c. 2004 Religion News Service

Poll: Americans Support Creationism but Are Skeptical on Details

(RNS) A Gallup Poll suggests that Americans are divided over how the world was created _ either through evolution or at the hand of God _ but either way they appear skeptical that it happened exactly as described in the book of Genesis.

The poll found that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution remains controversial among Americans. About one-third say it is supported by evidence, one-third see it as bunk and one-third don’t know enough to judge.

A plurality of Americans _ 45 percent _ say man was created by God in his present form, while 38 percent say man developed over time as God guided the process. Just 13 percent said God had no role in the process.

Yet a smaller percentage, 34 percent, said the Bible is the actual word of God and should be read literally. Pollsters said that discrepancy suggests that Americans believe man was created as-is, but not because the Bible says so.

Breaking down the numbers, Gallup officials said about one-quarter of Americans are “biblical literalists” who believe man was created 10,000 years ago in his present form. They tend to be women, conservatives, Republicans and attend a Protestant church at least once a week.

A slightly smaller number _ one in five Americans _ believe man was created in his present form 10,000 years ago, but not because they read the Bible literally. Just 9 percent of the country read the Bible literally but are open to the theory of evolution.

The largest group _ 46 percent _ do not read the Bible literally and believe humans may have evolved over time. This group tends to be male, urban, more educated, Catholic and seldom or never attend church.

“It is not surprising to find that the biblical literalists who believe that God created humans 10,000 years ago tend to be more religious and Protestant,” said Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief. “Given the recent emphasis on the importance of religion in the Nov. 2 presidential election, it is of interest to note that this `true believer’ group tends to be more Republican than (most Americans).”

The survey of 1,016 adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Evangelical Scholars Further Explain Support for Biblical Inerrancy

(RNS) A group of evangelical scholars has taken the first step to more clearly state its support of biblical inerrancy, the belief that the Bible is without error.

Members of the Evangelical Theological Society, who gathered for their annual meeting Nov. 17-19 in San Antonio, adopted a resolution that further explains the group’s two-sentence “doctrinal basis” that declares the Bible is inerrant.

“The case for biblical inerrancy rests on the absolute trustworthiness of God and Scripture’s testimony to itself,” reads the resolution, which was approved by a 4-to-1 margin.

“A proper understanding of inerrancy takes into account the language, genres, and intent of Scripture. We reject approaches to Scripture that deny that biblical truth claims are grounded in reality.”

It also states that members should refer to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, created in 1978, as a further explanation of the group’s stance.

James Borland, secretary-treasurer of the society, said the resolution will be discussed over the next year and is likely to be considered at the group’s 2005 meeting as a change to the organization’s bylaws.

“Some wondered what our original statement meant because it was so brief and so this was to help clarify that,” he told Religion News Service.

The action followed a meeting last year in which two scholars were almost ousted as members after declaring their support of open theism _ the belief that God can “change his mind” depending on the actions of humans. Some society members thought the position of those scholars violated the group’s commitment to inerrancy.

At the time of that vote, R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., had suggested that the society develop a definition of inerrancy. In a statement, Mohler called the approval of the resolution a “good start” toward a hopeful future for the organization.

“The hesitation to define the term would leave the door open to persons who would define it into meaninglessness,” he said. “We should be thankful that the society had the conviction and the courage and the eagerness, by such a margin, to approve this statement.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Incoming President Resigns From Troubled Baptist College

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) A week after being introduced to Southern Baptists as the next president of troubled Louisiana College, President-elect Malcolm Yarnell III backed out Tuesday (Nov. 23), citing emerging differences with the school’s trustees over governance.

The development provoked widespread dismay from faculty and some trustees. And with recruiting season about to start, it further destabilizes the 1,000-student college, which is already under scrutiny by its accreditation agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Yarnell, an Oxford-trained educator and theologian at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, was introduced last week to Louisiana Baptists as the college’s next president. Holding a Bible aloft at the convention’s annual meeting in Alexandria, he won a standing ovation with a ringing promise to anchor the liberal arts college in a biblical worldview.

However, only Yarnell and a handful of insiders knew that he had not yet finalized his contract.

“After accepting the presidency at Louisiana College, governance issues which would significantly impact my ability to lead the school were fully disclosed during the subsequent (contract) negotiations,” Yarnell said in a statement. He was not available for further comment.

The Southern Baptist college in Pineville, La., has been roiled by increasing internal turmoil for several years.

Critics, including many conservative pastors who now sit on its trustee board, claim that Louisiana College has become intolerably liberal. Most faculty and some alumni dispute that, arguing that conservative trustees unwisely prefer to shelter students from secular influences in popular culture.

