c. 2003 Religion News Service
Southern Baptist Convention Membership Hits 16.2 Million, Record High
(RNS) The Southern Baptist Convention’s membership has reached an all-time high of 16.2 million.
The denomination announced Tuesday (April 22) that total membership in Southern Baptist churches reached 16,247,736 in 2002, a 1.21 percent increase, or 194,816 additional members, over the previous year.
The total number of Southern Baptist churches increased to 42,775, an increase of 441 churches, or 1.04 percent, from the 2001 total of 42,334.
While membership totals grew, other figures showed some decreases. There was a slight decline in baptisms. The total, 394,893, was a decline of 1,037, or 0.26 percent, from the previous year.
Sunday school enrollment declined 8,251, or 0.10 percent, to a total of 8,174,493.
Church reports indicated growth in average worship attendance to 5,839,945, an increase of 108,965, or 1.9 percent.
The statistics are compiled by the denomination’s LifeWay Christian Resources division in the Annual Church Profile, drawn from church reports received from local Baptist associations and state conventions.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Justice Department Ends Probe of Texas Professor’s Evolution Policy
(RNS) The Justice Department has ended its investigation of a complaint against a Texas Tech University biology professor after he stopped requiring that students believe in evolution to receive a letter of recommendation.
The department said Tuesday (April 22) that it dropped its probe after professor Michael Dini eliminated the evolution belief requirement in his recommendation policy. He replaced it with a requirement that students have the ability to explain the theory of evolution, the Associated Press reported.
Micah Spradling, a student at the university in Lubbock, Texas, filed the complaint, accusing Dini of refusing to write letters of recommendation based on religious beliefs of his students. Spradling said as a creationist he couldn’t state a belief in human evolution to receive a recommendation.
The Liberty Legal Institute, a religious freedom group, joined in filing the complaint, calling Dini’s policy “open religious bigotry.”
Dini’s previous policy on his Web page told students desiring a recommendation to be able to answer a question about their views on the origin of the human species.
“If you cannot truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation for admittance to further education in the biomedical sciences,” he previously wrote.
Now his Web site reads: “How do you account for the scientific origin of the human species? If you will not give a scientific answer to this question, then you should not seek my recommendation.”
Dini later adds that the requirement “should not be misconstrued as discriminatory against anyone’s personal beliefs.”
In the fall, Spradling withdrew from Texas Tech and transferred to Lubbock Christian University. He re-enrolled at the first school in the spring semester after getting a recommendation letter at the other school.
“A biology student may need to understand the theory of evolution and be able to explain it,” said Ralph Boyd Jr., the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, in a statement. “But a state-run university has no business telling students what they should or should not believe in.”
Muslim Charity Appeals Freeze on Assets
WASHINGTON (RNS) A lawyer for a Muslim charity designated by the Bush administration as a sponsor of terrorism urged a federal appeals court Tuesday (April 22) to throw out a ruling that upheld a freeze on the organization’s financial assets.
John Cline, representing the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, denied government allegations that the charity had given money to Hamas, a militant Islamic group considered a foreign terrorist group by the State Department.
“We want to make charitable and humanitarian contributions, and not to Hamas,” Cline told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Cline said a “minuscule” amount of money had been given to orphans or families of suicide bombers as part of the aid given to thousands of needy people, according to The Washington Post. “Those families were not designated for support,” he said.
But Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter said there is nearly a decade of evidence showing that the Holy Land Foundation supported Hamas.
A federal judge last summer upheld the department’s decision to hold the group’s money and declare it linked to terrorism. But the judge also ruled that Holy Land could challenge the government’s search of its property.
Cline told judges Tuesday that using an administrative procedure to close Holy Land’s offices in December 2001 denied the charity proper notice of the investigation and the chance to defend itself.
Letter argued that agents acted under special circumstances allowed in the Bush administration’s fight against global terrorism to seize the organization’s offices based on overwhelming evidence linking Holy Land to Hamas.
