c. 2003 Religion News Service
Conservative Christians Urge U.S. Negotiations With North Korea
WASHINGTON (RNS) Seventeen leaders, including a number of conservative Christians, have written a statement urging President Bush to negotiate with North Korea while keeping matters of religious freedom on the table.
Drawing on the example of the Helsinki Agreement negotiated with the Soviet Union in 1975, leaders such as Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson and Southern Baptist executive Richard Land said similar talks with North Korea could result in progress for human rights.
“Based on the lessons of Helsinki, we strongly believe that the U.S. must neither directly nor indirectly license a fragile and oppressive Pyongyang regime to commit heightened atrocities against its own people in exchange for yet another promise not to pose nuclear threats to the world order,” they wrote in a statement published in the Jan. 17 edition of The Wall Street Journal.
“We also believe that the U.S. can enter into formal negotiations with Pyongyang in a manner that promotes American and universal ideas and creates unity with our allies.”
Other signers included National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson; Richard John Neuhaus, president of the Institute on Religion and Public Life; William Bennett, director of Empower America; Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House; Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy; and Marvin Olasky, editor in chief of World magazine.
The writers emphasize the need for promotion of democracy and special attention to religious persecution in North Korea as critical aims for future negotiations. They specifically asked for an expansion of funding for investigations of persecution by the regime by the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom.
In a separate but related matter, the World Council of Churches has sent a letter to leaders of Russia, China, Japan and South Korea, asking them to encourage North Korea to reverse its plans to restart its nuclear program and expel United Nations inspectors.
Nuclear weapons are “an unacceptable threat to all of humanity” and do not contribute to “carrying out the purposes of God’s love,” wrote Peter Weiderud, director of the WCC’s Commission of Churches on International Affairs, in the letter dated Jan. 15.
“The World Council of Churches is of the considered view that the way forward to avoid a nuclear conflagration in the Korean peninsula is through engagement and dialogue and not through military confrontation,” he concluded.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Canada’s Top Catholic Blasts Possible U.S. War on Iraq
(RNS) The president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday (Jan. 21) launched a strongly worded campaign against a U.S.-led attack on the devastated people of Iraq.
Quebec Bishop Jacques Berthelet asked Canadians, half of whom are nominally Roman Catholic, to go online to sign a statement, titled “Prepare for Peace in Iraq,” written by a coalition of Canadian church groups.
The coalition, spearheaded by Berthelet, 68, wants to deliver the petition directly to Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
The statement begins, “War is not the answer.” It calls on Western leaders “to accompany the people of Iraq, not with more bombs and missiles, but with moral, political and material support.”
While condemning Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, the statement warns the West against causing the kind of destruction that resulted from the Gulf War against Iraq in 1990, which it says killed tens of thousands of children, women and men.
“The destroyed infrastructure and subsequent economic sanctions together with continued bombing contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands more. Now, just when U.N. inspectors have begun to work effectively, we are on the brink of another war,” the statement says.
“We believe that renewed war on Iraq will not deliver lasting disarmament. War is most likely to deliver more of what it always does _ lost lives, environmental destruction, physical and psychological damage for both victims and aggressors, wasted resources, threats of widened political instability and increased terrorism, more hatred and re-energized extremism.”
The statement denounced Saddam as an unrepresentative leader who frequently violates his people’s human rights. However, it said peaceful means were the best way to stop him.
The statement was jointly produced with the justice committee of the Canadian Council of Churches, which represents the country’s Anglican, United Church, Orthodox and Salvation Army churches.
It is also being coordinated by an ecumenical church group called KAIROS, as well as an anti-arms organization called Project Ploughshares.
Supporters are being asked to sign on to the petition at the Ploughshares Web site (http://www.ploughshares.ca).
The statement proposes a peace plan that calls on Western leaders to:
_ Reject further war on Iraq _ “the consequences of which are borne primarily by the people.”
_ Persist in “a vigorous strategy of containment to prevent Iraq’s acquisition and/or retention of weapons of mass destruction” through internationally mandated inspections.
_ Pursue diplomacy toward establishing the entire Middle East as a region free of all weapons of mass destruction.
_ End comprehensive economic sanctions against Iraq.
_ Embark on diplomatic and political engagement, including material support for Iraqi civil society.
_ Douglas Todd
Update: Moscow Police Begin Probe of Franciscan-Owned Bordello
MOSCOW (RNS) Two months after a storm of publicity prompted prostitutes to vacate a Franciscan-owned bordello, local police and prosecutors have launched an investigation into the brothel.
