c. 2000 Religion News Service
Peace Advocacy Group Urges Advent Prayers for Middle East
(RNS) Churches for Middle East Peace, an ecumenical coalition, is asking Christians across the United States to pray for peace in the Middle East during Advent.
The Washington-based advocacy network plans to start the vigil on Dec. 3, the first Sunday of Advent, and continue it until the violence ends with a negotiated resolution of the conflict.
“We offer this prayer vigil as an opportunity for congregations to incorporate the welfare of the people of the Middle East into the heart of their church life _ in their worship, in their learning, in their giving and in their advocacy,” the Rev. Mark B. Brown, chair of the coalition, told the Presbyterian News Service.
“We urge people to see this prayer vigil … as an outpouring of concern for Palestinians and Israelis _ Christians, Muslims and Jews.”
Corinne Whitlatch, director of the advocacy group, said prayer is an appropriate way of continuing their work for peace.
“Prayer itself is a form of advocacy,” she said. “We’re just trying to establish a structure so that it may be done ecumenically.”
The Lutheran Office of Governmental Affairs has organized prayer vigils on a state-by-state basis starting on Dec. 3.
“Some people are surprised when we say that this prayer vigil will continue until the violence ends and we can celebrate a just and lasting negotiated resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” said Brown, who also is assistant director of international affairs and human rights for the Lutheran office.
“Perhaps … it is difficult for many of us to pray with confidence for justice and an enduring solution, but by engaging in this vigil, we are participating in a countdown, not to Armageddon, but to reconciliation.”
Eds: For more information, contact the coalition’s Web site at http://www.cmep.org or the Lutheran office’s Web site at http://www.loga.org.)
Survey: Mainline Clergy Do Not Shy From Politics in the Pulpit
(RNS) A new survey of Episcopal and Lutheran clergy shows that pastors in the two churches do not shy away from delivering political sermons from the pulpit, and are more likely to talk politics when their congregations disagree with them.
The preliminary findings from a three-year study of 60 congregations in the Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) hint that mainline clergy are more political than they are thought to be. The final study is expected to be released next year.
The survey was conducted by Christopher Gilbert, a professor of political science at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., and Paul Djupe of Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
Gilbert and Djupe said they wanted to explore what role mainline clergy play now, after years of historic leadership on slavery, prohibition and civil rights. The researchers also wanted to know how much political information parishioners received at church, and how that might influence their political activities.
“We learned that both ELCA and Episcopal clergy are more likely to speak about politics publicly, in and out of church, when their congregations are a minority in their communities,” Gilbert told a Lutheran newspaper, the Metro Lutheran.
Among the report’s initial findings:
_ Church members who have an interest in politics say their pastor is more political than the pastor thinks he or she is.
_ Messages on controversial topics _ such as homosexuality, civil rights and abortion _ are more clearly received by parishioners than non-controversial political messages.
_ Pastors are more likely to tackle controversial topics when their parishioners disagree with them, but parishioners who disagree politically are more likely to tune out those messages.
The study comes from an initial survey of 3,000 Lutheran churches and 3,000 Episcopal churches. Of those, 38 Lutheran and 22 Episcopal congregations were surveyed about political questions.
Gilbert said “at least 15 or 20” pastors and parishioners sent back their surveys, saying that the constitutional separation of church and state prohibited them from linking the pulpit with politics.
Gilbert said that was not the case.
“The Constitutional prohibitions against mixing religion and politics are institutional, not personal,” he said. “People are free to discern whatever political implications from their faith lives that they wish, from nothing to all-out consonance.”
Orthodox Patriarch Criticizes Evangelical Proselytizing
(RNS) The head of Orthodox Christians worldwide has deemed “unacceptable” attempts by evangelical Christians to convert adherents of other faiths.
Evangelical groups from the United States were “proselytizing Orthodox congregations in Ukraine, Russia and other (European) countries,” Ecumenical Patriarch Batholomew of Constantinople said during a speech in southern India delivered on Nov. 18.
Bartholomew did not specifically mention evangelical groups in India, but Catholicos Baselios Marthoma Mathews II, the leader of India’s main Orthodox church, described the actions of some “Pentecostal” groups in India as a “real problem.”
He told Ecumenical News International that the groups “… seem to feel that all other (Christians) are in the wrong way and they are the only right group.”
Orthodox Christians _ particularly those in Russia and other parts of eastern Europe _ regard the presence of foreign missionaries as a threat to Orthodox churches. Some contend the missionaries are leading Orthodox Christians to other religions.
Pope Cites `Urgent’ Need for More Priests and Religious
(RNS) Calling on the world’s Roman Catholics to join him in prayers for new vocations, Pope John Paul II has cited an “urgent” need for more priests and members of religious orders.
John Paul, issuing a message Saturday (Nov. 25) for the church’s 38th annual World Day of Prayer for Vocations, made a special appeal to priests, nuns, brothers, parents and teachers to “encourage in young people a sense of vocation.”
The theme of this year’s observance on May 6 is “Life as a Vocation.”
“Within the Christian community, each person must discover his or her own personal vocation and respond to it with generosity,” the pontiff said. “Every life is a vocation, and every believer is invited to cooperate in the building up of the church.
“On the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, however, we turn our attention in a special way to the need and the urgent requirement for ordained ministers and for persons who are ready to follow Christ on the arduous path of consecrated life in the profession of the evangelical counsels,” he said.
