c. 2000 Religion News Service

Methodists Open General Conference With Call for Unity

(RNS) The United Methodist Church opened its 2000 General Conference in Cleveland on Tuesday (May 2), with church leaders calling for a sense of unity in what could be a divisive meeting over the issue of homosexuality.

The United Methodist Church _ the nation’s second-largest Protestant body with 8.4 million members _ is meeting for its quadrennial General Conference through May 12. More than 1,000 guests joined 992 delegates at the Cleveland Convention Center.

The convention is expected to be dominated by the issue of homosexuality as progressive factions attempt to remove language referring to homosexuality as “incompatible with Christian teaching” and conservatives vow to hold the church’s position.

In an opening address to delegates, Bishop Robert Morgan of the church’s Louisville Area Annual Conference said the most important business before the convention is portraying a sense of unity to the outside world.

“Christ would not draw a line in the sand, but a circle,” Morgan said. “The crucified Christ paid the highest cost to draw a circle around us.”

Church bishops do not speak or vote during the 10-day meeting. In their only address to the church, the Rev. Emerito Nacpil spoke on behalf of the Council of Bishops. Nacpil called on the church to make new disciples around the world.

“Your bishops believe that the making of people as disciples of the crucified and risen Lord, and forming them into a community of discipleship, is the most radically significant event that can happen to humanity and to the world,” said Nacpil, leader of the church in Manila in the Philippines.

Study Shows Religious Concerns Are Not Just Conservative

(RNS) A new study by researchers at Princeton University has found that religious groups, led by mainline Protestant denominations, are more interested in progressive causes than conservative issues favored by the religious right.

A survey of 5,603 adults found that most people think churches should take the lead in advocating racial reconciliation, environmental protection and advocacy for the poor _ all issues that have been central to the mainline message for decades.

While the 1990s saw the rise of conservative evangelicals, the study found the causes advocated by mainline groups are the issues the public cares the most about.

“The perception that religious groups are really only interested in conservative issues is not true,” said Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow, who led the study. “They are not only focused on abortion or prayer in schools. Progressive issues do seem to be of enormous important to people.”

Only 40 percent of the respondents said clergy should advocate political issues from the pulpit, and there was little support for organized political lobbying _ such as through the Christian Coalition _ or for religious leaders seeking elected office.

The study also found that mainline Protestants have a slight edge over evangelicals in following public affairs. Forty-nine percent of mainline Protestants say they follow the news “most of the time,” compared with 42 percent of evangelicals, 39 percent of black Protestants, 37 percent of Catholics and 49 percent of Jews.

“We have too often assumed that mainline Protestants are politically dormant,” Wuthnow said. “These results show they are politically interested and active.

There was also significant evidence that religious groups would like to see more social action on the local level, and less influence by religious conservatives on the national level.

“The public wants churches to be taking a more active role at the local level, but is less keen on religious groups exercising influence at the national level,” Wuthnow said.

NCC Urges U.S. Not To Raid Vieques

(RNS) The National Council of Churches has asked the Clinton administration to call off a planned federal raid on protesters camped out at the U.S. Navy’s training ground on Vieques, Puerto Rico.

“This would not be the appropriate time or place for the use of force,” wrote NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar in a letter faxed to President Clinton on Tuesday (May 2).

Edgar pointed out that Puerto Rican churches have bonded interdenominationally to help lead efforts to bring a halt to the U.S. military occupation of Vieques, home to about 8,200 people.

Efforts to end the 60-year practice of military training on the island began in April of 1999 when a civilian security guard was killed by an errant bomb released during a Navy training mission. Four others were injured in the event.

In January, the Clinton administration and Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro J. Rossello reached an agreement permitting the Navy to resume limited bombing practice on Vieques until a referendum is held.

Several dozen demonstrators have camped out on the Navy compound in protest of the U.S. military’s continued use of the training ground, prompting federal authorities to announce they will use armed forces to remove the protestors.

