c. 2000 Religion News Service

Presbyterians Launch Investigation Into Missionary Abuse

(RNS) Officials in the Presbyterian Church (USA) have launched an investigation into charges that a former Presbyterian missionary in Africa sexually and physically abused children of church missionaries between 1945 and 1978.

About 20 people have claimed to be victims of abuse at the hands of the late Rev. William Pruitt, a church missionary to the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). Pruitt died in 1999.

The Grace Presbytery in Dallas, Texas, launched an inquiry into the charges last year after eight women there came forward and claimed to be victims of abuse. Pruitt was affiliated with Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, one of the nation’s five largest Presbyterian churches. Pruitt died before the investigation was completed.

According to church officials, charges had been leveled against Pruitt while he was serving at a church boarding school for missionary children in the Congo River city of Kinshasa. Those charges were eventually dismissed.

Of the approximately 20 people who have come forward, eight are daughters of former missionaries, church officials said. Other names have surfaced in the investigation, but all of the alleged abusers are now dead. At the time of Pruitt’s death, he was the only person under investigation.

The church recently appointed a five-member panel to investigate the claims and issue a report within 18 months. None of the victims has brought suit against the denomination.

“The purpose of the Independent Panel of Inquiry is not a disciplinary action under the PC(USA) Constitution, nor it is to evaluate or reach conclusions about civil legal liability,” a church news release said.

The church has provided counseling for each of the victims and has offered to pay up to $15,000 per person for additional counseling.

A similar problem rocked the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a small evangelical denomination, last year. Missionary children at a school in Guinea were psychologically, physically and sexually abused from 1950 to 1971. Seven former staffers and two former students were found to have been abusive and asked to undergo counseling.

Israel Dismisses Charge Iranian Jew Was its Spy

(RNS) An Israeli official said Tuesday (May 2) that Iran extracted a false confession from one of 13 Iranian Jews accused of spying for Israel’s main intelligence agency, the Mossad.

“There is no Mossad connection, no espionage,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press. “These people were imprisoned just because they are Jews.”

More than a year ago Iran arrested and imprisoned 13 Jews from the country’s southern region for releasing confidential information to Israel. The espionage could mean lengthy prison sentences and possibly the death penalty for the accused.

On Monday (May 1), an Iranian court reported one of the men arrested, Hamid “Danny” Tefileen, had confessed to giving classified information to Israel in exchange for money, and had asked Iran for clemency. That evening, Iranian television broadcast a confession statement from Tefileen.

“I have been accused of espionage for Israel,” said Tefileen in the televised statement, news accounts from Shiraz, Iran, said. “I do accept this charge. I have been spying for Israel. In my trip to Israel in 1994, I was trained for my activity in Iran.”

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman called the televised statement “ludicrous.”

“The attempt to present the Jews arrested in Iran as spies is ludicrous and pathetic,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron, according to the Associated Press. “Israel emphasizes that all the arrestees are innocent.”

Tefileen’s court-appointed lawyer Shirzad Rahmani said Iran is still required to prove his client is guilty of the state’s charges.

“There may have been confessions, there may have been an intention to spy, there may have been several trips to Israel, and there may have even been payments,” Rahmani said. “But if information damaging to Iran and beneficial to Israel was not actually exchanged, there can be no charge of espionage.”

Holocaust Remembrance Day Marked

(RNS) As memorial sirens wailed in the distance, daily activity in Israel came to a two-minute standstill at 10 a.m. Tuesday (May 2) in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, an annual observance which commemorates the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust.

Israeli radio and television stations also marked the day by replacing regular programming with documentaries and other programs about those killed by Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler.

At Israel’s parliament, Prime Minister Ehud Barak participated in the annual ceremony in which participants read aloud the names of their relatives who died in the Holocaust, Reuters reported.

In Poland, Israeli President Ezer Weizman and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski led the 12th “March of the Living” from the former Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland to Birkenau, another camp about two miles away, where German soldiers murdered as many as 1.5 million people _ primarily European Jews _ during World War II.

The march, first held in 1988, concluded at a monument erected in honor of those who died at the camp where Israel’s chief rabbi, Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor, delivered the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead.

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 230,000 people currently living in Israel had lived under Nazi rule in Germany and other countries. As many as 20,000 Holocaust survivors have died since the end of 1997, the Bureau reported.

Chiapas’ New Bishop: End Injustice Without Guns

(RNS) The new bishop of the strife-torn Chiapas, Mexico’s poverty-stricken southernmost state, has warned that the region would have no peace as long economic and other injustices remain.

