c. 2003 Religion News Service

King Holiday Observances Mixed With Protests of Possible War

WASHINGTON (RNS) Observances over the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend were frequently mixed with words of protest about a possible U.S. war with Iraq.

At “A Service of Prayer and Discernment” on Monday (Jan. 20) at Washington National Cathedral, which followed two days of anti-war protests in the city, religious leaders took turns reading the words of the slain civil rights leader. The first reading focused on words from King against war that he preached at the cathedral in his last sermon days before his assassination in 1968.

The Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, urged the audience of about 2,700 to “hear how prophetic these words are for today.”

Jim Wallis, convener of Call to Renewal, urged President Bush to create a “faith-based initiative” that would disarm weapons of mass destruction through means other than war.

“Today we pray to God and plead with our national leaders to avoid the destructiveness of war and find a better way to resolve the very real threats involved in this conflict with Iraq,” he said. “We believe that it is possible, and we believe we can still stop this war before it starts.”

Many at the cathedral service departed it to take part in a candlelight vigil at the White House.

Bishop John Chane, leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, joined Edgar and Wallis in leading the procession. Like others in the service, he recalled King’s legacy of supporting nonviolence and prayed for God’s help “to repent of our warring ways.”

Religious organizations also were involved in protests earlier in the weekend, including one that brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to Washington.

“The massive turnout at this rally proves that Americans won’t tolerate politicians waging unjust wars in their name,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation and co-chair of the Saturday event.

President Bush visited First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Landover, Md., to mark the King holiday on Monday. He did not address the possibility of war but instead spoke of King’s faith commitment during brief remarks at the predominantly black church.

“It is fitting that we honor Martin Luther King in a church,” the president said. “The power of his words, the clarity of his vision, the courage of his leadership occurred because he put his faith in the Almighty.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Catholic Bishops Asked to Pray for African Famine Relief

WASHINGTON (RNS) The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops have been asked to pray for relief for African famine and collect extra money in the next two months to help alleviate the plight of 34 million starving Africans.

“Because of our national preoccupations, we have been made less than fully aware of the imminent suffering and death that is facing tens of millions of our brothers and sisters on the African continent,” said a letter from Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Bishop Robert Lynch, chairman of Catholic Relief Services.

Gregory and Lynch said the famine has been made worse by the AIDS pandemic that has left many working people too sick or weak to harvest the dwindling crops. The bishops also said Washington’s failure to pass a new federal budget has limited U.S. government assistance.

Without immediate help, the bishops said “untold millions” will suffer from a 1.7 million-ton food gap. The bishops were asked to pray for the continent and collect “voluntary collections” in the next two months for Catholic Relief Services.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

American Humanist Association Names New President

(RNS) The board of the American Humanist Association has announced the election of Melvin S. Lipman as its new president.

Lipman, of Las Vegas, replaces Edd Doerr, who has served as the Washington-based organization’s president for the past eight years.

Lipman, a retired attorney, is an arbitrator and mediator who teaches constitutional law at the Nevada campus of the University of Phoenix.

A Humanist minister, Lipman is a member of the Las Vegas Interfaith Council.

“My goal is to reach out to the large number of Humanists in our communities so that we can remove the negative stigma our society places on those who do not share traditional religious beliefs,” Lipman said in a statement. “I want to publicly challenge the religious right’s exclusive claim to morality.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Anglicans Express Anger at Conservative Dissidents Redirecting Money

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (RNS) Mainstream Anglicans are angry that dissident parishes are using money in a “destructive and un-Christian way” to oppose the blessing of same-sex unions, according to Vancouver-area Bishop Michael Ingham.

Ingham made his comments after more than 300 delegates voted overwhelmingly on Saturday (Jan. 18) to approve his diocese’s plan to cut staff and borrow from a contingency fund to make up an annual $280,000 shortfall caused by dissident parishes withholding payments.

The eight parishes have stopped making their usual payments to the diocese because they want to operate independently of Ingham under the authority of an external “flying bishop.”

“I want to say to them (protesting parishes): `You can’t hold the church to ransom,”’ Ingham said in an interview.

“It’s not necessary to make these protests. No one is being compelled to do anything. Their witholding of funds is seen as a political protest.”

In November, Ingham announced he would indefinitely postpone the blessing of same-sex unions in his diocese so that he could take part in a “reconciliation process” with dissident priests.

However, he said last weekend he won’t let the talks go on forever if no progress is being made. “There’s a limit to all human patience.”

