c. 2004 Religion News
Explorers Unearth Cave That May Have Been Used by John the Baptist
(RNS) Archaeologists have uncovered a cave they believe was used by John the Baptist for ritual immersions, one of the first discoveries linked to the distant relative of Jesus.
The cave is located on a kibbutz about two miles outside Ein Kerem, the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist that is now part of Jerusalem. The cave contains what researchers believe is an immersion pool and crude drawings of the evangelist’s life.
“John the Baptist, who was just a figure from the Gospels, now comes to life,” Shimon Gibson, a British archaeologist who first explored the site in 1999, told the Associated Press.
Researchers found shards of small jugs used in ritual purifications and uncovered steps leading to the bottom of the cave, where they found niches for holding clothes and what appear to be dispensers for ritual oil.
Byzantine-era images of John the Baptist’s life came later and could have been carved by monks who associated the site with John the Baptist’s life through local legend.
Critics, however, say it is only speculation that the cave was actually used by John the Baptist, and point out that no direct references to him were found on the site. “Unfortunately, we didn’t find any inscriptions” that were conclusive, James Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte told the Associated Press after he worked on the site.
Hurricane Destroys Churches, Prompts Religious Relief Efforts
(RNS) As Florida begins its recovery from the wrath of Hurricane Charley, some churches are coping with destroyed or seriously damaged property and other religious groups have begun relief efforts to help the state’s residents.
The Church of the Nazarene reported that a church in Punta Gorda was a total loss and the steeple of another in nearby Port Charlotte was broken off by strong winds in the storm that hit the state Friday (Aug. 13).
“It was scary and we are thankful to still be alive and well,” said Pastor John Denby of the Punta Gorda Church of the Nazarene, who stayed at the church building during the storm.
A Southern Baptist church and a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in Punta Gorda also were destroyed, as well as a Presbyterian church on Sanibel Island, denominational news services reported.
Numerous faith-based relief organizations have begun to deliver supplies to the multitudes of Floridians who have suffered property damage and loss of power.
“You give them some water and it’s like you gave them a bar of gold,” said Steve Ewing, an on-site representative of Convoy of Hope, a relief organization working with the Assemblies of God. That denomination’s news service reported that a church in Punta Gorda was a total loss while others sustained hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage.
Other religious organizations, such as Catholic Charities USA, the Florida District of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, have begun soliciting donations to help victims of the hurricane. Groups like the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Church Welfare Services have shipped flood buckets, assigned food units and provided emergency supplies.
Catholic Relief Services is working with its partner Caritas Cubana to help those affected by the hurricane that crossed western Cuba before heading to the United States.
The Associated Press reported that Charley resulted in 19 deaths in Florida, four in Cuba and one in Jamaica.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Christian Leaders Call for Separation of Church and Politics
(RNS) A dozen Christian leaders from various theological perspectives have issued a statement urging the U.S. presidential candidates to “respect the integrity of all houses of worship.”
The statement, called “Playing Politics With Church,” was spearheaded by Wake Forest University Divinity School professor James Dunn and Baptist sociologist Tony Campolo.
“It is proper for church leaders to address social issues, but it is improper, and even illegal, for them to get their churches to endorse candidates or align their churches with a specific political party,” the statement reads.
It calls on church leaders “to stand vigilant against entanglement in partisan politics.”
Dunn told Religion News Service that news coverage of the Bush-Cheney campaign’s attempts to collect church directories sparked the joint statement.
“I think they crossed the line when they started collecting church directories for the campaign,” said Dunn, a professor of Christianity and public policy at the divinity school in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Other signatories included George Hunter, professor of evangelism and church growth at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky.; Walter Shurden, executive director at Mercer University’s Center for Baptist Studies in Macon, Ga.; and Paul Raushenbush, associate dean of religious life at Princeton University in New Jersey.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Study Says Independent Voters May be Turned Off by Religion
(RNS) If the Bush and Kerry campaigns want to woo independent voters who may still be undecided, they would do best to avoid overtly religious appeals, according to researchers at City University of New York.
Ariela Keysar and Barry Kosmin, authors of the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, said independent voters are “unlikely to be won over in large numbers by messages with strong religious elements” because they are the nation’s most secular voters.
Keysar and Kosmin mined their data from 2001 to find that 24 percent of independent voters consider themselves some form of secular, compared to 19 percent of Democrats and 11 percent of Republicans.
“Given their socioeconomic profile, independents are likely to be found in the middle ground on most economic and political issues, but not on faith issues,” they said in a new report released Monday (Aug. 16).
