c. 1997 Religion News Service

Catholic bishops renew appeal to Clinton for landmine ban

(RNS) In its continuing effort to press the U.S. government to act sooner rather than later in international efforts to win a comprehensive ban on landmines, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has again urged President Clinton to exercise”strong, unambiguous, and convincing U.S. leadership now.””Bold action by the United States on this vital moral question could improve dramatically (the) prospects for achieving this goal, not in the distant future but before we begin a new century,”Bishop Anthony Pilla of Cleveland, president of the NCCB, told Clinton in a July 31 letter released Tuesday (Aug. 5).

The letter was hand-delivered to Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Adviser, by Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, chairman of the bishops’ International Policy Committee.

The bishops and a host of other religious groups, as well as secular humanitarian and relief agencies, are pressing the Clinton administration to join the so-called Ottawa Process, a”fast-track”initiative that will convene nations in December to sign a treaty banning landmines. Nearly 100 nations have committed themselves to the process.

But the Clinton administration has refused to join the Ottawa Process, saying it supports continued work on a treaty through the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, a process that is expected to take years to complete.

In a separate but related development, World Vision, the evangelical relief agency, reported Wednesday (Aug. 6) that two World Vision-sponsored children were killed and six others injured when they triggered a landmine in Cambodia on July 26.

Cambodia is believed to be one of the most widely mined countries in the world. There are an estimated 100 million landmines strewn around the world, killing and maiming an estimated 500 people each week.

Clinton distances himself from slavery apology

(RNS) President Clinton does not consider an apology for slavery a top priority for the nation to work on racial reconciliation.”The president has really, in a way, put that issue aside and said that’s not going to be the focus of his race initiative,”said White House press secretary Michael McCurry.”Nor is it the place he believes we should really start the kind of discussion he is looking for.” Rep. Tony Hall, D-Ohio, introduced a House resolution June 12 that called on Congress to apologize to African-Americans for the slavery of their ancestors. His proposal has received support from some grassroots African-Americans and more than a dozen white members of Congress. But many whites think an apology would reopen an ugly chapter of American history and some black leaders say the apology would seem hollow without some compensation.

Shortly after Hall introduced the resolution, Clinton expressed interest in the notion, saying that”an apology, under the right circumstances, those things can be quite important.” But in an interview on Black Entertainment Television Monday (Aug. 4), Clinton said he would let his new advisory commission on race relations give him their views on the issue.”What I think I should do now is let this advisory board do its work and see what they have to say about the apology issue and all the related issues,”Clinton said.

Hall, in interviews this week, acknowledged that his resolution has not received much support and he doubts that it is likely to be approve in the near future.”It’s something that I believe in personally,”he told The New York Times.”It’s a moral issue for me. I think it’s right. It’s raised an issue which hasn’t been raised ever and it’s raised a dialogue that’s very, very important. I think it will happen one day. But I’m not sure it will happen while I’m in the Congress or maybe in my lifetime.”

Report: Children are beginning to die in North Korea famine

(RNS) Famine in North Korea has worsened sharply and people in the communist country are now openly talking about children dying of starvation, international aid agencies said Wednesday (Aug. 6).”The situation is very serious,”said Kathi Zellweger, director of international development with the Roman Catholic Caritas Hong Kong.”People are beginning to talk openly about children dying.

Zellweger made her comments at a Hong Kong news conference sponsored by a consortium of private aid agencies to plead for donations and help to combat the North Korean famine, Reuters reported.

Aid officials estimate that 37.6 percent of the children up to age 6 _ or 800,000 children _ suffer severe malnutrition.”These children, even if they survive, will be physically stunted and there is a possibility of mental retardation,”Tricia Parker of Oxfam Hong Kong told the news conference.

On Monday (Aug. 4), two United Nations agencies reported that 70 percent of North Korea’s current maize crop had been ruined by the drought currently affecting the country.

North Korea’s famine began in 1995 when severe floods destroyed arable lands, crops, fertilizer stores and irrigation systems. It has been followed by the recent 60-day drought.”The crop is lost,”said Roberto Christen, an adviser with the U.N.’ Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization, who was in North Korea at the end of July to assess the drought’s effects.”It is absolutely disastrous.”It is going to be a major catastrophe that no one realized because they kept on hoping it would rain,”Christen added.

U.S. ranks 16th among least-corrupt nations

(RNS) The United States ranks 16th among least-corrupt nations, behind Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom but ahead of France, Japan and Italy, according to a survey released Monday (Aug. 4) by a German anti-corruption group.

