c. 1997 Religion News Service

Deborah Lyons, wife of Baptist leader, pleads guilty to arson

(RNS) Deborah Lyons, wife of the president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, pleaded guilty Monday (Oct. 20) to first-degree arson in a case that led to controversy for her husband, the Rev. Henry J. Lyons and the nation’s largest black Baptist denomination.”I am responsible for setting the fires,”Mrs. Lyons said as she entered her guilty plea for committing arson at a $700,000 house in St. Petersburg, Fla., that her husband owned with another woman.

She was sentenced to five years probation, given 200 hours of community service and ordered to have an evaluation for alcohol and psychological treatment.

Mrs. Lyons, 49, said she was angry at her husband and had been drinking when she drove to the waterfront home July 6, the Associated Press reported. She ransacked the residence while her husband was out of town and set several fires.”Although I was drinking and under stress at the time, this is not an excuse,”Mrs. Lyons told Circuit Judge W. Douglas Baird while her husband sat in the front row of the courtroom.

The judge withheld a judgment of guilt from Mrs. Lyons, a first-time offender, which means she will not have a criminal record.

The incident led to numerous allegations concerning Lyons, 55, and his marital and financial practices. He has denied wrongdoing and survived a campaign to remove him from his denominational presidency in September. He remains under investigation by state and federal authorities about his handling of the denomination’s money.

Lyons owned the house with Bernice Edwards, a convicted embezzler whom he had hired as a denominational official.

Mrs. Lyons cried when her lawyer, Paul Meissner, told the judge that 80 letters from the community had been written in support of Mrs. Lyons. He said she was”horrified, embarrassed and humiliated”by the arson, which was not consistent with her nature.

Lyons left the courthouse Monday holding his wife’s hand.”We’re pleased it’s over,”he said.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania State Baptist Convention voted during the week of Oct. 13 to request that Lyons step down from the presidency of the denomination until the investigations of his use of church funds are over. The state group has no authority over the presidency, so the vote is a symbolic one, The Washington Times reported.

Survey: Less than a third of Baptists support Disney boycott

(RNS) Less than a third of Baptists _ including Southern Baptists _ agree with the boycott of the Walt Disney Co. by the Southern Baptist Convention, according to a study conducted for an independent Baptist news service.

Among Baptists who said their views are represented by the Southern Baptist Convention, 15.8 percent said they strongly agreed with the boycott and 14.3 percent said they agreed with the boycott. But 28.7 percent said they strongly disagreed with it and 26.7 percent said they disagreed with it.

Researchers for the Southern Research Group of Jackson, Miss., surveyed 610 randomly selected adults representing various Baptist groups and theological viewpoints for Associated Baptist Press, an independent Baptist news service. The telephone survey covered 14 states in the Southeast and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent.

Baptists who described themselves as”fundamentalists”were the only group who were more supportive than critical of the boycott _ 45 percent to 43 percent, with 7 percent not stating an opinion.

Those surveyed who said their viewpoint is best represented by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate group, overwhelmingly opposed the boycott, with 81 percent against it and 8 percent supporting it.

Researchers found those surveyed who considered themselves theologically conservative were more likely to support the boycott than those with more liberal viewpoints.

Fifty percent of those who described themselves as”conservatives”disagreed with the boycott while 37 percent supported it. Of those who called themselves”moderates,”82 percent said they were against the boycott while 10 percent were for it. Eighty-three percent of those who put themselves in the”liberal”category were against the boycott and 5 percent were in favor of it.

The boycott aims to encourage Disney to change policies critics believe benefit homosexuals and move the company away from a family-friendly image.

Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, questioned the accuracy of the survey.”I think it’s a joke,”he said.

Land said the vote during the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in June to implement the boycott showed the initiative has”overwhelming support”from Southern Baptists.”My mail’s running 20 to 1,”he said. He said mail received by SBC President Tom Elliff was”running 1,500 to 1″in support of the action.

Texas Catholic bishops call for end to death penalty in the state

(RNS) The Roman Catholic bishops of Texas, in their strongest statement to date opposing the death penalty, said Monday (Oct. 20) they are concerned”the state … is usurping the sovereign dominion of God over human life”by using capital punishment.

They urged all citizens in the state to”call on our elected officials to reject the violence of the death penalty and replace it with nonlethal means of punishment, which are sufficient to protect society from violent offenders of human life and public order.” The Texas bishops’ statement came as four justices of the U.S. Supreme Court also served notice they would begin scrutinizing the state’s rules in death penalty sentencing because they may be unfair to some convicted killers.

Texas has executed 31 of the 59 people put to death in the nation this year. Since the Supreme Court ended a moratorium on capital punishment in 1976, 417 people have been executed, including 138 in Texas.”It hasn’t been a deterrent,”said Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza, head of the Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston.”It has been more expensive to taxpayers to finance all those appeals leading up to execution than life imprisonment would be.” Fiorenza was one of the drafters of the statement signed by 19 active and retired bishops from Texas’ 14 dioceses.”States which have the death penalty do not have lower rates of violent crime than states without the death penalty,”the statement said.”All other Western democracies have abolished capital punishment and have lower rates of violent crime.”

Romanian government promises Catholics aid in property disputes

(RNS) The government of Romania has promised to help the country’s Roman Catholic minority recover some 2,000 churches seized during the 40 years of communist rule, according to a top church official.

The pledge was made Sunday (Oct. 19), when thousands of Romania’s”Greek Catholics”_ Catholics loyal to Rome but who worship with an”eastern”rite virtually identical to Christian Orthodox liturgies _ attended a reburial of their church’s founder, Samuel Micu Klein, whose body was returned to Romania in August after more than 300 years in Rome, Reuters reported.

In a message to the reburial ceremony in Blaj, some 250 miles from the capital of Bucharest, Prime Minister Victor Ciobea paid tribute to Klein and, according to church officials, pledged”to see that justice is done to all communities whose properties are in dispute … so that all believers may pray in their own churches.” The Orthodox Church in Romania opposes the return of the properties to the Greek Catholics.

The communists banned the Greek Catholic church in 1948. The ban was lifted seven years ago.

Methodist cleric elected African church council head

(RNS) The Rev. Kwesi Dickson, a Methodist clergyman from Ghana, has been elected president of the All-Africa Conference of Churches, the continent’s major ecumenical organization.

Dickson, who has been president of the Methodist church in Ghana for the past seven years, succeeds retired South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has headed the ecumenical organization for the past 10 years.

In an Oct. 13 news conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the AACC was holding its general assembly, Dickson defended the right of the AACC and churches on the continent to criticize politicians and governments.”If a person has convictions _ and the church has convictions _ then it must try as much as possible to live that conviction,”Dickson said.

At the same time, Dickson said the churches had to do their homework before engaging in political criticism, Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency reported. He said it is terrible for church leaders to criticize politicians”without getting the facts.”Where democracy is being sidelined, it’s important to have the facts,”he added.

Quote of the day: Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

(RNS)”Thomas Jefferson organized his library around three principles: Memory, reason and imagination. St. Photius organized his own great library as the summary of memory, of love and of consolation. The Orthodox Church is the repository of Christian memory. Our memory is of he who was from the beginning; he whom we have heard in our hearts; he whom we have seen without eyes. He is the Son of all memory and is even the memory of the future. He is the Son of all reason, of all imagination, the image of the invisible God.” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, speaking Monday (Oct. 20) at the Library of Congress comparing Thomas Jefferson’s library, which forms the core of the American collection and the library of St. Photius the Great, Patriarch of Constantinople in the 9th century.

AMB END RNS