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Total attendance at the various events is expected to top 1,000, of whom around 30% will have had little or no contact with evangelicals. There is already a waiting list for the ‘Contemporary music week’, though a few places remain on the ‘Classical music week’ and the ‘Computing week’, both due to be held in August. Specialists are brought to teach on these residential courses.

The summer programme ends with the popular ‘Family week’ in the last week of August, which includes time for relaxation and excursions in the area of Toral, which includes the historic city of León, as well as countryside of great beauty. Each family has its own room, which is a great bonus, and this year’s Bible Studies are being led by Walter Hofkamp de Seixo.

A notable feature of the Toral activities is the large number of volunteer monitors and leaders, who give up their time freely to help. This all helps to present the Gospel in a natural way to the large number of people from a non-evangelical background who spend time at Toral each summer. It is an open door for people to explore the Christian faith without the usual prejudices which still cloud much of daily life in 21st century Spain.

More information about Toral can be found at the website: www.leontoral.org

Source: Campamentos Toral. Editing: ACPress I believe in not going to church
 
July 7th, 2005 (ACPress.net). 
Belief and church attendance have never been further apart. More than half of all Spaniards say they hardly attend Mass or another kind of religious service, but 80% call themselves ‘believers’.>

78% claim to be Catholic, 12% agnostic and 6% atheist. 18% still say they go to church virtually every week, while a further 17% say they go several times a year. 2.2% go several times each week. The most important things to Spaniards are, in descending order, health, the family, work, friends, free time and money. Religion and politics are out of the frame. More people expressed satisfaction with the family than anything else, followed by their home, lifestyle, health and educational level. There was less satisfaction regarding work and pay. A lot of people said they would like to have more spare time to watch TV, read, do sport, spend time with their partner, or use Internet.

58% live with their spouse and children (if they have any), 6.7% live together without being married, 17.7% live with their parents and 13% live without a partner, though maybe family members other than their parents. Of the children who live at home, 45% are over 24, while 40% are aged between 7 and 14.

Source: CIS. Editing: ACPress.netArgument still rages over Religious Education
 
Madrid, July 7th, 2005 (ACPress.net). 
The latest meeting between the government and representatives of the Catholic Church has done little to bridge the considerable gap between them on the issue of the forthcoming Education Law.>

The Catholic delegation look back to the privileges enshrined in the pre-constitutional Accords of 1979 which established confessional R.E. as a subject on the same academic footing as any other. The Constitution itself guarantees the right of parents to choose moral and religious education for their children according to their own convictions.

The government is keen to implant a much broader subject along the lines of ‘History of Religions’ or ‘Ethics and values’. The Education Minister says freedom over Religious Education is absolutely guaranteed, something which Catholic groups deny.

Source: ESD. Editing: ACPress.net Christians needed in politics

Barcelona, July 7th, 2005 (ACPress.net). 
Jaume Llenas, General Secretary of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance, attended the ‘New Europe Forum’ in Timisoara, Rumania, in June, an event designed to encourage and help Christians to get involved in politics.>

Llenas said politics needs people able to influence it with Christian values. “We are beginning to realise (in Spain) that we cannot live in a ghetto, spiritualising our faith.” He admitted that the general tendency has been to immerse oneself in the life of the local church and not to worry about social issues. But preaching the Gospel has socio-political implications. “All that is expected of a good Christian is that he be a good church member”, with the result that Christians have disconnected themselves from society, as they feel comfortable within their churches. “We must recover a desire to share and promote values in society, not in order to impose Christian morality, but to have an influence on society.”

Although Llenas mentioned the Christian Union Party in Holland, which has 3 MPs, he recognised that this was in a country with a Protestant base, and that in Spain it would be necessary to try and gain influence in all the major political parties. However, with the experience of Franco’s National Catholicism fresh in the mind, many evangelicals still view politics with deep suspicion and consider it an unworthy profession for a believer. Yet  as long as the Church does not lose sight of its main mission, it can support those of its members who wish to participate in politics, without there being any one party which will be the only valid option for Christians to join. This will depend more on their own political convictions.

Llenas said the Evangelical Alliance wanted to help Christians who felt a calling to political involvement, by increasing links between them. In this connection he mentioned the visit of the European Evangelical Alliance’s Socio-Political Representative to the European Union, Julia Doxat-Purser, who is due in Madrid in October. One of the aims of her visit is to encourage evangelicals to consider a commitment to political participation.

Llenas concluded “It is more important to have influence than power”, and he highlighted that political involvement should come from a genuine Christian vocation among individuals, not churches or institutions.

Source: AEE. Editing: ACPress.net Palau preached in Madrid

Madrid, July 7th, 2005 (ACPress.net). 
It is estimated that between 35,000 and 40,000 people attended on each of the two nights of ‘FestiMadrid’, an open-air concert of Christian music which included an evangelistic message by Luis Palau. The event was held on the esplanade outside Madrid’s ‘Ventas’ bullring.>

The musical line-up included José Luis Rodríguez (‘El Puma’), Yuri, Rescate and Marcos Vidal, and was one of the largest evangelical events ever held in the Spanish capital, perhaps the biggest ever in terms of the number of people who attended. Palau’s message referred to the need of people to turn to God. He stressed that Jesus Christ is the one who can give new life, peace and meaning to those who give their hearts to Him. Festival organisers say “hundreds” did so.

The second night saw the popular Spanish singer, Rocío Jurado, appear on stage, invited there by El Puma. He prayed for her (she is not a Christian) as she has a serious illness. The event was mentioned in the local sections of the major newspapers, which do not usually give much space to religious events (papal visits excepted), especially not Protestant ones. The Festival audience represented the current reality of the Spanish evangelical church, with a large number of South American immigrants, and gypsies from the Philadelphia Church.

Money raised by the Festival is going to help the victims of the Asian tidal wave, and there was also a campaign for blood donors - a pressing need in Madrid. Palau also spoke at two other events - one for business people, and another for women -, both of which were attended by about 350 people. Unlike his visits to other countries, Palau did not meet any political or public figures during his time in Spain. 

Sources: FestiMadrid, Entrecristianos, Agencias. Editing: ACPress.netGovernment Trust ready to receive requests for money from religious groups

Madrid, July 7th, 2005 (ACPress.net). 
The government Trust designed to support cultural and social projects organised by the three officially recognised religious minorities in Spain - Protestants, Jews and Muslims - is up, and if not exactly running, beginning to grind into action.>

Groups which are involved in projects that meet the stringent requirements, gain the official approval of their supervising body (the Federation of Evangelical Organisations, FEREDE, in the case of Protestants), and can face the 16-page application form, are now invited to submit their requests for money. These will then be studied by the Trust. Each religion will get 1 million euros, to be shared among all the approved projects accordingly.

The Trust is chaired by the Justice Minister, Juan Fernando López Aguilar. The money is only available for “cultural, educational and social integration projects.” Buildings and clerical salaries, in fact anything connected to ‘worship activities’, are excluded. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church will receive this year nearly 150 million euros for clerical salaries and other activities directly related to worship. It also enjoys many privileges such as tax exemption and so forth. Yet the Minister insists that the Spanish government is not seeking to promote any particular religious group, even though nothing has been done until now to put the agreements with the three minority religions, signed years ago, into practice.

Source: El País. Editing: ACPress.net A.C.Press: The News Agency of the AEE  (Spanish Evangelical Alliance)
 
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