c. 2003 Religion News Service
Graham’s Good Friday Plans Irk Pentagon’s Muslim Staffers
WASHINGTON (RNS) Muslim staffers of the Defense Department have protested plans for evangelist Franklin Graham to lead Good Friday prayers at the Pentagon, but an Army spokeswoman said the invitation will not be rescinded.
The employees were dismayed that Graham had been chosen as a speaker and urged officials of the Pentagon chaplain’s office to find “a more inclusive and honorable Christian clergyman” to lead the service on April 18, The Washington Post reported.
Graham has been criticized for denouncing Islam as “a very evil and wicked religion.”
Such statements “have been very controversial and divisive,” said Zadil Ansari, lay leader of the Muslim community at the Pentagon.
Martha Rudd, an Army spokeswoman, said the invitation will not be withdrawn. She said some Christian employees requested that Graham be the guest preacher and the chaplain’s office helped them extend the invitation.
“The chaplain’s office here, just like at any Army installation, regularly assists groups of various faiths to hold their services,” Rudd said. “If a Jewish group wants to invite a particular speaker, they’ll do that. Muslims hold services here, too. The Army chaplains are absolutely nonjudgmental of any faith that soldiers want to follow.”
Graham is the son of evangelist Billy Graham and the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He also is president of Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian relief organization based in Boone, N.C.
A spokesman for Samaritan’s Purse confirmed that Graham is scheduled to appear at the Pentagon on Friday.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Catholics Tell Muslims They Do Not Share Harsh Views on Islam
(RNS) Roman Catholic officials recently told Muslim leaders that they do not share fundamentalist Christians’ harsh views on Islam or literal interpretations of the end times.
During the April 8-9 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Dialogue of Catholics and Muslims, the two sides gathered in Brooklyn to discuss religion and violence, marriage and family life, the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and American Christians’ treatment of Muslims.
The Muslims, represented by the Islamic Society of North America, expressed “particular concerns because of the negative comments by some leaders among (fundamentalist) Christians about Muhammad,” according to a communique issued after the session.
Naeem Baig, ISNA’s secretary general, said Muslims continue to be troubled by comments by evangelists Franklin Graham, who called Islam an “evil and wicked” religion that embraces violence, and the Rev. Pat Robertson, who called the Prophet Muhammad “an absolute wild-eyed fanatic.”
“They have similar concerns that such remarks are not helping for any peace in the U.S. or developing any kind of relationship among different religious groups,” Baig said. “They also mentioned that most of these evangelical Christians do not feel that even Catholics are going to heaven.”
The Catholics also distanced themselves from a literal interpretation of the Book of Revelation, which fundamentalists believe lays out the end times through a series of apocalyptic battles.
“We certainly don’t interpret the Book of Revelation by looking for who is the Antichrist in the contemporary world and how the battle of Armageddon might play out” in the present time, said John Borelli, the director for interreligious relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Catholic officials said they are open to relationships with “all Christians seeking reconciliation and the restoration of unity” but noted that talks with fundamentalists are “limited.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Southern California Religious Leaders Rally for Low-Wage Workers
LOS ANGELES (RNS) Echoing the Passover theme of freedom from injustice and oppression, Southern California clergy and labor leaders released a “Statement of Principles” supporting the rights of low-wage workers during a special Passover seder here.
Signed by some 165 area religious leaders, the brief statement says workers deserve “a living wage that allows them to meet the basic needs of their families.” Calling for laborers to receive full health care benefits and be treated with dignity, the statement also urges companies to respect the nation’s laws affecting workers, including the legal right to form a union.
The statement comes at a crucial time for Southern California janitors, whose current labor contracts expire April 30. The negotiations affect more than 11,000 janitors in Los Angeles, neighboring Orange County and San Diego, according to Elizabeth Brennan, spokesperson for Service Employees International Union, local 1877, which represents the janitors.
The new contract talks also follow on an important labor victory by area janitors who successfully concluded a strike in 2000.
Brennan said more than 300 workers attended the special seder at Temple Judea in Tarzana, a community of Los Angeles. Also participating in the seder were local political leaders, including Los Angeles City Councilman-elect Antonio Villaraigosa, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2001.
Southern California Jewish leader Aryeh Cohen, who helped draft the statement, said the document was intended to help business owners who employ janitors understand the ethical principles that should guide the way they treat workers.
Many of the owners of the businesses where the janitors work are Jewish, Cohen said, explaining the document enshrines principles from Jewish tradition regarding the just treatment of laborers. President-elect of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, Cohen is a professor of rabbinic literature at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.
Working on the statement in conjunction with the interfaith Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) in Los Angeles, Cohen said the document had been signed by both rabbis and Christian clergy. The Rev. Alexia Salvatierra, executive director of CLUE, said Christian leaders would be distributing the statement to their congregations.
A Lutheran pastor, Salvatierra underscored the connection between the story of Moses’ leading the Israelites slaves from Egypt, celebrated in the Passover, and the plight of modern low-paid janitors.
