c. 2005 Religion News Service

In Letter, National Council of Churches Criticizes Bush’s Iraq Policy

(RNS) The National Council of Churches plans to send a Fourth of July declaration to President Bush to voice grievances over what they call a failed policy in Iraq.

“He hasn’t made it clear what he intends to accomplish in Iraq,” said the Rev. Larry Pickens, general secretary of the United Methodist General Commission on Christian Unity and Inter-religious Concerns. “I don’t get that there is a great deal of vision.”

In an audio news conference on Thursday (June 30), NCC leaders said they are asking the president to consider more moderate religious perspectives in the administration’s policies, which they feel have been overshadowed by the views of conservative Christian supporters.

“It’s clear that the administration has listened more closely to far-right religious leaders who agree with them,” said the Rev. Bob Edgar, secretary general of the NCC.

The Rev. John H. Thomas, general minister and president of the United Church of Christ, said Bush’s polices have been damaging for foreign relations, and is asking him to consider input from international leaders and the United Nations.

The letter lists a series of items the groups are opposed to, including the escalating price of the war as well as non-disclosure of Iraqi casualties from the war. The letter asks for a definitive plan for U.S. troop withdrawal.

The letter also lists policies the groups would like the administration to consider, including restoring human rights and providing health care, housing, employment and education for the poor.

The Presbyterian Church, the World Sikh Council and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese are among the more than 15,000 supporters who have endorsed the letter.

The NCC said it plans to send it to Bush after the holiday weekend.

_ Yogita Patel

Seventh-day Adventists Re-elect Their President

(RNS) Seventh-day Adventists have re-elected their president, Jan Paulsen, for the second time.

Paulsen, 70, was re-elected at the General Conference meeting in St. Louis Friday (July 1). Church spokesman John Banks said attendees, who voted by lifting cards, chose Paulsen overwhelmingly.

Paulsen was previously re-elected in 2000 after beginning the post in 1999. At that time he replaced Robert S. Folkenberg, who resigned amid allegations he was involved in fraudulent business dealings.

Paulsen leads a worldwide church of 14.3 million members, including about 1 million in North America. Its General Conference session is held every five years.

“It is a privilege to serve the Lord and the church in the leadership role that you have asked me to fulfill,” Paulsen said after his re-election, Adventist News Network reported.

“It is an honor, and I want to express appreciation for the trust you placed in me. And I will do my very best to serve the Lord and his church.”

Paulsen, a native of Norway, was ordained in 1963 and served as the president of the church’s Trans-European Division.

_ Adelle M. Banks

ABC Drops Reality Show After Allegations of Religious Discrimination

(RNS) After accusations the show violates the Fair Housing Act, ABC has shelved a reality series that had white Christians picking the winner of a new house in their neighborhood from a pool of ethnically and religiously diverse families.

“Welcome to the Neighborhood” had seven families _ including an African-American family, an Asian family, a family that practices Wicca and a gay couple with an adopted infant _ compete against each other for the approval of three judging families. At stake was a 3,300-square foot, four-bedroom house in a pricey and homogeneous neighborhood outside of Austin, Texas.

The show was slated to run in six episodes on Sunday evenings beginning July 10. But that was before fair housing and civil rights advocates raised concerns after watching future episodes made available when the network sent them to TV writers for review.

In a statement praising the decision to drop the show, the alliance, a civil rights group, said, “If race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability or family status is even a part of the decision in choosing the neighbor, it violates the law.”

ABC released a statement Wednesday (June 29) that explained its goal was to show how the judging families faced their stereotypes during the process of deciding which family would make the best neighbor.

The network said it believed the series fulfilled the intended purpose, but added, “The fact the true change only happens over time made the episodic nature of the this series challenging.”

_Yogita Patel

`Hotel Rwanda’ Captures Humanitas Prize

LOS ANGELES (RNS) The script of “Hotel Rwanda” has been honored with a Humanitas prize for being a spiritually driven Hollywood screenplay. A Humanitas also went to a script about the Middle East written for NBC-TV’s “The West Wing.”

