c. 1998 Religion News Service

Evangelical group head urges prayer for Congress, Clintons

(RNS) The chairman of the National Association of Evangelicals has encouraged members of his group to pray for the country as Congress considers impeaching President Clinton.”We are urging our members to fervently pray for our nation while the House of Representatives debates and votes on articles of impeachment against President Clinton,”said the Rev. Lamar Vest.

His comments were included in a statement issued Monday (Dec. 14) ahead of traditional mid-week prayer services offered by many evangelical churches.”We know the decisions the House of Representatives will shortly make will affect the nation, now and for years to come,”Vest said.”It is lamentable that our president has put himself and our country in this position. We know world peace could also be affected if others see this defining moment in our history as a weakness.” Vest added that churches affiliated with the NAE also should pray for the Clinton family and”all the other families in government circles who are feeling distress during these painful days.” The NAE has not taken an official position on the impending vote in the House, but the Rev. Richard Cizik, the NAE’s interim governmental affairs director, has drafted a statement called”A Defining Moment: Biblical Considerations Regarding Leadership.” In it, Cizik spoke of the need for the church to uphold certain standards.”For evangelicals, the issue is not only what the Clinton crisis means to the society or the government, as important as that is,”he wrote.”What does it mean for the church? The kind of witness we demonstrate, and the lives we lead, may influence the society in which we live as much as what the Congress decides to do about impeachment.” Vest added in his statement that evangelicals, through prayer, can offer a model exemplified by Jesus, who”retreated from the clamor of the day in search of God’s will. That is why we are asking our people to pray more than debate; listen to God through searching the Scriptures; and re-examine our own lives.” In a related matter, the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman said at a Washington news conference that Clinton deserves a public reprimand, but Congress should determine a way to do it”without partisan exploitation or mean-spiritedness”and without throwing him out of office, the Associated Press reported.”That’s the way to deal with something like this, without discarding a person who really is a very gifted public leader and who in so many aspects of his life has been morally sensitive and committed,”said Wogaman at a news conference for his book,”From the Eye of the Storm: The Pastor to the President Speaks Out.”

Vatican warns on feminist theory of sexual equality

(RNS) The Vatican warned Tuesday (Dec. 15) that the world is facing a”crisis in faith”provoked in part by the feminist doctrine that men and women are absolute equals.

The warning was contained in a”Final Declaration”from a meeting between Australian bishops and the heads of six key Vatican administrative departments, including the powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The meeting, held at the Vatican Nov. 17-20, focused on the situation in Australia, where Catholicism is the largest Christian faith. But the document said that”many of the issues discussed are problems that are found in other parts of the church throughout the world as well.””There is a crisis in faith which has as its basis”a crisis concerning the ability to know the truth,”the declaration said.”It is manifested in Australia by the rise in the number of people with no religion and the decline in church practice.” The document said the crisis goes to the very heart of Christian belief. Cardinal Pio Laghi, head of the Congregation for Catholic Education and former papal nuncio to the United States, told a news conference that the”delicate points”the prelates discussed included feminist-inspired demands for gender-inclusive language.

The document said inclusive language could undermine basic Christian beliefs.”Generally throughout the world, there is evidence of a weakening of faith in Christ, as well as a distortion of some doctrines based on the Scriptures and the early councils of the church,”it said.”Indeed, some aspects of feminist scholarship can lead to a rejection of the privileged place given to the scriptural language describing the Trinity and to Jesus’ own teaching, and can lead to rejection of the Trinity itself.” By scrapping the Christian belief that the sexes serve to complement each other, feminism has contributed to a permissiveness that has created”great problems for Christian morality: indifference to the poor, racial prejudice and violence, abortion, euthanasia, the legitimation of homosexual relationships and other immoral forms of sexual activity,”the document said.

The document warned bishops that they must”not tolerate error in matters of doctrine and morals or church discipline, and true unity must never be at the expense of truth.”It said that when”this delicate tension between truth and unity”arises, bishops should consult each other and the Vatican to overcome it.

But it advised them to”strive to correct errors, not by the blunt use of authority, but through dialogue and persuasion.” Cardinal Edward Bede Clancy, archbishop of Sydney and president of the Australian Episcopal Conference, said Australian bishops fully agree with this approach.”If it is a priest concerned, we find that it is more productive to take him out to dinner rather than to take him to task,”Clancy said.

