c. 1997 Religion News Service
Korean Christians ask aid in resolving political division
(RNS) Prominent Christians from North and South Korea have appealed to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches to help them overcome their political divisions and achieve the reunification of their country.”North Korea and South Korea are one,”Park Chong-Soon, president of the National Council of Churches in (South) Korea told the 1,000 participants at WARC’s 23rd General Council in Debrecen, Hungary.”Some day we will accomplish reunification with God’s help.” Kang Yong-Suo, chair of the (North) Korean Christian Federation called on WARC to stand firm”in solidarity with Christians in our country for our national reunification.” It is the first time since the early 1950s that North Korean Christians have attended a meeting of the WARC General Council, the organization’s highest decision-making body, reported Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
Park embraced Kang on the stage, then the two leaders raised their clasped hands as a demonstration of solidarity in the reunification effort.
WARC represents 211 Presbyterian, Congregational, Reformed and United denominations around the world. Four Presbyterian denominations from South Korea are members of WARC. Kang said there are between 10,000 and 12,000 Christians in North Korea. His group, a”post-denominational”association, attended the WARC meeting as a guest.
In other action at the 12-day meeting, which concludes Aug. 20, Jane Dempsey Douglass, WARC’s president, told the 475 delegates and more than 500 observers that Reformed churches have”a responsibility to be advocates for those across the world who are being exploited by the process of (the) globalization”of the economy.
Such globalization, said Douglass, a professor of historical theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, has begun to”unravel the safety nets in … societies that have protected the poor.”
Federal judge upholds new law on child pornography
(RNS) A federal judge in San Francisco has upheld the new, expanded federal child pornography law that bans computer-generated sexual images of children and porn featuring adults depicted as minors.
U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti, in a ruling issued Tuesday (Aug. 12), said the new law protects children from sexual exploitation without violating freedom of speech.”Even if no children are involved in the production of sexually explicit materials, the devastating … effect that such materials have on society and the well-being of children merits the regulation of such images,”Conti said.
The National Law Center for Children and Families, which had filed an amicus brief in the case, hailed the ruling as”great news for children, bad news for pedophiles. … The Internet is no longer a safe haven for child-porn traffic.” Conti dismissed fears expressed by the American Civil Liberties Union that the law could be used to censor film versions of Shakespeare’s”Romeo and Juliet”or sex education manuals. Conti said only pictures that are marketed as child pornography are covered by the law.
But a spokesman for the ACLU told the Associated Press the law was broader than Conti interpreted it and the rationale Congress used in drafting the statute and Conti used in his ruling _ that the images help molesters recruit young children _ could be applied equally to”literature that describes sex in a way that makes it seem beautiful.”
Newspaper urges end to bitter Orthodox-Catholic rift in Romania
(RNS) Leaders of Romania’s Orthodox and Catholic churches have been called on by a Bucharest newspaper to end a bitter rift over the restoration to Greek Catholic control of more than 2,500 churches and other church-related buildings seized by the communists.
As in other Eastern European nations, buildings originally owned by Romania’s Greek Catholic Church, an independent church that retains ties with the Vatican, had been confiscated by the communists after World War II and handed over to Orthodox control, reported ENI, the Geneva-based religious news agency.”Ethnically, we are good brothers. At least on problems concerning the nation’s general welfare, we should be,”said the article, appearing in the daily Cotidianul. “Unfortunately, an irreconcilable divorce seems visible today between Orthodox and Greek Catholics, especially at a clerical level. It may be that a mutually accepted appeasement will be possible only after the present generation of (leaders) has gone.” Relations between Orthodox and Catholics in the Balkan nation have crumbled since Romania’s parliament narrowly passed a bill last month requiring the restoration of confiscated buildings to Greek Catholic control.
The newspaper also urged the Romanian Christian community to resolve its differences”without relying on laws … which often upset relations.” The bill, which was blocked from a vote in the lower house, is expected to be debated there when parliament resumes after its summer recess.
According to Ioan Bota, a Greek Catholic academic, the communists gave the Orthodox control of 2,500 Greek Catholic churches, monasteries and printing houses, as well as five cathedrals.
Patriarch Teoctist, leader of Romania’s 2 million Orthodox _ 87 percent of the general population _ called the bill a”dictate,”adding it represented”inadmissible state interference”and a”purposeful disregard”of Orthodox-Vatican agreements, reported ENI.
The official publication of the Romanian Orthodox Church labeled the legislation”a form of Catholic Church proselytism in disguise”and called on the lower house to reject it.
Legal recognition of Romania’s Greek Catholic Church, which claims 500,000 members, was restored in 1990 after a 42-year ban. Many of the church’s priests served long prison terms under the communists, ENI reported.
Netanyahu _ temporarily _ takes religious affairs powers
(RNS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took over the powers of his religious affairs adviser on Tuesday (Aug. 12) to implement a court ruling granting an Israeli woman from the Reform Jewish movement access to a bastion of Jewish Orthodoxy.
Netanyahu took the power to appoint Joyce Brenner to a local religious council in the city of Netanya after his religious affairs minister, Eli Suissa of the Orthodox Shas party, refused to do so.
Local councils provide religious services to residents of a locality. In the past, all councils have been made up solely of Orthodox, the most theologically stringent of Judaism’s main denominations and movements.
The Reform and Conservative movements, which make up the majority of Jews outside Israel but are a minority within the Jewish state, have been in a long legal struggle to break the Orthodox religious monopoly in Israel.
The Reform movement had filed suit to force the Brenner appointment and last week the Israel’s High Court ruled that authorities had to give Brenner a seat on the council.”Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed himself religious affairs minister and published a notice in the official gazette about Dr. Brenner’s appointment to the Netanya religious council in line with the High Court ruling,”the prime minister’s office said in a statement.
One Orthodox lawmaker said he was considering resigning over the issue.”It’s not even necessary to explain the damage this will cause to the whole issue of Judaism and the Jewish state,”said Moshe Gafni of the Torah Judaism party.”I feel I am unable to continue participation in such a coalition.”
Benin legalizes voodoo national holiday
(RNS) The parliament of the West African country of Benin has adopted a law formally making July 10 a voodoo national holiday.
Benin is considered the cradle of the voodoo religion.
Although officials have declared voodoo holidays on July 10 in past years, President Mathieu Kerekou, who describes himself as a born-again Christian, decided to seek approval of the parliament in making the holiday official, Reuters reported.
About 65 percent of Benin’s 5 million people are animists and the country has some 200 voodoo monasteries. In his 1992 visit to Benin, Pope John Paul II met chief voodoo priest Dagbo Hounon.
Quote of the day: Joseph Califano of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse
(RNS) On Tuesday (Aug. 12), the Commission on Substance Abuse Among Adolescents released a survey showing the percent of teens who know a friend or classmate who has used illegal drugs has more than doubled in the past year. Joseph Califano, former secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and head of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, had this response on NBC’s”Today”show:”This is not a problem for Washington. This is a problem for parents, for schools, for churches. Almost three-fourths of the kids … say their schools are not drug free. A drug-free school in America is oxymoronic. We have to do something about that. We have to do it locally, where the parents are, in the family, in the community.”
MJP END RNS