Three Scandinavian countries _ Denmark, Finland, and Sweden _ were ranked the least corrupt in the survey, which was based on seven different business surveys in each country that evaluated how business leaders, political analysts and the general public perceived the degree of corruption in a country.

Nigeria was at the bottom of the list of 52 nations who provided the Berlin-based Transparency International with enough information to make the evaluations.

Chinese Christian warns against U.S. meddling

(RNS) The honorary president of the state-sanctioned China Christian Council (CCC) says U.S. criticism of China’s policies toward Christians threatens relations between the Beijing government and China’s official church groups.

Bishop K.H. Ting said he read the recent State Department report critical of China’s treatment of its Christian minority”with deep regret and fear,”ENI, a Geneva-based religious news agency, reported Tuesday (Aug. 5).

The State Department report said China severely limits the religious rights of Christians and, in some instances, actively persecutes members of Roman Catholic and Protestant congregations. The persecution is most often directed at the so-called”house churches,”underground congregations that operate without state sanction, according to the State Department.

The report, requested by Congress, resulted from prompting by U.S. evangelical Christians who want religious freedom issues _ particularly as they pertain to Christians _ to become part of U.S. foreign policy concerns. “I do not mean that religious freedom is no longer a problem in China,”said Ting, whose CCC represents about 10 million Protestants. However, Ting said the best way to improve the situation is by the CCC and other such state-sanctioned agencies maintaining good relations with the Chinese government.”China being such a vast country, there is an endless stream of problems related to religion which we bring up with the proper authorities of the government, often with good results,”said the 81-year-old Ting, who was president of the CCC from 1981 until 1996.

He cited the distribution of nearly 20 million Bibles, the opening of 12,000 Protestant churches and other places of worship, and”17 centers of theological training”during the past 20 years as proof of the value of dealing diplomatically with the Chinese government.”I strongly feel that any U.S. government intervention as `protector of religion’ in the name of religious liberty would only jeopardize what we have been doing ourselves and intend to continue to do, and would give us the unenviable image of collaborating with the U.S. government, and that violates our principle of self-government.”

Yeltsin and Orthodox Church head to rewrite religion bill

(RNS) President Boris Yeltsin and Patriarch Alexii, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said Wednesday (Aug. 6) they would work together to fashion new legislation to replace a controversial measure restricting religious expression in Russia that Yeltsin recently vetoed.

The vetoed bill was backed by the church and was widely viewed as an attempt to help the Russian Orthodox Church counter western Protestant missionaries and representatives of other faiths, whose attempts to gain converts have been successful in Russia since the fall of communism.

The bill would have given the church special status as a traditional Russian faith, along with Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. The law would have regarded all other faiths _ including Roman Catholicism and Protestant groups _ as non-traditional and would have restricted their operations.

In vetoing the bill, which gained overwhelming support in the Russian parliament, Yeltsin said it was undemocratic.

But at a religious service in Moscow Wednesday (Aug. 6), Yeltsin and Alexii kissed and pledged to work together to create a compromise bill that both could live with, the Associated Press reported.”No obstacle shall separate us, because we know the role and the importance of the restoration in Russia of Orthodox Christianity and the Orthodox Church,”said Yeltsin.”I am satisfied that the president has moved to meet the aspirations of tens of millions of our church’s faithful,”said Alexii.

Yeltsin and Alexii spoke at a consecration service for the newly rebuilt Chapel of St. Boris and Gleb in downtown Moscow. The chapel was destroyed under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, and was rebuilt earlier this year. It is named after two 11th-century Russian princes who were martyred.

The Russian Orthodox Church claims some than 80 million followers, more than half of Russia’s population.

Quote of the day: Scholar Gayraud Wilmore

(RNS) Gayraud Wilmore, an ordained Presbyterian Church (USA) minister and retired Distinguished Professor of African Church History at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, writing in the most recent issue of the A.M.E. Church Review, examined the history of the black church in America and raised questions about its future:”The great and troubling question today before the African Methodist Episcopal Church and other black churches is whether or not we are still faithful to the tradition of the black church of the 19th century … (and) to what extent does it resist captivity to the neo-colonial domination of American capitalism and identify with the people of the Third World in their struggle for liberation … lifting Christ, the Liberator, before the powerful and affluent churches of the West.”

MJP END RNS