c. 2000 Religion News Service
Update: Methodist Same-Sex Decision Draws Mixed Reaction
(RNS) A decision by a Western regional body of the United Methodist Church to decline formally charging dozens of clergy who participated in a same-sex union ceremony is drawing mixed reaction.
And as the Methodists grapple with the latest decision on homosexuality, an Episcopal committee has recommended the Episcopal Church not take a nationwide stand on same-sex unions and gay ordination.
The Rev. Gregory Dell, director of In All Things Charity, a Chicago-based ministry that wants the United Methodist Church to be more open to gays, called the decision by an investigative committee of the California-Nevada Annual Conference “a watershed moment in the life of the church as it struggles with issues of sexual orientation.”
Dell last year was found guilty of violating Methodist church law for conducting a 1998 union ceremony for two men.
The decision in the California-Nevada conference responded to a complaint involving the Jan. 16, 1999 union of Jeanne Barnett and Ellie Charlton, a lesbian couple, in Sacramento, Calif.
“This committee’s determination clearly shows that our rule prohibiting holy union services is unclear and subject to mixed interpretation,” said Dell in a statement. “We take a vow as clergy to minister to all people in the congregations we serve, regardless of identity. Yet our current rule requires that clergy discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons.”
Dell said he believes the church should halt “denominational inquisition of pastors on one side of this debate.”
A Sacramento representative of Evangelical Renewal Fellowship, a group of congregations in the California-Nevada Conference who oppose same-sex unions, voiced his organization’s disagreement with the decision.
The Rev. Greg Smith said the decision has the effect of declaring that “we now follow our own individual consciences. I think it’s a day that could lead to division and even the breaking up of our annual conference.”
Smith said church leaders might want to consider a way for those supporting same-sex unions “to leave the church with dignity,” the United Methodist News Service reported.
In a separate but related matter, the Episcopal Convention’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music recommended in a report released Monday (Feb. 14) that dialogues about homosexuality should continue and each diocese should make decisions concerning same-sex unions and gay ordination.
The report reviews the almost 25 years of discussion on homosexuality within the Episcopal Church and includes several essays intended to foster discussion between members of the church who are divided on the issue.
“To admit that we are not ready, theologically or scientifically, to say a defining word about the life of homosexuals in the church betokens the much broader disagreement, in practice, among very faithful people regarding sexual mores in general,” wrote the Bishop Paul Marshall of Bethlehem, Pa., in a reflection on the essays.
Marshall added that “it seems best not to take absolutist positions on a national level” concerning homosexuality and the “principal alternative” to the committee’s recommendations “seems to be schism.”
Operation Rescue Founder Randall Terry Censured by Former Church
(RNS) Claiming onetime member and Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry has behaved “unbiblically” and is guilty of conduct “far short of Christian standards of behavior,” the pastor of Terry’s old church in Binghamton, N.Y., has issued a public “letter of censure” of the militant conservative activist.
“Many of his longtime friends … are shocked and bewildered that a man who has traveled the country pleading with Christian people to think and act biblically is now thinking and acting so anti-biblically on a number of fronts,” Dan Little, pastor of the Landmark Church, wrote in the letter posted on an Operation Save America (formerly known as Operation Rescue) Web site. Terry was an elder of the Landmark Church for 12 years.
In the letter, Little denounces what he called Terry’s “spiritual deterioration” and “lack of purity in speech and lifestyle,” writing that “Randall is altogether a different person than the one we knew and supported so many years ago.”
Little also accuses Terry of “leaving his wife in preparation to divorce, annul or otherwise dissolve their Christian marriage” and chastises him “for his unwillingness to repent of this sin.” He also charges Terry engaged in a “pattern of repeated and sinful relationships and conversations with both single and married women.”
Terry has confirmed he and his wife, Cindy, are separating, but dismissed Little’s claims as “absolute nonsense, insanity,” according to The Washington Post. “Let me just say this: My marriage problems are personal, painful and private,” he said.
Though a letter written in Terry’s defense and signed by four pastors read, “The truth is this: Mr. Terry has asserted he has only had sex with his wife,” Little said the assertion is similar to President Clinton’s denial of his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
“That’s like saying, `I did not have sex with that woman,”’ said Little, referring to Clinton’s infamous statement of denial. “Both Terry and I know what that accusation is referring to.”
Little also criticized Terry’s vocal opposition to Vermont’s domestic partner plan, which would grant same-sex domestic partnerships a legal status parallel to that accorded marriages.
“To go out and speak and challenge people to live and think biblically, you have to begin at home,” Little told the Associated Press. “If you can’t do it at home, why go to Vermont? Stay home and get it right and then go out and say what you want.”
Pope Urges Campaign Against Legal Abortion, Euthanasia
(RNS) Charging that legalized abortion, euthanasia, sterilization and artificial birth control corrupt society at its very foundations, Pope John Paul II appealed Monday (Feb. 14) for a campaign against “unjust laws that legitimize or tolerate such violence.”
John Paul addressed members of the Pontifical Academy for Life at the close of a four-day general assembly marking the fifth anniversary of the publication of his encyclical “Evangelium Vitae,” or “The Gospel of Life.”
“Facts exist that have proved with growing clarity how the policies and legislation against life are leading society to decadence, not only moral but also demographic and economic,” the pope said.
John Paul attacked the view that laws legalizing “abortion, euthanasia, sterilization and the planning of birth with methods contrary to life and to the dignity of matrimony” are an inevitable social necessity.
“To the contrary, they constitute a germ of corruption of society and of its foundations,” he said. “The civil and moral conscience cannot accept this false inevitability just as it cannot accept the idea of the inevitability of war or of inter-ethnic extermination.