Urging the world’s 1 billion Catholics to pray for new vocations, John Paul said, “I invite everyone to join me in imploring the Lord so that there will never be a lack of laborers in his harvest.”
The pope said that priests, nuns, monks and teachers can nurture vocations in young people both through “careful and prudent spiritual direction” and through the example of their own lives.
To parents of young people, he said: “Do not leave them alone when they are faced with the weighty decisions of adolescence and youth. Help them to prevent themselves from being overwhelmed by an anxious searching after material well-being and guide them towards that genuine happiness which belongs to the spirit.”
According to the Statistical Yearbook of the Church, as of Dec. 31, 1997, there were 404,208 priests worldwide, 263,521 serving dioceses and 140,687 members of orders, plus 4,420 bishops, archbishops and cardinals, 819,279 nuns and 58,210 brothers.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Does Not Rule Out Meeting With Pope
(RNS) Orthodox Patriarch Alexii of Moscow and All Russia said Tuesday (Nov. 28) he does not entirely rule out the possibility of an eventual meeting with Pope John Paul II.
But during talks in Moscow with visiting Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the Russian Orthodox leader reiterated his demands for settlement of bitter property disputes in the Ukraine and an end to alleged Catholic proselytizing among the Orthodox in Russia.
The Polish-born pontiff, who is now 80 years old, has made no secret of his strong desire to visit Moscow and meet with Alexii. Following groundbreaking trips to predominantly Orthodox Romania in 1999 and Georgia earlier this year, John Paul plans to travel to Ukraine in June despite the strained relations between Catholics and Orthodox in the former Soviet republic.
Speaking of a papal trip to Moscow, Alexii said, “We do not exclude such a possibility, but the meeting must be well prepared for and the obstacles that today do not permit it to happen must be eliminated.”
The Italian news agency ANSA, reporting from Moscow, said Alexii cited as obstacles “the lack of a Vatican condemnation of the actions of Eastern Rite Catholics who occupy Orthodox churches in the eastern Ukraine” and Catholic proselytizing.
The property at issue was confiscated and turned over to the Orthodox Church in 1946 when Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin disbanded the Ukrainian Catholic Church, forcing its members to practice their faith underground.
At that time, the Russian Orthodox Church included the Ukrainian church.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has split into three jurisdictions in a dispute over independence from Moscow following the establishment of an independent, post-communist Ukrainian state, but the largest section is still linked to the Moscow Patriarchate.
The Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches charge that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian Catholics have attempted to seize Orthodox property in an aggressive campaign to reclaim what was taken from them.
The Russian Interfax news agency quoted Alexii as saying the Vatican has, in effect, admitted it is proselytizing in Russia.
“We agree with some authoritative Vatican officials who believe that Russia is a field for missionary activity of the Catholic Church,” the patriarch said.
Theological Booksellers Honor Top Books
(RNS) Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann was named the winner of the “Best General Interest Book” in the 2000 Theologos Awards presented recently by the Association of Theological Booksellers.
Brueggemann’s winning book was “Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World” (Fortress Press).
Other winners were:
Best Academic Book: “Who Are We? Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities,” by Jean Bethke Elshtain (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.).
Best Children’s Book: “If Nathan Were Here,” by Mary Bahr (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.).
Book of the Year: “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation” by Parker Palmer (Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers).
Publisher of the Year: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
The winners were honored at a Nov. 18 ceremony during the annual conference of the Association of Theological Booksellers in Nashville, Tenn. The association includes publishers as well as seminary, university and college bookstores.
Russian Panel: Wallenberg Shot at Secret Police Headquarters
(RNS) A Swedish diplomat who helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi persecution was shot in Moscow at the headquarters of the Soviet secret police, according to the Russian presidential commission investigating the death.
The announcement Monday (Nov. 27) from the Presidential Commission on Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression disputed the official Soviet account of the death of Raoul Wallenberg, who saved the lives of at least 20,000 Jews in Hungary during World War II by giving them Swedish passports.
Wallenberg, who worked as a diplomat in the capital city of Budapest, was last seen in January 1945 headed toward a meeting with leaders of Soviet forces who had invaded Hungary.
Soviet officials have attributed Wallenberg’s death to a heart attack in a Soviet prison in July 1947.
“Now we do not doubt that he was shot in the Lubyanka prison, and so we have appealed to the main military prosecutor to carefully investigate all the circumstances related to his death,” the commission’s chairman was quoted as saying by a Soviet news agency, according to the Associated Press.
The commission has asked Russian prosecutors to recognize Wallenberg as a victim of oppression by Joseph Stalin. A separate report on Wallenberg’s fate is expected to be completed in January by a Swedish-Russian commission.
Wallenberg’s half-brother expressed caution about the news.
“Before accepting the theory that he was killed at Lubyanka, we need documentary proof,” Guy von Darden said.
Quote of the Day: Muslim teacher Amaarah Decuir
(RNS) “I talk to them about tolerance and teasing and how it’s not funny to have someone wave a Twinkie in your face when you are fasting.”
Amaarah Decuir, a Muslim sixth-grade teacher at Herndon Elementary School in Herndon, Va., who has explained the meaning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to students. Decuir was quoted in the Tuesday (Nov. 28) edition of The Washington Post.
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