c. 2003 Religion News Service

Magazine Picks `Most Spiritually Literate Films of 2002′

(RNS) As the film industry prepares for its annual Academy Awards, Spirituality & Health Magazine has named “Signs,” “Changing Lanes” and the animated feature “Spirited Away” as among the “Most Spiritually Literate Films of 2002.”

Writing in the April 2003 issue that movies can “help us see the world as infused with significance,” the magazine’s media editors named their top 10 picks for the most “spiritually literate” domestic films, foreign films and documentaries released last year.

In making the list, the editors said they highlighted films with stories in which characters show spiritual strength, such as “expressing compassion, hope and love,” “being transformed” or “working for justice and peace.”

In the magazine’s “Faith” category, M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller “Signs” was selected for depicting “the meaning of coincidence, family solidarity in the face of the inexplicable, and how destiny unfolds in every moment.”

“Changing Lanes” _ the “Transformation” pick _ was chosen as “an ethically charged, character-driven drama about how troubles can be the catalyst for personal transformation.” And the Oscar-nominated animated feature “Spirited Away” joined “About Schmidt” in the “You” category for portraying a young girl’s “steadfast refusal to set up a dualistic battle between good and evil.”

Two of the “spiritually literate” documentaries _ “Bowling for Columbine” and “Daughter From Danang” _ are also Oscar nominees.

Among the year’s foreign films, the Iranian parable “Secret Ballot” was selected for the “Openness” category, while “The Way Home” _ a Korean production centered on a boy’s relationship with his grandmother _ was named for the “Love” category.

X X X

Here are the magazine’s top films from 2002:

Ten Most Spiritually Literate Films of 2002

“Sunshine State,” “Signs,” “Dragonfly,” “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing,” “Minority Report,” “Changing Lanes,” “The Hours,” “About Schmidt,” “Spirited Away,” “The Quiet American”

Ten Most Spiritually Literate Foreign Language Films of 2002

“Talk to Her,” “A Song for Martin,” “The Way Home,” “Secret Ballet,” “The Fast Runner,” “Mostly Martha,” “Son of the Bride,” “Elling,” “Time Out,” “Monsoon Wedding”

Ten Most Spiritually Literate Documentaries of 2002

“ABC Africa,” “Ram Dass Fierce Grace,” “Promises,” “Nijinsky: The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky,” “The Back of the World,” “Nagovgatsi,” “Ayurveda: The Art of Being,” “Daughter From Danang,” “Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times,” “Bowling for Columbine”

_ Christina Denny

National Association of Evangelicals Appoints New President

(RNS) Ted Haggard, senior pastor of a megachurch in Colorado Springs, Colo., has been appointed as president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Haggard, 46, is the leader of New Life Church, the largest church in Colorado. He was appointed by the association’s executive committee shortly after the organization’s annual meeting March 6-7 in Eden Prairie, Minn.

Haggard succeeds another megachurch pastor, Leith Anderson, pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, who served as interim president.

In addition to his pastoral role, Haggard is the president of the World Prayer Center, which focuses on worldwide evangelistic prayer, and the World Prayer Team, a prayer network that functions via the Internet.

“Ted Haggard will give evangelicals in the United States a positive and proactive leadership voice,” said Bill Hamel, chairman of the board of the evangelical organization, in a statement announcing the appointment.

“His commitment to bringing evangelicals together for mission, prayer and as a united voice is a deeply held value that is acknowledged and known throughout the evangelical world.”

In one of his first acts as the organization’s new leader, Haggard called on American evangelical Christians to pray about the conflict with Iraq.

“I encourage prayers for a peaceful resolution to this situation,” he said in a March 17 statement. “As the likelihood of armed conflict increases, I ask Americans to pray for God to protect innocent lives, give wisdom to our leaders and advance the cause of freedom.”

The evangelical organization also has begun a new partnership with Mission America Coalition, a Palm Desert, Calif.-based organization focused on prayer and evangelism. The groups will work together to foster evangelism strategies through the more than 43,000 congregations from 51 denominations that are affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals.

