c. 2003 Religion News Service

Justice Roy Moore Defies Court Order To Remove Ten Commandments

(RNS) Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has defied a court order to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building, prompting support from some religious leaders and criticism from church-state separationists.

“I have no intention of removing the monument,” he said in a news conference Thursday (Aug. 14). “This I cannot and will not do.”

Moore reiterated his plans to appeal his case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

His remarks came in the week after U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ordered him to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the judicial building’s lobby by Aug. 20. Thompson said the monument violates the First Amendment.

Moore said he would ask the high court to tell Thompson to withdraw his order.

The Union of Orthodox Rabbis and the Rabbinical Alliance, two Orthodox Jewish groups, stated their support for Moore on Friday.

“The Ten Commandments are the basis of civilized society and the rule of law,” said Rabbi Hirsch Ginsberg of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, in a statement. “It is no accident that legal testimony begins with swearing the whole truth, while holding a Bible.”

Groups supporting church-state separation said Moore’s defiance of the order was cause for his resignation.

“If Judge Moore can’t in good conscience comply with a lawful federal court order, he ought to resign,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Rallies for and against Moore’s position are scheduled for Saturday near the judicial building.

In a separate but related matter, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined Wednesday to reconsider a ruling by a three-judge panel of that court that a Ten Commandments plaque can remain on the facade of a Chester County Courthouse in West Chester, Pa., the Associated Press reported.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Newspaper Says `Dr. Laura’ Cuts Ties to Orthodox Judaism

(RNS) “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger, the tart-tongued pop psychologist whose radio talk show draws millions of fans and critics, has reportedly renounced her ties to Orthodox Judaism, a New York Jewish newspaper reported.

The Forward reported Friday (Aug. 15) that Schlessinger, who converted to Conservative Judaism in 1996 and to Orthodoxy in 1998, told listeners on Aug. 5 that she still considered herself Jewish, although less observant.

“My identifying with this entity and my fulfilling the rituals, etc., of that entity _ that has ended,” she said, according to The Forward.

Schlessinger’s nationally syndicated advice show regularly draws 12 million listeners. She is a favorite of conservatives, but has alienated gay groups for calling homosexuality a “biological error” and saying many gay men are “predatory” against young boys.

In early 2000, gay groups launched a campaign to cancel Schlessinger’s syndicated television show; Paramount dropped the show in March, 2001.

“I think Judaism is better off not being saddled and directly associated with Dr. Laura’s means,” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the darling of Jewish pop culture and author of “Kosher Sex,” told The Forward.

Schlessinger, whose Web site describes her as an “avid student of Jewish history, religion and philosophy,” said she has received “very loving, very supporting” responses from her Christian listeners, while there has not been “much warmth coming back” from Jews.

“I have envied all my Christians friends who really, universally, deeply feel loved by God,” she said. “They use the name Jesus when they refer to God … that was a mystery, being connected to God.”

Schlessinger was born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother but was raised in a Brooklyn home with no faith. She first started to research her Jewish roots 10 years ago.

“I don’t think this is any great loss to the Jewish universe,” said Susan Weidman Schneider, executive editor of the Jewish feminist magazine Lilith. “I don’t think she was a particularly effective or useful spokesperson. She doubtless alienated more people than she drew toward Judaism.”

New Navy Chief of Chaplains Installed

(RNS) Chaplain (Rear Adm.) Louis V. Iasiello was promoted to chief of the Navy’s chaplains in a Friday (Aug. 15) ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard.

Iasiello, 52, most recently served as the deputy chief of chaplains for the Navy and chaplain of the U.S Marine Corps.

He replaces Chaplain (Rear Adm.) Barry Black, who served in the position from August 2000 until he became the U.S. Senate chaplain in July.

Iasiello, a Roman Catholic who prepared for ministry with a Franciscan religious order, has served as director of the Naval Chaplains School in Newport, R.I., and was in charge of operational ministry for the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet. He has worked in other active duty assignments from Memphis, Tenn., to Kodiak, Alaska.

He will oversee 1,300 chaplains on active duty and in the Reserves, who serve the Navy, Marines, Coast Guard and the Merchant Marines and an additional 1,000 active and reserve religious program specialists, enlisted personnel who assist chaplains.

