c. 1999 Religion News Service

Alabama school district sued over ban on cross necklace display

(RNS) An Alabama school district has been sued for preventing a student from displaying a cross necklace.

Kandice Smith, 11, a sixth-grader at Curry Middle School in Jasper, Ala., is being represented by the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative law firm founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.”The school district’s policy clearly violates the free speech and free exercise rights of our client by denying her the ability to express her faith through the visible wearing of the necklace,”said Stuart J. Roth, Southeast regional counsel for the law firm.

The suit was filed Tuesday (Oct. 12) in U.S. District Court in Birmingham against the Walker County Board of Education.

The suit alleges that Kandice has been told repeatedly by school officials to hide the necklace inside her clothing because any necklace displayed outside clothing would violate a new mandatory dress code of the school district. Violators of the policy could face penalties ranging from detention to suspension, the firm says.

Russ Robertson, an attorney for the school board, said he had not seen the suit but was aware of the ACLJ’s concerns.”The position of the board is that the restriction against wearing necklaces outside the shirt is a constitutional rule,”he told Religion News Service.”It’s our position after having received some correspondence from the American Center for Law and Justice that they believe sincerely but incorrectly that the policy is unconstitutional.” The law firm argues that the district has not explained how the wearing of the cross necklace deters from a new dress policy that aims to decrease violence, promote safety and prevent gang activity.

Robertson said the new dress code is designed to provide”a more uniform style of dress,”such as certain colors of shirts, pants, shorts, skirts and shoes, without logos.”It’s as much an effort to prevent distraction and to assist in lowering our dropout rate,”he said.

In August, a Mississippi school board reversed its decision that had barred a Jewish student from openly displaying a Star of David necklace.

Disciples call for cancellation of debt, end of land mine use

(RNS) Members of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) called for the cancellation of Third World debt, the closure of a controversial military installation and the end of land mine use during their recent national meeting.

The General Assembly, which concluded in Cincinnati on Tuesday (Oct. 12), marked the 150th anniversary of the first Disciples national gathering.

The assembly decided to join Jubilee 2000, an international campaign to cancel the debts of the poorest nations in the world. The campaign, which is supported by the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, urges the cancellation of some $300 billion owed by 41 countries to institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The 4,000 voting representatives at the meeting also debated the merits of land mines.”Land mines are a deterrent,”argued Bill Cooley, an officer in the Air Force and a member of an Albuquerque, N.M., church.”The only thing land mines deter are kids running up a hill, farmers planting their fields or women walking to market,”said the Rev. Robert Prince, an ex-Marine who pastors a Prairie City, Iowa, church.

In the end, a majority of voters urged the United States to sign the international Ottawa Land Mines Treaty that would outlaw the weapons, but a sizable minority opposed it.

The School of the Americas, a U.S. Army-run school at Fort Benning, Ga., also was a source of debate, Disciples News Service reported.

Latin American soldiers have attended the school, which liberal religious activists have targeted because some graduates were linked to the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests and two women in El Salvador.”It is a school of assassins, right in our own back yard,”said the Rev. Ken Kennon of Tucson, Ariz., a member of the Disciples Peace Fellowship.

The vote demanding the school’s shutdown included a sizable minority that opposed it, with some believing there was no hard evidence of abuse.

The Rev. Richard L. Hamm also was re-elected to a six-year term as general minister and president of the denomination, which is based in Indianapolis.

Religious leaders credited with Alabama lottery defeat

(RNS) Religious leaders were credited with influencing a rejection Tuesday (Oct. 12) by Alabama voters of a proposed state lottery.

Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat who focused on the lottery as a means to improve the state’s schools, found that most Alabama voters did not agree with him.

With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, the lottery lost by a vote of 54 percent to 46 percent, the Associated Press reported.”It shows the church still does have quite a bit of power,”said University of Alabama political analyst William Stewart.

In late August, polls indicated that the lottery had a 20-point lead.

But Stewart said pastors told church members”it is wrong and it is going to exploit the poor and break up families.”Such campaigning influenced the vote that defeated the lottery, he said.

Republican Lt. Gov. Steve Windom agreed.”The ministers have made this happen … encouraging their congregations to come together and vote against the lottery,”he said.

