c. 1997 Religion News Service
Jersey City to appeal ban on creche, menorah display
(RNS) Bret Schundler, Mayor of Jersey City, N.J., says he will appeal a federal court ruling prohibiting the display of a creche and menorah in the plaza in front of City Hall.
Schundler will be supported in the appeal by the Beckett Fund, a Washington-based public interest law firm that specializes in religious liberty issues.
The mayor also said he will attend a rally Dec. 17 in front of City Hall to unveil a sign that explains why the holiday symbol is missing, the Beckett Fund announced.
The American Civil Liberties Union had filed suit against the proposed holiday display, saying it violated the separation of church and state. Last week, a U.S. District Court judge in Jersey City ruled in favor of the ACLU.
But Schundler, in announcing the appeal, said the city believes the display should be allowed because it allows many religious activities throughout the year, including a Hindu parade, and observances of Buddha Enlightenment Day and Ramadan.
Cuban cardinal wants Christmas as public holiday
(RNS) Cardinal Jaime Ortega, head of Cuba’s Roman Catholic Church, said Tuesday (Dec. 9) he would like to see President Fidel Castro declare Christmas a public holiday as a gesture to Pope John Paul II’s January visit to the island nation.
Christmas ceased to be a holiday in Cuba nearly 30 years ago under the revolution led by Castro, Reuters reported. Ortega told a news conference Tuesday that John Paul had asked for the restoration of the day as a holiday when the Cuban leader met with the pope at the Vatican about a year ago.
Two years ago, the church called for greater respect for the celebration of Christmas after authorities banned the public display of Christmas trees and Nativity scenes other than in places frequented by tourists.
Although Dec. 25 is a normal working day in Cuba, many Cubans celebrate Christmas in their homes and church-going Cubans attend religious services.
There was no indication from the government on whether it will respond to the pope’s request and Ortega’s renewed plea.
Suit filed in Florida Bible history dispute
(RNS) Parents in Florida’s Lee County, backed by People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, have filed suit seeking to stop the county from teaching a controversial course that uses the Bible as a history textbook.”Public school officials are not allowed to use public school classrooms to promote religion and teach religious lessons,”said Carole Shields, president of People for the American Way.”But that is exactly what Lee County school board members are trying to do with this course. This class would be perfectly appropriate for Sunday school, but not for public school.” The American Center for Law and Justice, however, said the Bible curriculum adopted by the school board is constitutional.”The Bible curriculum in Ft. Myers is absolutely constitutional,”said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the Virginia Beach, Va.-based ACLJ. He offered the ACLJ’s resources to help defend the school board.”The lawsuit is premature. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that the Bible can be used in classrooms as long as the focus is educational. This curriculum is about Bible history, not proselytizing. It poses no constitutional crisis,”he said.
The Florida school board voted in 1996 to start a two-semester Bible History course that would promote”use of the Bible as a historical document.” It later adopted an Old Testament Bible history curriculum developed by local school district committee and the New Testament curriculum by a private group called the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which People for the American Way said is affiliated with the religious right.
Massachusetts court rules in divorce and religious teaching case
(RNS) The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled divorced parents of different faiths can be prevented from teaching their religious beliefs to their children if it causes harm.
In a 6-0 decision handed down Tuesday (Dec. 9), the state’s top court barred a father from taking his children to church services or enrolling them in Sunday school. The judges said the father tried to push his fundamentalist Christian faith on the children and was negative about his former wife’s Jewish faith.
The father, Jeffrey P. Kendall, is a member of the Boston Church of Christ. The mother, Barbara Kendall, is an Orthodox Jew. The children, ages 4, 6 and 9, are being raised with the mother as Orthodox Jews, the Associated Press reported.
Kendall was nominally a Catholic when he married Barbara Zeitler, a mildly observant Reform Jew in 1988. Their children followed Jewish practices. The mother converted to the more conservative Orthodox Judaism in 1994 and Kendall joined the Boston Church of Christ in 1991. The religious differences led to their divorce.
`Righteous Gentile’ honored in Scotland
(RNS) Jane Haining, the first Scot to be honored as a”righteous Gentile”was commemorated in a ceremony in Glasgow Monday (Dec. 8) when the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, Moshe Raviv, presented a medal to her half-sister, 75-year-old Agnes O’Brien of Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
Haining, who was born 100 years ago, became matron of the Church of Scotland’s home for Jewish girls in Budapest in 1932. When war broke out, she stayed on, helping to save her students, and in 1944 was deported to Auschwitz, where she died in the camp hospital a few months later.
The award, from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial is given to”men and women whose actions were a ray of light in a sea of darkness,”Raviv said.
Earlier this year, at its annual meeting in May, the Church of Scotland’s general assembly honored Haining’s memory with two minutes of silence.
Colombian government cooperating with U.S. on missionary case
(RNS) The Colombian government is working closely with the U.S. State Department on the case of three U.S. missionaries kidnapped by guerrillas five years ago, President Ernesto Samper said Tuesday (Dec. 9).
Samper, appearing on the CNN’s”Larry King Live,”said Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Mejia has sent a letter to the guerrilla movement’s leaders asking about the three missing missionaries _ Mark Rich, Dave Mankins and Rich Tenenoff.
The three are missionaries with New Tribes Mission, a Florida-based evangelical Christian group.”This case must finish,”Samper said.”Of course, we all wish that the truth is that they’re alive and can return to their families, but even if this is not the truth, we need the truth.” The State Department said it believes the three were kidnapped by the leftist Colombian guerrilla group FARC (The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). FARC says it did not take the men, Reuters reported.
Quote of the day: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jack Miles
(RNS)”If I may doubt the practice of medicine from the operating table, if I may doubt the political system from the voting booth, if I may doubt the institution of marriage from the conjugal bed, why may I not doubt religion from the pew?” Jack Miles, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning”God: A Biography”and a visiting professor at California Institute of Technology, writing in the New York Times Magazine (Dec. 7) on why some Americans unsure of God’s existence choose to be religiously involved.
MJP END RNS