They found that people with a “religious” outlook tend to be Republican across denominations, and those who are “somewhat religious” tend to be Democrats.
Keysar and Kosmin said religious-based appeals can rally the conservative, religious base of Republicans and possibly attract some “Reagan Democrats.” They also noted a GOP advantage because “religious” voters tend to be the most likely to register and show up on Election Day.
Democrats, meanwhile, may find religious appeals less successful among their core supporters, who are less religious and swing secular. “Indeed, Democrats are better off when the battleground moves away from religion,” they said.
Among the hotly contested Catholic vote, which comprises about a quarter of all voters, Keysar and Kosmin found that “practicing Catholics” lean Republican, 41 percent to 28 percent, while “cultural Catholics” who are not members of a parish and attend services less frequently lean Democratic, 36 percent to 28 percent.
They said the figures confirm that a “commonality of cultural outlook” that drew most Catholics to the domestic policies of the Democratic Party for decades has ended. Catholics are now split between the two parties depending on their levels of religious observance _ which also holds true for the fast-growing Catholic Hispanic population.
The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey polled more than 34,000 American adults in the lower 48 states and is widely regarded as one of the most accurate surveys of American religious life.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Prescription Discount Plan Saves Methodists $348,728
(RNS) United Methodists who have signed up for an innovative church-sponsored drug discount program have saved $348,728 in prescription costs since the program was unveiled in March, church officials said.
The first-ever partnership between the United Methodist Church and DestinationRx allows participants to save up to 50 percent on prescriptions, medical supplies and even pet medicine at 30,000 pharmacies across the country. It is the first such program between a church and a drug company.
“One of the great satisfactions to me is to know that persons who needed help are getting help,” said the Rev. Mearle Griffith, president of the United Methodist Association of Health and Welfare Ministries, who helped broker the deal.
“Some people are now buying food who once had to make a choice between paying for groceries or paying for their prescriptions,” he told United Methodist News Service.
More than 31,000 people have enrolled in the free program, which is not restricted to the country’s 8.3 million United Methodists. Griffith said some local churches have used the program to help poor and needy families in their communities.
Since its debut, the program has financed $1.2 million in prescriptions to members.
Griffith said he has been approached by the United Church of Christ, Mennonite Church USA and Roman Catholics for information on developing similar programs. United Methodists, with an average member age of 57, are among the oldest of U.S. denominations.
Dan Jadosh, senior vice president of DestinationRx, said his company is pleased it can play a small role in bringing aid to the elderly and the 44 million Americans without health insurance.
“It’s not a situation that’s an end-all to fixing the problem, but it will provide help, at least,” he said.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Progressive National Baptist Convention Opposes Iraq War
(RNS) Delegates to the Progressive National Baptist Convention passed resolutions urging an end to the war in Iraq and supporting traditional marriage at their recent annual meeting.
“The Progressive National Baptist Convention Inc. calls for an end to the war in Iraq which we opposed from the beginning as being an unnecessary rush to disaster,” reads the resolution, approved during the Aug. 2-6 gathering in Houston.
“Over 900 lives have been lost, thousands have been wounded and tens of thousands will never recover from this American-Iraq tragedy.”
The Rev. Major Jemison, president of the denomination, said the resolution was a reaffirmation of a statement opposing the war made at its 2003 meeting.
“We basically support our troops but we are advocating that our president find a quick resolution to this war and bring our troops home,” he told Religion News Service.
Delegates to the meeting also declared that the denomination “upholds the institution of marriage according to the Scripture, which is the marriage of a man and a woman in holy wedlock.”
Within that resolution on “family development,” they also advocated “violence-free relationships” and monogamous marriages.
“We are aware that any healthy marriage has to be free of violence and has to be monogamous in nature in order for it to be healthy … and for it to be strong and vibrant for kids to be raised in,” Jemison said.
About 6,000 delegates passed other resolutions, including one calling for “immediate international intervention” to stop the killing in Sudan and one recommending pastors “display prophetic leadership by getting tested personally to remove the stigma of HIV/AIDS.”
The 2.5 million-member denomination has about 1,100 churches in the United States and hundreds of churches abroad in Cuba, the Bahamas, the United Kingdom and South Africa.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Reformed Churches Criticize World Economic Order
(RNS) The World Alliance of Reformed Churches capped a two-week meeting in Ghana by publicly denouncing the international economic order, saying it hurts the world’s most poor and vulnerable.
“We reject any claim of economic, political and military empire which subverts God’s sovereignty over life and acts contrary to God’s just rule,” delegates to the alliance’s 24th General Council said in a statement prior to ending their conference Aug. 13 in Accra, Ghana’s capital.