The Rev. Joe Bob Mizzell, director of Christian ethics for the Alabama Baptist Convention, said no issue had united so many ministers from different denominations.”Even the abortion issue _ the sanctity of human life _ has not come as close to bringing denominations together,”he said.

Update: NCC’s action on fiscal crisis will be `swift and sure’

(RNS) The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said Wednesday (Oct. 13) the response by the NCC to a United Methodist Church decision to suspend funding for the agency will be”swift and sure.” Campbell’s statement came a day after the Methodist General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns announced a temporary suspension in paying its 1999 pledge to the ecumenical agency over concerns about the fiscal viability and responsibility of the council.”The NCC values highly the membership and participation of the United Methodist Church in the NCC,”Campbell said.”United Methodist funding is essential to the stability of the NCC.” She said the council was”distressed but not surprised”by the Methodist action.

In the current year, the NCC, made up of most of the nation’s Orthodox and mainline Protestant church bodies, was to receive some $670,000 from the United Methodist Church, the nation’s second largest Protestant denomination and the NCC’s largest member communion.

But citing concerns over the NCC’s debt load and fiscal practices, the Methodist ecumenical agency said it would suspend payment of more than $327,000 that has not yet been delivered to the NCC. And it rejected a proposal by Bishop William Boyd Grove to provide $700,000 to a special $2 million fund initiated by the NCC to help bring its fiscal house into order.

The council has a total budget of $60 million but is expected to have a shortfall of some $4 million this year.

Campbell said the executive board of the NCC”has already taken steps to address many of the concerns expressed in the United Methodist memo to the president of the NCC. We fully expect that the NCC will be able to respond to the United Methodist concerns in a timely manner.” Among those concerns, according to Methodist officials, is the enormity of the NCC’s debt, the lack of fund balances to cover the debt, the absence of a budget based on realistic income from member communions and the lack of clarity on future liabilities.

On Tuesday, senior staff members of the NCC met with the Rev. Bruce Robbins, general secretary of the Methodist Commission on Unity, and its staff.

Campbell called it”a highly constructive meeting.”

Pope sending peace envoy to Angola

(RNS) Pope John Paul II is sending a peace envoy to Luanda, the capital of Angola, to deliver a message to President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos and possibly meet with UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, a Vatican news agency reported Wednesday (Oct. 13).

Fides, the agency of the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, said that Archbishop Marcello Zago, secretary of the congregation, will leave Friday for a weeklong visit to the Central African country gripped by civil war since 1975.

Zago, a member of the order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate who served as a missionary in Africa, said in an interview with Fides that the pope”wants to express solidarity with suffering people but also the will of the church to promote peace through dialogue.””The way to arrive at peace in Angola is that of dialogue even if at the moment the leadership has made this difficult,”the prelate said. He said that only a determined international effort can end the long war.

Zago is scheduled to meet with Dos Santos, Angolan bishops and the diplomatic corps, and speak at Catholic University. Fides said he is also expected to have talks with Savimbi or a representative of UNITA.

He is meeting with the diplomats, he said, because they”have an important role both in the opening of humanitarian corridors to aid the population in the interior and to make their own countries aware of the reality of the conflict.”

Judge: Church bulletin baseball game discount OK if extended to all

(RNS) A judge has ruled that a Hagerstown, Md., minor-league baseball team may continue to offer discounts to fans who bring church bulletins to special promotion games _ as long as it offers the same discount to those who don’t.

Administrative Law Judge Georgia Brady ruled Tuesday (Oct. 12) that the Hagerstown Suns did not discriminate against self-described atheist Carl Silverman of Waynesboro, Pa., because he was offered the same $2-per-ticket discount, even though he brought no bulletin to a game.”I conclude that Maryland’s public accommodation law, unlike that of many other jurisdictions, prohibits only the discriminatory application of a promotion,”Brady said in her opinion.”In the absence of a discriminatory effect, the promotion is not per se illegal.” The Maryland Commission on Human Rights, joined by the state American Civil Liberties Union chapter, brought suit against the Suns, a Class A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, after Silverman claimed he was denied the discount when he attended a game on Easter Sunday 1998 with his daughters.

A ticket seller for the Suns testified that Silverman was offered the discount. The seller, Rico Seville, said he produced an extra bulletin on which to record Silverman’s discount, as he was required to do, but that Silverman declined the offer on philosophical grounds.

