c. 1996 Religion News Service

Orthodox dispute prompts WCC concern

(RNS)-World Council of Churches (WCC) General Secretary Konrad Raiser says the world body is watching with”profound concern”the dispute between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul over the status of the Orthodox Church in Estonia.

Raiser, an ordained minister of the Evangelical Church in Germany, told RNS in a recent interview that he has written to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksy II, urging that the dispute be speedily resolved.

Both bodies are members of the World Council of Churches, the international ecumenical agency of 324 Orthodox and Protestant churches, based in Geneva.

The breach between the two Orthodox bodies became glaringly visible on Feb. 23, when for the first time in 1,008 years, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch omitted from the day’s prayers the name of the Ecumenical Patriarch, the preeminent leader of Orthodox Christians worldwide.

At the heart of the dispute between the two is the status of the 60,000-member Orthodox Church in Estonia.

Since the rise of communism in 1917 in the former Soviet Union, the Estonian church has at different times been under the control of both the Russian church and the Patriarchate, depending on the political situation in the Soviet Union.

But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, anti-Russian sentiments sharpened in Estonia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, prompting calls from political and religious leaders for Orthodox Christian churches to be independent from the Russian patriarch.

On Feb. 20, Bartholomew declared the Estonian church to be under his jurisdiction and on Feb. 22, he recognized an autonomous Orthodox Apostolic Church of Estonia. Those acts led to the rupture, including the omission of Bartholomew’s name from the prayers and a declaration by Aleksy that relations between the two bodies were”suspended.” Raiser said the dispute has not immediately affected the WCC. He said the WCC will meet in May with representatives of a number of Orthodox churches.”That will give us a chance to assess the situation,”he said.”We have been told by both sides that this is, for the time being, an internal matter and that they will work it out according to the rules of inter-Orthodox church relationships, and it is not an ecumenical issue with which the WCC … should legitimately involve itself,”he said.

Mainline Protestants’ membership down, giving up

(RNS)-Membership in a number of mainline Protestant denominations is continuing to slide, according to the National Council of Churches’ 1996 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. But contributions are rising, even in churches that are losing members.”Membership decline in the mainline denominations has been noted for several decades,”Kenneth Bedell, the Yearbook’s editor wrote.”That decline continues.” It is difficult, however, to draw more than broad conclusions because churches use different means of counting members and the statistics are not always for the same years.

The biggest mainline Protestant loser since the 1995 edition of the Yearbook was published is the Presbyterian Church (USA), which lost 98,630 members, a 2.6 percent drop. The United Church of Christ lost 28,868 members, a 1.89 percent loss and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), lost 20,373 members, a 2.13 percent loss.

Not all denominations report financial information to the Yearbook but Bedell said that nearly all of those providing such figures for the 1996 Yearbook showed increases in contributions.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) lost the most members, but showed a 4.8 percent increase in total contributions to the denomination, to $2.1 billion. The UCC reported a 0.31 percent increase for a total income of $623.8 million. The Disciples of Christ registered a 3.34 percent rise in total contributions to $385.5 million.

The Roman Catholic Church remains the nation’s largest religious body, with 60,190,605 members. It is followed by the Southern Baptist Convention, with 15,614,060 members; the United Methodist Church, with 8,584,125 members; the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc., with 8,200,000 members; and the Church of God in Christ, with 5,499,875 members.

French Trappist monks kidnapped in Algeria

(RNS)-Seven French Trappist monks were abducted from their Algerian monastery Wednesday (March 27). Algerian security officials blamed the kidnapping on Muslim fundamentalists.”They came during the night and took them,”a spokesman for the Catholic archdiocese in Algiers told Reuters. Algerian law enforcement officials said the kidnapping was carried out by a”criminal group,”Algerian official shorthand for Muslim fundamentalists, Reuters said.

No group has taken responsibility for the kidnapping.

The monastery, about 45 miles south of Algiers, is in the Medea region of Algeria, a stronghold of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). GIA has ordered all foreigners to leave Algeria or face death.

There are an estimated 300 nuns, monks and missionaries of various nationalities in Algeria, Reuters reported.

Archbishop Henri Teisser of Algiers issued a plea for the release of the monks.

An estimated 50,000 people have been killed in Algeria since 1992 in political violence between Islamic groups and the military-backed government.

Mubarak names leading jurist to head Al-Azhar mosque and university

(RNS)-Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, 67, Egypt’s leading Islamic jurist, has been named to head the influential Al-Azhar mosque and university.

Al-Azhar is Islam’s oldest and most prominent institution of religious scholarship.

Tantawi is a moderate, pro-government scholar, the Associated Press said.

He succeeds Gad el-Haq Ali Gad el-Haq, who died March 15 of a heart attack.

Before being named to the prestigious Al-Azhar post, Tantawi served as Egypt’s mufti, the government’s top religious figure.

U.S. Mayors call for maintaining a united Jerusalem

(RNS)-A delegation of 11 mayors representing the U.S. Conference of Mayors ended a week-long visit to Jerusalem Tuesday (March 26) with a call for a united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.”All that we have seen and learned here has proven to us the value of maintaining a united Jerusalem,”the U.S. mayors said in a statement at the end of their visit.”To divide this city would widen the gap between people and be antithetical to all principles of human understanding and cooperation,”they said.

The mayors were in Jerusalem to attend the 16th Jerusalem Conference of Mayors.

Mayors attending the conference were: Charles Box of Rockford, Ill; William Thornton of San Antonio; Norman Coleman of St. Paul, Minn.; Sharon Sayles Belton of Minneapolis; Michael Turner of Dayton, Ohio; Richard Mystrom of Anchorage, Alaska; Michael Johanns of Lincoln, Neb.; Beverly O’Neill of Long Beach, Calif.; Joseph Kernan of South Bend, Ind.; Joseph Ganim of Bridgeport, Conn.; and Gary McCaleb of Abilene, Texas.

Quote of the day: Peter Jennings, senior anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight

(RNS)-Speaking at a recent conference sponsored by Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of Values in Public Life, Peter Jennings, senior anchor and editor of ABC’s World News Tonight spoke of the need for reporters to include religious views and information in their reporting:”Increasingly, medical reporting needs to include a religious component, whether it has to do with the ethics of genetic engineering or how we deal with the end of life now that we have created so much technology to extend it. … We cannot cover education without having a greater understanding of how people’s religious beliefs affect their thinking on everything from school choice to the curriculum. Coverage of family and social issues would be wholly inadequate without understanding people’s religious views of abortion and divorce, teen-age pregnancy, and sex education.”

MJP END RNS