c. 1997 Religion News Service

Interfaith delegation to bring medical supplies to North Korea

(RNS) A high-level interfaith delegation from the United States will travel to North Korea in early November to bring sorely needed medical supplies to the famine-stricken country and to express solidarity with its people.

The delegation represents members of the Interfaith Hunger Appeal (IHA) _ Catholic Relief Services, Church World Service, Lutheran World Relief and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The team will carry with them more than $100,000 in vitamins and dietary supplements.

In the past three years, IHA, which was formed in 1977, has given nearly $2.6 million in humanitarian aid to North Korea.

International aid agencies have donated millions of dollars in emergency foodstuffs to the striken Asian country over the past three years, but they have come under fire from critics who say that they also are bolstering a reprehensible government.”By visiting North Korea, the Interfaith Hunger Appeal wishes to make the plight of Koreans known to Americans of all faiths,”said Kenneth F. Hackett, board president of the IHA and executive director of the Baltimore-based Catholic Relief Services.

The Clinton administration will send its own seven-member team of experts to North Korea Saturday (Oct. 25) to assess the famine there. According to State Department officials, this is the first U.S. team to be allowed into the country. The U.S. government had threatened to cut off food aid to the communist country if it didn’t permit broader monitoring of aid distributions to children, the sick and others in need.

Former presidential hopeful Steve Forbes now staunchly anti-abortion

(RNS) Republican Steve Forbes, whose run in the 1996 presidential election was derailed by religious conservatives, is now courting his former adversaries with a new message of moral revival and an anti-abortion platform.

The millionaire president and editor of Forbes magazine, unveiled his agenda _”Fourth Great Awakening”_ before a standing room only audience at the Heritage Foundation Tuesday (Oct. 21) in Washington, D.C. Just a year ago, Forbes’ wavering stance on abortion launched the Christian right into opposition against him. This time around, Forbes, in an apparent campaign for the presidency in 2000, told the crowd,”Life begins at conception and ends at natural death.” He said he opposes abortion with exceptions for rape and incest and when the mother’s life is in danger.”I think we must recognize the deep emotional distress and trauma of the victims of incest and rape,”he said.

Conservative religious leaders are only one target of Forbes’ newly-fashioned strategies, his advisers said.

He also will use Americans for Hope, Growth and Opportunity, an organization he founded, to launch a series of radio spots on a wide range of topics including drug abuse and abortion.

Church-sponsored relief agency rejects lottery-based donations

(RNS) A major, church-sponsored relief agency in the Netherlands is rejecting thousands of dollars in donations that was offered to them by the Dutch lottery.

Accepting such an offer would be inappropriate, said Hans Schravesande, a spokesman for the the Dutch Interchurch Aid, the Netherlands’ central agency for channeling church funds to those suffering from poverty and disaster in developing countries.

Although the aid agency did not condemn those who participate in the Dutch Postcode Lottery, it said playing the game is destructive and can, in fact, cause poverty.

Through the lottery, Schravesande said,”consumers are being tempted with prizes of $7.5 million, with the aim of rolling in money as their greatest wish.”

UCC leaders seek transfer of Puerto Rican prisoner

(RNS) Leaders of the 1.5-million-member United Church of Christ are appealing to the federal government to transfer a political prisoner who has spent more than a decade in a U.S. prison for his involvement in the independence movement in Puerto Rico.

Church officials, speaking at a Tuesday (Oct. 21) news conference in Cleveland, made a plea for Oscar Lopez Rivera, who is currently confined to a federal prison in Marion, Ill., and called for an end to what they say has been a history of harsh treatment at the Marion facility in general.

Lopez, one of nearly 15 Puerto Ricans imprisoned in the United States for their roles in the independence movement in Puerto Rico, is serving a 70-year sentence. He has spent the last 11 years of his sentence in solitary confinement.

UCC leaders called Lopez”a community leader”and a”person of great heart, full of life and love.”Members of the UCC General Synod, the denomination’s highest representative body, said Lopez should be transferred from solitary confinement and placed in the general prison population of a lesser security prison.”Our church has a long-standing history of concern regarding the conditions at the penitentiary in Marion and other prisons like it,”said the Rev. Paul H. Sherry, president of the Cleveland-based denomination.

King statue to be part of Westminster Abbey display

(RNS) A statue of slain civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will be among those of other 20th-century martyrs to be displayed in a section of Westminster Abbey not used since the Middle Ages.

The statues of 10 modern-day martyrs will be unveiled in July in a ceremony at the London church to be attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other international religious leaders, the Associated Press reported.

The works, spanning from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 to the persecution of the church in Latin America in 1980,”are a representation of the Christian experience in the world of the 20th century, and the costs of that experience,”said Andrew Chandler, a historian at Queen’s College in Birmingham, England, and a member of the selection committee.

Regular worship service attendance boosts immune systems

(RNS) Attending religious services regularly has the power to boost the immune system and lower levels of a bad blood protein in people over age 65, Duke University researchers have found.”Those who go to church or synagogue regularly are physically healthier, mentally healthier and they have healthier immune systems,”said Harold Koenig, a Duke University psychiatrist and a lead author of the study. Koenig, who is well-known for his research on the intersection of religion, spirituality and medicine, co-authored the study with Harvey Cohen, director of Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development.

The researchers said that drawing, measuring and testing the blood levels of study participants for the presence of an undesirable immune system protein called interleukin-6 (IL-6), helped them determine the benefits of worship on the health of older adults, the Associated Press reported. IL-6 is linked to a number of age-related diseases and substances that regulate the immune system.”This is the first study that I know that tried to look at the pathways to translate religiosity to medical outcome,”said Dr. Marcia Ory, chief of social science research at the National Institute of Aging in Bethesda, Md.

Health benefits were most evident in participants who attended religious services at least twice a week. Researchers said the positive results linked to worship remained even when they accounted for such factors as age, chronic illnesses, the ability to perform routine tasks and depression. Study subjects who didn’t follow the same worship regime didn’t benefit from the positive results.

Quote of the day: The Rev. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches.

(RNS)”The United States government has given in to the opposition of the oil and automobile lobby. This is a recipe for environmental disaster.” The Rev. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, reacting to President Clinton’s Oct 22 announcement the United States will delay cutting its greenhouse emissions.

DEA END RNS