c. 1996 Religion News Service

NAACP leader calls for bringing young blacks and Jews together

(RNS)-Jewish and African-American leaders need to work together to help young Jews and blacks better understand the history of pain and cooperation shared by the two communities, the head of the NAACP said Monday (April 22).

NAACP President and CEO Kweisi Mfume, addressing some 300 Jewish leaders at a meeting of the Anti-Defamation League in Washington, said young blacks and Jews have become alienated from each other because of”racism and anti-Semitism.” He blamed the current climate of”hate radio, hate speech, hate groups and hate crimes”for the gulf separating young blacks and Jews.

Mfume said black and Jewish young people need to be made sensitive to the bias that each community has suffered, and to their shared attempts in the civil-rights era to overcome discrimination in society.

In response, ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said”we accept your challenge,”although, like Mfume, he offered no specifics on how to bridge the differences.

Foxman also said Jews, who helped found the NAACP in 1909, should continue to support the organization.

Mfume assumed the leadership of the financially ailing NAACP in February, following a period of controversy for the civil-rights organization, stemming in part from the leadership of Benjamin Chavis.

Chavis forged close ties with the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan, whom Jews generally regard as being anti-Semitic, a charge Farrakhan denies. Chavis’ association with him prompted many Jews to rethink their support of the NAACP. Chavis later joined with Farrakhan to organize last October’s Million Man March.

Farrakhan is often critical of the ADL. Despite oblique references to Farrakhan’s influence on black-Jewish relations, neither Mfume nor Foxman mentioned his name.

Mexican Catholic bishops blast President Zedillo for causing poverty

(RNS)-Mexico’s Roman Catholic bishops have blamed the nation’s free-market economic policies for causing an”intolerable”economic decline that has left more than half of the nation’s 90 million citizens living in poverty.”The growing impoverishment in which millions of our brothers are submerged, reaching intolerable extremes of dire poverty, is the most devastating and humiliating scourge which our country is living through,”the bishops said in a document released Thursday (April 18) at their annual meeting held near Mexico City.”We will go on asking those who run the economic policy of the country and those who have more money and more education, to take note of the results of a system which has caused generalized poverty,”the bishops added, according to a report by the Reuter news agency.

The bishops’ criticism was the latest attack on the economic policies of President Ernesto Zedillo and his predecessor, Carlos Salinas. Both men have been blamed for instituting austerity policies that have cost thousands of Mexicans their jobs and devastated the buying power of the Mexican peso.

Zedillo has said he will maintain the policies as the only way to ensure the nation’s long-term return to relative economic stability.

Prior to releasing their document-“Pastoral Project 1996-2000”-the bishops met with Zedillo and told him that an estimated 50 million of the nation’s 90 million people now live in poverty. They also demanded a change of policy.

In response, Zedillo reportedly told the bishops that Mexico’s economic problems were”more complicated”than they could imagine.

In their document, the bishops called Mexico’s political establishment”weakened and ailing”as a result of its domination for 67 years by just one party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Ohio bill seeks to add creationism to school lessons on evolution

(RNS)-A bill being prepared for introduction in the Ohio House of Representatives could make public schools forums for debating the merits and demerits of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The bill, not yet introduced, would require public schools that teach evolution to prevent evidence for and against the theory-which many in society consider scientist fact.

The bill is being prepared by Rep. Ron Hood, a Republican from the Youngstown area, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.

Darwin, an English naturalist, theorized that higher life forms (including humans) evolved from lower life forms. In contrast, Bible literalists believe that God specifically created each species.”I thought we had already been through the Scopes `monkey trial,'”said Rep. Robert Hagan, the House Education Committee’s top Democrat. Hagan said Hood”doesn’t understand that creation is an article of faith and evolution is an article of science.” The Scopes `monkey trial’ was the legendary 1925 case in which Ohio-born attorney Clarence Darrow defended John T. Scopes, who was charged with teaching evolution in a Tennessee school. At the time, it was illegal to do so. Scopes was convicted, but later freed on a technicality by a higher court.

House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson, a Republican from suburban Columbus, said the Hood bill is not likely to be voted on this year.

United Methodists to be counted as full members once baptized

(RNS)-The United Methodist Church moved Monday (April 22) to count people as full members once they are baptized, rather than waiting until they are old enough to publicly profess their membership in the denomination.

The policy-which is a return to the roots of Methodism-was unanimously approved by the 1,000 delegates attending the United Methodist General Conference, which is meeting in Denver. The Associated Press reported that the same body will vote later in the week to incorporate the change into church law.

The 8.5 million-member United Methodist Church is the nation’s second largest Protestant denomination.

A statement outlining the policy shift said”the sacrament (of baptism) is primarily a gift of divine grace. Neither parents nor infants are the chief actors; baptism is an act of God in and through the church.” Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, taught that infant baptism cleansed a person of original sin, and that once baptized a child was a full member of the church. However, public professions of faith later came to be accepted by Methodists as the standard for full church membership.

Under the new policy, infants will be considered full members once baptized, and professing members after they become old enough to personally state their faith in the church. That generally occurs at age 12, the age of confirmation.

The current status of”preparatory member”will be eliminated. The new policy means that people with severe mental disabilities will now also be considered full members of the church.

Saudi Arabia handling of the Hajj upsets Nigerians and Iranians

(RNS)-Nigerians and Iranians are upset with Saudi Arabia for its handling of this year’s Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca that is currently under way.

Nigerians are upset because the Saudis are limiting the number of pilgrims who may come from certain parts of Nigeria that have suffered outbreaks of meningitis. Of 1,580 pilgrims who sought to go to Mecca from the Nigerian state of Lagos, for example, just 84 are being allowed to enter Saudi Arabia.

A Nigerian diplomat in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, told the Reuter news agency that only about 10 percent of the more than 31,000 Nigerians who registered for this year’s Hajj have been allowed to go.

Iranians, meanwhile, are upset with Saudi officials for not allowing them to stage political protests against the United States, Israel and even Saudi Arabia while they are in Mecca.

The Hajj reaches its peak on Friday (April 26).

Saudi Arabia’s chief religious authority, Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Baz, has issued a ruling saying political rallies at the Hajj amounted to heresy.

Quote of the Day: Cardinal Bernard Law, Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston

(RNS)-Cardinal Bernard Law, speaking Sunday (April 21) on ABC’s”This Week with David Brinkley,”said of President Clinton’s veto of a bill banning a late-term abortion procedure:”The task before us as a church is simply to state the reality of partial-birth abortion because 78 percent of women … have indicated they feel this procedure should be criminalized. … The sheer horror of this puts it in a class by itself.”

MJP END RNS