The school’s chief academic officer and its president both resigned last year for jobs in other states. The college’s trustee board chairman resigned during the summer before he could be fired in a board revolt.

Meanwhile, conservative board members wrote a new textbook policy, gave themselves a prominent role in faculty hiring and began rewriting the faculty handbook, all with little or no faculty participation.

The trustees’ aggressive involvement in the college’s operations drew the attention of the accrediting agency. A team that visited the school in September reported that it worried for the preservation of academic freedom on campus.

The agency will decide in early December whether to take disciplinary action against the college.

“I think (Yarnell) discovered what some of us have known for a while, that the board of trustees are working on an agenda that’s not workable for our college,” said the Rev. Gil Arthur of Leesville, La., who lost a bid for the convention presidency on a platform critical of the college’s trustees. “The very best scenario would be for the board of trustees to get together and either resign or agree to back off.”

_ Bruce Nolan

Pope Urges Day of Prayer for More American Priests

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Expressing concern over the falling number of candidates for the priesthood in the United States, Pope John Paul II has urged the U.S. church to establish “a national day of prayer for priestly vocations.”

The 84-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff addressed prelates from the ecclesiastical provinces of Dubuque (Iowa), Kansas City (Kan.), Omaha (Neb.) and St. Louis, who were making the periodic visit to the Vatican required of all bishops.

“No one can deny that the decline in priestly vocations represents a stark challenge for the church in the United States, and one that cannot be ignored or put off,” the pope told the bishops at a Vatican audience Friday (Nov. 26).

John Paul urged the bishops to respond to the crisis with “insistent prayer” and a “program of vocational promotion which branches out to every aspect of ecclesial life.”

“Inasmuch as the entire people of God is responsible for promoting vocations and does so chiefly by persistent and humble prayer for vocations, I would propose for your consideration that the Catholic community in your country annually set aside a national day of prayer for priestly vocations,” he said.

The pope made no reference to the sex abuse scandals that rocked the U.S. church in 2002, but he said it was the task of the bishop to foster “mutual trust and confidence, dialogue, a spirit of unity and a common missionary spirit in his relationship with priests.”

The entire U.S. church hierarchy is making visits to the Vatican this year. All diocesan bishops are required to report directly to the pope and Vatican officials and hear their counsel every five years on what are called “ad limina visits,” a Latin reference to the threshold of the apostles’ tombs.

_ Peggy Polk

American Orthodox Jewish Union Supports Israeli Security Fence

JERUSALEM (RNS) During its 106th anniversary conference, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA) adopted a series of resolutions on a wide range of controversial issues, including Israel’s security fence.

As the largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization in the world, the Orthodox Union holds great sway in religious circles in the United States. Though best known for its certification of 275,000 kosher food products, the body is also active in educational and political issues.

In resolutions passed Thursday (Nov. 25), the organization expressed its “strong support for Israel’s security fence and other defensive measures” and directed the UOJCA leadership to “continue to mobilize support for … Israel while sharing, sensitively and with due discretion, the full range of our constituents’ views … with … (officials of the) Israeli and American governments.”

Acknowledging that its members disagree on whether Israel should withdraw its settlements and troops from the Gaza Strip _ which is home to 8,000 Jews and more than a million Arabs _ one resolution noted that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement plan” has “evoked strongly held feelings” within the organization’s constituency.

The resolution said that the differing perspectives stem from “the profound identification that so many in our community feel with the plight of Jews who face removal from their homes in areas which resonate in Jewish history” versus the long-standing impulse to support the democratically elected government of Israel’s efforts to seek security for its citizens.

On the subject of biotechnology research and Judaism, the UOJCA stated its support, “consistent with Orthodox rabbinic teaching, for the continuation of and public funding for cutting-edge biotechnology research, including embryonic stem cell research.”

At a breakfast meeting with the press, the Orthodox Union’s outgoing president, Harvey Blitz, said the organization is stepping up its efforts to market Israeli products abroad for two reasons.

“Doing so will boost Israel’s economy and provide vital jobs,” Blitz said, adding that the move “is also a response to those who would boycott Israeli products or seek to divest from Israel.”

Blitz said that UOJCA “is working hard” to convince Presbyterians and other Christians considering divestment to rethink their position.

_ Michele Chabin

French Lawmakers Adopt Passive Euthanasia Legislation

PARIS (RNS) France’s National Assembly overwhelming adopted legislation Tuesday (Nov. 30) legalizing passive euthanasia. But the bill falls far short of more daring right-to-die laws elsewhere in Europe.

