Has the media focus on the U.S. election kept people from being aware of even more important issues? World News and Prophecy is committed to providing a dimension you do not readily find elsewhere.
by Cecil E. Maranville
The United States is just completing
the exhausting exercise of selecting its president-a process over which
the U.S. media, if not its citizenry, obsesses.
For many months, the hourly radio news
updates, nightly TV news broadcasts, the Internet news sites, newsmagazines,
newspapers and talk shows have been bloated with talk of the race for
the presidency.
It began long before actual candidates
clashed in the New Hampshire primary and continued past Election Day.
It's what people want, what they expect. There isn't any point in debating
whether the producers of the media set out to cultivate this craving
in the U.S. population, or whether the citizens demanded this political
saturation diet of the media. Either way, the result is the same: people
have been listening to and reading an endless stream of election-speak.
What have they missed in the meantime?
Some World News and Prophecy articles
over the past several months have referred to the 2000 election, for
who leads the only superpower in the world at the beginning of the
new millennium (which starts on January 1, 2001) is unquestionably
newsworthy. However, we have not based most articles on that theme
or even necessarily mentioned it in every publication.
Why not?
The focus of our publisher, the United
Church of God, an International Association (UCGIA),
is nonpolitical-neither for, nor against the political process. That
doesn't mean its members are not involved. UCGIA members are
encouraged to regularly ask God's intervention in the selection of
national leaders and His blessing on them in their tasks. Paul urged
Timothy to teach, "that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and
thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high
positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful
in every way" (1 Timothy 2:1-2, RSV).
