c. 1997 Religion News Service
Urban League, black church group jointly promote black achievement
(RNS) The National Urban League and the Congress of National Black Churches have joined forces to encourage greater emphasis on academic achievement among African-American students.”We know that we _ and the society as a whole _ have much work to do,”the two groups said in a”Statement on Public Education”released Thursday (Dec. 4).”We have to reverse the increasing gap in academic achievement between African-American and other children. We have to increase their low rates of enrollment in college preparatory courses, and attack the inequitable allocations of resources for public education.” At a forum in Washington, representatives of both organizations addressed some of their plans for a”Campaign for African-American Achievement,”which will incorporate a total of 20 groups.
Starting in the spring of 1998, youth will be”inducted”into a National Achievers Society, an honor society that aims to draw nationwide attention to achieving young African-Americans. The campaign also will include local leadership summits and the collecting of data to assess educational standards, teacher preparation and classroom organization.
Bishop John Hurst Adams, CNBC’s founder said he thinks his organization and the Urban League will better be able to revitalize the education of African-American students by pooling the research expertise of the Urban League with the congress’ large constituency of African-American congregations.”We are not interested in three or four individual students doing well,”said Adams, the senior bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.”We are interested in bringing the whole community and population to academic excellence.” Other groups that will be involved in the campaign include sororities, fraternities and groups dealing with legal and child development issues.
But Urban League President Hugh B. Price views the role of the church coalition as a crucial one in the effort, not only because of its large grass-roots constituency but because organizers believe the achievement campaign should be driven by a spiritual sense that it is the”right thing”to do.”Just as the civil rights movement sprung from the church, this drive for achievement must spring from the church,”he said.
The Urban League is a social service and civil rights organization based in New York. CNBC is a Washington-based coalition of eight historically African-American denominations.
Billy Graham hospitalized with pneumonia
(RNS) The Rev. Billy Graham, hospitalized Wednesday (Dec. 3) in Jacksonville, Fla., has been diagnosed with pneumonia.
Graham, 79, entered St. Luke’s Hospital after experiencing fever and chills for the previous week. He had been vacationing in the Caribbean and was admitted to the Jacksonville hospital because of its affiliation with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where the evangelist has previously been a patient. He is suffering from inflammation of the lower lobe of his right lung.
In a news conference Thursday afternoon (Dec. 4), Graham’s doctor said the evangelist is in”fair, but stable”condition. Dr. Charles Burger said he hoped Graham’s hospital stay would be brief, but that further analysis of his condition is necessary before determining when the famed evangelist could be discharged.
Graham also suffers from Parkinson’s disease, but the doctor did not think Graham’s current illness was related to that condition.”He’s in very good spirits, certainly is the type of person that doesn’t like to be down, but is happy, I think, to be on the road to recovery,”Burger said.
Burger said Graham’s condition has improved since he entered the hospital.”He was having fever and chills and other symptoms of pneumonia that have improved over the last 24 hours and (he) feels stronger,”Burger said.
Graham completed a series of crusades in California this fall and met with President Jiang Zemin in early November during the CHinese leader’s visit to the United States.
Henry Lyons defends himself in news conference
(RNS) The Rev. Henry J. Lyons, embattled president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, held a news conference Wednesday (Dec. 3) to defend himself against investigations and questions about his personal and financial dealings.”If I have violated any state or federal laws, it was not my intent,”he said,”and it was certainly never my intent to do any act which would cause financial harm to anyone.”I have attempted to take reasonable steps to correct any perceived wrongdoing I may have committed. However, authorities may very well be intent on prosecuting me.” Lyons made his remarks at his church in St. Petersburg, Fla., surrounded by his wife, three lawyers and more than a dozen church deacons, reported USA Today.
Lyons’ financial dealings have been under investigation by state and federal authorities for several months.
The denominational president did not field questions from reporters and one of his attorneys closed the news conference by saying nothing his client had said should be taken as an admission of criminal wrongdoing.
Lyons struck a much different pose from the angry and defiant man who faced the media in July when allegations against him first arose. At that time, he claimed there was a racist conspiracy to oust him as a successful African-American leader.”I was wrong to imply or suggest everyone was out to get Henry Lyons simply because he’s black,”said Lyons. Although he believes racial inequities do exist, he said,”as a person of Christian faith it was my duty to not lean on perceived racial unfairness, but instead to admit that blacks, just as whites, are not immune from temptations.” Lyons has been facing allegations since his wife, Deborah, was charged in July with setting fire to a home he co-owned with a female denominational official. Since then, Deborah Lyons has pleaded guilty to arson and Lyons has survived attempts to oust him from the leadership of his denomination, the largest African-American Baptist group in the nation.
In addition to allegations of improper spending of church money, Lyons has been accused of failing to spend money earmarked for burned churches on that cause and accepting $350,000 in secret payments from the leader of Nigeria’s military regime.
At the news conference, Lyons apologized”to any of the churches that may have suffered”when church arson money was diverted from them, but did not discuss allegations concerning the Nigerian funds, the Associated Press reported.
Catholic bishops”disappointed”at U.S. failure to sign land mines pact
(RNS) The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops said Thursday (Dec. 4) they were disappointed at the United States’ refusal to join some 125 other nations in signing a treaty aimed at ridding the world of anti-personnel land mines.”Even if the United States is not responsible for the indiscriminate use of land mines in Angola or elsewhere, their terrible moral and human costs should compel us to help ban them, not resist or delay work toward this urgent moral imperative,”said Bishop Joseph Fiorenza, of Galveston-Houston, vice president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The bishops have made opposition to anti-personnel land mines one of their top foreign policy issues and have coordinated an anti-land mines campaign involving a host of Catholic religious orders and other organizations.
On Wednesday (Dec. 3), nations supporting the treaty gathered in Ottawa and began signing the treaty that climaxed a six-year campaign by non-governmental organizations such as the International Red Cross and religious groups such as the U.S. bishops, the National Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation.
Fiorenza, expressing the bishops’ unhappiness that the United States did not sign the treaty, said”without the United States, this noble effort to achieve an effective global ban will be seriously undermined.” The United States opposes the ban because, among other things, it wants to maintain the right to use mines along the sensitive border between North and South Korea.”We do not underestimate the challenge of developing alternatives to anti-personnel land mines that will resolve these concerns, but if alternatives exist, and many experts say they do, the United States has a moral responsibility to pursue them _ not in the distant future but now,”Fiorenza said.
Quote of the day: An unnamed, 15-year-old runaway in Rockville, Md., quoted in Washingtonian magazine speaking about drugs
(RNS) The cover story in the December 1997 issue of Washingtonian magazine consists of quotes from a variety of Washington, D.C.-area individuals on the subject of God and religious beliefs. Included are the comments of an unnamed, 15-year-old runaway girl in Rockville, Md., addressing the question of”evil, Satan and sin.””I think of Satan as being drugs, especially when you see people 13 or 14 being killed because of drugs. That’s how I stay away from them.”
DEA END RNS
