c. 1998 Religion News Service

Church World Service plans more aid for North Korea

(RNS) Church World Service, the relief and humanitarian arm of the National Council of Churches, has announced it plans to send $500,000 in new aid to North Korea to help people survive the next crucial”crunch”in March or April, when basic food supplies will again begin to run out.”Aid provided last year has made the current winter months more endurable, but the country’s people remain in peril,”said Victor Hsu, directors of CWS’ East Asia and Pacific Program. Hsu visited North Korea last month.

North Korea has been suffering since two years of floods and drought severely crippled the nation’s agricultural capacity creating famine conditions throughout much of the country.

Since 1995, Church World Service has sent more than $2.2 million in rice, corn, barley, beef, antibiotics, blankets and clothing to help alleviate the suffering. It works through the Korean Christian Federation, a church agency in North Korea.

On Jan. 6, U.N. officials said North Korea now needs more than 1 million tons of new food assistance. The World Food program, a U.N. agency, has announced plans to provide 724,000 tons in aid to help some 7.5 million people _ roughly a third of North Korea’s population.”The entire international community is less pessimistic now about North Korea, and North Korea does seem to have turned a corner in responding to the terrible effects of the calamities of recent years,”Hsu said.”But this is no time for humanitarian organizations to rest on its laurels,”he added.

Poland’s religious minorities seek equal rights with Catholic Church

(RNS) The Polish parliament has ratified a concordat with the Vatican giving the church treaty-level protection for the exercise of its rights and recognizing the Roman Catholic Church’s”mission”in Polish history.”The concordat will help the church’s work by legally regulating its status,”said Marian Subocz, deputy secretary general of Poland’s Roman Catholic Bishops Conference.”But it will also help the state by making agreements possible and giving it fewer worries.” Poland’s religious minorities, however, said while they were not against the concordat, they expected the same legal rights as Catholics, reported Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.”We are not against the concordat,”said Bishop Jan Szarek, a Lutheran who heads Poland’s Ecumenical Council.”But this is an international agreement which supersedes domestic legislation. We have made known our thoughts about the equality of churches.” Among the rights recognized in the agreement with the Vatican is the church’s right to own property, run schools, and appoint army chaplains. It also gives equal legal status to church and civil weddings, while barring divorce in the case of church marriages not registered in the secular courts.

Szarek said 14 non-Catholic faith groups were recognized by special laws in the overwhelmingly Catholic Poland. But he said new legislation would be needed to extend various concordat clauses, such as those legally recognizing church marriages, to the minority churches.”Certainly, Poland’s new political formation accepts the church _ and I hope not just one church,”Szarek said.

Szarek said he was happy Poland’s new prime minister, Jerzy Buzek, is a Lutheran.”But confessional considerations are less important than the fact that Poland is a democratic country and should be open to all citizens,”he said.

Red heifer not all she was cracked up to be

(RNS) It turns out the holy cow is not so holy after all.

Last May, a red heifer named Melody was born at Kafr Hassidim, an Orthodox Jewish village in northern Israel.

She attracted a great deal of attention because of the ancient Jewish belief that only individuals purified with the ashes of a red heifer could enter the biblical Jerusalem Temple. Some ultra-Orthodox Jews said her birth was a harbinger the Temple would be rebuilt and the Jewish Messiah would soon be born.

But it turns out Melody is not so pure after all.

Rabbi Shamaria Shore, the animal’s caretaker, said Friday (Jan. 16) he has spotted white hairs on the animal’s tail.”The truth is that I had serious doubts about her all along,”he told the Associated Press.

Shore is not without hope, however. It tuns out Melody is pregnant by a red bull, giving rise to the belief her calf could be a pure red heifer. If that’s the case, it would be the first red heifer known to be born in 2,000 years.

Turkish Islamic party banned by court

(RNS) Turkey’s highest court Friday (Jan. 16) outlawed the Islamic-oriented Welfare Party, the nation’s most powerful political force.

The Constitutional Court ruled 9-2 that the party’s religious orientation violated Turkey’s constitution, which bans political parties based on ethnicity, religion or communist ideology.

Party leader Necmettin Erbakan _ who served as Turkey’s prime minister for a year until June 1997 _ said the decision would be appealed to the European Human Rights Commission.

He also noted Islamic political activists had already formed a new party _ Virtue _ in anticipation of the ruling. Two Islamic parties that predated the Welfare Party were also ruled unconstitutional.

The court decision means Erbakan and five other Welfare members will lose their seats in parliament as well as their immunity from prosecution. The party must also forfeit its assets to the government.

Welfare won a fifth of the popular vote in Turkey’s 1995 general election, catapulting Erbakan into the prime minister’s office he held until the nation’s military forced him to resign.

Although most Turks are Muslims, the nation is officially secular.

Welfare supporters say the party is being unfairly punished by a government fearful of religious expression. Erbakan said that despite the court setback, an”Islamic jihad army”will someday rule Turkey. The only question, he said, is whether the rise to power will be”sweet or bloody.” Christian Coalition sues former fund-raiser over use of mailing list

(RNS) The Christian Coalition has sued its former key fund-raiser for allegedly using an unauthorized list of the conservative organization’s donor base to raise money for rival groups.

The coalition, in a federal lawsuit, accuses Hart Conover, Inc., a northern Virginia direct-mail company, of trying to”eliminate the coalition as a competitor.”For four years, Hart Conover was the primary fund-raiser for the coalition.

The coalition said the unauthorized use of its mailing list is at least partially responsible for the decrease in donations that has prompted layoffs and program cuts.

Arne Owens, coalition spokesman, said the group brought in about $17 million last year, a decrease of 36 percent from 1996 and a four-year low.

The suit said Hart Conover obtained the list from Mail America, a mail processing vendor in Bedford County, Va., hired to handle a mailing for the coalition in August 1996.

Steven Chameides, an attorney for Hart Conover, said the allegations are groundless.

But Hart Conover has been barred from using the list while the matter is in court, under an order from U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton.

Update: bingo hall backs down, drops Mecca from name

(RNS) Protests by British Muslims against the renaming of a bingo hall using the word Mecca have been successful, according to officials from Islamic groups in England.

The Muslims mounted the protests in December when officials of Top Rank Bingo, a chain of 135 bingo clubs, said it would continue to use the name Mecca in the name of its bingo operation in Luton, England, after the sign outside the club had been vandalized.

But following a series of meetings with representatives of Luton’s Muslim community, officials from Top Rank and Mecca Bingo Ltd., its Luton subsidiary, said an”amicable agreement”had been reached. They refused to elaborate or say to what the name would be changed.

The vandalized sign with the offensive Mecca Bingo Hall wording has been removed.”We are happy with the situation,”said Akbar Khan, the secretary of Luton’s Islamic cultural society.”Everyone is happy with what has happened.” Quote of the day: Nina Shea of Freedom House

(RNS)”The real test for (Fidel) Castro will come after the pope leaves. The world will be watching to see if Cuba’s institutionalizes recent developments and reforms toward greater religious freedom.” _ Nina Shea of the human rights organization Freedom House on Pope John Paul II’s scheduled Jan. 21-25 visit to Cuba.

DEA END RNS