c. 2004 Religion News Service
Instructor to Be Investigated for Alleged Comments on Religious Voters
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (RNS) A University of Louisville sociology instructor has had his contract to teach withheld pending an investigation into comments he allegedly made in class saying President Bush was re-elected by “religious zealots” who should be shot with automatic rifles.
In a statement released Sunday (Dec. 12), U of L President James Ramsey said the contract for John McTighe, a part-time sociology instructor who has been employed at the school on a semester-by-semester basis, had been withdrawn for at least the spring semester while university officials investigate comments attributed to McTighe in a conservative student publication.
“We strongly support academic freedom,” Ramsey said in the statement. “The quote attributed to Professor McTighe is unacceptable and not an issue of academic freedom.”
The university’s decision is a victory of sorts for the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association. It orchestrated a campaign last week that generated more than 2,000 e-mails and telephone calls to the university complaining about the comments, according to spokesman Randy Sharp.
In a Dec. 1 column, Brian Yates, publisher of the Louisville Patriot, a privately owned student publication that covers news and sports at the university, quoted McTighe saying Bush’s re-election was a result of “religious zealots who say they are voting on morals. I think we should all buy AK-47s and shoot them all.”
McTighe said his comments were taken out of context and that Yates misquoted him. But Yates, a junior accounting major who pens a column for the monthly newsmagazine, says he confirmed the account in an interview with Katherine McCrocklin Martin, a student in the class who says she voted for Bush in the November election.
“It was one of those stories you hear and your jaw drops,” Yates said. “I looked into the whole issue, and then I contacted the university to see what their position might be. I was informed by (university provost) Shirley Willihnganz that he made the comments, but that he said he was just being sarcastic. At that point, I really wasn’t sure the university was taking the issue seriously. So I wrote the column about the incident, and it just took on a life of its own.”
One reader, a Louisville member of the American Family Association, forwarded Yates’ column to AFA officials in Tupelo, and the religious activist group responded by letting other Kentuckians know about the statements.
“We thought that because (McTighe) was being paid by taxpayers’ dollars, people of faith in Kentucky would be upset their money was being used to promote this kind of thinking,” AFA’s Sharp said. “As a result of those e-mails and phone calls, to the university’s credit, they are now investigating the incident.”
University officials said the investigation will take place after the holiday season when classes resume.
_ Dennis P. O’Connor
Muslim Scholar Resigns Notre Dame Post
(RNS) Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim scholar whose visa was revoked days before he was to begin teaching at the University of Notre Dame, has given up further attempts to enter the country.
Ramadan, who lives in Switzerland with his family, had shipped his furniture to the South Bend, Ind., campus and was already on the payroll of the university, where he was to teach about religion, conflict and peace-building, when his visa was suddenly revoked last August.
Ramadan is the author of “Western Muslims and the Future of Islam” (Oxford University Press) and has written and spoken widely on how the Muslim religion is compatible with secular European values.
Supporters allege that Ramadan’s critical stances against the war in Iraq and against Israel were the reason for the revocation. Ramadan had applied in October to reinstate his entry visa, but that appeal ended with his resignation of the faculty appointment.
Ramadan cited family stress as the reason for abandoning his quest to teach in the United States.
“As you may imagine, my family has experienced enormous stress and uncertainty during this period, and I keenly feel the need to resolve our situation,” he wrote in a letter to R. Scott Appleby, who directs Notre Dame’s Institute for International Peace Studies.
Appleby, in a statement, said that Ramadan would have made a valuable contribution to the study of Muslim religion and culture.
“Faculty and students at Notre Dame and at other U.S. universities were looking forward to engaging him productively on a variety of issues central to our times. Such dialogue, we believe, is an essential requirement to a deeper understanding of the complexity of the Muslim world,” he said.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Bush’s Re-Election, Gibson Film Tie as Top Religion Stories of 2004
(RNS) The role of faith in President Bush’s re-election and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” tied as the top stories of 2004 in a survey of religion newswriters.
The online survey of Religion Newswriters Association members was conducted Dec. 10-14 and released Wednesday (Dec. 15).
Gibson also was named the organization’s Religion Newsmaker of the Year, receiving 51 percent of the votes from survey participants. Bush garnered 40 percent of the votes, making him runner-up for the newsmaker designation.
Gibson’s movie, released in February, earned record crowds and DVD sales and sparked extensive discussions about topics ranging from possible anti-Semitism to faithfulness to Scripture.
There has been much coverage about how religion and values played a role in the presidential campaign and the election, with some studies crediting evangelicals with giving Bush his margin of victory.
The third most newsworthy topic, the nation’s religion reporters said, was the issue of gay marriage. Stories covering that topic ranged from court cases to proposed legislation to the mobilization of religious groups on both sides of the issue.
