c. 2000 Religion News Service
Religious Leaders: Shelve `Partisan Self-Interest’ in Vote Tally
(RNS) A diverse group of religious leaders have teamed with a nonpartisan but liberal grass-roots organization in urging Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush to “put aside partisan self-interest” to resolve the controversy surrounding the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
Calling to mind the candidates’ endorsement earlier this year of a pledge to conduct civil political campaigns, the Interfaith Alliance called upon the two to “put aside partisan self-interest to preserve the integrity and trustworthiness of our electoral process.”
“It is clear that what is at stake is larger than either candidate or party,” the group’s statement said. “Nothing less is being tested than the strength of our cornerstone democratic principle that every vote counts.”
More than 30 religious leaders of various faiths signed the statement, including Interfaith Alliance executive director the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, and the Rev. Joseph C. Hough Jr., president of Union Theological Seminary.
Religious leaders have “a moral responsibility to speak to the current controversy surrounding the presidential elections,” the statement declared.
Bush and Gore should work to ensure that every citizen’s vote counts and make sure “that the democratic process is worthy of trust and involvement,” the statement added.
“Justice must not be circumvented,” the statement said. “Patience for due process that guarantees a just resolution is as important as impatience with tactics that seek to delay or divert due process because of a dislike of voting results.”
Pope Declares Baptism Gives All Christians `Fundamental Unity’
(RNS) – Appealing for renewed dedication to ecumenical dialogue, Pope John Paul II said Wednesday (Nov. 15) that although centuries-old divisions prevent all Christians from sharing the Eucharist, baptism is “the deep root of a fundamental unity.”
“The tree of unity must grow to its full expansion,” the Roman Catholic pontiff told some 30,000 Holy Year pilgrims attending his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square.
The pope’s appeal took on added significance because of doubts of the church’s commitment to dialogue raised by the declaration “Dominus Iesus,” issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in September. The document asserted the primacy of Roman Catholicism and said the Anglican and Protestant denominations are not churches in the full sense of the word.
“The doctrinal divisions existing between the disciples of Christ gathered in various churches and ecclesial communities limit full sacramental sharing,” the pope said. “Yet baptism is the deep root of a fundamental unity that binds Christians despite their differences.”
The Catholic church bars non-Catholics from sharing the Eucharist because of differences over the interpretation of how Jesus is present in the elements of bread and wine.
The pope said it was possible, however, to introduce “some signs of participation that express the unity already existing.” He noted that “on exceptional occasions and for just causes,” a bishop may allow non-Catholics to read during the Mass and said “a certain reciprocity” is permitted with Eastern Orthodox Christians in the sacraments of penitence, the Eucharist and the annointing of the sick.
John Paul urged Christians to turn the limits to joint communion into “an appeal for purification, dialogue and the ecumenical road of the churches.”
“They are limits that make us feel more strongly, precisely in the Eucharistic celebration, the weight of our lacerations and contradictions,” he said. “The Eucharist is thus a challenge and a provocation placed in the very heart of the church.”
“The church must not be a body of divided and sorrowing members but an alive and strong organism that moves forward sustained by divine bread,” the pope said.
Catholic, Evangelical Scholars Look at Movie Spirituality
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(RNS) In no less a temple of Hollywood’s faith in creative freedom than the Directors Guild of America, Roman Catholic and evangelical theologians gathered last weekend (Nov. 11-12) to discuss spiritual approaches to film _ a medium some view as an anathema instead of an avenue to Christian virtue.
Two Roman Catholic panelists joined two evangelicals for “Evangelicals, Catholics and the Entertainment Media: Crosscurrents of Religion and Culture,” a forum held as part of the seventh annual City of the Angeles Film Festival in Los Angeles.
The four leaders presented ideas based on their research into Catholic-evangelical relations and the connections between Christian faith and film. Discussion ranged from surprising revelations about the historic link between Hollywood and religion to the particular contributions of the two religious traditions to understanding and creating cinematic art.
“I have been hanging out with evangelicals,”joked the Rev. Thomas Rausch, Roman Catholic panelist and chair of the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. While acknowledging both Catholics and evangelicals are “strongly committed to the central doctrines of the Christian faith,” Rausch pointed to contrasting approaches to film in the two traditions.
Rausch said Catholics focus on transforming the norms of today’s secular and individualistic society, noting contemporary Catholic interest in the “evangelization of culture” itself.
Evangelicals, on the other hand, concentrate on film as a vehicle to evangelizing individuals, utilizing the media to carry out the New Testament’s Great Commission to convey the Christian message to the world, Rausch said.
His Catholic colleague on the panel, the Rev. Peter Malone, talked about Roman Catholic-Protestant dialogue about film, including in ecumenical juries at film festivals. Malone is president of the International Catholic Organization for Cinema and Audiovisual.
Panelist William Romanowski, professor of communication at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., sketched the religious presence in Hollywood from the start, noting the prominent roles played early in the film industry by Jews, Catholics, and Protestants.
When Hollywood became dominated by Jewish immigrants in the first third of the century, Romanowski said, industry moguls enlisted the help of Roman Catholics to implement the Production Code, an ethical standard to which Hollywood films would adhere for decades.
Romanowski identified Will Hays, a Protestant, as another key figure in the development of the industry. The presence of people from the three faith traditions underscores “the centrality … of religion to understanding … the American cinema,” he said.
A second panel of media professionals and then the audience asked questions about issues such as what evangelical and Roman Catholic filmmakers bring to their craft from their religious background.
Rausch said he believes the Catholic emphasis on the sacramental _ the idea that material things from the physical world can be conduits of the sacred _ has opened the eyes of Catholic filmmakers to the power of images to enshrine spiritual truths.