The Geneva-based alliance is a coalition of 75 million Christians in 200 different churches with historic roots in the 16th century Protestant Reformation.
“We live in a scandalous world that denies God’s call to life for all,” the alliance said in a statement, noting that the annual income of the world’s richest 1 percent is equal to that of the poorest 57 percent, Ecumenical News International (ENI) reported.
The council attendees said the process of economic globalization has been marked by, among other things, unrestrained competition and economic growth for the rich, which in turn has had a deleterious effect, demanding an endless flow of sacrifices from the poor.
Globalization, the council said, has made the false promise that it can save the world through the creation of wealth and prosperity, claiming sovereignty over life and demanding total allegiance, which amounts to idolatry.
The church itself, delegates said, has benefited from economic globalization, causing the council to formally recognize the church’s contribution to the problem.
“We acknowledge the complicity and guilt of those who consciously or unconsciously benefit from the current neo-liberal economic global system; we recognize that this includes both churches and members of our own Reformed family and therefore we call for confession of sin.”
_ Chris Herlinger
Lutheran World Relief Receives $500,000 Gift From eBay Founders
(RNS) Lutheran World Relief has accepted a $500,000 gift from the founders of eBay to help address the Sudanese humanitarian crisis.
The funding from the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Fund at Peninsula Community Foundation of Menlo Park, Calif., has already been put to use in Western Sudan, Lutheran World Relief President Kathryn Wolford said in an announcement.
“Through the Omidyars’ generous gift, we already are providing life-saving assistance, including water, sanitation and shelter to vulnerable persons displaced by the conflict,” she said.
The relief agency is working with its partners, Action by Churches Together and Caritas Internationalis, to raise $17.5 million for their work in the affected region to assist people who have been forced from their homes by raids of militia in the past year.
Its plans for assistance include providing shelter for hundreds of thousands of homeless people, helping with camp construction for refugees, providing additional food for displaced children, and offering counseling and protection for women who have been raped or suffered other violence.
In a separate but related matter, the Union for Reform Judaism announced it has created a Sudan Relief Fund to address the needs of victims in the Darfur region.
The Reform movement is part of the Save Darfur Coalition, a network of more than 70 faith-based and humanitarian groups that has designated Aug. 25 as a national Interfaith Day of Conscience to draw attention to the slaughter and other violence that has occurred in the war-torn region.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Britain Grants License for Therapeutic Cloning
LONDON (RNS) The decision by the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to grant the first license for therapeutic cloning has come under fire from pro-life groups in Britain.
The initial one-year research license was granted to the International Center for Life at Newcastle University. Their goal is to eventually create insulin-producing cells that could be transplanted into diabetic patients.
“After careful consideration of all the scientific, ethical, legal and medical aspects of the project, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority … agreed to grant an initial one-year research license to the Newcastle Center for Life,” the British regulatory agency said in a statement Wednesday (Aug. 11).
Describing the decision as “a deplorable further step down the slippery slope,” Jack Scarisbrick, national chairman of the anti-abortion group LIFE, said: “Cloning involves the manufacture of a new kind of human being _ one generated asexually and without traditional parentage _ with the express purpose of destroying it once its stem cells are removed. This is manipulation, exploitation and trivialization of human life of a frightening kind.”
The technique involves removing the nucleus of a human egg cell and replacing it with the nucleus from a human body cell. The egg is then artificially stimulated so that it divides and behaves like an ordinary embryo.
Scarisbrick argued that it was not necessary to clone embryos to overcome terrible diseases. “Stem cells taken from adults are likely to be just as good, if not better,” he said.
Helen Watt, director of the Linacre Center for Healthcare Ethics, which is supported by the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales, said she was “appalled but not surprised” at the news.
Another group, Comment on Reproductive Ethics, founded in 1994 by the anti-abortion campaigner Josephine Quintavalle, described the HFEA’s granting of a license as “a tragic decision which will result in further relentless destruction of early human life.”
It said that along with other pro-life groups it was taking legal advice as to whether the legality of the HFEA’s decision could be challenged in the courts.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Episcopal Bishop William Swing
(RNS) “I’ve always told the gay and lesbian community that I’ll support you, but not to the extent that I’m going to let all the other ministries die. So in one sense, everybody’s got to take a number and stand in line. We’ll get to you when we can get to you.”
_ Episcopal Bishop William Swing of San Francisco, a strong supporter of gay rights, on the need to balance competing ministries in his diocese. He was quoted by Episcopal News Service.
DEA END RNS
