c. 1997 Religion News Service
Church investment group protests barring of shareholder resolutions
(RNS) The United Church Foundation, an investment agency of the United Church of Christ, is protesting a Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) policy allowing companies to bar shareholder resolutions regarding employment policies.
The United Church Foundation sent a letter in late April to members urging them to write the SEC’s four commissioners protesting the policy. The letter is the latest round in a five-year battle to retain shareholder rights.
Raising questions about a company’s employment practices, including the hiring and promoting of women, has become a key issue for a number of groups in the corporate responsibility movement. Organizations involved in the movement seek to use shareholder resolutions to raise moral and ethical issues with American businesses.
The foundation claims the SEC policy limits shareholder rights to influence business policies that stockholders consider unethical.”One of the ways in which our church has expressed its position as an ethical investor is by filing shareholder resolutions with companies where we wish to raise an issue,”said Donald G. Hart, financial vice president and treasurer of the foundation.
The SEC initiated the policy in 1992, after the New York City Employees Retirement System submitted a shareholder resolution challenging Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores’ proposal to fire homosexual employees. The SEC ruled Cracker Barrel could exclude the shareholder resolution from its proxy statement.
On appeal, the SEC maintained its position, and in February, it refused to hear a new appeal from religious organizations requesting a reversal of the policy.
New York court again rules Hasidic school district unconstitutional
(RNS) A school district set up to accommodate disabled children in an Orange County, N.Y., Hasidic Jewish community was ruled unconstitutional Tuesday (May 6).
The school district in the Kiryas Joel community, 45 miles northwest of New York City, was ruled unconstitutional by the New York state Court of Appeals on the grounds it violates the establishment clause of both the state and national constitutions, the Associated Press reported.
The establishment clause of the First Amendment prohibits government endorsement of any one religious faith.
Kiryas Joel’s special school district was created in 1989 when the state legislature passed a law specifically designed to allow its establishment. The Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently determined the law was unconstitutional.
The district, which was re-established in 1994 under a revised law, is necessary to accommodate about 200 children with special needs, proponents say. Community leaders say the district also is needed because if the Hasidic children are sent to local public schools, they will have to abandon some of their conservative Jewish religious and cultural traditions.
But the state school boards association argues that a special district is an unconstitutional inequity.”Once you said that government funding would be used to build a ghetto wall because the people inside the ghetto wanted it, by that same theory you could build a ghetto wall because the people outside the ghetto wanted it,”said Louis Grumet, the association’s executive director.
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America expressed disappointment with the ruling.”We are disappointed that once again the Constitution’s provisions designed to promote a religiously pluralistic society have been turned on their heads and used to strike down the accommodation of religious citizens,”said Nathan Diament, director of the Orthodox Union’s Institute for Public Affairs.
Leading North American Muslim groups elects first woman to board
(RNS) A retired educator living in Ottawa, Canada, has become the first woman to be elected to the top policy board of a North American Muslim religious organization.
Khadija Haffajee, who is also assistant secretary general of the International Muslim Women’s Union, was elected to the 24-member shura (consultative board) of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
ISNA, based in Plainfield, Ind., is one of four leading American Muslim groups that send representatives to the Islamic Shura Council of North America, a loosely organized body that sets some religious policy for Muslims in Canada and the United States. ISNA’s membership consists of 10,000 individuals and 300 community and professional Muslim organizations.
Sayyid Muhammad Syeed, ISNA’s secretary general, said Haffajee’s election Sunday (May 4)”is a first for North America,”although women have been elected to the boards of local, regional and politically oriented Muslim organizations in Canada and the United States.
Islam dictates strict gender roles, with men generally controlling religious and community affairs.
Born in South Africa in 1942, Haffajee has been active in ISNA women’s organizations, Muslim-Christian dialogue and aiding Afghan refugees in Pakistan. Haffajee’s election to a two-year term came in a mail ballot of ISNA members.
Muzammil Siddiqui, director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, Calif., was elected president of the ISNA shura. He lives in Fountain Valley, Calif.
Chicago TV station loses two Catholic commentators over Springer hire
(RNS) The controversy over the decision by a Chicago television station to hire controversial talk show host Jerry Springer as a news commentator has cost the station two commentators in addition to its well-respected news anchor.