Bishop Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, formerly the bishop of Tapachula on the Chiapas coast, used his inaugural homily as the new bishop of San Cristobel de las Casas to call for reconciliation and an end to the six-year war between the Mexican government and the Zapatista leftist rebels seeking greater rights for Indians.

“Chiapas is hungry and thirsty for peace,” the bishop said. “No more war, because no reason or person is superior to another. It is time for reconciliation and brotherhood.”

He encouraged the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army to honor human rights, and appealed to the group to resume peace talks with the government.

The bishop succeeds the popular Bishop Samuel Ruiz, known by his supporters as the “bishop of the poor” and by detractors as “the red bishop” for his support of liberation theology and his outspoken advocacy on behalf of the indigenous population of Chiapas.

Arizmendi, while calling for justice for the poor, also warned against the turn to violence.

“There cannot be true and lasting peace as long as there are serious injustices and exclusion,” said Arizmendi. “But guns only provoke more poverty and misery. Jesus Christ does not accept to resorting violent methods.”

Ruiz told reporters he was confident the diocese would be successful under the leadership of Arizmendi _ who supported Ruiz even though conservatives and the Mexican government suspected him of sympathizing with Zapatistas.

“I have no doubt that the work of the diocese will not only continue, but will keep leading the way toward challenging and resolving the conflicts that arise along the path of this diocese,” said Ruiz.

Alabama’s Ten Commandment Judge Seeking Higher Office

(RNS) The Alabama judge who became nationally known after fighting to keep the Ten Commandments in his courtroom is now the front-runner in a four-way Republican race for the post of chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

“I feel I have a responsibility to take what I have learned to higher office,” said Circuit Judge Roy Moore.

In 1995, Moore was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union for his display of the Old Testament laws at the Etowah County Courthouse in Gadsden, Ala. The case was dismissed on technical grounds by the Alabama Supreme Court, so the judge has been able to keep displaying a plaque with the commandments in his courtroom.

Moore, 53, believes American law is based on nature’s laws “and nature is God,” the Associated Press reported. He thinks court rulings removing prayer from public schools or religious symbols from courtrooms are wrong.

Alabama’s Republican leaders have supported Justice Harold See, one of Moore’s pro-business opponents. But a poll released in late April showed Moore is leading among likely Republican voters in the state, which is part of the Bible Belt.

The poll of 265 registered voters who expect to take part in the June 6 GOP primary showed almost 38 percent supporting Moore, followed by 14 percent for Jefferson County Circuit Judge Wayne Thorn, 10 percent for See and about 8 percent for Criminal Appeals Judge Pam Baschab. More than 29 percent of voters surveyed from April 10-17 were undecided. The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 6 percentage points.

But Moore trails See significantly on the fund-raising front. He has about $18,341 compared to $366,885 for See. Rather than using television commercials, Moore has been campaigning by speaking from church pulpits, holding in-home gatherings with supporters and meeting with Republican groups.

Seventh-day Adventist Church Urges End to “Female Genital Mutilation”

(RNS) The Seventh-day Adventist Church has issued a statement urging the eradication of ritual circumcision of females.

“Because female genital mutilation threatens physical, emotional, and relational health, Seventh-day Adventists are opposed to this practice,” reads a three-page statement adopted in April by the church’s General Conference Christian View of Human Life Committee.

“The church calls on its health-care professionals, educational and medical institutions, and all members along with people of good will to cooperate in efforts to eliminate the practice of female genital mutilation.”

The statement notes that the practice of removing portions of the genitalia of young African and Arab girls _ also known as female circumcision _ is defended as a religious tradition.

“While Seventh-day Adventists strongly advocate protection of religious liberty, Adventists believe that the right to practice one’s religion does not vindicate harming another person,” the statement says. “Thus, appeals to religious liberty do not justify female genital mutilation.”

The statement cites several biblical principles on which the stance has been taken, including “healthful procreation,” “protection of vulnerable persons,” and “preservation of life and health.”

“Because female genital mutilation is harmful to health, threatening to life, and injurious to sexual function, it is incompatible with the will of God,” the statement reads.

Quote of the Day: Wheaton College President Duane Litfin

(RNS) “We are hard-pressed to find anything in these disastrous waves of fighting that our Lord might have approved, despite the fact that the conflict was ostensibly carried out in his name.”

Wheaton College President Duane Litfin, writing to the college community of his Wheaton, Ill., school about the decision to no longer have “Crusaders” as Wheaton’s mascot.

DEA END RNS