Jordan too polluted for baptisms? Concerns about pollution and water quality have prompted an environmental advocacy group to call for banning baptisms in the lower Jordan River, where the Bible says Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. Israeli authorities insist tests done on the water of the lower Jordan River show the popular site for baptismal ceremonies at Qasr el Yahud on the West Bank meets health ministry standards. But Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of EcoPeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East, said the ceremonies should not take place until pollutants are removed from the water. His group says the river suffers from “severe mismanagement,” including diversion of 98 percent of its fresh water to Israel, Syria and Jordan, as well as discharge of untreated sewage and agricultural run-off.
Want quality health care? Check into a church-run hospital. Church-run health care systems in the United States are more efficient and provide higher quality care than their secular counterparts, according to a new Thomson Reuters study. The study looked at 255 health care systems and found that church-owned systems are “significantly more likely to provide higher quality care and efficiency” than both investor-owned and secular nonprofit health systems. “Our data suggest that the leadership teams … of health systems owned by churches may be the most active in aligning quality goals and monitoring achievement across the system,” the report stated. The performance measures included mortality rates, the number of medical complications, readmission rates, lengths of stay, profitability and other factors.
Prayer binds black couples. The adage “couples who pray together stay together” may be true, especially for African-Americans, a new study shows. The survey of religion, race and relationships found African-Americans attend church more as couples compared to members of other racial and ethnic groups. Four in 10 African-American respondents said they attended services regularly as a couple, according to a study published in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. In comparison, 31 percent of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans, and 29 percent of whites, said they regularly shared a pew. In addition to worshipping together, African-Americans were found to be more likely than non-Hispanic whites to participate in prayer and Scripture studies at home. “Without prayer, black couples would be doing significantly worse than white couples,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, a co-author of the study and the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. “The vitality of African-Americans’ religious lives gives them an advantage over other Americans when it comes to relationships.” The study, based on responses to the 2006 National Survey of Religion and Family Life, does have limitations, scholars cautioned. For example, the responses to the survey came from one partner’s report on the quality of their relationship and the extent of their religious involvement.
Compiled from Religion News Service