c. 2005 Religion News Service
New Group Aims to `Reclaim’ Christianity From Religious Right
WASHINGTON (RNS) A fledgling group of liberal-minded Christians from Jacksonville, Fla., said Wednesday (June 22) they hope to “reclaim” the Christian faith that has been “usurped” by religious conservatives and used for partisan politics.
The new Christian Alliance for Progress debuted at a press conference here with a vow to counter the “hatred, division, war and greed” that they say have been proclaimed by leaders of the religious right.
“The foundation of what we stand for is not left or right, it’s gospel values,” said founder Patrick Mrotek, a Jacksonville businessman and Episcopalian who launched the venture.
Leaders conceded some of their work is already done by other progressive groups like the Interfaith Alliance and the Clergy and Laity Network, but said their group is more grass-roots-oriented and more explicitly Christian.
“We’re not the thought leaders,” said Kathleen LeRoy, the group’s vice president for operations, who is also an Episcopalian. “We are the people.”
LeRoy and Mrotek said their group will focus on abortion rights, gay rights, health care, the environment and “economic justice” for the poor. Mrotek said the group will not shy from “hot potato” cultural issues.
But more generally, officials said they hope to provide an alternative Christian voice to conservatives like Jerry Falwell, the Family Research Council or Pat Robertson.
“Just because people have satellites doesn’t mean they have the truth,” said the Rev. Timothy Simpson, a Presbyterian who directs religious affairs for the group. He is also editor of the journal Political Theology.
For now, LeRoy said the group has seven paid employees and a three-member board of directors. She said the group has already raised 20 percent of its goal for a $500,000 operating budget.
“We reject a Christianity co-opted by any government and used as a tool to ostracize, to subjugate, or to condone bigotry, greed and injustice,” reads the group’s manifesto, the “Jacksonville Declaration.” “If your politics flow from your faith, then we do not know the Jesus you claim to follow.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Jewish Groups Decry Divestment Effort in Israel as Fringe Movement
(RNS) As more groups join the effort to divest from companies that do business in Israel, American Jewish organizations are criticizing the movement as the work of a fringe, destructive minority.
Last week, the divestment movement grew when the New England conference of the United Methodist Church voted to divest from companies that “support Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.”
Jewish leaders are working to stop the divestment movement for a number of reasons _ chiefly, they say, because divestment is not effective. Rather than divestment, the groups urge churches to invest proactively in companies that foster peace and cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians.
“You can care about having peace, you can have proactive ways to work toward peace, without having divestment,” said Mark Waldman, the Washington-based director of public policy for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.
Ethan Felson, assistant executive director of the New York-based Jewish Council for Public Affairs, says Protestant groups pursuing a proactive investment approach outnumber those who advocate divestment.
“On their best day, the efforts in favor of divestment are those of a fringe in any church,” he said.
“No objective observer of the Middle East thinks a church selling some stock is going to end terrorism or get us closer to a Palestinian state,” he added.
In fact, said Felson, though the majority of divestment efforts come from denominational resolutions, the initiatives cause tensions between Christians and Jews at the local level.
“There is no groundswell, but there is a destructive minority who fail to understand that the impact of divestment is felt locally in interfaith tension,” said Felson.
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Jewish groups aren’t the only ones disappointed with the latest developments in the divestment movement.
Mark Tooley, United Methodist program director at the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy, criticized his denomination and other mainline Protestants for prioritizing the Israel situation over other human rights violations in Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
“The preoccupation with the sins of the United States and Israel, and the indifference to far grosser human rights violations around the world, shows a perplexing double standard by mainline church elites,” Tooley said in a statement. “I cannot help but suspect an underlying spiritual and theological problem.”
In addition to the Methodists’ recent resolution, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ and the worldwide Anglican Communion have taken up the divestment issue as a way to protest what they say is unjust Israeli occupation of and expansion into Palestinian-held territory.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for a photo of Rogers to accompany this story.
Southern Baptist Leader Adrian Rogers Fighting Colon Cancer
NASHVLLE, Tenn. (RNS) Prominent Southern Baptist leader Adrian Rogers has been diagnosed with colon cancer but says he’s hopeful for a long future of ministry.
“I have been diagnosed with a malignancy, had a part of my colon removed and will be having some more treatment, some chemotherapy,” Rogers said Monday (June 20) during the annual Southern Baptist Convention Pastors’ Conference.
“It’s a serious matter but our faith, our trust is in the Lord and whatever God decides, that’s fine with me. But I want to tell you that I confidently expect to be preaching for many, many more years.”
Rogers, 73, a three-time president of the Southern Baptist Convention, was honored Tuesday at the Southern Baptist Convention for his recent retirement as senior pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, Tenn. The resolution of appreciation from the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee called him “the pre-eminent pulpiteer among Southern Baptists” and credited him with taking the first steps that led to the conservative resurgence in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which began in 1979.
Despite his hopes for successful treatment, Rogers noted that he, along with others, still faces death.
“When they write on my tombstone, I’d like for them to say something like this: Here lies Adrian Rogers, a man of God,” he said.
Rogers was inducted into the hall of fame of the National Religious Broadcasters in 2003 for “Love Worth Finding,” his radio and television ministry.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Virtual `Town Meeting’ Will Bring Together Faiths, Nations
(RNS) Linked by the Internet, an unlikely group of “neighbors” will come together Sunday (June 26) for a demonstration of their commitment to Middle East peace.
The gathering, which organizers are calling a “transnational town meeting,” will be based at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, but it will bring together Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders from 40 U.S. cities plus Jerusalem, Egypt and Jordan.
The participants will communicate by videoconference and via the Internet, and they will discuss how to capitalize on the fragile “window of opportunity” for peace that they observe between Israelis and Palestinians.
The meeting will be moderated by former CBS news anchor Dan Rather, and its U.S. participants will include Rabbi Paul Menitoff, executive director of the Central Conference of American Rabbis; Imam Yahya Hendi, Georgetown University chaplain; and Serge Duss, vice president and director of public policy and advocacy for the Christian peace group World Vision.
From Jerusalem, both Palestinian and Israeli leaders will participate, including Knesset member Yossi Beilin; Jerusalem’s Anglican bishop, the Rt. Rev. Riah Abu El Assal; and Sheikh Imad Falouji, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council who represents Gaza.
Organizers say the gathering reflects a mutual depth of commitment to peace.
“The convening of prominent Israeli and Palestinian leaders from the three faiths is an expression of mutual respect for the humanity of the `other’ and demonstrates a rejection of violence and support for negotiations as the necessary means to peace,” said Bruce Wexler, a professor of psychiatry at Yale and the founder and president of A Different Future, one of two sponsoring organizations for the meeting.
Wexler, who has done research on the brain chemistry that causes people to feel hatred, said that his group and its collaborator, the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East, wants to unify disparate voices and urge the U.S. government to continue to be involved with the peace process.
“We are coming together with a collaborative voice to mobilize support for strong sustained U.S. leadership of the peace process,” Wexler said.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Quote of the Day: John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge of The Economist
(RNS) “Back in the 1960s, it was axiomatic amongst the elite that religion was doomed. In `The Secular City’ (1965), Harvey Cox argued that Christianity had to come to terms with a secular culture. Now religion of the most basic sort is back with a vengeance. The president, his secretary of state, the House speaker and Senate majority leader are all evangelical Christians. Ted Haggard, the head of the 30 million-strong National Association of Evangelicals, jokes that the only disagreement between himself and the leader of the Western world is automotive: Mr. Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas he prefers a Chevy.”
_ John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge in an editorial for The Wall Street Journal. They co-authored “The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America.”
MO/PH END RNS
