c. 2000 Religion News Service
Pope Renews Call for Special Status for Jerusalem
(RNS) Pope John Paul II has renewed his call for an internationally guaranteed special status for Jerusalem to preserve its holy sites and ensure full freedom of worship to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.
Addressing pilgrims gathered outside his summer residence at Castelgandolfo in the Alban Hills south of Rome on Sunday (July 23) for the midday Angelus prayer, the 80-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff said he is closely following the Middle East peace talks under way at Camp David, Md.
“I want to accompany those negotiations, which are certainly not easy, with prayer and encouragement,” John Paul said.
The pope said he hoped the talks were based on “respect for law and justice for all” and the desire to reach “a just and lasting peace,” and would take into consideration the “spiritual dimension” of Jerusalem.
“I would like to invite the parties involved not to overlook the importance of the spiritual dimension of the city of Jerusalem with its holy places and the communities of the three monotheistic religions that surround them,” he said.
“The Holy See continues to hold that only an internationally guaranteed special statute can effectively preserve the most holy parts of the holy city and assure freedom of faith and of worship for all the faithful who, in the region and in the entire world, look to Jerusalem as the crossroads of peace and coexistence.”
The status of Jerusalem is reported to be the major stumbling block in two weeks of talks by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the presidential retreat at Camp David aimed at reaching a definitive peace agreement.
Although there has been a news blackout on the negotiations, led by President Clinton, Israeli and Palestinian officials disclosed Friday (July 21) the United States has offered proposals for Israel and the Palestinians to share Jerusalem and its suburbs.
Since it annexed Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel has claimed the city as its “undivided and eternal capital” but pledged open access to the holy sites. Arafat seeks to make East Jerusalem the capital of the independent Palestinian state he plans to declare in September.
During his Holy Year pilgrimage to Jerusalem in March, John Paul heard an angry exchange between Jewish and Muslim religious leaders over control of the city.
The Vatican, which established full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1994, last February signed an accord governing its future relations with the Palestine National Authority.
The document called for “a special, internationally guaranteed statute” for Jerusalem and warned that “unilateral actions and decisions which alter the specific character and status of Jerusalem are morally and legally unacceptable.”
General Mills Apologizes for Including Bible in Cereal-Box CD-ROMs
(RNS) General Mills has apologized in advance for including the Bible on CD-ROMs in cereal boxes headed to grocery store shelves.
The Bible is included on the CD-ROMs along with games such as Clue, Lego Creator and Carmen Sandiego Word Detective.
The Minneapolis-based company said the Bible ended up on the CD-ROM “without our knowledge or consent,” the Associated Press reported.
“While inclusion of the Bible may be seen as added value by some, it is the company’s policy not to advance any particular set of religious beliefs,” General Mills said. “Inclusion of this material does not conform to our policy, and we apologize for this lapse.”
Greg Swann of Rhinosoft Interactive of Wisconsin, the company that helped create the CD-ROMs, called General Mills’ assertion that it was unaware of the software Bibles “a flat-out lie.”
Swann said his idea was to promote the Bible as part of a basic “reference library” for home computers, including a one-volume encyclopedia, a thesaurus and a Merriam Webster dictionary.
“We all knew we were walking through a minefield,” Swann told the Detroit Free Press. “But I knew this idea was going to be very popular with millions of Christians who will want those free Bibles.”
Zondervan Publishing House, a Christian publisher based in Grand Rapids, Mich., had given free licenses for the 12 million to 13 million software copies of its New International Version of the Bible.
In March, an executive from Disney Interactive, who licensed “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” software for the CD-ROMs, told Swann and other partners the Bible was too controversial. Disney ordered it be taken off the CD-ROMs including the “Millionaire” software. Those CD-ROMs appear in some cereal boxes.
“The Bible was on the discs from the very beginning, but the people from Disney didn’t want it on their CD-ROMs,” said Ken Patterson, a software developer based in Minnesota who worked on the discs. “It held up production when Disney had us pull it from their discs in March.”