Silverman denied he had been offered a discount. The judge apparently found Seville’s testimony more credible.

Suns general manager David Blenckstone said the 6-year-old bulletin discount would continue. Attorneys for Silverman said they would appeal, the Associated Press reported.

Faith communities to observe Children’s Sabbaths

(RNS) Faith communities across the country are preparing to celebrate the eighth annual National Observance of Children’s Sabbaths this weekend.

The Children’s Defense Fund, a Washington-based organization that supports children’s causes, began the nationwide movement in 1992. Worship services, religious education classes and other activities will focus attention on the needs of children from Friday (Oct. 15) through Sunday.”The Children’s Sabbath affirms the faith mandate in every great religious tradition to protect, nurture and care for children, and gives congregations the opportunity to embrace and renew their responsibility to their young people, their communities and our nation,”said Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund.”The religious community should be raising a voice about the needs of children and saying to our nation that we have a moral obligation to see that the least of these, who do not vote, who are vulnerable, are protected.” More than 200 national and regional religious groups endorse the annual observance, including the National Council of Churches, the Congress of National Black Churches, the International Institute for Islamic Thought, the National Black Catholic Congress, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

Ralph G. Neas named president of People for the American Way

(RNS) Civil liberties advocate Ralph G. Neas has been named the new president of People for the American Way.

Neas, who was executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights for 14 years, will succeed Carole Shields, who served as president since 1996.

On Jan. 3, Neas will become the chief executive officer of the liberal Washington-based advocacy group on religious and civil-rights issues.”Ralph Neas has led the way in many decisive fights to protect Americans’ rights and liberties _ helping win key battles that many people said were unwinnable,”said David Altschul, chairman of People for the American Way.”His leadership, talent, energy and commitment to equality and justice will be critically important as we carry forward our fight to defend the American way and expand the promises of liberty to more Americans.” Neas, of Bethesda, Md., also will be president and chief executive officer of People for the American Way Foundation.”For almost two decades, People for (the American Way) and the Foundation have, time and again, stood up to the radical right and successfully defended this nation’s democratic institutions and fundamental values,”said Neas.”I am honored to have an opportunity to serve as president of both organizations and, in this time of daunting challenges, to help carry on this proud tradition.”

Regent University to build Washington-area campus

(RNS) Regent University, a Christian graduate school based in Virginia Beach, Va., has announced plans to build a campus in the Washington metropolitan area.

Ground will be broken for a five-story facility in Alexandria, Va., on Oct. 25.

It will include classroom and office space for the University College of Communication and the Arts as well as the business, counseling, divinity, education and government schools. The facility also will include an auditorium and lecture hall.

The building, which is scheduled to open to faculty and students in January 2001, is projected to cost $6.5 million.

Covenant House founder Bruce Ritter dies

(RNS) The Rev. Bruce Ritter, controversial founder of the Covenant House shelters for homeless teens, died Oct. 7.

Ritter, 72, had suffered from Hodgkin’s disease.

The Roman Catholic priest was forced to resign from Covenant House in 1990 after several young men accused him of seducing them. He denied the accusations and was never formally charged.

Ritter left the Franciscan order in 1991, the Associated Press reported.

At its peak, Covenant House was the largest private child care agency in the nation, taking in $92 million annually and sheltering 2,000 homeless teen-agers a night.

Quotes of the day: Television journalist Bill Moyers and Paige Patterson, president of the Southern Baptist Convention

(RNS)”Exploiting an unsuspecting laity’s reverence for the Bible … the laity would be subjected to the preacher, who would serve the denominational politburo, who would decide who was and wasn’t a Baptist. It was a brilliant, if heretical strategy, and it worked.” _ Television journalist Bill Moyers describing the takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention by conservatives at an Oct. 4 dinner honoring moderate Baptist James Dunn.

“Bill Moyers’ shrill, inaccurate and desperate attempts to paint conservative Bible-believing Christians in the Southern Baptist Convention as `theological Stalinists’ is entirely typical of his behavior. Moyers’ position has always been if the facts are not in your favor and you cannot adequately interpret them within your framework, then slander the witness.” _ Paige Patterson, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, responding to Moyers, as quoted in the Oct. 12 Baptist Press, the denomination’s official news agency.

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