Forty-one percent of 260 eligible RNA members _ or 108 journalists who write about religion for non-religious news media _ responded to the survey. They were required to rank their top 20 choices and no tie votes were permitted.
The rest of the top 10 stories chosen are:
No. 4: Several Catholic bishops say they will deny Communion to politicians with abortion rights stances.
No. 5: The Anglican Lambeth Commission criticizes conservatives and liberals and has an apparently unsuccessful attempt to heal the rift caused by last year’s installation of a gay bishop in New Hampshire.
No. 6: The U.S. Supreme Court upholds “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance on technical grounds.
No. 7: Debate continues over the U.S. role in Iraq, with some religious leaders calling for withdrawal and others voicing support for the troops.
No. 8: Two lesbian preachers are tried in the United Methodist Church, with one acquitted and another found guilty. The Presbyterian Church (USA) also continues to deal with differences over homosexuality.
No. 9: The largest settlement in the Catholic sex-abuse cases is reported in Orange County, Calif.
No. 10: High tensions continue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) call for withdrawing investments from companies profiting from Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, prompting complaints from some Jewish groups.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Southern Baptists Say No to New Ecumenical Group
(RNS) The Southern Baptist Convention has told organizers of Christian Churches Together in the USA, a fledgling ecumenical organization, that it has no interest in joining.
The new organization, set to formally launch next fall, aims to bring Catholics, mainline Protestants, Orthodox Christians, black churches, evangelicals and Pentecostals together for the first time.
“For the most part, we don’t do ecumenism because you usually have to give up some doctrinal beliefs or ignore or emphasize others to work with folks that really aren’t on the same path, share the same doctrines, the same beliefs _ particularly about salvation,” said Martin King, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists’ North American Mission Board.
Organizers had hoped to include Southern Baptists, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination with 16 million members. Other evangelical groups, such as the Salvation Army, the Evangelical Covenant Church and World Vision, have endorsed CCT.
“We just don’t see that it would help us in our efforts to help our Southern Baptist churches share our understanding of how to be saved, so we have no plans to participate,” King told Religion News Service.
So far, about two dozen churches have formally endorsed CCT, and organizers cite interest from at least a dozen more. Officials say they hope to get to know each other better before committing the group to formal action.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted in November to join CCT, the first time American Catholics have committed to work with Protestants. Catholics and Southern Baptists are not members of the National Council of Churches, which represents 36 mainline Protestant and Orthodox churches.
Earlier this year the Southern Baptists voted to withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance, accusing the global body of a “leftward drift.”
The Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America and chair of the CCT steering committee, said he was disappointed _ but not surprised _ by the Southern Baptist rejection.
“It is pretty clear that this just wasn’t a reasonable expectation of where they are right now,” Granberg-Michaelson said. “We never had a high anticipation that the Southern Baptists would be a part. We’d wanted to have as strong a participation as we could from across the board in terms of representing different constituencies.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Forensic Team Reconstructs Face of Original Santa
LONDON (RNS) What did the real Santa Claus look like? Viewers of a program being broadcast on BBC 2 this Saturday (Dec. 18) will be able to find out, and they might be scared.
A team of forensic scientists at Britain’s Manchester University has reconstructed the face of St. Nicholas of Myra _ the precursor of 19th century America’s Santa Claus _ from X-rays and measurements of the saint’s skull, preserved with his other relics at Bari in Italy.
Repairs in the 1950s to the crypt of the basilica where the saint’s remains were kept meant that they had to be temporarily moved, and the opportunity was taken to invite a professor of anatomy at the local university to X-ray them and take thousands of detailed measurements.
Using this data, Dr. Caroline Wilkinson in Manchester constructed a clay model of St Nicholas’ head, to which another scientist added coloring, hair and beard. What emerges is a heavily set face, like a bulldog’s, with a broken nose and powerful jaws.
Nicholas was bishop of Myra, in what is now southwestern Turkey, in the early fourth century.
“Nicholas’ life, although he was one of the most universally venerated saints in both East and West, is virtually unknown,” states the Oxford Dictionary of Saints before going on to recount the legends attached to his name. His relics were taken to Bari in 1087.
His feast day on Dec. 6 became in the Middle Ages an opportunity to give presents of nuts and fruit to the poor, and despite Protestant disapproval the Dutch persisted with the custom, bringing with them to the New World their observance of the feast of the saint they called Sinterklaas _ a name anglicized into Santa Claus.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Rapper Kanye West
(RNS) “Contradiction is part of who everybody is. … One song is, I love God, and the next song is, Can you come over? That’s how I feel. Sometimes you’re in church, and you’re looking at the girl’s dress right next to you.”
_ Grammy-nominated rapper Kanye West, quoted by Time magazine about the contradictions in his debut album’s song called “Jesus Walks” and inclusion of sexual content and profanity on the rest of the recording.
MO/PH RNS END
