c. 2003 Religion News Service
Baptist World Alliance Executive: War Would Hurt Missions
(RNS) The general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance has added his voice to those of other religious leaders opposed to a possible U.S.-led war in Iraq, saying it could negatively affect mission work in the region.
“One of the tragic consequences of war in the Middle East, and particularly with Iraq, would be the devastating effect it would have upon the Christian mission, not only in the Middle East, but among Muslims people worldwide,” said Denton Lotz in a statement issued Wednesday (Feb. 19).
Lotz said Muslims’ views of Christians will be influenced by military action in the region.
“Unfortunately, perception is often greater than reality, and Muslims everywhere may well see any war with Iraq as a war of Christians against Muslims,” he said. “This, therefore, complicates very much the Christian witness of our brothers and sisters who for so many years have been a minority in the Middle East.”
Even without a war, Lotz said, tensions have been high.
“Many unfortunate and inflammatory statements by Baptists and other evangelical leaders against Islam and for war has caused untold suffering to our people,” he said. “Many of our Baptist leaders are on the defensive, having to explain to their government who Baptists are and what we stand for.”
Lotz estimated that there are more than 600,000 Christians living in Iraq, which has a population of 22 million.
“This sizable minority needs our prayers and support,” he said.
Lotz leads a global organization of 206 member bodies from headquarters in Falls Church, Va.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Pagan Parents Sue School After Daughter Is Assaulted
(RNS) A pagan couple has sued school officials in Union County, Tenn., after they claimed their daughter was harassed for not playing the Virgin Mary in a school play.
Greg and Sarajane Tracy say the school district promoted religion, denied their daughter’s right to free exercise of her own religion and failed to protect her from verbal and physical abuse.
The parents said their daughter, India, was reprimanded for not wanting to play the Virgin Mary in a school play, and was taunted after they did not allow their daughter to attend a local Christian service in 1999.
“The principal had called me into the office because mine was the only (permission) slip that said no,” India, now 14, told the Knoxville-News Sentinel. “He asked me why I didn’t want to go. He asked my religion. I told him I didn’t want to talk about it and for him to call my parents.”
The girl’s parents said their daughter suffered from cut lips and a bloodied nose when her classmates kicked her at her locker. They said a bus driver repeatedly invited her to church and she was called a “Satan worshipper” and a child-eating lesbian by her classmates, according to the Associated Press.
The parents are seeking $300,000 in damages to pay for counseling for their daughter and tuition at a private school they enrolled her in a year ago. They also want the school to end its “continued religious indoctrination of children.”
“Maybe it will be a harsh enough lesson so the next child in Union County who’s different can continue through school and graduate and feel safe,” Sarajane Tracy said.
School officials were unavailable for comment.
Pope to Beatify Mother Teresa on 25th Anniversary of Pontificate
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II will proclaim Mother Teresa of Calcutta blessed, the rank below sainthood, on Oct. 19 to mark the 25th anniversary of his pontificate, the Vatican said Friday (Feb. 21).
The widely admired, Albanian-born nun, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for ministering to “the poorest of the poor,” will be beatified in record time _ little more than six years after her death on Sept. 5, 1997, at the age of 87.
Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, made the announcement almost as an aside at a Vatican news conference called to issue the pope’s message for World Mission Sunday.
“This year, World Mission Sunday, which falls on Oct. 19, 2003, will coincide also with the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, with the beatification of Mother Teresa of Calcutta and with the closing of the Year of the Rosary,” Sepe said.
Elected pope on Oct. 16, 1978, and invested with the pallium, the symbol of his office, on Oct. 22, 1978, John Paul called the special Year of the Rosary last Oct. 16 to mark his 25th year as Roman Catholic pontiff.
John Paul knew and admired Mother Teresa during her life, and it was largely his doing that the Vatican has acted with such speed on the cause of her sainthood. The process normally takes decades, sometimes centuries.
The pope waived the normal five-year interval between a death and the start of a cause. He then permitted the examination of a “scientifically unexplainable” miracle attributed to Mother Teresa’s intervention to be carried out at the same time as an investigation into her “heroic virtues” instead of afterward.
