Short stuff

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Campus Life magazine will become Ignite Your Faith magazine, beginning with the Jan./Feb. issue. The magazine’s publisher, Christianity Today International, hopes the renaming will clarify its intended audience. Founded in 1942, the magazine targets high school, not college, students.

—release

The 18 articles of the Mennonite Brethren Confession of Faith are now available in Chinese. Translated by Joseph Kwan, editor of the MB Chinese Herald, the booklet contains the text in both English and Chinese.

—Kindred Productions

It’s been called “the most startling public turnaround” since Bob Dylan announced he’d been born again. Anne Rice, who gained fame and fortune with her sagas of vampires and witches, now writes about Jesus. Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, a novel of Jesus at age 7, is the first of a trilogy. Her “return to faith” happened over a course of years, Rice says; “I promised that from now on I would write only for the Lord.”

—media reports

Canada has a new Anglican publication. The Anglican Planet, a monthly, originated as an “alternative voice” for conservative Anglicans who feel the denomination’s official paper, Anglican Journal, is not representing them.

—ChristianWeek

Musing in print about why Manitoba Mennonites, like recent Giller prize winner David Bergen (for The Time in Between), have risen to “literary prominence,” Winnipeg Free Press columnist Morley Walker opines it’s not just because of a word-venerating religious culture or the need to be “heard” that once found fulfillment in the service of the church. It comes down to “self-discipline and hard work,” he says, qualities the Mennonites encourage.

—Winnipeg Free Press

The Ecumenical Jury prize at the 2005 Montreal World Film Festival, awarded for films of artistic merit that explore ethical, social and spiritual values, went to Kamataki, directed by Claude Gagnon. The film tells of a young Japanese–Canadian who learns traditional pottery from his uncle in Japan while recovering from a suicide attempt.

—The Church Herald

Although record executives told Jars of Clay their interest in global poverty and persecution would be “career suicide,” the band refused to retreat to “safe” Christian music and formed Blood:Water Mission, an agency that works for AIDS relief in Africa. Their audiences, they are finding, are willing to engage in social and justice issues.

—Sojourners

“Children of the Nabka” is a new video from MCC that deals with aspects of the conflict of Palestianians and Israelis, both “heirs to a story of dispossession.” For grade 10 to adult, the video includes a study guide, and can be purchased or rented.

—Mennonite Central Committee