c. 2000 Religion News Service

Survey Finds Prevalence of Hazing Among High School Students

(RNS) Hazing is prevalent among high school students, whether they are joining a church group or a sports team, a new survey finds.

The Alfred University study found that 48 percent of students who join any high school group are subjected to hazing.

“We found that every high school student who joins any group _ from gangs to church groups, from the football team to the band _ is at risk of being hazed,” said Nadine Hoover, the principal investigator of the survey by the private, nonsectarian university in Alfred, N.Y.

Hoover also conducted the university’s 1999 study of hazing among collegiate athletic teams.

“We anticipated that we would find some level of hazing among high school groups,” she said in a statement. “What we found distressing was the prevalence.”

Hazing was defined as “any humiliating or dangerous activity expected of you to join a group, regardless of your willingness to participate.”

Examples included being yelled, cursed or sworn at; being forced to eat disgusting things; and being told to skip school or not associate with others.

While high school fraternities and sororities haze about 76 of their members, Hoover said few high school students are involved in such groups. But she said far more students are active in church groups.

“We know that church groups haze about 24 percent of their new members,” she said. “Based on that, we project approximately 237,000 high school students are being hazed to join a church group each year.”

She estimated that the comparable number of high school fraternity or sorority students who would be hazed is about 155,000 a year.

The direct-mail study results were based on 1,541 surveys returned from a random national sample of 20,000 high school students. Researchers said the 8.28 percent response rate was typically low for mail-in surveys, but that the response included a broad representation of students by gender and geographical region.

About 90 percent of the students responding attended public schools and the rest attended church schools, other private schools or home schools.

Polish Catholic Bishops Apologize for Anti-Semitism

(RNS) Catholic bishops in Poland apologized Friday (Aug. 25) for the church’s past toleration of anti-Semitism and hostility toward non-Christians, saying, “Anti-Semitism, like anti-Christianism, is a sin.”

The country’s bishops approved a statement Friday and the letter was read in Catholic churches Sunday (Aug. 27), according to the Associated Press. Almost 95 percent of the country’s 39 million citizens are Catholic.

The bishops followed the example of Polish-born Pope John Paul II, who has led the church into an unprecedented age of apology for sins of the past, including the Holocaust and institutional anti-Semitism.

“We ask forgiveness for those among us who show disdain for people of other denominations or tolerate anti-Semitism,” the letter said.

Poland’s Jewish population was decimated by the Nazi Holocaust. Before World War II, the country had a thriving Jewish population of 3.5 million; today there are only about 20,000 Jews.

The bishops said the church and the country had been indifferent to the suffering of the Jewish people and prayed for closer ties between people of different faiths in the interest of the “common good.”

The bishops also called for greater vigilance against anti-Semitism and solidarity with the “people of Israel to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again, anywhere.”

Lieberman Stresses Role of Faith in Public, Private Life

(RNS) Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Joseph Lieberman told a black church in Detroit that the nation needs more, not less, faith in private and civic life and challenged the notion of a strict separation between church and state.

Speaking at the Fellowship Chapel on Sunday (Aug. 27), Lieberman started his first week of solo campaigning by saying the country’s “moral life is stagnating” even as the economy is booming.

“As a people of faith we need to reaffirm our faith and renew the dedication of our nation and ourselves to God and God’s purpose,” said Lieberman, the first Jew on a major party national ticket.

While Lieberman has not shied away from his very personal yet public faith, Sunday’s appearance marked a sort of spiritual “coming out” event for the Connecticut senator. Lieberman said while his candidacy is historic, he wants to see barriers of faith removed from public life.

“I want to talk to you this morning about another barrier that may fall as well, as a result of my nomination,” Lieberman told the congregation in a 30-minute address. “I hope it will enable people _ all people who are moved _ to feel more free to talk about their faith and about their religion. And I hope that it will reinforce the belief that I feel as strongly as anything else that there must be a place for faith in America’s public life.”

Lieberman challenged the notion of a strict separation between church and state. “The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion,” he said. “There must be and can be a constitutional place for faith in our public life.”

Lieberman, who spent Saturday off the campaign trail because of the Jewish Sabbath, used the Christian Sabbath to tell his audience that they have much more in common than it might seem.

“Let us break through some of the inhibitions that have existed to talk together across the flimsy lines of separation of faith, to talk together, to study together, to pray together, and ultimately to sing together his holy name,” Lieberman said. “You know and I know that I feel right at home here today because we’re all children of the same God.”

Nestle Contributes $14.6 Million to Holocaust-related Settlement

(RNS) The Nestle food company announced Monday (Aug. 28) that it plans to contribute $14.6 million to a settlement between the largest Swiss banks and Jewish organizations covering legal claims related to the Holocaust.

In a statement, Nestle said it was either certain or could be presumed that some Nestle Group companies in Nazi-controlled countries employed forced wartime laborers, even if Nestle did not own or control the companies during Word War II, Reuters reported.

“As the legal successor of such corporations, Nestle nevertheless accepts its moral responsibility to help alleviate human suffering, all the more so since this injustice was committed in the company’s domain,” the company said.

The $1.25 billion settlement was reached amid allegations that Swiss banks prevented Holocaust survivors or their heirs from withdrawing assets deposited with banks in neutral Switzerland.

“The company expresses its sympathy to the people concerned and hopes that the means now available can be used without delay and as intended to assist the often aged victims of forced labor,” the Nestle statement concluded.

Quote of the Day: Christian Coalition of Georgia Chairwoman Sadie Fields

(RNS) “I think you are going to see more and more spontaneous kinds of rising up against those governmental bodies who are attacking the community of faith. It is a true infringement on the rights of Christians to display their faith.”

_ Christian Coalition of Georgia Chairwoman Sadie Fields, speaking about her encouragement of “spontaneous” prayer at high school football games this fall, in protest of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that a Texas school policy permitting a student to lead a prayer before football games was unconstitutional. She was quoted in the Monday (Aug. 28) edition of The Washington Times.

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