Ingham added he delayed the introduction of same-sex rites to let the mediation process occur, not because eight parishes out of 80 in the region began witholding their annual assessments to the diocese _ causing a funding drop of about 18 percent.

Ingham called last weekend’s special synod of the Anglican diocese, held at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver, so delegates could discuss the financial implications of their decision last June to vote to become the first Anglican diocese in Canada to formally bless homosexual relationships.

The Vancouver-area delegates agreed almost unanimously Saturday to support the diocesan treasurer’s motion to make up the budget shortfall by eliminating chaplains’ positions at St. Paul’s Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital, cutting two administrative staff, reducing top administrators’ salaries and trimming outreach programs.

_ Douglas Todd

English Church Leader Urges Quick Implementation of Abuse Rules

LONDON (RNS) The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales said that priests should expect they would have to resign if they fail to implement the church’s new, tougher guidelines for child protection.

At the same time, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, in his first newspaper interview in more than a year, rejected demands for his resignation over a clerical abuse case involving a jailed pedophile priest.

The cardinal conceded to The Daily Telegraph in Britain that he had made a “serious mistake” in appointing the priest, Michael Hill, as a chaplain at London’s Gatwick airport, where Hill was accused, and later convicted, of abusing a number of children.

Murphy-O’Connor said he had “learned well” from what had proved to be a “painful” learning curve that had “tested me as a man.”

The Catholic Church in England and Wales has put in place new child protection guidelines _ rules that “if they are not being implemented by a bishop, and if a bishop deliberately ignores them,” Murphy-O’Connor said, “that bishop puts himself in a very serious position.”

The cardinal said that “if there are serious failures, the bishop would be held to account. There is no question of that.” All bishops, he added, are “fully committed” to the reforms.

But as for himself, he insisted, there were no cases in his own past in which he covered up for a pedophile priest.

In particular, Murphy-O’Connor flatly rejected a newspaper report that he had arranged for another convicted pedophile priest, the Rev. Tim Garrett of Arundel and Brighton in England, to get a job in Switzerland, although the cardinal conceded he would have handled that case differently if the new guidelines had been in force.

_ Al Webb

Reformed Church of South Africa Opens Way for Women Deacons

POTCHEFSTROOM, South Africa (RNS) In a groundbreaking move, the Reformed Church of South Africa (Gereformeerde Kerke in Suid Afrika, GKSA) voted overwhelmingly last week to allow women in the office of deacon.

Approximately 200 male ministers and elders, delegates to GKSA’s regular triennial synod, accepted by a margin of about two to one a proposal from the synod’s commission on women that “women with the necessary gifts be installed as deacons.”

“The deaconate is considered a service of the love of Christ to the people,” said Callie Opperman, a GKSA pastor and commission chairman. “It is clear that women in the early church did deaconate service in the care of other believers.”

The synod let stand, however, a ruling from the 1988 synod that “all men are the head of all women.”

Ben Fourie, a pastor in Pretoria, while not against women as deacons, opposed the decision because he thinks it deviates from the way the GKSA traditionally handles sensitive issues. “Our position before was to consult other churches. Things like this should be tested with our partner Reformed churches in New Zealand and Australia,” he said.

Disagreeing with Fourie, Rosil Jager, a former member of parliament in South Africa, said the synod’s decision “normalizes our position with respect to other Afrikaaner churches.”

GKSA synods have been looking at the issue of women in church leadership since the 1930s. Coubus Snyman, an elder and farmer in Koster, said, “This feels like the right thing to do. I prayed for this.”

Dries du Plooy, dean of the denomination’s seminary attached to the state university, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, said: “The gifts of God do not relate to a person’s gender. Men can be called to more than one service and so can women.”

Although women have a vote on church matters, they have not been allowed in the three offices of deacon, elder and pastor. Women students, however, attend the church’s seminary and participate fully with their male colleagues but cannot be ordained.

The church, which has close ties with the Christian Reformed Church in North America, has about 300 congregations and 75,000 members.

_ Robin Gallaher Branch

Quote of the Day: Science Journalist Michael Guillen

(RNS) “It’s kind of like being gay in the military: Don’t ask, don’t tell. A belief in God isn’t the norm, much less believing in Jesus being the son of God. That’s like a double whammy, and I have been reluctant to talk about it.”

_ Michael Guillen, the former science reporter for ABC News, who offered to test a cloning-services company’s claim that it had cloned a human being. He was quoted by Beliefnet, an interfaith Web site, in an interview that asked if his Christian beliefs are uncommon in scientific and journalistic circles.

DEA END RNS