c. 2005 Religion News Service
Episcopalians, Canadians, Banned From Anglican Meetings Until 2008
(RNS) In sanctions narrowly approved Wednesday (June 22), the Episcopal Church and its Canadian counterpart were told they will not be welcome at an international panel that sets policy for the Anglican Communion.
The Anglican Consultative Council, meeting in Nottingham, England, voted 30-28 to ban the U.S. and Canadian churches from future meetings until 2008. There were four abstentions in the closed-door vote.
However, a U.S. church spokeswoman said there are no further ACC meetings scheduled between now and 2008, which makes the sanctions “a moot point.”
The sanctions were recommended by senior Anglican bishops at their meeting in February, when they urged the two churches to “voluntarily withdraw” from the global panel because of their support of homosexuality.
Both churches made their case to the panel Tuesday, with Americans arguing there is “genuine holiness” among gay parishioners and within same-sex unions, as part of a 130-page report.
The Canadian and U.S. churches normally have three representatives each on the council; they were present at the Nottingham meeting but did not participate.
The council’s vote seems to signal that those arguments fell flat, at least with Anglican leaders from the Third World who are most opposed to homosexuality and make up a bulk of the council’s membership.
The resolution that censures the North American churches was signed in support by Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, one of the most outspoken critics of the U.S. church’s actions.
The leader of the U.S. church, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, said the close vote revealed a “divide” within the Anglican council, but said much of the church’s work happens in other venues where Americans are still invited.
“It is through these means and our numerous other relationships focused on mission to our hurting world that we will, with God’s grace, find our way forward,” Griswold said in a statement.
The conservative Atlanta-based American Anglican Council applauded the sanctions, saying they reflect “the mind of the Communion” and traditional understandings of human sexuality.
The sanctions will remain in place until Anglicans hold their most important legislative meeting, the Lambeth Conference, in London in 2008. The sanctions also remove both churches from the communion’s financial affairs board and steering committee.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
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.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Anglicans Endorse Divestment Against Israel
LONDON (RNS) Anglican churches around the world, including the Episcopal Church in the United States, were urged Friday (June 24) to join a growing church-based movement to divest from Israeli companies that support the Palestinian occupation.
The Anglican Consultative Council, a global policy-setting panel for the 77 million-member Anglican Communion, unanimously approved a statement urging divestment that was drafted last year by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network.
The ACC, meeting in Nottingham, England, commended the U.S. church for its “resolve” to pursue divestment, even though it has not formally endorsed divestment. American church leaders were not allowed in the meeting because of sanctions stemming for their pro-gay policies.
The ACC urged the Communion’s 38 provinces to consider divestment, as well as “investment strategies that support the infrastructure of a future Palestinian state.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which had criticized the divestment report two weeks ago, said it was “bitterly disappointed” by the action.
“Israel is (a) democracy and a pluralistic society in which Jews and Arabs, Christians and Muslims have equal rights in the law,” said the board. “These rights are not extended to non-Muslims in many of Israel’s Arab neighbors, sadly. Israel is also a country on a virtual war footing _ not a conventional war, however, but a war of terror characterized by the suicide bomber.”
The board echoed criticisms from many U.S. Jewish groups that divestment is one-sided against Israel and “fundamentally flawed and unbalanced.”
“That Israel alone should be singled out for such treatment, particularly at a time when dialogue is beginning to prevail, shows an inequality in the treatment of the Jewish state which must raise concerns about the Church’s relationship with our community,” said the board’s chief executive, Jon Benjamin.
In the United States, the Presbyterian Church (USA) sparked the divestment movement last summer but won’t make a final decision until next summer. The United Church of Christ is scheduled to debate the issue at its general synod in Atlanta in early July.
_ Robert Nowell and 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.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
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.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Another Drop: Presbyterians Report Loss of 43,000 Members in 2004
(RNS) The Presbyterian Church (USA) continues to hemorrhage members, with new statistics showing an overall loss of 43,175 members in 2004.
