c. 1997 Religion News Service
Promise Keepers founder committed adultery two decades ago
(RNS) Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney committed adultery more than two decades ago, a spokesman for the ministry confirmed Friday (Oct. 31).
Mark DeMoss, a spokesman for Promise Keepers, said McCartney’s actions took place about 25 years ago and the former University of Colorado football coach confessed them to his wife, Lyndi, in 1993.
But McCarney’s forthcoming second autobiography,”Sold Out: Becoming Man Enough to Make a Difference”(Word Publishing), fails to mention the adultery.
Rather, it was revealed in a New York Times story primarily about Mrs. McCartney and the couple’s relationship published Wednesday (Oct. 29). In the story, the Rev. James Ryle, McCartney’s pastor at Boulder Valley Vineyard Christian Fellowship, divulged that McCartney had admitted the tryst to his wife Jan. 1, 1993, before the Fiesta Bowl football game.
When asked why the indiscretion was not included in the book, DeMoss said the McCartneys”considered it a private matter and one they had dealt with.” McCartney said Thursday (Oct. 30) that he considered his actions to be adultery and not an affair,”which I would think you have to take to mean it … did not involve any prolonged period of time,”DeMoss explained.
Although this is the first time adultery has been mentioned publicly, McCartney has long discussed his personal struggles.”The very reason he resigned his coaching position at the University of Colorado was he … realized he had been pursuing his own goals and ambitions at the expense of his wife,”DeMoss said. McCartney left his $350,000-a-year coaching job in 1994.
DeMoss said he didn’t expect the latest revelation about McCartney to have a detrimental effect on the Promise Keepers ministry, which has gained greater national prominence since its”Stand in the Gap”rally Oct. 4 that gathered hundreds of thousands of Christian men in Washington for prayer and worship.”McCartney’s life is really a testimony to the very kind of changed lives that Promise Keepers is talking about,”DeMoss said.
The book addresses McCartney’s struggles with alcoholism and a bad temper, as well as how his involvement with his sports career, and later Promise Keepers _ which he founded in 1990 _ that prompted him to neglect his wife and family.”These are all issues that men and couples are trying to overcome and nobody ever said that Promise Keepers was comprised of perfect men, not even perfect leaders,”DeMoss said.
Russian synagogue denied permit under new religion law
(RNS) Local authorities in the Russian city of Bryansk have held up a Jewish congregation’s registration permit, citing Russia’s new law regulating religious expression, even though the measure recognized Judaism as one of the nation’s”traditional”faiths.
Critics of the law said the situation validated their concerns that the law would be applied unevenly and according to local whim.
The law, which went into effect Oct. 1, restricts the activities of religious groups that have not been officially active in Russia for at least 15 years. The law _ which passed with overwhelming political support, including that of some Jewish leaders _ was designed to protect the Russian Orthodox Church from losing members to evangelical Protestant and other mostly Western religious groups that have flooded Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
However, the law also listed Judaism, Buddhism, Islam and”Christianity”as traditional Russian faiths. Micah H. Naftalin, national director of the Union of Council for Soviet Jews (UCSJ), based in Washington, said the”Western media was duped”into believing that Judaism would be exempted from the law’s stringent requirements because it was listed as a traditional Russian faith.”What is happening in Bryansk is exactly what we predicted would take place in Russia’s provinces under the auspices of the religion bill,”Naftalin said Thursday (Oct. 30).”This law is in effect a hunting license, designed to intimidate and persecute Jews and Western-oriented Christians …” The congregation in Bryansk, about 200 miles southwest of Moscow, is a member of the Congress of Jewish Religious Societies and Organizations of Russia, which is officially registered.
The congregation, with about 70 members, was formed in the early 1990s by a Jew who took most of the synagogue’s official papers with him when he emigrated to Israel. The congregation’s current leaders sought a new permit under their names.
Leonid Stonov, UCSJ international director, said the Bryansk incident is likely to be repeated elsewhere in Russia.”Several local and regional officials are zealously applying this discriminatory law in order to carry out their anti-Semitic agendas,”he said.
Word Publisher Charles”Kip”Jordon dies at 52
(RNS) Charles”Kip”Jordon, executive vice president and publisher of Word Publishing, died Thursday (Oct. 30) at the Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas of liver failure.
Jordon, 52, presided over one of the most successful religious publishing programs of the last two decades. Under his leadership, Word produced dozens of best sellers by such authors as Billy Graham, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll, Max Lucado, Barbara Johnson and others.
Jordon joined the publishing world in 1973 as an educational curriculum consultant to Sweet Publishing in Texas. Seven years later he became president of the company. In 1983, he moved to Word, where he held various executive posts. Word Publishing became part of Nelson/Word in 1992 and moved most of its operation from Dallas to the corporate headquarters in Nashville earlier this year.
Jordon served as president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association and held posts on its board of directors. He also served on the board of Dallas Christian Leadership and helped establish the first Habitat for Humanity chapter in Texas.”I have profound respect for this man,”Dobson said of Jordon in a Dallas Morning News profile of Jordon earlier this year.”He’s a man of his word, honest through and through.” Said Jordon in the same article:”I wake up delighted every day to do what I do.” Although friends knew he needed a liver transplant, he continued an active schedule until recently. Many expressed surprise that the disease he had lived with so long had finally claimed his life.”He was one of the last, great publishers,”said Michelle Rapkin, editor-in-chief of Doubleday’s Crossings Book Club.”His deep respect for God, books and people were intertwined; he loved each with all of his heart.” Bishop reportedly freed by Chinese; Dalai Lama backs White House meet
(RNS) China has reportedly released from jail a Roman Catholic bishop who has refused to renounce the Vatican’s authority over Chinese Catholics.
Fides, the news agency of the Vatican’s missionary service, reported Friday (Oct. 31) that Bishop Shu Zhimin, arrested Oct. 8, had been freed, confirming an earlier announcement by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Albright noted Zhimin’s release Sunday (Oct. 26), just as Chinese President Jiang Zemin arrived in the United States for an official visit to Washington.
Shu has spent some two decades in Chinese jails for refusing to bow to Chinese demands that he renounce Rome and operate only within the confines of the government’s officially sanctioned Catholic church.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama has given his approval to Jiang’s White House meeting with President Clinton. As demonstrators demanding freedom for Tibet marched in Lafayette Park across from the White House Wednesday (Oct. 29), Jiang and the president discussed Chinese-American relations inside.
Spokesman Tempa Tsering said the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader believes that international engagement could lead to changes in Beijing’s treatment of occupied Tibet.
U.S. religious activists have charged China with persecuting people of faith, including Catholics and other Christians, and Tibetan Buddhists.
Quote of the day: Wildlife repository specialist Dennis Wiist
(RNS)”I feel like I’m doing something really important. By helping to protect the religious freedom rights of Native Americans, I’m helping to protect the religious freedom rights of everyone.” Dennis Wiist, a wildlife repository specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, quoted in The Washington Post about helping American Indians obtain feathers from federally protected eagles for spiritual and ceremonial purposes.
MJP END RNS