Illinois Mayor Rejects City Council Plan for Muslim Mosque Buyout
(RNS) The mayor of Palos Heights, Ill., has rejected a city council plan to pay a group of Muslims $200,000 not to convert a Protestant church into a mosque as allegations of religious bigotry consume the town.
The Reformed Church of Palos Heights has been on the market for two years, but when the Al Salam Mosque Foundation wanted to buy it for $2.1 million and convert it into a mosque, city leaders offered to buy the Muslims out and instead use the building for a new community center.
The city’s mayor rejected the plan, calling it an insult to the community’s 450 Muslim families.
“Government should have no place in this issue,” said Mayor Dean Koldenhoven, according to the Associated Press.
Since the controversy erupted several weeks ago, the town has had to face charges of religious bigotry, with some residents declaring Christianity the “one true religion” and Islam “a false religion.”
The mosque foundation initially rejected the offer but has since decided to accept the money and move on. Muslims said the incident was fueled by anti-Muslim prejudice because the city had never before made an offer to buy the church.
“If you look inside your hearts, you know you do not want that mosque here,” said Edward Hassan, a town resident and Muslim who plans to attend whatever new mosque is built, during a hearing on the issue.
The Rev. Peter Semeyn, pastor of the church, said his congregation wants to move to a new facility. Semeyn said he regretted the controversy, but said his church had little to do with it.
The sale has “put us in a spotlight we didn’t want to be in, (and) brought wrath from citizens we didn’t deserve,” Semeyn told The Chicago Tribune.
Critics: Group of Eight Dragging Feet on Debt Relief Issue
(RNS) As a three-day meeting of the world’s richest nations came to a close Sunday (July 23) in Japan, critics of the annual economic summit said the nations did little to honor their pledge to provide $100 billion in debt relief for about 40 poor countries.
Instead of tackling the issue of debt relief, the nations squandered “a historic opportunity to cancel the unpayable debts of the poorest countries,” charged Ann Pettifor, United Kingdom director of the Jubilee 2000 global debt relief campaign.
“The final communique offers no response to the public outrage at the G8’s failure to produce a new deal on debt,” Pettifor told Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency. “They have merely repeated their promises of a year ago. They did not keep their promises then. Why should we believe them now?”
During the economic summit held last year in Cologne, Germany, the industrial powers known as the Group of Eight _ Canada, France, the United States, Japan, Britain, Italy, Germany and newly included Russia _ adopted the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative under which they agreed to provide $100 billion in debt relief by the end of the year 2000 for about 40 of the world’s poorest nations.
But so far less than half of the promised $100 billion in debt relief has been provided. The recent summit in Okinawa, Japan, was criticized for outlining no additional steps to help free extremely poor countries from debt.
“The outcome was worse than I anticipated,” said Martin Drewry, head of campaigns for the English charity organization Christian Aid. “My feelings are a mixture of disappointment, anger and frustration.”
Drewry said he was disappointed that the Group of Eight had not reviewed the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, which Christian Aid contends does not go far enough and wrongly excludes Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world. The group also contends the debt relief initiative should be increased to $300 billion.
“Thirteen children are still dying every minute in sub-Saharan Africa because of the failure to cancel unpayable Third World debt,” the Jubilee 2000 statement said. “Debt relief is still happening at a snail’s pace and on terms that ignore the plight of the poor.”
The Okinawa summit did produce a number of pledges to promote education and technology use in developing countries and fight diseases such as AIDS and malaria, but Pettifor said those promises amount to “no more than a pipe dream without debt cancellation.”
Six Church Groups Support AME Zion Church in Breakaway Dispute
(RNS) Six major church groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs supporting the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in its lawsuit against a breakaway congregation in Temple Hills, Md.
The case involves the Rev. John A. Cherry and most of the 24,000 members of Full Gospel AME Zion Church who left the parent denomination in July 1999 and formed From the Heart Church Ministries. When the church left, it took with it more than $40 million in assets, including sanctuaries, school buildings and a Learjet.
The breakaway congregation sued the AME Zion Church to try to control those assets and the denomination countersued, claiming Cherry was trying to swindle the AME Zion Church. The case is scheduled to be argued Sept. 7 in Annapolis, Md.