“Moses was the first union organizer,” Salvatierra said. The ancient leader cared about “workers who were not being treated fairly … who were being used and exploited.” Moses “proclaimed that he wasn’t just concerned about that, but that God was concerned about that.”
_ Ted Parks
Dad Sues Over Sending Soldier Son in Iraq Region Religious Material
WASHINGTON (RNS) The father of a soldier serving in the war in Iraq has sued the U.S. Postal Service, alleging he was not permitted to send him Christian texts due to a prohibition against “religious materials contrary to the Islamic faith.”
In a suit filed Friday (April 11) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Jack Moody of Lenoir, N.C., said he wanted to send a package to his son Daniel that included a Bible study publication, other scriptural materials and other Christian texts. He alleged that a local postal supervisor told him such materials were not permitted in the postal code covering Kuwait and Iraq.
“By preventing private communication and dispersal of religious beliefs, the USPS rule creates an unconstitutional burden on the ability of private American citizens to freely exercise their religious faith,” states the suit filed by the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization based in Charlottesville, Va.
The suit cites postal regulation E2 and says it states a prohibition of “any matter containing religious materials contrary to Islamic faith or depicting nude or seminude persons, pornographic or sexual items, or nonauthorized political materials.”
Mark Saunders, a spokesman for the postal service, said he could not discuss the particulars of the lawsuit, but he said the restrictions are for mass mailings, not individual ones.
“The host country’s prohibition was to keep items contrary to the Islamic faith from reaching the general population,” he said. “Americans mailing individual items to recipients overseas in the military should not have a problem.”
He said a postal bulletin that is updated every other week will be updated so the E2 regulation reads: “Although religious materials contrary to the Islamic faith are prohibited in bulk quantities, items for the personal use of the addressee are permissible.”
Saunders said the customs restriction was made “by the host country, not by the postal service, not by the military.”
The suit, which also named Army officials as defendants, sought an invalidation of the regulation.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Holy Land Prelate Urges Israel to Accept Mideast `Road Map’
JERUSALEM (RNS) Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the ranking Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, Tuesday (April 15) called on Israel to accept the “road map” proposed by President Bush for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement leading to a Palestinian state.
“You Israelis have to go with this proposal, it is a positive proposal to bring peace to your own people,” said Sabbah, speaking at a news conference in advance of the upcoming Easter holiday.
Sabbah also called on leaders throughout the Holy Land to “change their ways, be submissive to God” and work toward peace.
Sabbah said Israelis, hardened to Palestinian suffering after years of violent clashes and terror, must recognize that Palestinians “are capable of living in peace once their freedom and their rights are given back to them.”
And the patriarch suggested Palestinian life under Israeli occupation was similar to what the Iraqis had been experiencing as a result of the recent U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Referring to the five-week Israeli siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity last spring, Sabbah observed, “The Basilica is liberated, but not the human being. The Palestinians remain under siege, exposed to humiliations, to hunger and to anarchy, and the Israelis remain in their insecurity and fear.
“And what we live here, in this Holy Land,” he concluded, “we begin to see it also in Iraq.”
_ Elaine Ruth Fletcher
Former Interdenominational Theological Center President Dead at 71
(RNS) The Rev. James H. Costen, former president of the Interdenominational Theological Center, died Friday (April 11). He was 71.
Costen served as president of the consortium of six historic African-American seminaries in Atlanta from 1983 to 1997.
“Jim Costen was a sterling example of stewardship, leadership and service,” said ITC Interim President Oliver J. Haney, in a statement. “The ITC is extremely blessed to have had his guidance and influence for more than 20 years.”
Costen came to the consortium in 1969 when he began 14 years of leadership of the Johnson C. Smith Seminary, a theological institution of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
He served as moderator of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the USA in 1982 when it merged with the Presbyterian Church in the United States to become the Presbyterian Church (USA). Costen also was president of the Association of Theological Schools and chair of the Fund for Theological Education. He was involved internationally with his denomination and was influential in providing scholarships for African students to attend ITC.
“Jim Costen left huge footprints on the landscape of ITC,” said Joe Samuel Ratliff, chairman of the consortium’s board of directors. “He was a builder of the ecumenical community and was always a champion for the disenfranchised.”
Upon retirement, Costen was a volunteer development officer for the Pastoral Institute of Kenya, a school operated near Nairobi by the Presbyterian Church of East Africa.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Day: Catholics for a Peaceful End to War and Terrorism
(RNS) “We have heard (our national leaders) proclaim that there will be no accounting for Iraqi casualties, combatant and noncombatant, nor an acceptance of responsibility for the collapse of social order and the chaos that is now being experienced in many parts of Iraq. In the middle of this Christian Holy Week, the image of Pilate comes to mind, he who washed his hands of responsibility after condemning Jesus to death.”
_ Catholics for a Peaceful End to War and Terrorism, a coalition of Catholic groups including Pax Christi USA and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, in an April 16 statement.
DEA END RNS