The annual meeting of the NAE is scheduled to be held at Haggard’s church next March.

_ Adelle M. Banks

$1.5 Million in Grants Announced to Reduce Bias Against Muslims, Others

(RNS) The National Conference for Community and Justice has announced recipients of $1.5 million in grants to help reduce discrimination against Muslims, Arabs and South Asians.

The September 11th Anti-Bias Project grants, supported by the ChevronTexaco Foundation, include $100,000 each for the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago and the University of Richmond Chaplaincy in Virginia.

“Over 300 anti-bias organizations from 36 states and Washington, D.C., applied for the September 11th Anti-Bias Project grants,” said Sanford Cloud Jr., president and CEO of NCCJ, in a statement. “It was both sobering and heartening to read the many efforts nationwide to address the heightened discrimination against Arabs, Muslims and South Asians in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.”

The Chicago council applied for the grant to foster relationships among youth and adults in the city’s Muslim, Sikh, Greek Orthodox and Jewish communities. The chaplaincy program in Richmond intends to increase regional leaders’ understanding of Arab, Muslim and South Asian populations.

Other grant recipients intend a wide range of projects _ from showing documentaries on Muslims to help employees and community members better understand Islam to encouraging social service professionals to more effectively aid Muslim clients and patients.

Other recipients are: Active Voice, San Francisco; Afghan Coalition, Fremont, Calif.; American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, San Francisco; American Immigration Law Foundation, Washington; Arab American Institute Foundation, Washington; California State University, Long Beach Department of Social Work, Long Beach, Calif.; Chhaya Community Development Corporation, Flushing, N.Y.; The Church Avenue Merchants Block Association, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Educators for Social Responsibility, Cambridge, Mass.; Graduate School of Islamic and Social Studies, Washington; The Hate Free Zone Campaign of Washington, Seattle; InterFaith Ministries, Wichita, Kansas; Islamic Social Services Association, Mesa, Ariz.; Japanese American Citizens League, San Francisco; Lohgarh Sikh Educational Foundation, Palo Alto, Calif.; Masjidul Waritheen, Oakland, Calif.; Muslim Student Association of the U.S. and Canada, Washington.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Update: Judge Rules in Favor of Students’ Religious Candy Canes

(RNS) A federal judge ruled Monday (March 17) that students at a Massachusetts high school had the right to distribute religiously themed candy last Christmas and should not have been suspended.

U.S. District Court Judge Frank Freedman said the students’ free speech rights were violated when they were prohibited from handing out candy canes with Christian messages. Freedman also said the school was wrong to suspend the students after they ignored the principal’s order to stop.

Students “enjoy the right to free personal intercommunciation with other students so long as their communication with other students does not substantially or materially disrupt the operation of the classroom,” Freedman said in his ruling.

The candy canes were accompanied by a note that explained the candy’s history and included an invitation to Christianity. Freedman rejected the school’s argument that the principal had the right to restrict the messages because the student Bible club was a school-sanctioned activity.

“If the court were to accept the school’s proposition that the LIFE Club is a school-sponsored, curriculum-related group, then the school would be in flagrant violation of 40 years’ worth of Supreme Court precedent barring school-sponsored prayer and devotional activities,” Freedman ruled, according to the Associated Press.

Erik Stanley, who represented the students as part of the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, called the opinion “well-reasoned.”

“Students should be aware of their rights and not be intimidated by unconstitutional school policies that violate their rights,” he said.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Russian Lawmakers Support `Values’ of Nation’s `Traditional’ Religions

MOSCOW (RNS) A broad coalition of lawmakers in Russia’s State Duma on Tuesday (March 18) formed a voting bloc in support of the “morals and values” of Russia’s so-called traditional religions: Russian Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism.

At a founding meeting in the lower house of parliament that included top Orthodox clerics, rabbis, muftis and lamas, speaker after speaker urged giving the traditional faiths everything from tax breaks to free land.

