c. 2000 Religion News Service

Baptist Official Credits Boycott With Disney Store Closings

(RNS) A Southern Baptist official has greeted reports of plans for the closure of more than 100 Walt Disney Co. stores as a sign that a boycott against the entertainment conglomerate has been successful.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Disney plans to redesign about 600 of its stores and close the remaining 140 stores over the next several years as their leases expire.

“I read this news as a sign that the boycott Southern Baptists called in 1997 against the Disney Company is working,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Southern Baptists voted to boycott the company to express concern about changes in what they once considered to be a family-friendly company, including its adoption of policies and airing of programs they believe favor homosexual rights.

“I predicted at the beginning that it would be at the Disney Stores where the SBC-supported boycott could have had the most visibility and the most impact,” said Land, reported Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Journal reported that prices at the stores owned by Disney, which has suffered from a “recent earnings slump,” have also decreased significantly. The newspaper said the company has pledged to drop retail prices on some of its mass-market items sold outside its stores by 30 percent or more.

“The news that Disney’s retail sector is slashing prices of its branded products in the market is a clear indication that the entertainment giant is not moving product,” Land added.

“It is fair to assume that Southern Baptists and others who stand against Disney’s new direction under Michael Eisner are in a position to take substantial credit for what is now being acknowledged by the Disney Corporation.”

Disney spokesman Ken Green declined comment when reached by Religion News Service.

Focus on the Family Radio Co-Host Leaves Abruptly

(RNS) A top executive and well-known radio personality with the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family abruptly resigned last week for unspecified personal reasons, the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based organization said.

Mike Trout, 53, senior vice president of broadcasting and co-host on Focus on the Family president James Dobson’s popular radio program, has not spoken publicly about his reasons for quitting on Oct. 11. Paul Hetrick, a Focus on the Family spokesman, declined to discuss why Trout resigned, citing legal and privacy concerns.

Since 1986, Trout has been the announcer and co-host on Focus on the Family’s daily half-hour radio broadcast, which reaches an estimated 2 million people in North America. He’s also written a book about his radio-show experience and helped organize a series of bike rallies across the country to raise money for Focus on the Family.

Hetrick called Trout “probably the most recognizable name or voice at Focus on the Family” after Dobson. He said the ministry will begin seeking a replacement co-host.

Dobson, in a radio program aired Friday, called Trout “a brother and a much-cherished friend” but did not discuss the details of his resignation. He also asked listeners to pray for Focus on the Family, which he said “has gone through some pretty tough times in the past few months.”

Another Focus on the Family official, John Paulk, has been criticized for visiting a gay bar in Washington D.C. last month and then lying about it. Paulk, a self-described former homosexual who advocates that gays can “change,” remains employed at Focus but was stripped of his chairmanship at Exodus International North America, another organization that believes homosexuality is a lifestyle that can be left.

Pope John Paul II Celebrates 22nd Anniversary of Papacy

(RNS) Pope John Paul II entered the 23rd year of his record-breaking pontificate Monday (Oct. 16) with some pretty impressive numbers to his credit.

The Polish pontiff, elected to lifetime office Oct.16, 1978, is now the seventh longest-reigning pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. St. Peter himself, the world’s first pope, still ranks as No. 1 with historians divided as to whether he reigned 31 or 34 years.

But many other firsts are Karol Wojtyla’s.

Wojtyla is the first Polish pope in history and the first non-Italian since Adrian VI (1522-1523).

He has proclaimed 994 new “blesseds” and 447 new saints _ more than all those beatified and canonized by his 262 predecessors combined. John Paul’s unprecedented travels have taken him to 123 nations besides Italy.

He has had 659 official and private meetings with heads of state (that number will become 660 Tuesday (Oct. 17) when Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II visits). He has met with 203 with prime ministers. He has seen more than 15.6 million people at his general audiences in Vatican City.

The 80-year-old pontiff has named a total 157 new members to the sacred college of cardinals which elects new popes. The college is currently made up of 142 cardinals. Of the 118 under age 80 and thus eligible to vote in any papal elections, 86 were named by John Paul.

