c. 2003 Religion News Service
Religious Freedom Panel Asks Bush to Push for Iraqi Religious Liberty
(RNS) The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has urged President Bush to maintain his commitment to religious freedom for all Iraqis.
“Now that Saddam Hussein has been ousted, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom believes strongly it is essential to ensure that the Iraqi people can exercise their religious freedom in full accordance with international human rights standards,” commission members wrote Bush in a letter dated Monday (April 28).
“The United States can help this become a reality.”
The commission expressed its concern that U.S. leadership is needed to prevent ethnic and sectarian violence and other human rights violations against Iraq’s diverse religious communities.
“The recent murders of Shiite clerics could be the harbinger of further violence within and between religious groups,” they wrote. “Now is the time to prevent such an outcome.”
In a speech Monday in Dearborn, Mich., the president included the issue of religious freedom in his comments about the future of Iraq.
“Whether you’re Sunni or Shia or Kurd or Chaldean or Assyrian or Turkoman or Christian or Jew or Muslim _ no matter what your faith, freedom is God’s gift to every person in every nation,” he said.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Pope Names Country’s First Vietnamese Bishop
(RNS) Four months after appointing the nation’s first Chinese bishop, Pope John Paul II has named Monsignor Dominic Dinh Mai Luong as the country’s first Vietnamese bishop.
Luong, pastor of the 18,000-member Mary Queen of Vietnam Church in New Orleans, will serve as auxiliary bishop in the Diocese of Orange, Calif., home to one of the nation’s largest Vietnamese communities.
“It’s a great honor,” Luong, 62, told the Orange County Register. “Vietnamese Catholics, even though we have a lot of different characteristics, we can contribute a lot to the church to make a tapestry that makes U.S. Catholics more richly blessed.”
Before he was called to New Orleans in 1976, Luong taught in seminaries and preferred teaching to pastoral work. Luong was born in Nihn Cuong, a North Vietnamese village about 50 southwest of Hanoi.
Vietnamese Catholics are one of the fastest-growing segments of the American church, providing a large share of new priests.
Last December, the pope appointed Monsignor Ignatius Wang, the nation’s first Asian bishop, as auxiliary bishop in San Francisco.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Muslims Lobby Capitol Hill to Protest Daniel Pipes Nomination
(RNS) At least 150 Muslim activists from across the country gathered on Capitol Hill on Friday (April 25) to protest the nomination of controversial commentator Daniel Pipes to the United States Institute of Peace.
The lobbying effort was led by participants in the Council on American-Islamic Relations Annual Leadership Conference.
CAIR, which is a Washington-based Islamic civil rights and advocacy group, argues that Pipes’ views on Israel and civil liberties for Arabs and Muslims qualify him as “the nation’s leading Islamophobe.”
Pipes, who directs the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, was nominated to the government-funded Institute of Peace by President Bush. The Senate must confirm the nomination to the foreign policy think tank.
During the lobbying day, Muslim activists met with elected officials and congressional staffers. The purpose of the conference was to focus on political empowerment and leadership skills for American Muslims.
High on the list of issues was the Pipes nomination, which CAIR leaders say should be of great concern to Muslims.
“Mr. Pipes’ nomination runs counter to the president’s repeated declarations that the war on terrorism is not an attack on Islam,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR.
“His extremist and militant views serve to promote unending conflict, not peace,” Awad said.
CAIR cited several examples of Pipes’ thought that they feel are dangerous to Muslims who are concerned about civil liberties in post-Sept. 11 America, including Pipes’ claim that 10 percent to 15 percent of Muslims are “potential killers” and his “Campus Watch” program, which maintains dossiers on professors and academic institutions Pipes suspects of extremist leanings.
At a gathering of journalists at the University of Maryland’s Knight Center on Specialized Journalism last week, Pipes said extremists dominate many U.S. Muslim political organizations, including CAIR. He called the groups “apologists for terrorists” and said they should not be invited to the White House.
CAIR leaders reacted strongly to the categorization.
“This is his standard line,” said CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper. “Whenever somebody challenges his Islamophobic views and his anti-Muslim bigotry, he tries to smear them with false charges.”
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Judge: Church-Run Day Care Center Innocent in Child’s Death
(RNS) A Florida judge has found a church-run day care center in Daytona Beach innocent of the accidental death of a toddler who was left inside a van two years ago.
Circuit Judge S. James Foxman acquitted the now-defunct Abundant Life Academy of Learning of aggravated manslaughter in the death of Zaniyah Hinson, the Associated Press reported. The child was left inside a van on a hot afternoon for more than two hours during a field trip in August 2001.
“The negligence of the employees that afternoon was not something the corporation acquiesced to or condoned,” the judge said Thursday (April 24). “The employees just didn’t do what they were supposed to do.”
The Rev. Marcus Triplett, president of Abundant Life and its umbrella corporation, Abundant Life Ministries, faced the possibility of a $10,000 fine. The ministries include the River of Abundant Life Church, a congregation affiliated with the Assemblies of God.
A Christian educational association ordered that the day care center be closed two months after Zaniyah’s death.
Last fall, the child’s mother received a $1.5 million settlement from the center’s insurance company. Gail Besemer, the van’s driver, was sentenced to five years of probation last August after admitting responsibility for her role in the accidental death.
Britton to Head Financially Troubled Berkeley Divinity School
(RNS) The founding director of a Paris center for Christian studies has been named the new dean of the financially troubled Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University.
The Rev. Joseph Harp Britton will serve as dean of the Episcopal-affiliated seminary, and also associate dean at Yale Divinity School. Britton is the founding director of the European Institute of Christian Studies, and served the Episcopal churches in Europe.
Britton holds degrees from Harvard University, General Theological Seminary and the Institut Catholique de Paris.
The school was the subject of an investigation by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal after former Dean William Franklin resigned on Jan. 1, 2002, after spending school funds on personal expenses.
A Yale audit found “a complete lack of internal controls” on spending, and Franklin was ordered to repay money that was spent on his daughter’s tuition at Harvard Medical School. Interim Associate Dean Frederick Borsch, the former Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles, said there was no illegal activity but rather “poor judgment” and “poor standards.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
New Archbishop of Wales Elected
LONDON (RNS) Bishop Barry Morgan of Llandaff, 56, has been elected the Anglican archbishop of Wales.
Morgan, who served from 1993 to 1999 as bishop of Bangor, succeeds Archbishop Rowan Williams, who nine months ago was appointed archbishop of Canterbury. Williams was enthroned as head of the worldwide Anglican communion in February.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick
(RNS) “As more and more Christians emigrate and leave that beautiful country (Israel), we are very concerned that what we call the Holy Land will become a museum without any living Christian presence in the land of Jesus’ birth, ministry and death.”
_ Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, speaking on Monday (April 28) to the Anti-Defamation League about Christian-Jewish relations.
DEA END RNS