Fuller Seminary professor and panelist Robert Johnston echoed Rausch. Though evangelicals “can talk about God being alive and active in the world,” Johnston said, “we have tended to underplay the value of common grace.”
Historic Church Suffers $1 Million in Fire Damage
(RNS) An 1861 church renowned for classical concerts and elegant architecture lost a bank of stained glass windows and all its recording equipment in a Sunday (Nov. 12) morning fire that left $1 million damage in its wake.
About 100 firefighters arrived at Emmanuel Church of Boston shortly after 6:30 a.m. to find flames shooting 20 to 30 feet into the air. The quickest way to the fire’s source, said Boston Fire Department Spokesman Steve MacDonald, was through the stained glass windows.
“You really had no choice,” said MacDonald, who was at the scene. “You have to go in where the fire is.”
Firefighters smashed through seven of the precious windows to control the blaze. The largest window stood approximately 10 feet high and 6 feet wide, MacDonald said. “They looked beautiful,” he said.
The fire started with a bare light bulb in a storage room, according to the report. A collection of public address system wires had pressed against the bulb and eventually caught fire.
Recording equipment for the church’s acclaimed concerts went up in flames immediately. The fire quickly spread upstairs and down, consuming wooden surfaces until it reached a brick wall. Firefighters dashed the flames within 30 minutes, MacDonald said.
At the time of the fire, eight women and two staff members were on site at a women’s homeless shelter, which the church operates. All escaped unharmed and received temporary accommodations from the Red Cross.
Emmanuel Church of Boston, an Episcopal congregation, sits among the high-end boutiques of Newbury Street. When Sunday’s fire forced worshippers off site, the neighboring Ritz Carlton Hotel gave them space.
Catholic Bishops Issue Appeal for Sudan
(RNS) The nation’s Catholic bishops called on the international community to pray for the embattled nation of Sudan and to find ways “for a just peace” that will “ultimately bear abundant fruit.”
Gathered in Washington for their annual meeting, more than 300 bishops approved the statement Tuesday (Nov. 14) calling on the Sudanese government to end their “current path … of death and destruction” as a 17-year-old civil war continues to ravage the country.
More than 2 million people have been killed, and 4 million have been made refugees during the strife which has pitted the northern-controlled Islamic government against Christians and other non-Muslim minorities in the south. The bishops said the “Sudanese government, however, bears the greatest responsibility for abuses against civilian populations.”
“Slavery; torture; executions; religious persecution; discriminatory laws; unconscionable restrictions on aid to populations threatened by famine; indiscriminate bombings of churches, hospitals and schools; and the systematic depletion and expropriation of property and resources are just some of the horrors perpetrated on the people of Sudan,” the bishops said in their statement.
The bishops said international corporations with oil interests in Sudan bear a “special responsibility” for helping to end the violence. These companies must “use their influence to promote an equitable distribution of the benefits of the country’s oil resources and to ensure that these resources are not diverted to fuel the war.”
Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, chair of the bishops’ international policy committee, said the bishops did not call for specific action by the U.S. government but instead tried to raise awareness of the issue across the political and religious spectrum.
“The hope of this message is that the kind of exposure from simply presenting the facts will then generate a greater interest and concern to try to ameliorate the situation,” Law said at a news conference.
Church Arsonist Gets 42 Years
(RNS) A man who pleaded guilty to setting fires at more than two dozen churches was sentenced in federal court Tuesday (Nov. 14) to 42 years in prison.
Jay Scott Ballinger, 38, of Yorktown, Ind., must also pay $3.6 million in restitution for the church burnings, which took place during the 1990s.
Ballinger, who is white, has confessed to setting fires at both white and black churches in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, California, Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. In July he pleaded guilty to 20 counts of causing damage to religious property, the Associated Press reported.
Ballinger still must face federal charges in Georgia for five church burnings in 1998 and 1999, including one in which a firefighter died.
According to Tuesday’s plea agreement, Ballinger “frequently expressed his hostility towards organized Christianity.” The plea also noted that Ballinger identified himself as a “missionary of Lucifer.”
Church of God in Christ Elects New Presiding Bishop
(RNS) An unprecedented bid to unseat the incumbent presiding bishop of the nation’s largest African-American Pentecostal denomination ended in victory Tuesday (Nov. 14) for Bishop Gilbert E. Patterson of Memphis, Tenn.
Nearly 6,000 voting delegates to the annual convention of the Memphis-based Church of God in Christ elected Patterson to the office of presiding bishop, said the Rev. Isaac Patrick, public relations director of the denomination.
Patterson’s win ended the six years of leadership by Bishop Chandler David Owens, 68, whose post also was sought by Bishop Charles E. Blake of Los Angeles and Bishop Roy L.H. Winbush of Lafayette, La.
Owens began serving as presiding bishop after the 1995 death of Bishop Louis Henry Ford. Owens was re-elected by a single vote to another term as presiding bishop, defeating Patterson, in 1996.
Patterson, pastor of Temple of Deliverance Bountiful Blessings Church of God in Christ in Memphis, will serve a four-year term as head of the 5.5-million-member denomination. He also will head the church’s administrative branch, the 12-member General Board of Bishops.
Quote of the day: Arlington Trotman, secretary of the Churches’ Commission for Racial Justice
(RNS) “Europe is at the heart of the racism issue. It is responsible for much of the racism around the world (through colonialism). Therefore Europe must show a certain level of leadership and set down a marker for others to follow.”
_ Arlington Trotman, secretary of the London-based Churches’ Commission for Racial Justice, in an interview with Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
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