“I ask of pastors, believers and men of goodwill, especially if they are legislators, a renewed and agreed commitment to modify unjust laws that legitimize or tolerate such violence,” the Roman Catholic pontiff said. “Do everything possible to eliminate the legalized right or at least to limit the damage of such laws, keeping alive the knowledge of the radical duty to respect the right to life from conception to natural death of every human being.”
In “Evangelium Vitae,” John Paul declared the taking of innocent life, including abortion and euthanasia, are contrary to the doctrine of the church. He told the academy members he considers the encyclical central to the teachings of his pontificate and a continuation of Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” which prohibited the use of artificial means of birth control.
The pope praised initiatives at the diocesan and parish level over the last five years to build “a new culture of life,” but said “much still remains to be done.” He said the issue must become an integral part of pastoral teaching.
Call to Renewal Begins Summit, Plans Call for End to Poverty
(RNS) Hundreds of religious leaders have gathered for the annual summit of Call to Renewal, an alliance of faith-based organizations that plans to initiate a campaign to address poverty.
“Overcoming poverty is a nonpartisan issue and a bipartisan cause,” said the Rev. Jim Wallis, convener of Call to Renewal, in a statement. “Churches are coming together in a way never seen before, partnering and strategizing to solve the problems of poverty.”
In an advertisement in the Monday (Feb. 14) edition of The New York Times, the group addressed recent discussions of presidential candidates about Jesus by stating that Jesus would consider poverty a top priority if he were a presidential adviser. The organization intends to offer a moral challenge to all political candidates to sign on to a “Covenant to Overcome Poverty” and a 10-year campaign to implement it, acccording to the ad.
The covenant will address a “living family income” for workers, affordable housing, educational opportunities and quality health care, the group said.
Leaders of a range of denominations and faith-based groups are expected to affirm the covenant.
The summit, which began Sunday in Washington, will conclude with a Wednesday rally announcing the covenant.
Update: American Falun Gong Member, Held by China, Returns Home
(RNS) A New York City woman detained in China after taking a picture of police breaking up a protest by members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement returned home Saturday (Feb. 12).
Tracy Zhao, 30, of New York City, was arrested Feb. 4, one of about 50 Falun Gong followers detained during the protest at Tiananmen Square, the Associated Press reported.
Zhao did not participate in the protest, according to her boyfriend Lin chong-Li, but was there to show her support for the movement, which she joined about a year ago.
Zhao, who emigrated to the United States about seven years ago, was visiting Beijing to celebrate the Chinese New Year with family and to find out how Falun Gong members were treated.
Falun Gong _ a blend of traditional Chinese breathing exercises, Buddhism and Taoism _ was outlawed by Chinese authorities last July.
The same day Zhao was arrested, about 140 Falun Gong members in the Daguang detention center in northeast China launched a hunger strike to protest their arrests and to demand their release by the Chinese New Year on Feb. 5, according to the Information Center of Human Rights and Democratic Movement, a human rights group based in Hong Kong.
At least two protesters have gone without food for nine days, the Center said, while some refused to eat for up to five days.
A detention center official has denied Falun Gong followers were being held there, while an official at the Changchun Bureau of Public Security denied any knowledge of the detainees.
In other signs of an increased crackdown on non-recognized religious groups, Chinese courts on Monday (Feb. 14) sentenced two local Falun Gong leaders _ Duan Rongxin and Liang Yening _ to eight- and six-year prison terms, respectively, for “using an evil cult to disrupt the implementation of the law,” Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, on Feb. 10, Chinese authorities reportedly arrested John Yang Shudao, an 80-year-old archbishop of China’s underground Roman Catholic Church, according to the Associated Press. Yang has already served nearly 30 years in prison, receiving a life sentence in 1955 for refusing to deny the pope’s authority as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, and for not helping create a government-controlled church.
He was released in 1981, but was again sentenced to a three-year prison term in 1988. He has been detained on a number of occasions since then. Authorities at China’s Religious Affairs Bureau said they had no knowledge of the recent detention.
Obit: Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Pioneer in Comparative Religious Studies
(RNS) Wilfred Cantwell Smith, professor emeritus of the comparative study of religion at Harvard University and former director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, died Feb. 7 in Toronto of natural causes. He was 83.
Ordained as a Presbyterian minister, Smith established the Institute of Islamic Studies in 1951 at Montreal’s McGill University, where he taught 1949-63. He became director of Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions in 1964, then moved on to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1973 to create a department of comparative religion at Dalhousie University. In 1985 Smith was appointed senior research associate to the faculty of divinity at Trinity College, University of Toronto.
Smith wrote a dozen books, including “Towards a World Theology”and”The Meaning and End of Religion,”and served as advisory editor for a number of journals. His work has been translated into some dozen languages, including Japanese, Swedish, Arabic and Urdu.
He was awarded honorary degrees from more than a dozen universities and served as president of a number of academic societies, including the American Society for the Study of Religion, the Canadian Theological Society and the International Congress of Orientalists. Smith was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received Canada’s highest award in January when he was inducted as officer into the Order of Canada.
Smith received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and a doctoral degree from Princeton University. He also studied at Upper Canada College in Toronto and Cambridge University, moving from England to teach at Forman Christian College in India.
He is survived by his wife, Muriel, five children and 10 grandchildren.
Quote of the Day: Evangelist Billy Graham
(RNS) “Tom was one of the greatest Christian gentlemen I ever knew.”
Evangelist Billy Graham, in a statement on the death of Tom Landry, founding coach of the Dallas Cowboys football team, on Saturday (Feb. 12). Landry, 75, was a former chairman of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and a United Methodist.
DEA END RNS
