c. 2003 Religion News Service
Experts: Divide Over Religion A Factor In U.S.-European Relations
(RNS) As the European Union struggles over whether to reference God and Christianity in its constitution, experts on U.S.-European relations said stark divides between the United States and Europe over the importance of religion may contribute to the rift over foreign policy.
At a Thursday (July 10) conference sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, experts said conflicting opinions over the separation of church and state, the use of religious language by politicians, and the prominence of faith in the public sphere have accentuated the diplomatic split between Europe and America.
Justin Vaisse, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the U.S. and France, said France and the United States are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the church-state divide.
“The separation of church and state in France was not about shielding the church from the state _ it was the opposite,” he said, adding that whereas Americans equate freedom with the ability to practice religion openly, Europeans believe freedom is gained by confining religion to the private sphere.
Craig Kennedy, president of the German Marshall Fund, an American institution fostering U.S.-European relations, said most Europeans are confounded by the eclectic nature of American religion.
“In the U.S., the separation of church and state gives us the insurance that allows us to have a freewheeling, dynamic religious system that seems quite chaotic to Europeans,” he said.
Experts also cited President Bush’s frequent invocations of God as a major source of diplomatic tension. The president’s use of religious rhetoric in articulating his administration’s policy toward Iraq, Iran and North Korea, nations he dubbed the “axis of evil,” shocked many Europeans and reinforced the stereotype of America as a religiously zealous nation, Vaisse said.
“This stereotype of America as religious is part of the anti-American feeling,” he said.
The stereotype may, in part, be true, according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press last December, which found nearly 60 percent of Americans said religion was important to them, compared to just 11 percent in France and 21 percent in Germany.
Andrew Kohut, the director for the Pew Research Center, rejected the notion that divisions over religion have real policy ramifications, saying that such differences amplify rather than cause transatlantic tiffs.
_ Alexandra Alter
Church-State Group Criticizes Police Role in Buddhist Retreat
(RNS) Church-state separationists have criticized the Madison, Wis., police department for encouraging police officers to attend a meditation retreat with renowned Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh this August.
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based watchdog group for religious liberty, said the Madison police department should not urge officers to attend a Buddhist meditation retreat intended to help them cope with work-related stress.
“Just as the city may not promote Christianity, Judaism or Islam, it may not advance Buddhism,” the Rev. Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United, said in a statement. “ I understand that police officers face a significant amount of stress, but the city must find some other way of helping them cope. Encouraging them to go to a religious retreat doesn’t pass constitutional muster.”
The retreat was planned by Madison Police Capt. Cheri Maples, an ordained lay member of the Zen Buddhist order of Thich Nhat Hanh, an internationally known Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist and poet.
Maples invited Thich Nhat Hanh to offer a nonsectarian program emphasizing peace and nonviolence from Aug. 24-29 in Green Lake.
“It’s hard to do this work and not close down emotionally over time,” Maples told the Associated Press. “My focus is on how to help people do this job with an open heart, to deal with what we deal with and not pay a price themselves.”
Lynn, however, said Maples’ efforts to counsel fellow officers amounts to a breach in the separation of church and state.
In a July 8 letter to Maples and Chief of Police Richard Williams, he cautioned that Maples’ promotion of the retreat posed serious constitutional problems, citing several Supreme Court rulings that forbid government to endorse religion.
“We understand that Captain Maples has studied under Thich Nhat Hanh,” Lynn wrote in the letter. “She has explained that `mindfulness’ has helped her deal with the rigors of police work. While Captain Maples is entitled to hold those beliefs, the Constitution forbids her from using her government position to assert beliefs that advocate or endorse religious points of view.”
_ Alexandra Alter
“The Practice,” Antwone Fisher Among Humanitas Prize Winners
LOS ANGELES (RNS) An episode on capital punishment won ABC-TV’s “The Practice” a $15,000 Humanitas Prize at the same awards ceremony where novice screenwriter Antwone Fisher won a $25,000 Humanitas award for writing the screenplay for last year’s autobiographical movie.
“I was a teenager when I discovered the healing (power) of writing,” said Fisher after accepting the award for the script on July 10 (Thursday).
Fisher wrote the work after living through an abusive childhood and becoming a troubled sailor and then a movie studio security guard.
“I feel so grateful to be here,” Fisher told about 350 screenwriters, actors, producers and others at the awards luncheon at the Hilton Universal Hotel next to Universal Studios. “I wrote 41 drafts in the course of learning how to write a screenplay.”
The 29-year-old Humanitas Prizes were developed by the late Rev. Ellwood “Bud” Kieser, the Catholic priest who created the spiritually themed “Insight” TV series. Honoring TV movie and scripts that explore the human condition, the eight Humanitas awards this year distributed $115,000 in prize money.