Edgar said the Council of Churches supported “those who currently occupy the beaches on Vieques in a peaceful protest so that the island will once again become a normal society.”

“The majority of the people of Puerto Rico and Vieques have demonstrated through various means that they no longer wish Vieques to be a site for war exercises,” wrote Edgar. “Church leaders of all denominations in Puerto Rico have also confirmed this. Why not halt military exercises now, rather than wait for a referendum?”

On Sunday (April 30), nine religious leaders from Puerto Rico and the U.S. held an interreligious worship service to support those who call for military withdrawal from the island.

“The delegation’s witness affirms our solidarity with the heroic determination of the Puerto Rican people and their leaders in the call for `not one more bomb, not one more bullet,”’ said Corrine Kohut, spokeswoman for the group and a staff person with IFCO/Pastors for Peace, the group that organized the worship service.

“Network of Mainstream Baptists” Created

(RNS) A new group that aims to counter what it calls “fundamentalist domination” of state Southern Baptist conventions was formed in late April.

The inaugural meeting of the Network of Mainstream Baptists was held in Atlanta April 25-26 and attended by more than 100 representatives from 15 states.

The group intends to work to steer local churches and state conventions away from the conservative direction taken by leaders of the 15.8-million-member denomination in the last two decades. It does not intend to start a political apparatus to try to retake control of the Southern Baptist Convention or an alternative national convention that would oppose the SBC, reported Associated Baptist Press, an independent news service.

“We have no desire to create a massive organization,” said John Baugh, a Houston layman who is leader of the new movement. “We could never clean up the SBC, so why waste our time and effort?”

Movement leaders hope to educate like-minded Baptists about issues confronting churches and state conventions and to get voters out to state convention meetings to prevent “fundamentalists” from gaining control.

David Currie, executive director of Texas Baptists Committed, a state mainstream organization said mainstream Baptists need to reject the notion that politics are to be avoided.

“All church work is political,” he said. “It’s about connections and networks. Show me a pastor who’s not political, and I’ll show you a pastor who got fired.”

The new network does not intend to be the start of the proposed Baptist Convention of the Americas or the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, said Herbert Reynolds, chancellor of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, who suggested the new convention in 1998.

The fellowship began in 1991 as an alternative to the Southern Baptist Convention for providing church resources and sponsoring missionaries.

States represented at the inaugural meeting were Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Alliance of Baptists Renews Call For Dropping Cuban Embargo

(RNS) The Alliance of Baptists has renewed its call for U.S. officials to lift the country’s trade embargo against Cuba.

The resolution, adopted April 28 during the moderate Baptist group’s annual meeting in Austin, Texas, called on President Clinton and Congress “to begin an intentional process” to end the 40-year-old embargo.

“The Elian Gonzalez affair most likely would not have occurred if the embargo did not exist,” said Jim Strickland of Florala, Ala., one of 364 people registered at the 14th annual convocation and the proposer of the resolution.

Strickland said he was torn between risking the appearance of exploiting the highly publicized custody controversy over the six-year-old Cuban boy and missing the opportunity for the group to restate its stance on the embargo.

The Washington-based group has previously called the embargo an ineffective and outdated policy. It has a relationship with the Fraternity of Baptist Churches in Cuba.

The alliance also adopted a resolution stating its opposition to the death penalty, reported Associated Baptist Press, an independent news service.

It called for “churches to actively pursue ministries that promote healing and justice for victims of crime, while opposing pseudo-solutions, such as the death penalty, which perpetuate violence, hatred and revenge.”

The resolution on capital punishment also called on jurors to resist its use, governors to commute death sentences and legislators to abolish it.

The group also elected Paula Clayton Dempsey, campus minister at Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, N.C., as its new president. Dempsey will preside at next year’s convocation at Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga.

Update: `Greek Elian’ Custody Dispute Resolved

(RNS) A toddler held for nine months by his grandfather in Egypt has been reunited with his parents in Greece.