“I don’t think anything will come of it. They just want to show that they are doing something,” Anatoly Pchelintsev, a lawyer for the Franciscans Minor Conventual order in Moscow, said Wednesday (Jan. 22).
The monks, who said they unwittingly rented out the large apartment to the bordello operators, had been appealing to the police since March, when the tenants changed the lock and refused the landlords access.
Father Grigory Cioroch, the Franciscans’ superior in Russia, attributed the belated police interest in the case to a formal inquiry by members of Russia’s lower house of parliament.
The local prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the investigation, referring all questions to a police investigator, Anatoly Mamontov, in Moscow’s Presnensky district. Mamontov was unavailable for comment.
Cioroch said the monks have more faith in a Wednesday court hearing seeking the tenants’ eviction than in the police. The court process has been dragging on for months, he said, adding that he is now expecting a verdict soon since the city wants to acquire the apartment from the Franciscans in an apartment swap.
“It could go quickly now that the Moscow city government has taken an interest,” said Cioroch, noting that in Russia “the judiciary is not always independent.”
The conflict between the bordello operators and the Franciscans simmered quietly for months until the October publication of an expose in Russia’s largest-circulation daily newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda. The article featured a photo montage of a praying monk and a nearly naked nun to illustrate its account of the downtown Moscow bordello and the prostitutes inside.
Days later, the most-watched television network in the former Soviet Union, the state-owned ORT, broadcast a detailed report complete with footage of the Franciscans’ superior ringing the bordello’s doorbell. A Moscow television show that boasts of a blessing from the Russian Orthodox Church weighed in next with its broadcast of “Words and Deeds of the Vatican on Russian Soil.”
The Vatican fired back, with spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls denouncing “an ignoble operation” aimed at discrediting the Franciscans “and through them the Catholic Church.”
_ Frank Brown
Graham Continues Mission Plans With Oklahoma City Announcement
(RNS) Evangelist Billy Graham has decided to hold two evangelistic missions in 2003.
A month after an already-announced event in San Diego, the evangelist plans to lead meetings June 12-15 at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City.
“I am overwhelmed to receive an invitation to come to Oklahoma City to preach at an evangelistic mission this June,” Graham said in a statement read at an announcement of his plans on Tuesday (Jan. 21).
“Although my strength is more limited now that I am in my 80s, my burden to proclaim the gospel is as strong as ever.”
Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys welcomed the plans for the downtown evangelistic effort.
“Billy Graham holds a special place in the life and history of Oklahoma City,” the mayor said in a statement. “None of us will ever forget his leadership of the memorial service in 1995 after the bombing.”
The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building resulted in 168 deaths and more than 500 injuries.
On Jan. 9, leaders in San Diego announced that the evangelist would hold a mission in their city May 8-11.
The Oklahoma City mission is expected to involve more than 15,000 volunteers from 500 churches in the area.
Graham previously held missions in Oklahoma City in 1956 and 1983. He held missions last year in Cincinnati and the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Church of Scotland Opposes Sex-Selection Procedures
LONDON (RNS) The (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland is opposed to sex selection, however performed, except if it is to prevent gender-linked genetic diseases such as hemophilia, the denomination’s Board of Social Responsibility has announced.
The church made its statement in its response to the consultation on sex selection being carried out by the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, the body set up by the British government to oversee in vitro fertilization and similar matters, including research on human embryos.
The board also said it wanted to oppose any laws allowing abortion of a fetus of the undesired sex or discarding an embryo of the undesired sex. But it pointed out that the church’s general assembly _ the only body competent to express the views of the Church of Scotland _ had not yet considered whether it wanted the sperm selection technique of sex selection to be banned.
“All of us who have discussed this think it wrong to use sex selection,” said the Rev. Richard Corbett of the Board of Social Responsibility. “However, since sperm selection does not involve destroying human life, some of us think permitting it a lesser evil than restricting parents’ choice.
“Our main reason for opposing sex selection is that we ought to love our children for themselves. To do so, we must love them whatever their sex. Since sex selection works by ensuring that we don’t have a child of the sex we don’t want, to use it is to imply that we’d rather have no child than one of the sex we don’t want.
“In other words, we’re trying to create a child with no intention of loving it for itself. This is the exact opposite of what many claim for sex selection _ that it would make it easier for parents to love their children.”
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: The Rev. Al Sharpton of New York
(RNS) “Young lady, it is time for the Christian right to meet the right Christians.”
_ The Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, making a declaration to an anti-abortion demonstrator outside the NARAL Pro-Choice America dinner Tuesday (Jan. 21) who challenged him as a minister to boycott the Washington event. Sharpton earlier in the day announced that he would explore a presidential bid.
DEA END RNS
