c. 1999 Religion News Service
Religious, educational groups support guide to cooperation
(RNS) Religious and educational organizations from a range of theological and political perspectives have joined together to endorse a new guide to the controversial intersection of religion and public schools.”Public Schools & Religious Communities: A First Amendment Guide”was announced Wednesday (July 7) at a news conference at the Freedom Forum in Arlington, Va. The guide is jointly published by the forum’s First Amendment Center, the American Jewish Congress and the Christian Legal Society.”Public schools and religious institutions have different missions, but they share many of the same civic and moral values,”the 10-page guide begins.”By working together in ways that are permissible under the First Amendment, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, schools and religious communities can do much to enhance the mission of public education.” The guide emphasizes the need for safety and religious neutrality when community organizations, including religious groups, and school districts enter a”cooperative arrangement.” The booklet cites examples for possible cooperation, including crisis counseling, mentoring programs, shelters, school use of facilities owned by religious institutions and released-time religious education.
It says religious leaders can be among qualified counselors who can assist schoolchildren in coping with a crisis.”Even when counseling to deal with a sudden crisis, religious leaders should remember that a public school is not a place for proselytizing or other overt religious activity,”the guide reads.
The guide notes that schools can cooperate with mentoring projects operated by religious institutions and houses of worship can be used as shelters or school facilities. In cases where a public school leases space from a house of worship, religious symbols and messages cannot be displayed in the lease area, it says.
The guidelines have been endorsed by a variety of groups, including the American Association of School Administrators, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, the Council on Islamic Education, the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Council of Churches, the National School Boards Association and the U.S. Catholic Conference.
Gay issues dominate Methodist regional meetings
(RNS) If the debates and actions of the United Methodist Church’s round of annual conference meetings are any indication, gay issues are likely to dominate the denomination’s General Conference _ the top legislative body _ next year.
At the same time, if these same meetings are indicative, the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination is unlikely to make any sharp changes in its position that homosexual practices are incompatible with church teaching and that gays and lesbians cannot be ordained to the Methodist ministry.
Most of the conferences dealing with the issue also tended to uphold current church teaching that bars Methodist clergy from officiating at same-sex union services or allowing their churches to be used for such services.
The denomination’s 66 annual conferences, or regional bodies, met during May and June and adopted a host of resolutions that will help the General Conference set its agenda for its May 2-12, 2000 meeting in Cleveland.
Of those annual conferences acting on gay-related issues, 20 urged the denomination to maintain its current policies and three urged disciplinary action against pastors who helped celebrate a same-sex union in Sacramento, Calif., in January.
Seven conferences voted to ask the General Conference to drop the language in the church’s Book of Discipline saying homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.
Although the annual conferences were sharply divided by gay issues, they appeared more united in their support for resolutions dealing with children’s issues, especially the Bishops’ Initiative on Children and Poverty. Thirteen conferences reported collecting more than $883,000 to support the anti-poverty effort and the related”Hope for the Children of Africa”appeal and”Change for the Children of Africa”program.
Other conferences dealt with the issue of violence and children. The Western New York Conference called for a study of the causes of violence and a 15-day”Abstain From Violence”campaign, including a boycott of violent films and TV shows.
WARC names first non-European as general secretary
(RNS) The World Alliance of Reformed Churches has appointed a theologian and pastor from Ghana as its first non-European general secretary.
The Rev. Setri Nyomi of Ghana, currently a senior official with the All Africa Conference of Churches, has been named to head the day-to-day operations of the WARC, which has 214 Presbyterian, Reformed, Congregational and United churches around the world.
WARC, which is headquartered at the Ecumenical Center in Geneva, is currently holding its annual executive committee meeting in Taipei, Taiwan.
Nyomi, 45, is a pastor in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Ghana and holds a master’s degree from Yale University Divinity School and a doctorate in pastoral theology from Princeton Theological Seminary.”I’m glad to say that, talking in 1999, there is a blending and development in all traditions, and what we have in common is on the increase,”Nyomi told Ecumenical News International, a Geneva-based religious news agency, when asked about his view of ecumenism.”I celebrate that.”But I also celebrate that, as Reformed people, we have pioneered sound theological reflection which leads to meaningful worship, as well as action in society,”he said.
Americans in Zimbabwe: `We are not commandos’
(RNS) Three Americans arrested in Zimbabwe on weapons charges said Wednesday (July 7) they”are not commandos”and they were shipping the cache of weapons with which they were seized home to the United States.
