c. 2004 Religion News Service
United Methodists Elect 21 New Bishops
(RNS) The United Methodist Church has elected 21 new bishops to serve in the United States, including three African-Americans, four Asian-Americans, a Hispanic woman and five white women.
The new bishops were elected during five regional meetings last week (July 12-17) to serve at least one of the church’s 63 regional conferences. Twenty-nine other current bishops were appointed to additional four-year terms.
Four other bishops will be elected later this year to serve the church’s 1.7 million members in overseas conferences.
The new bishops included women and ethnic minorities who will bring greater diversity to represent the church’s 8.3 million U.S. members. A committee in each jurisdiction decides where each bishop will serve.
Bishop Hope Morgan Ward of Raleigh, N.C., was the first woman ever elected on the first ballot of the church’s fast-growing Southeastern Jurisdiction. Ward, who was assigned to oversee churches in Mississippi, is the second woman bishop to serve in the Southeast.
Other women elected were Bishop Jane Allen Middleton, appointed to Harrisburg, Pa.; Bishop Deborah Kiesey, appointed to North and South Dakota; Bishop Sally Dyck, appointed to Minnesota; and Bishop Mary Virginia Taylor, assigned to Columbia, S.C..
The new bishop for Phoenix, Minerva Carcano, is the church’s first female Hispanic bishop. “I want to thank you for creating a table large enough, that has a place even for me and the people of my birth, my language, my culture,” she said after she was elected.
Four Asian-American men were elected as bishop: Bishop Sudarshana Devadhar, an Indian-American, was appointed to New Jersey; Bishop Jeremiah J. Park, a Korean-American, was appointed to New York City/Connecticut; Bishop Hee-Soo Jung, also a Korean-American, was appointed to Chicago; and Bishop Robert Hoshibata, a Japanese-American, was appointed to Portland, Ore.
The three African-American men are Bishop Marcus Matthews, appointed to Philadelphia; Bishop Robert Hayes, appointed to Oklahoma; and Bishop James Swanson, appointed to eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Interfaith Alliance Seeks Dismantling of Faith-Based Office
(RNS) The Interfaith Alliance has asked the presidential campaigns of President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to pledge to eliminate the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
The Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of the Washington-based nonpartisan alliance, sent letters to Kerry and Bush in mid-July.
“We ask you to put forward a clear, unequivocal plan in your platform which includes nothing short of a pledge to dismantle completely the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and reverse the past four years of bad public policy which inappropriately has mixed religion with politics in the appropriations process,” Gaddy wrote to Kerry.
Kerry, in a July 6 address to members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, announced that he favored government financial assistance for faith-based organizations “in a way that supports our Constitution and civil rights laws.” His campaign issued an outline of his plans that included prohibiting the use of tax dollars to build churches or proselytize.
Gaddy told Bush, “We believe your campaign for re-election offers you an opportunity to revisit and even to alter past policy priorities related to your faith-based initiative.”
Bush instituted the office early in his presidency and continued to open related Cabinet-level centers to expand his faith-based initiative when legislation codifying his plans stalled on Capitol Hill.
Gaddy called on both candidates to rescind the executive orders issued by Bush that required “equal protection” for faith-based and community groups. Among his other requests was that houses of worship competing for federal funding create separate nonprofit organizations to conduct activities that would receive government money.
He told both of them that the “exemplary work” of groups like Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and United Jewish Communities demonstrate that partnerships can occur where civil rights laws are upheld and there is no hiring discrimination based on religion.
“While we encourage you to continue federal support for such healthy partnerships, we ask that you halt the disturbing trend which is increasingly forcing those in need of vital social services to risk the sacrifice of their religious freedom,” Gaddy wrote.
The alliance, which is clergy-led, was founded in 1994 and strives to foster a positive role for religion in public life.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Pope Sends Aid Official to Darfur, Urges `Just Solution’ to Conflict
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II sent the coordinator of Catholic aid worldwide to the Darfur region of Sudan on Thursday (July 22) and urged a “just solution” to the conflict that has forced up to a million African Sudanese to flee their homes.
Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, will visit the scene of attacks and the Nyala refugee camps, the Vatican said. He will meet with Cardinal Gabriel Zubeir Wako, archbishop of Khartoum, and the papal envoy to Sudan, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti.
