c. 1999 Religion News Service

Methodists lift suspension of NCC funds

(RNS) The United Methodist Church said Thursday (Dec. 16) that it has lifted its suspension of the denomination’s funding of the National Council of Churches.

The Rev. Bruce Robbins, chief executive of the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, said the commission’s executive committee approved the action during a Dec. 14 conference call, United Methodist News Service reported.

Robbins, who spearheaded the temporary suspension as a means of highlighting the fiscal crisis faced by the nation’s premier ecumenical agency, said he was”relieved and glad”to resume funding.”I’m appreciative of the hard work that staff members of the council have done to address the issues at stake,”he said.

In response, the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the NCC, said the council leaders have”identified historic problems in the financial infrastructure of the NCC and have recognized severe difficulties in making much needed changes.” She said the Methodists”quite rightly pushed us to complete this task.” The Methodists sent shock waves through the ecumenical world when they announced in October, just weeks before the NCC’s 50th anniversary celebrations, that they were suspending payment of about half their pledge of $670,000 until the NCC brought its fiscal house into order.

At its November meeting, the NCC adopted a fiscal framework for the coming year that included sharp staff reductions and setting aside 10 percent of projected income in a reserve fund.

It also named a new general secretary, the Rev. Robert Edgar, a former Pennsylvania congressman, to replace Campbell, who is retiring in January.

In a statement Thursday, the Methodist ecumenical agency said it has received regular reports on the progress made by the NCC over the past two months and”believes that the (council) has made extensive changes and is now essentially in compliance with (its) requirements.” Campbell said the council is”grateful that we are able to close 1999 with the blessing of one of our major contributors.”

Demand for emergency food help on increase in U.S. cities

(RNS) Demand for emergency food assistance in the nation’s cities increased an average of 18 percent in the last year, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reports.

The Washington-based group’s annual status report, based on a survey of 26 cities, indicates the need for such food had the largest increase since 1992.”Unfortunately, our nation’s unprecedented prosperity is not reaching a lot of our own citizens,”said Peter Clavelle, chairman of the conference’s task force on hunger and homelessness and the mayor of Burlington, Vt.

The report also found that an estimated 21 percent of requests for food are not met. Slightly more than half of the responding cities reported turning away needy people due to lack of resources.

The survey also indicates that requests for emergency shelter rose 12 percent since the previous year, the largest increase since 1994. Sixty-nine percent of the cities surveyed reported an increase in the demand for housing.

The report listed numerous factors for homelessness, including lack of affordable housing _ which was cited the most _ as well as substance abuse, low wages, domestic violence, mental illness, poverty and changes to public assistance programs.

Most of the cities surveyed reported an expectation that demand for emergency food and shelter would increase in the year 2000. No city expected that requests for shelter or food would decrease.”This report confirms the unfortunate and sadly ironic effect that prosperity has on the poor in cities,”said Wellington E. Webb, conference president and mayor of Denver.”Our good economy has simply driven up housing costs and reduced the supply of affordable housing, putting many people on the streets and into shelters.”

Andrew Young, new NCC leader, recovering well from surgery

(RNS) Former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, the new leader of the National Council of Churches, is doing well after surgery for prostate cancer.

Young’s spokesman Lee Echols said Wednesday (Dec. 15) that the surgery went well with”no obvious spread of cancer beyond the prostate gland, which was removed. According to his physicians, everything at this point is right on course.” On Monday, the day before his surgery, Young attended his first meeting with council staff in New York.

At that time he announced that he would prefer that well-wishers who might have sent him flowers instead donate Moringa tree seedlings through Church World Service, the council’s relief division. The trees grow quickly and provide nutrients to malnourished children in West Africa.

Young, who is chairman of GoodWorks International, an Atlanta-based consulting group that fosters economic development in Africa and the Caribbean, was diagnosed in late September with early-stage prostate cancer. He is scheduled to officially become president of the council on Jan. 1.