“I can’t describe how happy I am,” said Yiannis Diamandis, the father of the 21-month-old boy dubbed the “Greek Elian.” “I want to thank all those who helped to get our baby back.”

The child was the center of a custody dispute between Diamandis and his Egyptian-born wife, Gehan Mohamed Fathi Ali Ahmed, and the boy’s maternal grandfather in Alexandria, Egypt. Upset that the boy would be raised as an Orthodox Christian and not as a Muslim, Mohamed Ali Ahmed refused to return the boy to Greece though he had promised to do so when his daughter visited Egypt with the child.

Egyptian police retrieved the child Wednesday (May 3) by breaking into the grandfather’s home, according to Reuters news agency. The child then was flown back to Athens on a Greek government plane.

“Following efforts by the Greek and Egyptian authorities … the baby was given to its parents in the early morning hours,” read a statement issued by the Greek foreign ministry.

New Episcopal Bishop Installed in Los Angeles

(RNS) J. Jon Bruno wasted no time at the April 29th ceremony naming him the future bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

In his first homily as bishop coadjutor, Bruno spoke of a concern on the minds of most clergy _ money.

Indeed, included in the ordination program were pledge cards for the diocese’s “2000 by 2000” fundraising campaign in which 2000 people each are asked to buy a $2,000 share in the diocese’s permanent endowment fund for missionary work.

In pitching “2000 by 2000,” Bruno said it would make a stronger church for future generations like the children he asked to join him on stage at the Los Angeles Convention Center. “One of my central focuses will be children,” said Bruno. “Only when we put the dignity of them before the dignity of anybody can we be people of God.”

Bruno, 53, played football for a year with the Denver Broncos in the late 1960s and then spent six years as a Burbank, Calif., police officer. He became an Episcopal priest in 1978 and worked at churches in Southern California and Oregon. More than 3,000 people attended the ceremony, including at least a dozen Episcopal and Anglican bishops from throughout North America plus Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Jewish clergy.

Currently provost of the 85,000-member, six-county diocese’s Cathedral Center of St. Paul near downtown Los Angeles, Bruno will replace Bishop Frederick Borsch, when he retires sometime, unspecified, in the future.

Bruno was elected Nov. 13 after eight ballots in an upset diocesan election which saw his name offered as a from-the-floor nomination by delegates who rejected the four candidates submitted by the diocese’s 24-member search committee. His election was approved by 90 of the country’s 112 Episcopalian bishops.

Like Borsch, Bruno is critical of the resolution condemning homosexual sex passed by the world’s Anglican bishops at the 1998 Lambeth Conference.

Borsch comes from largely an academic background while Bruno is known as a social activist, prompting Borsch to describe himself and his successor as “the bishops’ Mutt and Jeff.”

Four Die in Kenya While Waiting For Cure from Evangelist

(RNS) A four-month-old baby girl and a three-year-old girl are among four people who died Sunday (April 30) while waiting to see a visiting American prayer during a religious meeting.

The four had been allowed to leave a hospital in order to attend a two-day “Miracle Crusade” in Nairobi led by American evangelist Benny Hinn, according to Kenyan police. They had hoped for a cure, but died before Hinn could pray for them, according to Reuters news agency.

Ten others in the crowd suffered broken jaws and other serious injuries when they fell out of trees they had climbed in order to better see the evangelist.

As many as 1 million people reportedly attended the crusade to see Hinn, whose shows are broadcast nightly on Kenya’s religious channel.

Quote of the Day: Former Baptist Pastor Joel Gregory of Texas

(RNS) “God is not always in the large, the grandiose, the big. He also is involved with much that is never seen, known, noticed.”

Joel Gregory, former pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, one of the nation’s largest Baptist churches, and owner of a small publishing business in Fort Worth, Texas. He was quoted in the May 2 report of Associated Baptist Press, an independent news service.

DEA END RNS