c. 2004 Religion News Service

Poll: Faith Sometimes Drives Support for AIDS, Poverty Relief

(RNS) A new poll shows that religious beliefs form a foundation for many Americans’ support of stepped-up efforts to combat global AIDS and reduce poverty around the world.

While 86 percent of Americans believe the next presidential term should include a multilateral effort to fight AIDS and extreme poverty, 90 percent of evangelicals _ who in recent years have drawn more attention to the need to address AIDS _ called such an effort an important endeavor, a poll released Wednesday (Dec. 8) by the ONE Campaign revealed.

Eleven organizations are the founding partners of the campaign launched in May to fight AIDS and poverty across the globe. They include faith-based groups such as World Vision, humanitarian organizations such as Save the Children, and advocacy groups such as DATA _ Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans say a very important reason the country should provide humanitarian assistance to poor countries is that their “faith and religious beliefs say that we should help those less fortunate than ourselves,” pollsters found. Eighty-seven percent of evangelicals said they had the same sentiment and 35 percent of evangelicals said it was among the most important reasons for their support of humanitarian aid.

Michael Perry, principal of Lake, Snell, Perry & Associates, the Washington-based research firm that conducted the poll, said the findings about support for these efforts are not new, but the reasons behind the support are revealing.

“This cuts across party lines and there’s a strong faith-based element of this support,” he said in a teleconference with reporters.

Liberal and conservative advocates of the campaign agreed that this cause is embraced by people from a variety of points of view.

“I think in this effort we see how _ across the political spectrum _ people of faith are responding to a very urgent need to fight global AIDS,” said Mike McCurry, former press secretary to President Clinton and a senior adviser to Sen. John Kerry’s recent presidential campaign.

The Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, said in a statement that evangelical Christians embrace the call to combat AIDS with a “moral response,” seeking behavioral change as well as money to fight the disease.

“If we as evangelicals will seize this continuing crisis as an opportunity to serve God and man, we can beat this scourge,” he said.

The telephone survey of 1,140 American adults was conducted from Nov. 3-4 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Religions Urged to Rise Up and Combat Terrorism

(RNS) The president of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, has called on the world’s religions to fight terrorism and be a force for peace rather than conflict.

“We should rise and demonstrate that religion is a force for peace,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, told the two-day International Dialogue on Interfaith Cooperation (Dec. 6-7) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

“To my mind, terrorism today must be regarded as the enemy of all religions,” he added. “In the end, the forces of light, reason and hope must overpower the forces of darkness, despair and violence,” Reuters reported.

The conference brought together more than 100 religious leaders representing 10 faiths. They came from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told the opening session that religious fundamentalism threatens the world.

“A terrible perversion of religion with a violent face threatens moderate believers and moderate states in both the East and the West,” he said.

Australian tourists were the main victims of an October 2002 nightclub bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali that killed more than 200 people.

But the Rev. John Baldock, an Australian Anglican, said a weakness of the meeting was precisely that it brought only moderates together, Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious new service reported.

“I think there is a danger that these gatherings tend to bring together people who are already converted in a sense,” he said.

Baldock also said he regretted the minimal involvement of Thailand at the conference given the recent violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the country.

On Sunday, as the Indonesia conference was about to begin, the Thai air force dropped some 120 million origami “peace cranes” in the Muslim-dominated southern part of country as a peace gesture. But the gesture was met with more violence, including two bombings.

Conference organizers, however, said the aim of the meeting was not just to discuss terrorism _ the focus of the political leaders who spoke _ but also such social ills as poverty and AIDS.

The meeting was co-sponsored by the Indonesian and Australian governments and Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second largest Muslim organization with some 30 million members.

_ David E. Anderson

Top Christian Science Official Retires

(RNS) Virginia Harris, who led the Boston-based Church of Christ, Scientist, for more than a decade, is retiring, church officials announced.

The church, which is also known as the Christian Science Church, overcame financial difficulties, expanded its reach and underwent massive reconstruction at its Boston headquarters during Harris’ 12-year tenure as chair of the church’s board of directors and its principal spokesperson.

In 2003, the church faced a budget deficit in the millions, and it had to cut jobs to recover financially.

But under Harris’ leadership, the church also built and opened The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity, a research library and exhibit gallery devoted to the teachings of the church’s founder.

In a Monday (Dec. 6) memo to church employees announcing Harris’ retirement, officials praised Harris’ “energetic devotion to our leader’s writings, to the spiritual seeker and to the church Mrs. Eddy founded.’

Eddy, who died in 1910, taught that Jesus was a healer, and that believers can heal themselves through prayer.

Harris’ replacement is Mary Trammell, a Florida-based board member who holds a doctorate in biblical studies. After a year, Trammell will step aside, and the position will rotate on a regular basis in the future.

_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Pope John Paul II Has Proclaimed a Record 1,828 Saints and Blesseds

ROME (RNS) Pope John Paul II has proclaimed a record 1,828 saints and blesseds, more than all his predecessors over the last 400 years put together, a Vatican official has reported.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, said Saturday (Dec. 4) that in the 26 years of his reign, John Paul has created 1,345 blesseds and 483 saints. Beatification, or being declared blessed and worthy of veneration, is one step below sainthood.

“This figure exceeds by far all the blesseds and saints proclaimed by his predecessors,” the cardinal said. He referred to the period following 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII reformed the process leading to sainthood and centered it at the Vatican.

Martins, who oversees the creation of saints, spoke at a conference on a new edition of the “Martirologium Romanum,” a book containing some 7,000 names of martyrs, confessors of the faith and priests, who are remembered in the liturgical calendar.

Defending the pope against what critics have called his “inflation of saints,” the cardinal quoted John Paul as saying, “It is the fault of the Holy Spirit.”

_ Peggy Polk

Britain Seeks a Few Good (Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu) Men of the Cloth

LONDON (RNS) The British Ministry of Defense will soon start advertising in the national and religious press for qualified people to serve as Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh chaplains to the British armed forces.

Some 300 Christian chaplains already minister to the 210,000 personnel of the Royal Navy, the army, and the Royal Air Force. These chaplains are given commissioned rank as officers. There are also honorary Jewish chaplains.

The four chaplains to be appointed will, however, be civilian employees of the Ministry of Defense. Each will be responsible for ministering to about 740 adherents of the minority faiths in all three services.

Ivor Caplin, a member of Parliament and one of the junior ministers at the department, said: “It is our aspiration to have armed forces which are representative of UK society as a whole. As such, we hope to encourage people throughout society to join, to make their distinctive contributions, and to achieve their full potential.

We genuinely welcome all faiths into the armed forces and will make proper provision for their spiritual needs. These chaplains will also assist with promoting a greater understanding of faiths within the armed forces and help break down any barriers which might deter people from different faiths from joining.”

Nearly 18 months ago, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon dismissed a request for a chaplain for the estimated 300 Muslims in the British armed forces. At the time, Hoon said the numbers did not yet justify a full-time chaplain.

_ Robert Nowell

Quote of the Day: Shroud.com Editor Barrie Schwortz

(RNS) “The biggest irony of my life is that I spend most of my time trying to convince Christians that the shroud is authentic. God does have a great sense of humor.”

_ Barrie Schwortz, editor of Shroud.com, a Web site focused on questions about whether the Shroud of Turin, an ancient linen cloth, was the burial cloth of the crucified Jesus Christ. He was quoted by Christianity Today.

KRE/JL END RNS