Daily briefs of the top news stories impacting Christians around the world.
In today's edition:
- Cairo Mosque Turned Into Christian Torture Chamber
- Each Family Dinner Adds Up to Benefits for Adolescents
- Huckabee: Evangelicals Will Leave if GOP Backs Gay Marriage
Cairo Mosque Turned Into Christian Torture Chamber
Radical Islamists took over a Cairo mosque and used it to torture Christians who had been protesting against the Muslim Brotherhood, CBN News reports. According to Fox News, mosque officials were so upset over the incident that they had filed a police report. Leaders of Bilal Ibn Rabah mosque said radicals took control of the building after Friday prayers, then detained Christian and Muslim protesters and tortured them there for hours. Mosque officials said they "deeply regret what has happened and apologize." Observers say that more radical elements of the Muslim Brotherhood are gaining power in Egypt and pushing an Islamist agenda.
Each Family Dinner Adds Up to Benefits for Adolescents
Parents have heard it for years: Family dinners help kids avoid risky behaviors and may even help them in school. But new research shows that the more frequent these dinners, the better the adolescents fare emotionally "The effect doesn't plateau after three or four dinners a week," says Frank Elgar, an associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University in Montréal and coauthor of the study published this week in the Journal of Adolescent Health. "The more dinners a week the better." The study was based on a nationally representative sample of 26,069 Canadian adolescents ages 11 to 15 in 2010. With each additional dinner, researchers found fewer emotional and behavioral problems, greater emotional well-being, more trusting and helpful behaviors toward others and higher life satisfaction, regardless of gender, age or family economics. However, while researchers see a correlation, they can't say family dinners caused the benefits. "We don't know if family dinners contribute to mental health, or if mental health and other behavioral problems cause some teenagers to avoid the family dinner," Elgar said.
Huckabee: Evangelicals Will Leave if GOP Backs Gay Marriage
Evangelicals will leave the Republican Party if it supports redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. When asked in a Newsmax interview if he believed the Republican Party would change its position and support gay marriage, Huckabee remarked, "They might, and if they do, they're going to lose a large part of their base because evangelicals will take a walk. ... And it's not because there's an anti-homosexual mood, and nobody's homophobic that I know of, but many of us, and I consider myself included, base our standards not on the latest Washington Post poll, but on an objective standard, not a subjective standard." Evangelicals comprise an important base within the Republican Party; today, about three out of four evangelicals vote Republican.
Publication date: March 29, 2013