Following anchor Carol Marin, who announced her resignation on May 1, two Chicago priests announced Monday (May 5) that they will not fulfill their commitments to serve as commentators during the installation of Roman Catholic archbishop Francis George, which is set for Wednesday (May 7), according to a statement issued by Rosner & Walsh public relations firm.
The Rev. Andrew Greeley, who is also a columnist for RNS, and the Rev. Don Senior issued a joint statement saying,”We admire the professional news people at Channel 5, but the decision of management that forced the resignation of Carol Marin shows a lack of respect for the people of Chicago and we will not condone it by our presence.” WMAQ-TV, an NBC-owned station which The New York Times reports is Chicago’s leader among viewers most sought by advertisers, hired Springer to deliver nightly commentaries. Springer’s talk show regularly deals with controversial _ and some critics say vulgar _ issues such as sexual promiscuity, transvestism and physical deformity.
The controversy over Springer’s hiring mounted Saturday (May 3) when six women’s groups participated in a rally at the NBC Tower in Chicago protesting the treatment of women in the newsroom.
The coalition of women’s groups, including Chicago Catholic Women and the National Council of Jewish Women, expressed disappointment that WMAQ”forced”Marin’s departure.”The women of Chicago are not going to sit by and let Channel 5 push us aside, nor are we going to remain quiet while it gives a platform to a man who exploits women and families,”the coalition said in a statement.
Church report: Zimbabwean government soldiers slaughtered 2,000 in 1980s
(RNS) A confidential report, leaked to a Johannesburg, South Africa, newspaper May 2, charged that Zimbabwean government soldiers suppressed an armed rebellion in the 1980s, killing 2,000 civilians and committing other atrocities.
The report contains eye-witness accounts compiled by Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic Justice and Peace Commission and the Legal Resources Foundation, according to Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
Troops of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe committed the alleged abuses, which include the shooting of two pregnant girls and then stabbing them to reveal their moving fetuses, according to the report.
Mugabe has been prime minister and effective leader of the African nation since its independence in 1980. In 1987, following constitutional changes, he was elected president. The alleged atrocities were committed between 1981 and 1987 in the southern province of Matabeleland.
The Weekly Mail & Guardian, the Johannesburg newspaper, said the 176-page report contained more than 1,000 accounts of torture, rape and massacre.
Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic bishops presented the report to Mugabe on March 17 but had held back publication of the document awaiting a response from Mugabe.
Mugabe has yet to respond to the report, according to the Rev. Oskar Wermter, spokesperson for the Zimbabwean Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
Christian Educator David Ng dead at 62
(RNS) The Rev. David Ng, whose career as an educator in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the National Council of the Churches (NCC) spanned three decades, died April 30 at his home in San Anselmo, Calif. of an apparent heart attack. He was 62.
Ng, a professor of Christian education at San Francisco Theological Seminary, was awarded the 1991″Educator of the Year”award by the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators.
During Ng’s 1981-1986 tenure as associate general secretary for the NCC’s Division of Education and Ministry, he helped oversee the major revision of the 1952 Revised Standard version of the Bible, on which the NCC holds the copyright.
The resulting New Revised Standard version is widely considered to be the most authoritative translation of the text. It is the first to receive the official endorsement of the major Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic bodies.
Ng was the author of more than fifteen books and numerous magazine articles.”David’s colleagues and friends remember not only his fine leadership in the area of Christian education but recall with tenderness his warm pastoral manner and concern for others,”said the Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the NCC, in a statement which will be read at a May 18 memorial service at the San Francisco seminary.
Quote of the day: ELCA Bishop H. George Anderson
(RNS) Bishop H. George Anderson, head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, had the spring floods of Minnesota and North Dakota _ the heartland of Lutheranism _ on his mind when he addressed the mid-April meeting of the National Workshop on Christian Unity in Sacramento, Calif., on baptism as a sign of the unity of the churches:”Grand Forks (N.D.) is unundated and the one thing they can’t get is water. Conflicts seem to flood our church. We are awash in raw sewage and debris, amid dangerous currents, and we need the pure water of baptism.”
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