c. 2004 Religion News Service

CAIR, NCC Praise Supreme Court Ruling on Detainees

WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday (June 28) that “enemy combatants” and foreign nationals detained by the United States must be permitted to challenge their detention in U.S. courts.

The rulings in two separate cases were applauded by religious groups who had filed “friend of the court” briefs on behalf of the prisoners, who are being held on a U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The court’s decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld applies to U.S. citizens who are determined to be “enemy combatants” by the president. Even in a time of war, the court ruled, the president is not constitutionally permitted to block their access to legal counsel and judicial review.

“We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens,” wrote Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for the 8-1 majority.

In another case, Rasul et al. v. Bush, the court concluded that federal courts have the jurisdiction to hear foreign detainees appeal their imprisonment.

“Aliens at the base, like American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts’ authority,” wrote Justice John Paul Stevens in his 6-3 majority opinion.

The National Council of Churches, one of the religious groups that had filed a brief on behalf of the foreign detainees, hailed the Supreme Court’s decision.

“If the United States is to model democracy, it must accord due process to all whom it detains,” said the Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the NCC.

Earlier this year, the NCC co-sponsored a trip to Washington by members of the Guantanamo Human Rights Commission, an organization that includes family members of some of the detainees held by the United States in Cuba.

The Council on American-Islamic relations also applauded the Supreme Court’s decisions. “Today’s rulings are a victory for due process and a confirmation that the executive branch of government does have limitations on how it can sidestep constitutional civil liberties guarantees,” CAIR said.

However, the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative public interest law firm founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, called the ruling “troubling.”

“By limiting the president’s role as commander in chief, the high court interjects the federal judiciary into a process that is certain to result in chaos and confusion,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the ACLJ.

_ Daniel Burke

Presbyterians Elect Border Mission Worker as Moderator

(RNS) A mission worker from the U.S.-Mexico border has been elected to a two-year term as moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) by delegates gathered for the church’s 216th General Assembly meeting in Richmond, Va.

Rick Ufford-Chase, an elder at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Ariz., was elected on the second ballot on Saturday (June 26). He succeeds the Rev. Susan Andrews of Bethesda, Md., who finished her one-year term.

Ufford-Chase founded BorderLinks, an organization that aims to mobilize faith groups on both sides of the border, 17 years ago. He is a former co-moderator of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.

“God can use us to transform the world,” he told delegates, according to Presbyterian News Service. “I have found that fear and fulfillment go hand in hand.”

Ufford-Chase is the first layperson to hold the post since 1999, and the first moderator who will serve a two-year term. As moderator, Ufford-Chase will serve as the 2.5 million-member church’s spokesman and ambassador.

He has named the Rev. Jean Marie Peacock, associate pastor of Lakeview Presbyterian Church in New Orleans, as vice moderator. Peacock will share travel duties with Ufford-Chase until their terms end in 2006.

Ufford-Chase said he supports proposals to be considered during this week’s (June 26-July 3) meeting that would rescind a ban on non-celibate gay clergy. However, he said he would not allow his personal views to interfere with his new post.

“This church should welcome their gifts,” he said of gays and lesbians before the election. “… Although it is quite fair for you to ask my opinion and for me to share it, if I am elected, it is not appropriate for me to advance my opinion.”

On Andrews’ last day as moderator, charges were filed against her by a conservative activist, accusing her of breaking church law by supporting her openly gay associate pastor, the Rev. Scott Winnette.

“I will cooperate fully with any judicial process initiated by National Capital Presbytery because I want to honor our denomination’s constitution _ as I promised to do in my ordination vows,” she said in a statement.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Moderate Baptists Contribute to World Alliance

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship concluded its three-day annual assembly here Saturday (June 26) after raising funds for a world Baptist group that was shunned this year by the Southern Baptist Convention.

The CBF, which has an annual budget of $16 million and receives contributions from 1,800 Baptist churches, doubled its budget for the Baptist World Alliance from $20,000 to $40,000. It raised more than $47,000 in special offerings during its Birmingham meeting. About 3,000 attended.

Denton Lotz, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance in Falls Church, Va., spoke to the CBF on Friday and welcomed them to his organization, which the fellowship joined in 2003.

“Welcome CBF, into the Baptist world family,” he said.

“CBF is deeply honored to be invited,” said new CBF moderator Bob Setzer.

He said the “threat of financial blackmail” against the world alliance failed.

After the Baptist World Alliance accepted the CBF as a member last year, the 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention responded this year by withdrawing its membership and a $300,000 annual contribution, which had already been reduced from $425,000 the previous year.

“We did not want accepting the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to be a vote against the Southern Baptist Convention,” Lotz said. “It’s like a family feud. There’s so much anger.”

But Lotz said churches all across the country are making up the difference in funding. “We are not worried financially,” Lotz said. “The churches will make it up. The problem is schism and division. Our concern is unity.”

Lotz said he will continue talks with the Southern Baptist Convention, hoping to get them back in the world alliance.

“In the next few years, the Baptist World Alliance is going to find a new mission and a new life,” said CBF coordinator Daniel Vestal.

In other business, the fellowship became a founding member of Christian Churches Together USA. The ecumenical coalition of evangelical, Catholic, mainline Protestant and Orthodox Christians is scheduled to launch by May 2005.

_ Greg Garrison

Independent Probe Clears Albany Bishop of Sexual Misconduct

(RNS) An independent inquiry into sexual misconduct allegations leveled against Roman Catholic Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., has found “no credible evidence” to support the charges.

The results of the investigation, led by former federal prosecutor Mary Jo White, were announced Thursday (June 24) in Albany.