Lawyers for the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the American Baptist Churches in the USA, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Seventh-day Adventists and the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and Easton filed the briefs in the Maryland Court of Appeals, The Washington Post reported. They contend that the suit could affect them in disputes with breakaway congregations.
In April, the court’s Chief Judge Robert M. Bell ruled that the assets could remain with From the Heart Ministries until a final decision was made in the dispute.
Mary Logan, general counsel for the General Council on Finance and Administration of the United Methodist Church, said her denomination chose to join the brief because of the broad impact a court decision could have.
“The Constitution prohibits courts from rewriting the polity and doctrine of a religious denomination, and if the court in this case rules in favor of Rev. Cherry and his dissident group, that would be a serious rewriting of the AME Zion polity and doctrine in violation of the First Amendment,” she said.
Cherry, in a July 9 sermon, charged AME Zion leaders with “sleeping with the enemy” and suggested that race was a factor in the other denominations getting involved.
Bishop Milton A. Williams of the Mid-Atlantic II Episcopal District of the AME Zion Church, rejected Cherry’s accusation.
“If we don’t prevail, the mainline churches in America would be in serious trouble,” Williams told the Post.
Relief Planes Barred From Southern Sudan
(RNS) Humanitarian relief planes that depart from outside Sudan will not be allowed to enter the war-torn southern part of the northeast African country, the Sudanese government announced Saturday (July 22).
President Omar el-Bashir said he believed that Operation Lifeline Sudan, a joint effort of U.N. and other relief agencies, used planes to deliver aid to separatists in southern Sudan.
“We will not allow (Operation Lifeline Sudan) … to be used for the provision of assistance to the rebels,” said el-Bashir, according to the Associated Press.
A spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program in Khartoum said implementation of the flight ban could lead to “a worrisome” situation, but the Sudanese government had not officially informed the food program of any plans to do so.
“So far our flights are going as normal and all OLS standing agreements are in force,” said Makena Walker.
Also in Sudan, a staff member with World Relief, the international assistance arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, was injured during a bomb attack Thursday (July 20) in Liethnom. Government military planes dropped 12 bombs in the area, where World Relief operates one of its two relief operation centers in southern Sudan.
“It is an appalling travesty that the military forces of northern Sudan should target humanitarian endeavors aimed at improving the condition of the civilian population in Liethnom,” said Clive Calver, president of World Relief. “At a time when the church there is exploding with life, I call upon churches in the U.S. to demonstrate solidarity with the church in Liethnom through their prayers and much-needed humanitarian assistance at this time. We do not intend to leave our brothers and sisters to stand alone.”
The bombing marked the third attack on Liethnom since June 14, according to World Relief, which reports that each bomb attack gets closer and closer to World Relief’s operations.
First Religious Freedom Ambassador Leaving State Department Post
(RNS) The country’s first ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom is leaving his State Department post to join a think tank at Eastern College outside Philadelphia.
Robert Seiple, a former president of both World Vision International and Eastern College, will leave the State Department in September. President Clinton named Seiple the first ambassador for religious freedom in 1998.
Seiple told Associated Baptist Press he felt confident he had woven religious freedom “into the fabric” of American foreign policy. “I think I did what I came here to do,” Seiple said.
Seiple will head the new Institute for Global Engagement, which will focus on the reasons and causes for religious persecution around the world. Seiple said he hopes the independent think tank will be able to act in ways that a government agency cannot.
The religious freedom post was created by Congress in 1998, along with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a watchdog group that reports to the president and Congress. Seiple said his successor would likely be named after the November elections.
Elliott Abrams, chair of the religious freedom commission, said Seiple has set a good precedent for his office.
“He started from scratch and built the position into a serious and influential one by force of personality, personal integrity and a passionate commitment to religious freedom,” Abrams said in a statement.
Quote of the Day: Actor Charlie Sheen
(RNS) “I think religion is for people trying to stay out of hell. Spirituality is for those who’ve gone through it.”
_ Actor Charlie Sheen, speaking at ABC’s party during the summer TV press tour. He was quoted in The Palm Beach Post.
DEA END RNS