Indiana school district creates”precepts”for moral behavior

(RNS) An Indiana school district has tried to circumvent a potential legal challenge to posting the Ten Commandments by creating 11″Common Precepts”for moral behavior.

The list begins with”Trust in God”and continues by urging students to respect authority, honor their parents, speak truthfully, abstain from sex until marriage and resolve conflicts without violence.”We’re not trying to teach religion,”said Robert Hooker, the school superintendent in Scottsburg, Ind.”With kids killing kids, and so many negative images out there, we’re just trying to put forth a positive message.” Hooker told The New York Times that the precept about trusting God is taken from the words on U.S. currency and does not refer to a specific religion.

Although the school board hoped to remove itself from legal entanglements, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in Indianapolis said its hopes may be dashed.

Kenneth Falk said he intends to file suit against the Scott County school district if the precepts are posted.”It suspiciously tracks the Ten Commandments,”Falk said of the list.”The edict to trust in God is clearly a religious notion.” In the town 30 miles north of Louisville, Ky., there are many townspeople who believe children need to be trained in the principles outlined in the”Common Precepts to Promote a Virtuous and Civil School Community.””We need to instill values in our children,”said Mayor Bill Graham.

But Jonathan Wakeman, a pilot who lives in Scottsburg, said he believes religious tenets should be upheld at church and at home.”It’s not the school’s job to tell students to believe in God,”he said.

World Council of Churches to launch `Decade to Overcome Violence’

(RNS) As the World Council of Churches prepares to launch its”Decade to Overcome Violence,”the U.S. Conference of the WCC gathered in Atlanta to set the parameters of its own effort in the decade-long program.

Retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speaking from the pulpit made famous by the Rev. Martin Luther King at Ebenezer Baptist Church, told the gathering the church must be an agent of reconciliation to a divided world.”This is what God is saying to you as you enter this new century: Help all of these my children as if they are your brothers and sisters, as if they are members of the same family.”That is the radicalness of the gospel we have been asked to preach,”Tutu said.

The Dec. 9-11 meeting also elected and installed the Rev. Kathryn Bannister, 29, as president of the U.S. Conference of the World Council. At last year’s WCC Assembly in Harare, Zimbabwe, Bannister was elected a regional vice president of the WCC.

WCC General Secretary Konrad Raiser told the U.S. Conference the plan of the world’s largest ecumenical organization to create a 10-year-long emphasis on overcoming violence has generated”a positive response of churches to couch their ministry in the concept of reconciliation”while noting the fears expressed by some that reconciliation is a complex subject and the churches do not always feel competent to mediate conflict.

Reconciliation between antagonists, between perpetrators and victims, he said,”requires of both an act of self-denial _ of repentance from the victimizers, and on the part of the victim, the readiness to forgive and not ask for revenge.” During the decade, WCC member churches will share models and resources that are working to overcome violence in local situations.

Hillary Clinton among Church Women United honorees

(RNS) Church Women United recently awarded one of its newly established human rights awards to first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Susan Shank Mix, national president of the New York-based ecumenical women’s organization, praised Clinton”for all your work especially for women and children.”Mix cited the first lady’s previous work with the Children’s Defense Fund and the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.

Other recipients were Dorothy I. Height, president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women; Charlotte Bunch, director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership; Bari-Ellen Roberts, lead plaintiff in the landmark discrimination case of Roberts vs. Texaco; Linda Descano, of the investment firm Salomon Smith Barney; and Musimbi Kanyoro, general secretary of the World YMCA.

The awards were presented on Dec. 10 in New York in observance of Human Rights Day.

Quote of the day: Southern Baptist hunger official Steve Nelson

(RNS)”Some people are uncomfortable. Some people show the love of Christ. A lot of people just look away.” _ Steve Nelson, director of hunger concerns for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, describing how he is received when he anonymously appears in worn clothes and ragged shoes in Baptist churches to highlight the needs of the poor.

DEA END RNS