The four-month examination included 350 pages of exhibits, 300 interviews and a review of more than 20,000 documents, including Hubbard’s phone logs and appointment books, White said.

The investigation “should have produced something if a person has been sexually active for over 30 years,” said Anthony Valenti, an investigator who worked with White. “We found nothing.”

White, who was hired by a church review board, said Hubbard had passed a lie detector test in which he was asked if he had ever engaged in “sex of any kind” with another person.

“The facts did not substantiate any of the charges against Bishop Hubbard,” White said.

The allegations against the bishop arose in February when a man announced that his brother had left a suicide note professing an affair with a bishop named Howard.

The investigation found that the man was actually in a mental facility in Vermont at the time of the alleged affair.

A second man later came forward asserting that Hubbard had paid him for sex while he was a homeless teenager. The investigation found that those charges were baseless.

Hubbard said that it was a “profoundly painful and disillusioning experience to be falsely accused and to see and hear those falsehoods repeated over and over. … I now more fully appreciate the role of suffering in human existence.”

Although White would not disclose the cost of the investigation, she said that it would be “very expensive.” Still, she defended the thoroughness of the inquiry. “The only thing harder to unscramble than an egg is a rumor,” she said.

New Bible Has St. Paul Recommending `Regular Partner’ for Sex

LONDON (RNS) A controversial new translation of the Bible that has St. Paul recommending a “regular partner” for sex has received a warm commendation from the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, for its “extraordinary power.”

The version, “Good as New: A Radical Retelling of the Scriptures,” was written by retired Baptist minister John Henson. Its modern idiomatic English features the names of people and places in contemporary slang.

St. Peter thus becomes “Rocky,” Barnabas becomes “Cheery” _ apparently the literal meaning of the name in Aramaic _ Thessalonika becomes “Tessatown,” and Bethany is called “Dategrove.” Paul, however, stays Paul and Corinth stays Corinth.

The new translation is much more direct than most Bible readers have been used to. In the King James version, Paul tells the squabbling Christians of Corinth: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.”

In Henson’s version, it goes this way: “Some of you think the best way to cope with sex is for men and women to keep right away from one another. I think that is more likely to lead to sexual offenses. My advice is for everyone to have a regular partner.”

In addition, Henson leaves the door open to various possibilities when he has Paul saying, “Husbands and wives should strive to meet each other’s sexual needs. They should submit to one another for that purpose.”

In his foreword, Williams asks: “What would Christianity look like, what would Christian language sound like, if we really tried to screen out the stale, the technical, the unconsciously exclusive words and policies and to hear as if for the first time what the Christian scriptures were saying?”

Henson’s translation does not include all the books of the New Testament _ Revelation is missing, for example, as are some of the Epistles. He also adds the Gospel of Thomas, which has never been accepted as part of the Christian canon.

_ Robert Nowell

N.Y. Episcopal Churches Launch Friendly Bidding War for Danforth

NEW YORK (RNS) The race is on between New York City’s well-heeled Episcopal churches to attract a prominent new member _ U.N. Ambassador John C. Danforth, who is also an Episcopal priest and former Missouri senator.

The New York Observer, a weekly newspaper that covers the quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) internecine battles and feuds among New York’s wealthy and media elite, reported in its June 21 issue about the possible competition _ friendly and polite, in this case _ between Episcopal churches on the city’s wealthy Upper East Side to see which parish Danforth might attend once he settles into his new position.

There is even talk that Danforth could become an associate pastor at the church he ultimately selects.

“It’s hard to remember the last time George W. Bush did anything to excite Episcopalians,” Observer reporter Ben Smith wrote, noting Danforth’s pending arrival in New York “has touched off a genteel rivalry among the East Side’s Episcopal parishes.”

As Danforth “prepares to get in between Israel and Syria, he might also want to keep an eye on St. Bartholomew’s, St. Thomas and the Church of the Epiphany,” Smith wrote about the three churches most often mentioned in the Danforth sweepstakes.

“I’m sure there will be a competition,” the Rev. Andrew J.W. Mullins, rector of the Church of the Epiphany, told the Observer, saying he had already sent a letter of invitation to Danforth. Down the way from Epiphany, on New York’s Fifth Avenue, the Rev. Andrew C. Mead, the rector of St. Thomas Church, said, “I’m sure that a number of us, especially in midtown, would offer him a place.”

But, the Observer speculated, the church widely expected to attract Danforth is St. Bartholomew’s _ or St. Bart’s, as it is endearingly called _ located across the street from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the traditional residence of the U.S. representative to the United Nations.

Locale is not the only important factor here: St. Bart’s is also the church where President Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, attended when he served as U.N. ambassador during the early 1970s.

“I would be delighted to have him (Danforth) preach,” said the Rev. William Tully, St. Bart’s rector. Danforth recently preached and presided at the Washington funeral of former President Ronald Reagan.

An unnamed New York Episcopal priest told the Observer that at least one other factor should take pride of place over such considerations as locale or church politics. Said the priest, “You would hope that God would be involved in the whole call process.”

_ Chris Herlinger

Quote of the Day: St. Louis Alderman Jim Shrewsbury

(RNS) “I am a pro-life Catholic Democrat, but I don’t make my political decisions solely on the issue of abortion. We live in a secular society. I will vote for (John) Kerry over George Bush, and I will go to confession, but not for that.”

_ St. Louis Alderman Jim Shrewsbury, reacting to comments by Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis that Catholics who vote for politicians who support abortion rights should confess and do penance before receiving Communion. Burke had said earlier the sanctions applied only to politicians like Kerry. He was quoted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

KRE/PH END RNS