With 548 out of 551 lawmakers voting in favor of a broader patient-rights bill, which permits withholding life-sustaining care, support crossed party lines, even though lawmakers voted for it for starkly different reasons. Three lawmakers abstained from voting.

Anti-euthanasia lawmakers said they hope the legislation will set the boundaries of what is legally permissible in medicine. But other politicians and right-to-die associations hope the legislation marks the first step toward more far-reaching reforms, including legalizing active euthanasia, sometimes called “mercy killing.”

“It’s a first step,” said Jeanine Girnt, vice president of the Paris-based Association for the Right to Die in Dignity, which is lobbying to legalize active euthanasia in France. “But what we fear is lawmakers will now say, `We’ve dealt with right-to-die issues, and we’re not going further.”’

The French legislation allows doctors to withhold life-sustaining medicines from terminally ill patients under narrowly defined circumstances. It falls short of laws passed in Belgium or the Netherlands, which legalize active euthanasia, or in Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal.

While definitions vary from country to country, passive euthanasia is generally seen as the hastening of death by altering some form of support and allowing the patient to die.

Active euthanasia involves causing the death of a person through a direct action, such as a lethal injection.

Physician-assisted suicide has a doctor providing the means for a patient to end his or her life.

In the United States, passive euthanasia is sometimes legal and active euthanasia, made famous by Dr. Jack Kevorkian, is banned. Oregon is the only state that allows assisted suicide, through lethal medication.

Girnt said the French legislation “is especially designed to help medical staff who have to make life-and-death decisions every day. But it doesn’t go further than that.”

Like elsewhere in the world, euthanasia and other right-to-die questions are deeply divisive ethical and religious issues in France, with Pope John Paul II and the Roman Catholic Church strongly opposing such methods as part of a “culture of death.”

The question took on new urgency last year after a handicapped young Frenchman, Vincent Humbert, took his life with his mother’s help.

A few months before his death, 22-year-old Humbert _ left blind, deaf and mute from a car accident in 2000 _ had written to French President Jacques Chirac asking for the legal right to end his life.

_ Elizabeth Bryant

Study Suggest Candles, Incense in Churches May Be Dangerous to Health

(RNS) Candles and incense burned during church services release potentially carcinogenic particles that could cause lung cancer, according to Dutch researchers who published their findings in the December issue of the European Respiratory Journal.

“The exposures are worrisome, not so much for the occasional churchgoer but priests, choirs and other people working in churches (who) may have significant exposure,” Theo de Kok, author of the Maastricht University study, told the Reuters news agency.

Scientists found the air inside Maastricht’s Basilica of Our Lady exceeded standards set by the European Union as healthy. After nine hours of candle-burning in small chapel, the level of fine particulate matter increased five-fold. In the main basilica, a simulated service with incense increased pollution four-fold.

By comparison, an average traffic intersection had only about one-twelfth the same level of pollution as the basilica after the use of incense.

Worse, scientists also found “very high concentrations” of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are known to be carcinogenic, along with various types of free radicals. Free radicals emitted from burning candles and incense raised concern because they begin the formation process of cancerous tumors.

De Kok has called for research into whether priests, monks and those who are in church regularly are more likely to have lung disease. “While we still have to assess more precisely what level of risk these people are running and how toxic the newly identified free radicals are, this discovery is very worrying,” he said.

De Kok suggested improving church ventilation, using fewer candles or switching to electric candles.

_ Wangui Njuguna and Robert Nowell

Churchgoers Eat Their Spinach and Carrots

(RNS) An academic study shows that churchgoers eat more of the healthiest fruits and vegetables than those who don’t attend services.

The study, released this month by St. Louis University School of Public Health researcher Deidre Griffith, found that those who frequently attended church ate 26 percent more “powerhouse” fruits and vegetables than those who didn’t frequently attend.

Griffith defines “powerhouse” vegetables and fruits as those that contain the most nutrients. They include dark, leafy greens, such as spinach, and bright orange carrots and cantaloupe.

Many of the 554 people interviewed for the study said they attended choir rehearsals and Bible study groups and workshops. Griffith said healthier food options were often present at these church events.

“Church can be a big part of your support system for changing your diet,” said Griffith.

_ Wangui Njuguna

Quote of the Week: Pop star Britney Spears

(RNS) “A lot of people think you should wait till you’re older to have kids. I’ve had a career since I was 16, have traveled around the world and back and even kissed Madonna! The only thing I haven’t done so far is experience the closest thing to God and that’s having a baby.”

_ Pop star Britney Spears, 22, in a Thanksgiving letter to her fans that was posted on her Web site and quoted by USA Today.

MO END RNS