINANCING CAN MEAN FOR YOU YOU SAVE* COST OF COST OF AMOUNT BORROWING BORROWING FINANCED AT 9.5% FOR 48 AT 0.9% FOR MONTHS* 48 MONTHS* $15,000 $3,088.80 $277,44 $25,000 $5,147.84 $462.08 $3S,pOO *7,206.88 $646.72 2001 CHEVY TRACKER 2001 CHEVY BLAZER 2001 CHEVY 1500 SERIES PICKUPS 2 Purchase Financing up to 48 months1 Downpayment ni | ic |V| I 1 Payments for 90 days lllVy Interest for 90 days I (General Motors pays the interest) PLUS: IMPALA, MONTE CARLO, CAMARO, AURORA, SILHOUETTE, ASTRO, S-10. 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Offers apply as Indteated to new or demonstrator 2001 and remaining 2000 models. Offers apply to qualified retail customers In the BC Chevrolet Oldsmobile Dealer Marketing Association area only. Dealer trade may be necessary. Limited quantities ot 2000 models available. Limited time offer which may not be combined with other offers. Dealers are free to set IndMdual prices. See your Dealer for conditions and detala. ‘Savings based on 0.9% Purchase Financing compared to current average Financial Institution rates. Your savings may vary. , CHEVROLET CHdsmobfle Christian fundamentalism growing on Saltspring Island Southam Newspapers VANCOUVER — It’s almost as though the churchgoers can sense there is an unsaved soul among them. At first opportunity, members of the Community Gospel Chapel, in true fundamentalist form, eagerly introduce themselves to me. Recruitment is in the air this Sunday morning in the brand new building on the north end of Saltspring Island. The 12,000-square-foot religious complex on a 1.2-hectare plot of donated land is not quite finished, but the church is in full born-again swing. The Gospel Chapel, an affiliate of the Apostolic Church of Pentecost of Canada, has outgrown its old space, but there is room to spare in the mammoth new auditorium. The upcoming inaugural open house is meant to woo others on the eclectic island off the southern tip of Vancouver Island to the church, “especially your unsaved friends,” the announcer tells the flock. Down the road, at the Salt Spring Pentecostal Assembly’s newly renovated complex, the atmosphere is more charged, but the cut-and-dried message is the same. Pastor Rick Hill reads a Biblical passage about the City of Ephesus, a predominantly pagan culture that rejected Paul’s teachings of God’s grace. Then, Hill preaches, “Man had chosen to become a law unto himself, thinking he knows more about his life than the God who created him.” The converts among them, those who “believed God’s love and mercy and desire for their lives, their lives were changed. At that moment, they recognized that God’s laws are not open for debate.” In a world of parables, the story of the Ephesians is perhaps the best sketch of saucy Saltspring, a community better known for its free-spirited openness, than its conservative, evangelical proselytizing. This morning, there’s no talk about the anti-logging calendar sporting naked women that has become the island’s public face this fall. Instead, we hear about sexually transmitted diseases, the failure of condoms and the evils of no-fault divorce legislation. Here, on an island more noted for its shades of grey, the evangelical preachers spread a black-and-white message of absolutes. And in an era when the growth of fundamentalist churches has elsewhere stalled, the strategy seems to be working — the numbers on Saltspring just keep climbing. “Man had chosen to become a law unto himself, thinking he knows more about his life than the God who created him.” The boom would be less surprising if we were in the heart of Alberta’s Bible Belt or maybe the Fraser Valley. But according to local theorists, the island’s alternative flavour — which brings together lost souls and open minds — may be the unlikely fertile ground these Christian fundamentalist churches need to flourish. Certainly, it is not a trend that anyone saw coming. The early years of the Community Gospel Church, the first evangelical operation on Saltspring, were humble in the extreme. Without its own place to worship in 1961, a handful of followers attended Bible studies and Sunday school at family homes. “I never imagined we’d grow to this. It’s a big transformation,” says Effie Twa, one of the original members, now in her 80s. In the last decade, the Gospel Church has grown eight fold, from 18 members to more than 150. “There’s been steady, steady growth,” says pastor Chris Cormack, who has overseen the membership drive and the construction of the new building. It wasn’t long after the first settlers joined natives on Saltspring’in 1859 that organized religion followed. African-Americans, former slaves and children of slaves who immigrated to British Columbia as free citizens, were drawn to a Methodist preacher who held the first church service in 1861. After the arrival of Brits, Scots, Hawai-ians and Australians, Catholic, United, Methodist and Anglican churches were built in the 1880s. Morality was very much qn the mind of church leaders like Rev. Edward Francis Wilson of St. Mark’s Anglican Church, who, in 1905, wrote in the Salt Spring Island Church Monthly: “The moral condition on the island, taking it all over, has, I believe, improved. There is no tavern now on the island and not nearly as much drinking as there used to be. Many bachelors have married and new settlers with families have come in.... There is, I think, very little gambling, and even card-playing does not seem to be much indulged in. I would like to be able to feel that there was some increased interest taken in spiritual matters, but of this I fear there is not very much outward evidence.” Despite the arrival of “gentlemen settlers” in the late 19th century, Saltspring didn’t undergo a radical transformation until the 1960s. Today, the mainline Christian churches — Catholic, United and Anglican — are surrounded by adherents of Judaism, Buddhism, Bahai and the Wiccan religion, as well as Mormons, agnostics, atheists and born-again Christians.