“I am honored and humbled to have the opportunity to continue serving the Navy and the chaplain corps as the chief of Navy chaplains,” Iasiello said in a statement to Religion News Service. “The legacy and ministry Navy chaplains and religious program specialists provide are key elements to the successes and operational readiness of America’s Sea Services.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

WCC Official Decries Israeli Security Wall

(RNS) The international affairs director for the World Council of Churches says a security wall now being erected by Israelis around Palestinian territories threatens to revive Apartheid-era segregation.

Peter Weiderud, director of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, said the Geneva-based ecumenical group is “extremely concerned” about the wall’s effects on Palestinians’ livelihood.

“All over the world barriers or walls are tumbling down or becoming obsolete, (but) we experience the creation of a wall here,” Weiderud said at a Jerusalem news conference on Thursday (Aug. 14), according to Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.

“People lose access to their property, and to their income. Normal daily life will be disturbed. Basic human rights are violated, as people will not have access to their livelihood.”

Israel broke ground on the massive project last August. The wall, which also includes barbed wire, patrol zones, ditches and movement sensors, is 26 feet high in some places.

Palestinians say the wall has separated them from their fields and orchards that they rely upon to feed their families. Israelis say the wall is a necessary barrier to protect their citizens from would-be suicide bombers who want to enter Israel from the West Bank territories.

Weiderud compared the wall to the Bantustan territories that were carved out for black South Africans by the white-minority government in the 1970s. The territories were eventually disolved and their citizens were granted all the rights given to other South Africans.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Advertising Firms Ponder Ways to Boost Brisith Church Attendance

LONDON (RNS) Unlike their cousins the other side of the Atlantic, the British are notoriously not very keen on going to church.

The number attending has been dropping steadily ever since World War II, and today it is merely about 7.5 percent of the population of the United Kingdom who go to church on Sunday.

Thinking about this, and recalling all the advertising he passed on his way to work every day, the editor of the evangelical monthly Christianity + Renewal, John Buckeridge, had the idea of asking two advertising agencies to devise a series of advertisements that would encourage people to go to church.

Interestingly enough, none of the two teams involved were churchgoers.

Link ICA opted for a campaign built round the slogan “Get a life _ go to church.” The agency’s joint creative director, Jonathan Wilcock said the slogan was because “most people come to a point in their lives when, although they may have a nice car, home, and partner, they feel something is missing.”

He said he was thinking particularly of those in their 30s and 40s. “Teens think they’ll live forever, 20-somethings are busy getting a career, a partner, and building their life, but when like me you get to 30-something you start to feel something is missing. Others fill it with something else like alcohol or sex or loads of holidays. For some people the church can shed light on what life is all about.”

At Khameleon the agency’s managing director, Guy Lupton, said they wanted to steer away from the typical image of church and religion. “We don’t think people like to be preached at, and we didn’t want traditional images like a picture of Jesus or a cross. We felt the key was to get people through the door of the church and let them make their own minds up.”

Khameleon’s campaign promoted the values of community life at a church, the chance to have a good “sing,” hear a good sermon, and have a heart-to-heart chat. So one of their ads pictured a solitary goldfish at the bottom of a goldfish bowl and asked: “When did you last really need someone to talk to?” with the answer: “You’ll always find someone at your local church _ you don’t know what you’re missing.”

But both agency men agreed that even the best advertisement would be unlikely to turn around someone who is anti-church or not interested in church. However, Wilcock thought ads promoting a church could work and were particularly likely to affect people who had recently had a spiritual experience, helping to push them over the edge to decide to go to a church.

_ Robert Nowell

Quote of the Day: La Crosse, Wis., Mayor John Medinger

(RNS) “In this situation it is the park that belongs to Caesar (the government) and the Ten Commandments that belong to God. The Jesus I know would not be troubled or opposed to moving these commandments to a place of worship where they would get the visibility and the respect they deserve.”

_ La Crosse, Wis., Mayor John Medinger, explaining in a letter to the city’s Common Council his reasons for vetoing the council’s decision to appeal a court ruling that a Ten Commandments monument should be removed from a city park. The letter appeared in the La Crosse Tribune. The council later overrided his veto.

DEA END RNS