The Louisville, Ky.-based church’s membership stood at 2.36 million at the end of 2004, a drop of about 1.79 percent from 2003, according to statistics released Tuesday (June 21). It was the second-largest decline in a decade after a loss of 46,658 in 2003.
The church’s highest officer, Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, attributed most of the loss to churches that purged inactive members from membership lists, who were lost “out the `back door’ to nowhere.”
“Statistically, we are not losing people to other churches,” Kirkpatrick said in his annual report. “Our problem is that we are losing people to the secular world _ to no active church affiliation.”
The membership loss, which is seen across most mainline Protestant bodies, continues a trend that started in the mid-1960s. When the Presbyterian Church (USA) was formed through a merger of other bodies in 1983, it had 4.2 million members.
Kirkpatrick said that 40,476 transferred into the denomination last year from other churches, compared to 30,319 that transferred out. Still, 36,034 members died and 109,000 moved to churches “not in correspondence” with the Presbyterians or dropped out altogether.
Kirkpatrick said the figures should be a “wake-up” call for Presbyterians, especially in the area of starting new churches. During 2004, the church dissolved 63 congregations and started only 25 new ones.
“We as Presbyterians will only become a growing church if we begin on our knees, praying for forgiveness for our timidity in evangelism and seeking God’s renewal so that we lose our image as God’s `frozen chosen,”’ Kirkpatrick said.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Canadian Military Presides Over Its First Same-Sex Wedding
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (RNS) Canada’s military has confirmed that two soldiers exchanged vows in May in the first gay marriage to be recognized by the country’s armed forces.
Canadian Press reports that the two unnamed men, one a sergeant, the other a warrant officer, both in their late 30s, were married at Canadian Forces Base Greenwood in Nova Scotia on May 3.
It was the first time the military has presided over a same-sex wedding, now legal in almost all of Canada after a series of court rulings over the past two years.
The ceremony took place two years after the Defense Department issued guidelines on the contentious issue and more than a decade after gays were allowed to join Canada’s armed forces.
The policy states that “every chaplain in the branch will receive all couples who come to them _ regardless of sexual orientation _ with respect and dignity.”
The men were wed at the base’s chapel in front of about 45 friends, Canadian Press reports.
A United Church of Canada minister presided after the base’s chaplain, an Anglican, refused to perform the ceremony. Canada’s Anglican church last month declared a two-year moratorium on the blessing of same-sex marriages.
Lt. Cmdr. David Greenwood, the base’s head chaplain, helped arrange the ceremony and said it might encourage other gay soldiers to step forward.
“I think there was a sense that many people thought they would never have seen something like this in their lifetimes _ and not in a negative way, but in a positive way,” Greenwood told Canadian Press.
“It was something that I was very proud to be involved in.”
_ Ron Csillag
Fed Up With Pilgrims, Owner of House Where Pope Was Born Wants Out
(RNS) Fed up with pilgrims, the owner of the 18th century house in the Bavarian town of Marktl where Pope Benedict XVI was born is looking for a buyer.
“I want my private life back,” Claudia Dandl said.
Dandl, a physiotherapist, said she and her two children no longer answer the door to pilgrims demanding to enter the two-story, former police station, which she bought and renovated six years ago.
Benedict, son of a police officer, was born Joseph Ratzinger in the family’s apartment above the police station at 11 Marktplatz in the center of the town in southern Germany on April, 16, 1927.
“The town is very interested in acquiring the house. We would like to open the birthplace of the pope to pilgrims,” Mayor Hubert Gschwendtner said.
Dandl told reporters she was willing to sell to the highest bidder and she expected the price “to correspond to the historic value of the building.”
Local real estate agents valued the house at about 150,000 euros ($181,500), but if the price that a car once owned by Ratzinger is any indication, the selling price will be considerably higher.
Offered for auction on the German eBay Internet site six days after Ratzinger’s election as pope on April 19, the six-year-old Volkswagen Golf, for which the current owner had paid $11,495, went for $245,620.54 to the Golden Palace Casino of Austin, Tex., on May 5.
The house, built in 1745, has a wooden roof, a facade painted yellow and white and geraniums in its window boxes. Two plaques beside the door proclaim it to be the birthplace not only of the pope but, in 1779, of Georg Lankensperger, inventor of the axle still used for automobile steering wheels.