The Vatican also has ignored controversy over Mother Teresa’s miracle, the curing in 1998 of an abdominal tumor suffered by a young Indian woman, Monica Besra, an animist, who was given a medal blessed by the nun.
The woman’s husband, Seiku Murmu, insisted her doctors were entirely responsible for her cure, and the Communist government of the state of West Bengal warned that word of a miraculous cure could lead to wholesale conversions to Christianity and provoke violent retaliation by Hindu extremists.
The Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved Mother Teresa’s “heroic virtues” Sept. 24 and certified the miracle Oct. 1. The pope gave his final approval Dec. 20.
The Catholic Church requires another miracle after beatification to qualify a candidate for sainthood.
Born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu in the Albanian city of Skopje, now part of Macedonia, on Aug. 26, 1910, Mother Teresa entered the order of the Sisters of Loreto at the age of 18 and went to India as a missionary teacher.
She spent the rest of her life caring for the destitute and dying on the sidewalks of Calcutta. The Missionary Sisters of Charity, the order she founded in 1947, now has 4,300 members in 131 countries and works with a male order she established more recently.
_ Peggy Polk
Clergy Urged to Reconcile, Work on AIDS at Promise Keepers Conference
(RNS) Clergy attending a Promise Keepers conference that concluded Thursday (Feb. 20) in Phoenix heard pleas for reconciliation among Christians and joint work to address the global AIDS crisis.
“The churches of Africa are dying and the pastors of Africa desperately need our help,” said author Bruce Wilkinson in an address at the end of the men’s conference attended by 9,000 at Bank One Ballpark.
Wilkinson, who wrote the best-selling “The Prayer of Jabez,” and the Christian relief agency World Vision formally announced Monday that they intend to work together to involve American and African churches in fund raising to help people affected by HIV/AIDS. World Vision is trying to raise $10 million for an initiative to provide prevention, advocacy and care to address the disease.
“Some of your people need to move to Africa, take in 20 orphans,” said Wilkinson, who relocated to Africa last year. “You pastors need to go to Africa yourself. Touch the people, see the people, spend the night with them. Your heart will be ripped out and you will never be the same.”
He hopes thousands of clergy will make such a trip and commit to return visits in partnership with other churches.
At other times during the conference, Promise Keepers officials and others highlighted the cross-cultural connections among those in attendance. Presenters at the second clergy conference of the evangelical men’s ministry included African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics and messianic Jews.
Bill McCartney, the founder and president of Promise Keepers, stressed the need for teamwork among Christian men.
“It’s not about what one guy can do; we have to be a team _ bonded together,” he said Wednesday. “Just one guy can be the fresh fire that takes the lead in becoming a real team that can make real differences in our world.”
About 39,000 ministers attended Promise Keepers’ first clergy conference in 1996 in Atlanta.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Poll Finds Irish Disapprove of Abuse Settlement Plan
LONDON (RNS) A majority of voters in the Irish Republic disagree with the controversial deal whereby the Irish government has agreed to pay compensation to victims of abuse in residential institutions run by religious orders and congregations on behalf of the state.
Under the agreement, reached in January 2002 and signed in June that year, the orders agreed to pay a total of $138 million into the state redress scheme. The government agreed to indemnify the orders against claims arising from child abuse, meaning victims who accepted compensation under the plan would not be able to go on and sue the order concerned.
An opinion poll published in the Irish Times showed that 55 percent disagreed with the deal, while only 33 percent agreed. Controversy has centered on the amount of money the state will have to pay out.
During the negotiations that led to the agreement, an estimate provided for the government forecast total compensation payments amounting to $540 million, on the basis of some 3,500 victims receiving between $54,000 and $324,000 each, depending on how severely they had been abused.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Episcopal Bishop Geralyn Wolf
(RNS) “I have this power as the bishop of the diocese, but so often I’m bound up in pettiness. Do we like our priest. Don’t we like our priest. Are the altar flowers right, or are the altar flowers not right. Do we have enough money. Can we afford a secretary. I want to say, `Stop talking about the money. Do the work. It’s much more fun.”’
_ Episcopal Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island, recounting four weeks in January she spent living on the streets as a homeless person. Wolf is now trying to use the experience to improve conditions for the homeless. She was quoted in the Providence Journal-Bulletin.
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