c. 1998 Religion News Service
Debt-ridden University of Mobile gets accreditation reprieve
(RNS) The debt-ridden University of Mobile has received a one-year extension on its accreditation probation while it works to balance its budget.
The Southern Baptist-affiliated school in Alabama has been dealing with a debt of almost $4 million.
Jack Allen, associate executive director of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, said the school’s proposed plan for a balanced budget demonstrates”good cause”for an extension.
Originally, the agency said in June the school had six months to prove it could improve its debt situation. The probation was due to problems related to accountability and financial stability, reported Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Allen said a special committee will visit the school this fall, when University of Mobile officials will have to present reports on the school’s financial situation as well as audits of its main campus and its campus in San Marcos, Nicaragua.
The Nicaragua campus was started without authorization from the Alabama Baptist State Convention, the school’s parent body. Tensions surrounding the campus and its financial management led to the resignation of Michael Magnoli as the university’s president last May.
In one year the review committee will determine whether to extend the probation another six months, drop the school’s accreditation or remove the accreditation sanctions.
Walter Hovell, interim president of the university, voiced confidence about the school’s financial and academic future.”We continue to move forward with our plan of action to improve the financial stability of the institution,”he said.
Romanian Baptists receive religious freedom pledge from government
(RNS) Romanian officials have pledged to Baptist leaders that they are committed to religious freedom.
They also have apologized for the beating of nine Baptists in the village of Ruginoasa last Easter, Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention reported Friday (Jan. 2).
After the beating, which took place in a house used for worship, Romanian President Emil Constantinescu ordered an investigation and called a May summit to determine the rights of Romanian evangelicals. At that time, the Baptist World Alliance asked the Romanian government to investigate the lack of police protection for Baptists.
Denton Lotz, the Baptist World Alliance general secretary who led a delegation that met with the officials, said Constantinescu and Victor Ciorbea, the Romanian prime minister, gave their assurances of religious freedom for all Romanians during a Nov. 21 meeting in Bucharest.
Constantinescu was elected in 1996, succeeding former communist Ion Iliescu, and has been known for his openness to reform.
Karl Heinz Walter, general secretary of the European Baptist Federation and BWA regional secretary for Europe, thanked the Romanian leaders for their pledge to religious freedom, which is a marked contrast from former leaders.
Baptist leaders also met with Orthodox Patriarch Teoctist to discuss proposed Baptist-Orthodox dialogues. The alliance is waiting for a decision from 15 independent Orthodox groups about whether to hold such conversations.
Lotz told the patriarch his organization opposes proselytism, something the Orthodox accuse evangelicals of doing, and the two discussed the suffering Baptists endured in Romania from the 16th to 19th centuries.
Pope visits quake victims, urges Franciscan spirit in coping
(RNS) Pope John Paul II visited the area of central Italy ravaged by earthquakes three months ago, urging the quake’s victims to bear the hardships caused by the disaster”in a Franciscan spirit.” During a one-day visit Saturday (Jan. 3), the pope visited three towns in the stricken region, including Assisi, home of St. Francis, Italy’s patron saint. The quakes last fall left 11 dead and 13,000 people homeless. Among the buildings damaged in the quakes was the St. Francis Basilica.
Government and church officials said they hoped restoration of the basilica _ a major pilgrimage site _ will be completed by the end of 1999, in time for the year 2000, when millions of tourists and pilgrims are expected to visit Rome and other historic sites in Italy.”How could one not see in the destroyed homes, churches, streets and piazzas the emblems of wounded intimacy, of human ties violated, of historic continuity interrupted, of a sense of security lost?”the pope asked, according to The New York Times.
But, he said, the natural disasters had”not wiped from your hearts the greatest treasure: the patrimony of your Christian and human values.”
Farrakhan denounces South Africa’s truth commission
(RNS) Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan has criticized South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for being too soft on whites who committed atrocities during the apartheid era while subjecting Winnie Mandela to a nine-day public hearing.”Is it politically motivated? Is it designed to destroy her political credibility so she won’t be a force in this country?”Farrakhan asked at a news conference in Soweto.
The controversial leader praised Mandela, former wife of South African President Nelson Mandela, as a”warrior.” The nine-day hearing investigated charges that she led a gang of township thugs in the late 1980s that kidnapped, tortured and murdered those it considered its enemies.
Farrakhan said the commission needs to encourage those who committed crimes during the apartheid era to correct their wrongs, the Associated Press reported.”You cannot leave the blacks in the condition they are in and affect real reconciliation,”he said.
Arizona inmate, on hunger strike, dies over demand for religious diet
(RNS) An Arizona inmate serving a 20-year sentence for murder has died following a hunger strike he called because the prison did not meet his demands for a religious diet.
The prisoner, Teshone Abate, 39, a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church, stopped eating in August and eventually his weight dropped to 75 pounds, about half his original weight. He died Saturday (Jan. 3) at St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson, the Associated Press reported.
Ethiopian Orthodox leaders told Arizona Department of Corrections officials that their faith requires adherence to Old Testament dietary laws. But prison officials said Abate refused to eat the prison’s kosher meals.”He was always changing what he wanted to eat,”said Camilla Strongin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, according to a The New York Times report.”No diet we could come up with would satisfy him.” Although Abate had been hospitalized in September under a court order, he had ripped out his feeding tubes and a court later ruled that he could not be force-fed because he was mentally competent to decide whether or not to accept medical care.
Quote of the day: author and former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver
(RNS) Former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, now a writer and lecturer, writing in the Los Angeles Times, recalled Martin Luther King’s last speech before being assassinated and its vision of black Americans entering the Promised Land:”We must go beyond where King went. We must enter that Promised Land. As Joshua and the people of Israel were to Moses, we must be to King. His dream and his vision, standing upon the loftiest spiritual and political principles of this nation, must become our reality as we embrace and live out this nation’s creed.”
MJP END RNS