At least $5 million in donations was part of the seizure of the organization’s offices in Richardson, Texas, and satellite offices in three other states, according to The Washington Post. Holy Land has been under federal investigation for at least eight years.
_ Susie L. Oh
Spanish Archbishop: Queen of Inquisition Worthy of Sainthood
MADRID (RNS) Queen Isabella, who ordered the persecution of Jews and Muslims, established the Inquisition, and sent missionaries and conquistadors to the Americas, was a multifaceted woman worthy of sainthood, according to a senior Spanish clergyman.
Braulio Rodriguez, archbishop of Valladolid, told a gathering of Latin American ambassadors in Madrid that he expects Isabella to be canonized despite protests by Jews and liberal Catholics in Spain and abroad.
The new talk of Isabella’s canonization comes just two weeks before Pope John Paul II is scheduled to visit Spain to canonize five new saints _ all founders of religious orders.
“Her saintliness is not a myth,” said the prelate, whose archdiocese is promoting the queen’s cause for beatification at the Vatican.
But, he added, “It has to be understood in its historical context.”
Rodriguez and other advocates of Isabella’s canonization see the queen as a maligned figure of history. They believe she should not be judged for her political decisions, such as the establishment of the Inquisition against heretics and insincere converts _ in which thousands were tortured to death _ or the decree ordering the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.
Many also hold her responsible for the forced conversion of Muslims following the conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada, and for the abuses of conquistadors and missionaries in Latin America.
Isabella’s supporters say she should be credited for spreading Roman Catholicism to the New World and promoting equality for the inhabitants of territories conquered by the Spanish crown.
“She recognized her nothingness before the Creator,” said Agueda Castellano Huerta, a specialist on Isabella’s life.
The ambassador of Ecuador, Francisco Carrion Mena, who attended the presentation at an Iberian-American cultural center in the Spanish capital, said it was “very interesting from an academic and historical point of view.”
However, he declined to comment on the beatification, saying it was “up to individual conscience of each Ecuadorian” to decide what to think about it. Ecuador is a predominantly Roman Catholic country.
Nevertheless, the Isabella the Catholic Commission, which forms part of the Valladolid diocese, said the church has received more than 100,000 letters written to the pope in support of the beatification of the queen.
Rodriguez said he was sure Isabella would be made a saint “because we think it right that the children of the church have her as an example.”
The canonization of Isabella was first proposed in 1957, during the archconservative dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.
After a long period of stagnation, the cause was revived in 2001 by the Spanish bishops’ conference. Proponents of canonization hope it will be done in 2004, five centuries after the queen’s death.
_ Jerome Socolovsky
New Leader Named for Ahmadiyya Muslim Movement
LONDON (RNS) The Ahmadiyya Muslim community, which claims more than 200 million adherents throughout the world, has a new leader following the April 19 death of Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad, 74.
The new caliph, chosen Tuesday (April 22) at an electoral college that met at the movement’s headquarters in southwest London, is 52-year-old Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, a great-grandson of the movement’s founder.
Tahir Ahmad was the movement’s fourth caliph and a grandson of its founder, Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who claimed to be the Messiah promised by the prophet Muhammad and who began the movement at Qadian, India, in March 1889.
The new leader was to preside over the burial Wednesday (April 23) of his predecessor at Tilford, Surrey.
The Ahmadiyya community moved its headquarters to London in 1984. Following the partition of India in 1947, the movement moved its headquarters to Rabwah in Pakistan, but increasing persecution by the Pakistani authorities prompted the move to London, where the community had opened its mosque in 1924.
With the exception of the first caliph, a doctor who had been a close companion of the founder, all the movement’s leaders have been descendants of its founder.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Maj. Todd Smith of the Salvation Army
(RNS) “The last thing we want to say to people is that we can’t help them. Unfortunately, we’re having to do that now.”
_ Maj. Todd Smith of the Salvation Army-National Capital and Virginia Division, which is cutting back monthly emergency assistance to more than 2,500 people and considering layoffs due to reduced funding. He was quoted by The Washington Post.
DEA END RNS