In an affidavit, the three self-described missionaries said they are used to”very liberal firearms legislation”in the United States and didn’t know they would be breaking the law by transporting the weapons through Zimbabwe from their closed mission station in Congo.
The three _ John Lamonte Dixon, Gary George Blanchard and Joseph Wendell Pettijohn _ are affiliated with the Indianapolis-based Harvestfield Ministries.
The Americans were arrested March 7 after a gun set off a metal detector as they boarded a flight in Harare, Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe police said they found an array of weapons, including pump-action shotguns, hunting rifles, automatic rifles, a light machine gun, telescopic sights, handguns and silencers, in the men’s luggage and in a truck parked at the airport.”We have never undergone military training,”the men said in their affidavit, the Associated Press reported.”We are not commandos, and we bear no country nor its people ill intent. On the contrary, we serve God and minister to the needy.” Zimbabwe has charged the men with illegal possession of”arms of war”and attempting to place”dangerous goods”aboard a civil aircraft, the AP said. They could receive eight years to life imprisonment if convicted. Their trial is scheduled to begin Monday (July 12).
English Catholics urge steps to reverse number of women sent to prison
(RNS) The Catholic Agency for Social Concern, an arm of the Roman Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, is urging the government to come up with measures to reverse the sharp increase in the number of women sent to prison.
In a report issued Wednesday (July 7), the agency said the 72 percent increase since 1991 in the number of women being imprisoned had done little to reduce crime and had had particularly severe consequences for the women and their children.
Government statistics put the number of jailed women in England and Wales at 3,166; two-thirds of those are mothers.
The report said many of those imprisoned should not be there at all and urged the government to carry out further research into and development of effective alternatives to prison sentences for women offenders, particularly those with young children.
The report acknowledged there is a small but growing number of women imprisoned for violent offenses and for some of those women, imprisonment represented the most appropriate option. But it argued most women in prison were serving sentences for nonviolent offenses and many women prisoners present little security risk and could reasonably be punished in the community.
It said the negative consequences of imprisonment for the children of women in jail were often disproportionate to any possible social benefit achieved by sending the offender to prison.
The report carries a foreword written shortly before his death by Cardinal Basil Hume, who said,”The recommendations challenge the trend of secular thought on crime and imprisonment and deserve serious attention.” Pope flies to northern Italy for two-week Alpine vacation
(RNS) Pope John Paul II put the cares of the Vatican behind him Wednesday (July 7) and flew to northern Italy to begin his annual two-week vacation in a simple country cottage high up in the Italian Alps.
The pope flew to the Turin airport where a helicopter waited to take him further north to the village of Les Combes in the Valle d’Aosta near the French border.
As on his previous holidays at Les Combes, the leader of the world’s 1 billion Roman Catholic will stay in a two-story, slate-roofed cottage of wood and stone set among fir trees and larches at an elevation of about 5,000 feet above sea level.
John Paul first saw Les Combes on a pastoral visit to the area in 1986 and since then has returned seven times to spend his vacation in the isolated cottage with a view of Mount Blanc.
The cottage, a retreat owned by the Salesian order, has a small sitting room, kitchen and bathroom on the first floor and two bedrooms _ for the pope and his secretary, Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz _ and a chapel on the second.
The Vatican said John Paul also was accompanied by a Polish friend, Tadeusz Styczen, chief Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls and Vatican security guards.
The pope’s only public appearances will be on the two Sundays of his holiday when he will recite the midday Angelus Domini prayer _ on July 11 from the balcony of his cottage and July 18 at a convent of 10 cloistered Carmelite nuns and one postulant in the nearby village of Quart.
Growing up in Poland as Karol Wojtyla and even after he was elected pope in 1978, John Paul enjoyed skiing and hiking in the mountains, but a broken thigh bone he suffered in 1994 and the effects of a neurological disorder believed to be Parkinson’s disease have limited his mobility in recent years.
In the last few years, the pontiff, now 79, has used a staff for support on the walks he has taken with forest ranger Alberto Cerise.
Quote of the day: Jonathan Yardley, book critic
(RNS)”The present vogue for spirituality is little more than that: a passing fad indulged in for easy gratification rather than a genuine religious commitment requiring hard choices and genuine faith. In the 1960s it was pot; at the approach of the millennium it’s God. Same difference.” _ Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley, quoted by Martin E. Marty in the July 1 issue of Context.
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