_ Peggy Polk
Rabbi Tapped to Oversee Religious Tolerance at Air Force Academy
WASHINGTON (RNS) A Jewish rabbi and a veteran Navy chaplain has been tapped by the Air Force to help oversee religious tolerance in the “religious climate” at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, the former U.S. director of interfaith relations for the American Jewish Committee, was named Monday (June 27) as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff for Values and Vision.
“It is imperative that we continue to emphasize and ingrain in all we do the importance of mutual respect among airmen,” Michael Dominguez, acting secretary of the Air Force, said in a news release.
Resnicoff’s appointment follows a June 22 report by a 16-member military panel that found no “overt religious discrimination” at the elite academy, but rather an overall “perception of religious intolerance,” especially against non-Christian cadets.
The panel’s 100-page report said some cadets were “overly aggressive” in sharing or expressing their faith, and that some faculty and staff had a “lack of awareness” of when proper lines had been crossed.
Resnicoff served 12 months (2001-2002) as the interfaith director for the American Jewish Committee after 30 years in the Navy. A Conservative rabbi who was ordained in 1976, Resnicoff retired in 2001 as command chaplain for the armed services in Europe.
Resnicoff also served as principal adviser to Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO’s former supreme allied commander, on issues of religion, ethics and morals. He was the first Jewish chaplain to graduate from the Naval War College.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Muslim Countries to Launch Islamic Bank
(RNS) A global Islamic bank, in which no interest is paid or charged on deposits and loans, will open next year, a group of investors announced Wednesday (June 22).
The proposed $1 billion bank, which will be called the Emaar International Group, will adhere to Muslim law and bring together investors from a number of countries.
The bank’s headquarters will either be in Malaysia, Bahrain, Qatar or Dubai, Saleh A. Kamal, chairman of the General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions, said, according to the Associated Press.
According to Kamal, many Islamic banks that currently exist are undercapitalized and in dire financial straits.
Additionally, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), a 57-nation group whose financial arm is a key shareholder in the new proposed bank, includes 27 nations that are classified by the World Bank as “low-income.”
Addressing financial needs and adhering to Islamic laws governing finance are two reasons for launching the new bank, but a third reason organizers cited was using a 10-year financial services master plan to encourage development in the Muslim world.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told a group of investors gathered at a forum that addressing “the problems of extremism and terrorism” and encouraging development in OIC member-nations would be priorities for the new bank.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
To Promote Ecology, Ministers `Bless’ Bicycles with Drips of WD-40 Oil
VANCOUVER, B.C. (RNS) Canadian Christian clergy promoted an ecologically responsible lifestyle by conducting a blessing-of-bicycles ritual in which WD-40 oil was dripped on bicycle chains and sunscreen on bicyclists’ noses.
Although the Friday (June 24) ceremony was light-hearted, the Anglican and Lutheran clergy who led it had a serious purpose _ to ask people to consider how the type of transportation they choose affects the environment.
“As Christians, we are called to be stewards of creation,” Paige Dampier, an Anglican organizer, said.
“Our personal actions _ like whether we drive, pedal, or take public transportation _ are linked to environmental justice.”
About 50 people stood with their bicycles on the steps of Christ Church (Anglican) Cathedral in downtown Vancouver to take part in the unusual ceremony.
Wearing helmets and rain gear, they rang their bells to celebrate the attempt to sanctify and promote cycling as an alternative form of transportation in Vancouver, which is already one of the more bicycle-friendly major cities in North America.
The Rev. Paul Borthistle, a priest in the Vancouver-area Anglican diocese, said: “The bicycle is symbolic of an ecologically responsible lifestyle, so when we’re blessing the bicycle, we’re acknowledging that cyclists have made a conscious choice to live in an ecologically responsible way.”
The ceremony included a moment of silence for cyclists who had been injured or killed.
The bike-blessing ritual coincided with the city of Vancouver officially designating June as Bike Month.
_ Douglas Todd
Quote of the Week: 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.”
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