In announcing Cordes’ mission, the Vatican noted that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has labeled the destruction of villages of African Sudanese, many of them Christians, by the Arab Janjaweed militia “ethnic cleansing.” Both Annan and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell recently visited Darfur and urged the government to withdraw the militia.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, said in a letter to Cordes that the “serious humanitarian situation in Darfur is a cause of great concern” to the pope. He said John Paul wanted Cordes to express his “closeness, solidarity and prayer, in particular for the refugees, who suffer on account of the ongoing conflicts and their grave consequences.”
Sodano said the pope urged “all necessary humanitarian aid” to the people of Darfur, who will be faced with additional hardships when the rainy season begins. The Vatican cited U.N. reports of 100 deaths a day in refugee camps.
“He trusts that the Sudanese authorities, in partnership with the international community, will intensify their efforts to reach a just solution for Darfur,” the prelate said. “This will happen when the voice of the peoples of Darfur is heard and recognized and when their fundamental human rights are respected, especially the right to life, to political and religious freedom and to a peaceful existence in their own territories.”
Calling on the Khartoum government to respect “the legitimate local authorities” of Darfur, Sodano warned that the situation there threatened its agreement with the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army-Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement aimed at ending 20 years of conflict, which has claimed 2 million lives and displaced 5 million people.
The Vatican said Cor Unum has already donated relief funds through the U.N. High Commission for Refugees and that the Catholic charity Caritas is working with the ecumenical Action by Churches Together to collect more donations.
_ Peggy Polk
`Designer Baby’ Decision in England Draws Church Reactions
LONDON (RNS) The decision by Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority to allow the selection of an embryo which would be a tissue match for an existing seriously ill sibling has been sharply criticized by leading church officials.
The decision came in a case involving the plight of 2-year-old Joshua Fletcher of Northern Ireland. He has a potentially fatal blood disorder called Diamond Blackfan anemia which can be treated by using stem cells to stimulate his body to produce healthy red blood cells.
But neither his parents nor his 5-year-old brother have tissues that match his closely enough.
Describing the decision as “deeply flawed” and needing to be reversed, Roman Catholic Archbishop Peter Smith of Cardiff, Wales, chairman of the department of Christian responsibility and citizenship, said:
“Everyone will sympathize with the plight of parents searching for a tissue donor for a gravely ill child. But to allow an embryo to be selected for this purpose (and others discarded) is wrong, because it abandons the foundational moral principle that human lives should never be used as a mere means to an end.”
Once society allows a human life to be deliberately produced, and then selected or destroyed, simply to benefit another, it has lost its ethical bearings, he added. Rushing into decisions in response to a particularly tragic case was not a sound or reasonable way to proceed, he continued, adding that the HFEA urgently needs to reconsider its decision.
Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow, Scotland, echoing Smith, said one could understand the motives of parents requesting such a procedure, but society could not lose sight of the fact that embryos were human beings. “For every embryo implanted using the technique proposed, many will be destroyed,” he said.
“We do not as a society have the right to initiate life either to destroy it or for purposes, however nobly intended, which render that life a means to someone else’s ends.”
The HFEA’s decision has also come in for criticism from the Church of England.
Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester told the Daily Telegraph: “I wish they hadn’t gone down this road because the pressure will grow to go further. I fear that there will be no logical reason to say that this should not be done for any sick person.”
A spokesman for the Church of England emphasized that no human being should be seen as purely instrumental in achieving a desired outcome, even though the chance of saving a child’s life could be “a hugely important reason” to use this technique provided no harm came to the second child born as a result. “The risk is that pressure pushes us onto the slippery slope towards wholesale `designer babies,”’ he added.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Christian Musician Lauren Barlow
(RNS) “We believe God has called us to protect our brothers’ eyes. We don’t have to get attention for what we wear.”
_ Musician Lauren Barlow, a member of the Christian rock group BarlowGirl, speaking at a recent Nashville, Tenn., rally celebrating the 10th anniversary of True Love Waits, a sexual abstinence campaign. She was quoted by Baptist Press after her group had performed “Clothes,” whose lyrics promote women’s modesty.
DEA/PH END RNS