Polish bishops condemn conservative group as `schismatic’

(RNS) Poland’s Roman Catholic bishops’ conference has condemned what it calls the”schismatic activities”of an ultra-conservative church group and threatened to excommunicate Catholics who support the group.”Though numerically small in Poland, this group has opened chapels in various towns, and sent propaganda to parishes and seminaries,”the bishops’ conference said in a statement circulated across the country.”It is very active on the Internet, attacking the Roman Catholic Church and members of the bishops’ conference. Its actions are causing confusion in the hearts and minds of the faithful,”the statement added.

The group, the Brotherhood of St. Pius X, is an offshoot of the ultra-conservative group founded in 1970 in France by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was excommunicated in 1988 for ordaining bishops without papal consent. Lefebvre held that the reforms of Vatican II were heresy and that popes since then have been illegitimate.

Poland is considered a conservative Catholic country but not of the schismatic variety as the followers of Lefebvre, who died in 1991. The brotherhood opened its Polish branch in August 1996, said Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.

In their statement, the Polish bishops said they warned Catholics about the brotherhood out of”pastoral concern and spiritual vigilance”that they faced expulsion from the church if they collaborated with the brotherhood.

Leaders of the brotherhood in Poland said they have not denied the pope’s authority and accused the bishops of misrepresenting the group’s teaching.

Church of Scotland: parliament and parish don’t mix

(RNS) The Church of Scotland has ruled that a full-time parish minister cannot also be a full-time member of the new Scottish Parliament to be elected next May.

The Rev. Beverly Gauld, minister of Carnwath, Lanark, has been selected as a candidate for the Scottish National Party, but his presbytery ruled that he could not become a member of Parliament and remain a fulltime minister.

Gauld appealed to the Kirk’s (church) general assembly, whose commission _ the body that acts on behalf of the general assembly between its annual meetings _ unanimously upheld the Lanark presbytery’s ruling. The presbytery clerk, the Rev. Iain Cunningham, said it would be”fraught with practical difficulties”for Mr. Gauld to combine the two jobs.

He also raised the rights of the congregation _ which, in the Church of Scotland, elects its minister.

Gauld’s view is that, while Church requires a full-time parish minister to have his presbytery’s approval before taking on any employment outside the church, it also says there is no impediment to a minister serving as a official. Gauld has in fact been a member of South Lanarkshire council since 1995.

Cunningham told RNS there is a distinction in that the members of Parliament will be paid a salary and will be expected to put in a five-day week, while councillors are merely paid expenses for what is regarded as an act of public service on top of their normal work.

If Gauld is elected to the new Scottish Parliament next May, his presbytery will require him to resign as parish minister, while remaining a minister in good standing and able to take on preaching engagements.

Mormon Church leader in Chile missing, presumed drowned

(RNS) The head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Chile is missing after his flotation tube overturned during a fishing expedition on a turbulent stretch of the Bio-Bio River Monday (Dec. 14).

Police and firemen continued Tuesday to search for Dallas N. Archibald, 55,who was presumed drowned in the incident.

Don LeFevre, a church spokesman in Salt Lake City, said Archibald was last seen by a church official who was fishing nearby.

Buoyed by his personal flotation tube, Archibald was caught in rapids and disappeared around a river bend. When his companion, David Broadbent, pursued, he was only able to recover Archibald’s flotation tube.

Local police said rescue units have combed the Bio-Bio, a river known for pristine natural beauty located some 350 miles from the church’s Chile headquarters in Santiago, the Associated Press reported.

Archibald, who left a business career in 1992 to pursue church service, had just concluded a weekend of church meetings in nearby Conception, where Broadbent is president of a Mormon mission.

Archibald was a member of the church’s third highest worldwide governing body, The First Quorum of the Seventy, and led the Mormon church in Chile. Both Archibald and Broadbent are originally from Salt Lake City.

The Mormon church has about 460,000 members in Chile.

Quote of the day: South African President Nelson Mandela

(RNS)”The name WCC struck fear in the hearts of those who ruled our country during the inhuman days of apartheid. To mention you was to incur the wrath of the authorities. To indicate support for your views was to be labelled an enemy of the state.” _ Nelson Mandela, president of South Africa, and head of the formerly outlawed African National Congress, in a Dec. 13 speech to the World Council of Churches’ Eighth Assembly, recalling the WCC’s aid to the anti-apartheid movement.

DEA END RNS