c. 1997 Religion News Service
Report: Former Rep. Tate of Washington to head Christian Coalition
(RNS) Former Rep. Randy Tate, R-Wash., a one-term Congressman with strong conservative credentials, will be the new executive director of the Christian Coalition, the Associated Press and CNN reported Tuesday (June 10).
The AP said it had learned from conservative and Republican sources that the 31-year-old Tate, defeated last fall in his bid for re-election, will succeed Ralph Reed as the new executive director of the eight-year-old religious right advocacy group.
An official announcement is expected Wednesday.
Tate, a businessman from Puyallup, Wash., carried the banner on a number of conservative causes during his two years in Congress, including defending gun rights, urging a constitutional amendment banning flag burning and cracking down on illegal aliens.
The Christian Coalition, which claims 1.8 million members and supporters, grew out of the 1988 presidential campaign of religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. Tate served as a Robertson delegate to the 1988 Republican National Convention.
Reed announced in April he was resigning as head of the Coalition to set up a political consulting firm and play a more direct role in Republican politics.
Under Reed’s leadership, the coalition became one of the most powerful special interest forces within the GOP and was credited with securing the 1996 presidential nomination of Bob Dole.
UCC cloning panel: Dolly could lead us astray
(RNS) President Clinton and a United Church of Christ (UCC) committee have reached the same general conclusion about the historic cloned sheep named Dolly: this little lamb could lead us astray.
But a special panel of the liberal Protestant denomination, in a four-page statement, took a sharply different tack from that of Clinton and the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, which released its report on cloning Saturday (June 7).
For the UCC panel, one of the central ethical issues raised by the Dolly debate and the specter of cloning was justice, and the possibility the techniques would be used principally by the rich and privileged.
In particular, the panel opposed the use of cloning for reproductive purposes.”When the world groans with hunger, when children are stunted from chronic malnutrition, when people die of famine by the thousands every day … the development of any more technologies to suit the desires of those who are relatively privileged, secure and comfortable seems to fly in the face of fundamental claims of justice …,”said the panel’s statement, released Tuesday (June 10).
In such instances, said the 10-member committee, which included theologians, ethicists and a biologist,”… we oppose cloning and say `enough’ to technologies that are privileges of the rich in the Western world. We support legislation to ban cloning for reproductive purposes, at least for the foreseeable future.” At the same time, the panel said it did not”object categorically”to human”pre-embryo research, including that (which) produces and studies cloned human pre-embryos through the 14th day of fetal development, provided the research is well-justified in terms of its objectives.” The panel also said continued cloning research on animals is”morally and theologically permissible”provided that”animals be treated humanely and that needless suffering is avoided.” Like Clinton and the government bioethics commission, the UCC panel called for continued discussion and debate on the ethical issues raised by cloning.”We hope the United Church of Christ will play a helpful role in educating the public about the importance but quite limited role of genes in determining the full identity of human identity and personhood.” On Monday, Clinton proposed legislation that would ban efforts to clone humans.”Attempting to clone a human being is unacceptably dangerous to the child and morally unacceptable in our society,”Clinton said in a White House ceremony accepting the bioethics committee’s report.
Seeking to find middle ground in the issue of genetic research, the president endorsed a bill that would ban human cloning for five years, allowing time, he said, to”continue the national dialogue”on cloning _ the production of genetically identical individuals _ while allowing some cloning research to continue.
The UCC panel was appointed by the denomination’s Board for Homeland Ministries and its conclusions are not an official position of the 1.5 million-member denomination.
Catholic bishops urge resumption of direct U.S.-Cuba flights
(RNS) U.S. Catholic bishops have urged President Clinton to lift the ban on direct air flights between the United States and Cuba, saying the suspension has sent transportation costs for humanitarian aid skyrocketing.”The relatively modest program of helping people in need in Cuba, fully authorized and indeed encouraged by our government, has been unfortunately and, we believe, unnecessarily burdened by the excessive costs involved in shipping through third countries,”two top officials of the U.S. Catholic Conference said in a June 6 letter to President Clinton.
The letter, released Tuesday (June 10), was signed by Archbishop Theodore McCarick of Newark, N.J., who chairs the conference’s international policy committee, and Bishop John Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., chairman of the board of directors of Catholic Relief Service.
Direct flights for delivering aid were suspended 18 months ago in retaliation for Cuba’s shooting down of two aircraft flown by Cuban-Americans that the Castro government charged violated Cuban airspace.
A number of U.S. church groups, including Catholic Relief Services, have been providing humanitarian aid to Cuba with U.S. government approval, although the United States has imposed a severe economic embargo on Havana.
McCarrick and Ricard told Clinton that the continued suspension”has had nothing but harmful consequences for both the authorized providers of such aid and the intended recipients.”
Salvation Army endorses proposed Religious Freedom Amendment
(RNS) The Salvation Army has endorsed the proposed Religious Freedom Amendment, which supporters say is necessary to protect religious expression in public places.
In a letter to Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., one of the sponsors of the proposed amendment, Salvation Army National Commander Robert Watson wrote that his organization”strongly believes in the right of the individual to pray and to recognize their religious beliefs, heritage and traditions. We encourage Congress to enact this legislation.” Istook expressed his pleasure that the evangelical Protestant denomination supports the proposal.”This organization commands nationwide respect for its commitment to helping the needy and I praise it for realizing the necessity for a constitutional amendment to restore religious freedom,”Istook said in a June 6 statement.
Opponents to the measure have said it is unnecessary and instead have urged increased education about the religious rights people already have in the public sphere.
United Church of Canada launches Korea, Central Africa relief appeal
(RNS) Canada’s largest Protestant denomination has launched a six-month campaign to raise $250,000 for emergency aid to North Korea and Central Africa,church officials announced Tuesday (June 10).
The United Church of Canada is calling on its 3,872 congregations and the general public for help in providing the assistance. North Korea, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) have been pinpointed to receive food, medicine and building supplies.
The United Nations has said there is less food per capita in North Korea than anywhere else in the world, noted Nan Hudson, the denomination’s area secretary for East Asia. Reports state that some North Koreans have been reduced to eating boiled tree bark and ground-up corn husks to survive. In Central Africa the emergency is attributed to years of civil strife.”This emergency appeal has been called because there is a desperate and immediate humanitarian need to save lives and to rebuild communities,”said Rhea Whitehead, general secretary of the United Church’s Division of World Outreach.
Swedish parliament ratifies election of woman bishop
(RNS) The Swedish Parliament has ratified the election of the Rev. Chistina Odenberg as the next bishop of Lund _ the first woman bishop in the Church of Sweden.
More than 90 percent of Sweden’s 8.8 million people belong to the Church of Sweden, the country’s official state church, which has adhered to Lutheranism since the 16th century.
Odenberg will be ordained as a bishop at an Oct. 5 service in Lund. She was ordained a priest in the church in 1967, reported Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
Quote of the day: The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches.
(RNS) At a banquet Monday (June 9), National Association of Evangelicals President Don Argue shared a platform with National Council of Churches (NCC) General Secretary Joan Brown Campbell at an NCC event marking the rebuilding of burned churches. Both organizations _ which long have been divided by theological differences _ responded in their own way to the spate of church fires. Said Campbell:”This is the first time ever _ ever _ in the history of these two organizations that they have come together on the same platform to commit themselves to the same struggle and to share what have been their responses to the same tragedies.”
END RNS