Lama Sanjai Balzhirov, a leading cleric from the mostly Buddhist Siberian region of Buryatia, said the new parliamentary organization would “make it easier for us to express our opinion.”

For Buddhists, the lama said, property issues are near the top of the agenda. “For example, in the capital of Russia, there is no temple. This is disappointing to us,” he said, noting that Moscow has about 20,000 Buddhists.

While the founders of the bloc insisted that there is no conflict between supporting some faiths and not others, some of the participants made clear they had other ideas.

“Scientology is a commercial cult,” Yevgeny Nikiforov, head of Radonezh, a hard-line Russian Orthodox organization, told lawmakers.

Aside from Russian Orthodox clergy, no other Christian leaders took part in the meetings.

As of Tuesday’s meeting, 45 of the State Duma’s 450 deputies had signed up in support of the country’s traditional faiths. In an election year, religion is proving a hot topic with the State Duma due to consider two proposed laws, both of which would enhance the position of the dominant, 80 million-member Russian Orthodox Church.

“We need a religion code, just as we already have a land code, a civil code,” said Viktor Zorkaltsev, a Communist deputy on the Duma’s committee on public associations and religious organizations. “Russia is a secular state, yes. But you cannot divide religion and the state.”

_ Frank Brown

British Religious Leaders Join in House of Lords Iraq Debate

LONDON (RNS) By choosing to go to war against Iraq, Britain has chosen the second-worst option of the five open to it, Bishop of Oxford Richard Harries told the House of Lords on Tuesday (March 18) during its lengthy debate on the crisis.

“Acting for what are strategically the best of reasons, we now find ourselves in a truly tragic predicament,” the bishop said. “The best option, of course, was for Saddam Hussein to divest himself of weapons of mass destruction without resort to actual force. The second-best option, in my judgment, was to continue to explore other alternatives such as permanent United Nations monitors, surveillance planes, together with stepped-up `no-fly zones,’ while not ruling out an ultimate resort to force.

“The third-best option was to use force on the authority of a fresh mandate from the United Nations. The fourth-best option was to use force without such a resolution.”

The worst option, he said, would be to allow Saddam once again to flout the authority of the United Nations and get away with whatever he thought he could get away with, Harries said.

While saying Saddam _ “an evil tyrant” _ was primarily to blame for the current situation, Harries also said, “Western policy has been complicit for decades, supporting his murderous war against Iran, selling him weapons, undermining sanctions and failing to act when he gassed 5,000 Kurds and destroyed the habitat of the Shias.”

Another prelate who is a member of the House of Lords, Bishop of Chelmsford John Perry, told the Lords why he and his Roman Catholic opposite number, Bishop Thomas McMahon of Brentwood, had the day before visited the 4,000-strong garrison at Colchester, 2,500 of whose troops are currently in Kuwait, given that both bishops are known to be opposed to military action in Iraq.

Their reply to questions was simple: “Yes, we have consistently opposed military action as the way of resolving this crisis. We are not persuaded that the case for action has been made. We particularly regret the marginalization of the United Nations.

“But we want the garrison to know that, in the event of war, we will give our unequivocal support to the men and women of our armed services who are in the Gulf and to their families back in this country.”

Lord Ahmed, who in 1998 became the first Muslim to be made a peer, told the House: “There is real fear about the war among the Muslim communities in this country. They fear attack by racists and by the media.”

_ Robert Nowell

Quote of the Day: The Rev. Craig Johnson, a Minneapolis-area Lutheran Bishop

(RNS) “To connect the Prince of Peace with these kind of toys for war seems to be on the edge of obscene to me.”

_ The Rev. Craig Johnson, bishop of the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, responding to Kmart and Wal-Mart stores selling Easter baskets with police and military themes, including toy semiautomatic pistols and toy assault vehicles. He was quoted by the Star Tribune.

DEA END RNS