Oklahoma Pastor Leads Black Republican Support for Bush

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(RNS) A prominent Oklahoma pastor has joined other African-American Republicans in announcing support for Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.

“We think … George W. Bush will be a powerful catalyst for political and social change for our country and our people,” said Bishop Carlton Pearson, pastor of Higher Dimensions, a 5,000-member multiracial church in Tulsa, Okla. “He is our choice and we believe we’ll put him in the White House.”

Pearson led a Washington news conference Friday (Oct. 13) of African-American educators, farmers and business people who have aligned themselves with the GOP.

“We are the new Republicans,” he said. “We are the new thinkers.”

Pearson said they are advocating for school prayer, quality education and anti-abortion causes through their stand with the Republican Party.

“According to those who oppose our position, it’s all right to be gay, to have sex outside of marriage, to produce children outside of marriage, to be an alcoholic, a drug addict or a heretic but not a Republican,” he said. “They say `Don’t you dare change parties and if you do, don’t you tell anybody.’… But we’re saying no to that. This is our coming out day. We’re coming out en masse.”

The news conference was held in conjunction with a luncheon that gathered about 125 leaders from across the country for an “African-Americans for Victory 2000” event.

Angela Sailor, director of African-American affairs for the Republican National Committee, said representatives from 12 states attended. She said the clergy and other leaders will work to overcome the “hesitancy” of some black Republicans about their political leanings.

“We’re talking about black leaders who have a long reach and influence back across the country,” she told Religion News Service.

Pearson has gained attention since he wrote a commentary that first appeared in the Los Angeles Times headlined “There’s No Better Time Than Now to Be a Black Republican.”

Pope Praises Families During Special Jubilee Celebration

(RNS) Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims flooded St. Peter’s Square during the Roman Catholic families’ special jubilee weekend and listened to Pope John Paul II denounce modern trends that trample on the rights of both born and unborn chidren.

“We must be vigilant so that the good of the child always comes first,” the pope said. He warned that the “right to a child” has prevailed over the “rights of the child” which must be defended.

At events that brought some 250,000 Catholics to the Vatican on Saturday (Oct.14) and more than 150,000 Sunday (Oct. 15) despite wind and rain, John Paul reiterated the church’s bans on birth control, abortion and divorce and remarriage. He urged couples to adopt orphaned children rather than go to “morally unacceptable” extremes to generate their own.

“The tendency to use morally unacceptable methods of generation reflects an absurd mentality of a `right to a child’ supplanting the just recognition of the `right of the child’ to be born and then to grow in a fully human way,” the pope said. “How very different and how worthy of encouragement is instead the practice of adoption!”

John Paul rejected homosexual marriages for depriving children of their right to both a mother and father.

“No one more than you, dear parents, can better attest to how essential it is for children to be able to count on you both, on both the paternal and maternal figures, on your complementary gifts,” the pope said. “It is not a step forward when civilization encourages tendencies which obscure this elementary truth and which demand recognition even at the legal level.”

John Paul claimed that already “so many children will bear forever the psychological signs of having been subjected to the separation of their parents.”

Pope John Paul appeared unusually vigorous and his voice surprisingly steady and clear during the jubilee for families which Vatican experts say he considers one of the central moments of the jubilee year he proclaimed to mark the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus.

“Unfortunately, as we well know, children’s situation in the world is not always what it should be,” the 80-year-old pontiff said. He criticized the world’s affluent societies for sometimes treating children as an optional “accessory” and “more as a threat than as a gift.”

Quote of the Day: Jodi Scott of Atlanta, Ga.

(RNS) “As Native Americans we can empathize with both sides. We have been through our own holocaust and we also know what it is like to give up land for peace.”

_ Jodi Scott, a Native American and evangelical Christian from Atlanta, who was among 4,500 Christians who traveled to Israel this weekend for the annual Feast of the Tabernacles, sponsored by the International Christian Embassy. Scott was speaking about the growing violence between Jews and Palestinians in Israel.

KRE END RNS