Study reveals Amish growth. A new study says the population of North American Amish has increased nearly 10 percent in the past two years, causing many communities to turn westward in search of new land. Conducted by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pa., the study found the American Amish population has more than doubled in the past 10 years, bringing the current total to about 250,000. The current annual increase hovers at about 5 percent, meaning the population doubles approximately every 16 years. With a rise in population, however, comes a need for fertile farmland to sustain the Amish in their simple lifestyle, and land can be expensive. In Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, known as the unofficial Amish heartland, costs can reach $15,000 an acre. Elsewhere in the nation, however, that price can drop to $2,000 or $3,000. This push for land has encouraged Amish communities to look as far west as Colorado and South Dakota.
Anti-Jewish incidents continue. A Jewish group that tracks anti-Semitism has published its annual report of more than 1,200 incidents of assaults, vandalism and harassment against Jews in 2009, saying the level of incidents remained “sustained and troubling.” In total, the New York-based Anti-Defamation League reported 29 incidents of physical assaults on Jewish individuals, 760 cases of anti-Semitic harassments and threats, and 422 reports of anti-Semitic vandalism in 2009. Most of the cases took place in states with large Jewish populations. The top four states included California (23 percent of total cases), New York (17 percent), New Jersey (10 percent) and Florida (7 percent). The 2009 audit employed new methodology and evaluation criteria, the first makeover ADL has made in more than three decades of reporting on the topic. When analyzed using the old criteria, the 2009 numbers represent an approximate 10 percent increase in incidents from 2008.
Priest in doghouse after canine Communion. The Anglican Church in Canada is dealing with fallout following a published report that a priest gave Communion to a dog. One congregant quit St. Peter’s Anglican Church in downtown Toronto—and filed a complaint with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto—in protest over the June 27 incident, in which interim priest Marguerite Rea gave Communion to a man and his dog. The Toronto Star reports that according to people in attendance, it was a spontaneous gesture intended to make both the dog and its owner—a first-timer at the church—feel welcome. Peggy Needham, a lay official who was sitting near the altar, said she doesn’t recall the man asking for the sacrament for his dog. Instead, she said the priest leaned over and placed the wafer on the canine’s wagging tongue. No wine was offered to the dog. Bishop Patrick Yu said he wrote to the parishioner who protested: “It is not the policy of the Anglican Church to give Communion to animals. I can see why people would be offended. It is a strange and shocking thing, and I have never heard of it happening before. I think the reverend was overcome by what I consider a misguided gesture of welcoming.”
Compiled from Religion News Service