Showtime’s “Our America,” about two teenagers in a Chicago housing project who document their hard life on public radio, won the $25,000 prize for best 90-minute TV script.
The two $10,000 Humanitas prizes for children’s scriptwriting went to the Disney Channel’s “A Ring of Endless Night” movie and the WB network’s animated “Static Shock” series for an episode about gun control.
A script from the Fox Broadcasting sitcom “The Bernie Mac Show” won a $10,000 prize, while another $10,000 was given to novice comedy writer Kathy Fischer for the first Humanitas Comedy Fellowship prize.
While this year’s prizes were for scripts from last year, the $10,000 prize for the top independent film screenplay went to “Whale Rider,” a New Zealand movie about a Maori tribe which opened in limited U.S. distribution last month. _ David Finnigan
Officials of Town Dedicated to Padre Pio Charged with Embezzlement
(RNS) Authorities on Friday (July 11) brought embezzlement and fraud charges against the mayor, deputy mayor and four councilmen of San Giovanni Rotondo, the southern Italian town that was home to the much-venerated Padre Pio and has become one of the world’s major places of pilgrimage.
Prosecutors accused Mayor Antonio Squarcella, Deputy Mayor Mauro Cappucci and four members of the center-right town council of misappropriating about 15 million euro ($17 million) in connection with Holy Year celebrations in 2000 and Padre Pio’s canonization on June 16, 2002.
The officials allegedly inflated expense claims and doctored receipts for personal trips they took with family and friends around Italy. Authorities said they charged the town for a trip to Imola to see an international racecar competition and visits to nightclubs.
Some 8 million pilgrims visit San Giovanni Rotondo each year to pray at the tomb of the miracle-working Capuchin friar, who bore the stigmata, the same five bleeding wounds that Jesus is believed to have suffered on the cross.
Padre Pio died Sept. 23, 1968, at the age of 81 and is interred in the monastery of Santa Maria dell Grazie. Pope John Paul II proclaimed him St. Pio of Pietralcina, the village where he was born, before a record crowd of some 300,000.
San Giovanni Rotondo, where Padre Pio built the largest and best-equipped hospital and research center in the poverty-stricken southern region of Apulia, has become a place of pilgrimage on a par with the shrines at Lourdes in France, Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Fatima in Portugal and even Mecca.
The Vatican earlier this year took over administration of the monastery’s finances.
_ Peggy Polk
Nearly 1,000 North American Jews to Immigrate to Israel this Summer
(RNS) The first group of North American Jewish immigrants brought to Israel by a new Jewish organization arrived Wednesday (July 9) at Ben Gurion International Airport amid singing, tears and welcomes from Israeli government officials.
The group, Nefesh b’Nefesh, was founded in 2001 to help Jews “make aliyah,” or move to Israel. Last year, the group brought 519 North American Jews to Israel, 99 percent of whom remain there today.
This year, almost 1,000 Jews from 21 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces will move. A total of 330 went on the first plane, with more groups going over throughout the remainder of the summer.
Nefesh b’Nefesh leaders say that their goal is to remove the red tape associated with immigrating to Israel, like resolving college debts or other loans, and setting up housing and employment in their new location. The privately funded group provided loans to immigrants that do not have to be paid back if they stay in Israel for more than three years.
“There were too many obstacles facing the growing number of U.S. and Canadian Jews who want to realize their long-cherished dream of `aliyah,”’ said Tony Gelbart, who is the co-founder of Nefesh b’Nefesh.
“Our 1,000 Olim (newcomers) this year will make history,” added Nefesh b’Nefesh co-founder and executive director Rabbi Joshua Fass in a news release announcing the first plane’s arrival.
“They are not fleeing adversity or anti-Semitism,” Fass said. “They are idealistically, consciously realizing their dream to make their lives in Israel and to contribute economically, socially and culturally to the country.”
Immigration to Israel appears to be on the rise, despite continuing violence in the Middle East. Nefesh b’Nefesh says that immigration rates are at their highest in the past 30 years, and the Jewish Agency for Israel, a governmental agency that helps immigrants, said that the numbers are up more than 20 percent this year, the Associated Press reported.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Quote of the Day: Best-selling Author Jon Krakauer
(RNS) “Mormon authorities treat the fundamentalists as they would a crazy uncle _ they try to keep the `polygs’ hidden in the attic, safely out of sight, but the fundamentalists always seem to be sneaking out to appear in public at inopportune moments to create unsavory scenes, embarrassing the entire LDS clan.”
_ Best-selling author Jon Krakauer, writing in his new book, “Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith,” which is drawing criticism from officials of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Krakauer, who refers to the officially abandoned practice of polygamy by LDS breakaways, was quoted by the Associated Press.
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