“Hotel Rwanda” screenwriter Keir Pearson and director Terry George shared the $25,000 prize during the Wednesday (June 29) awards luncheon at the Universal Hilton Hotel. They competed against scripts from 2004 films “Millions” and “Finding Neverland.”

The Pearson/George script portrayed Rwandan hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, who saved lives during the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 people were slaughtered in about 100 days, most of them ethnic Tutsis killed by rival ethnic Hutus.

Televison producer John Wells won a $15,000 script prize for his “West Wing” script about the importance of applying U.S. diplomacy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Wells did not attend the awards but sent one of his scriptwriters to accept the honor and read a speech in which Wells said the U.S. has applied “untested geopolitical theory” in the Iraq war and elsewhere.

Founded in 1974 by the late TV producer and Catholic priest Father Ellwood “Bud” Kieser, the Humanitas awards distribute about $125,000 in prize money each year to scripts thought to have uplifted the human spirit with dignified film and TV characters. Prior Humanitas winners include such films as “Whale Rider” and “October Sky” and TV comedies such as “Frasier” and “The Bernie Mac Show.”

This year, the interfaith, Pacific Palisades, Calif.,-based organization decided not to award $10,000 prizes in the 30-minute TV script category because no recent TV comedies were deemed to be both funny and humane.

“Sitcoms are suffering,” said the Humanitas president, the Rev. Frank Desiderio, a Paulist priest. “Nothing came up to the value that we have (expected) … really trying to find humor in the human condition.”

Other scripts receiving $10,000 or $25,000 Humanitas prizes included pages written for HBO’s “Lackawanna Blues” film plus the independent film “The Motel” and the ABC Family film “Searching for David’s Heart.”

_ David Finnigan

More than 50,000 Christians Wish Bush Happy Birthday on the Internet

(RNS) When President Bush turns 59 on Wednesday (July 6), he will receive more than 50,000 religiously themed birthday greetings from Christians.

For the fourth time this year, the Presidential Prayer Team, a Web site based in Scottsdale, Ariz., is collecting birthday prayers for Bush and passing them on to the White House.

“Know that for `such a time as this,’ you are placed exactly where you are to be, and it was a move of the hand of God that placed you there,” wrote one well-wisher.

“I so appreciate the fact that the man who runs our wonderful country bows first to the One who created it,” another writer said, expressing a common theme in the greetings: satisfaction that Bush says he prays regularly.

The Presidential Prayer Team encourages participants to commit to praying every day for the president. Now in its fourth year, the Internet site was set to open in late 2001, but the organizers speeded up its launch after the 9/11 attacks. By the end of the year, the site had half a million subscribers, organizers said.

“We’ve matured and grown in the past four years,” John Lind, the group’s president, said in an interview. “Our president has gone through a lot in four years and we’ve grown with him.”

Citing the Bible, Lind said he feels compelled by Scripture to pray for political leaders.

In addition to collecting birthday greetings for Bush, the Presidential Prayer Team also connects American military personnel with Christians who want to pray for them. The group recently made its millionth troop “adoption,” Lind said.

Before the November 2004 elections, the Presidential Prayer Team organized “Pray the Vote” rallies, in which participants signed up to pray in hour-long blocks for “God’s will to be done” in the election, as Lind put it.

But the site’s main purpose remains enlisting daily prayers for American leaders. Although the prayers are for members of government to make decisions based on what Lind calls “God’s will,” he hopes that praying regularly will accomplish something for the participants as well.

“Even though people take on the mantle of praying daily for the president, that also drives them closer to the Lord,” he said.

_ Nancy Glass

Quote of the Day: Jars of Clay’s Lead Singer Dan Haseltine

(RNS) “There is never a moment in this age when we can rest on what we have done to serve the poor and the suffering. As long as there are people without access to water, and people who do not even have the basics for survival, we who have so much should never rest. I believe we can make poverty history.”

_ Dan Haseltine, lead singer of the Christian band Jars of Clay, speaking about the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia on Saturday (July 2) to raise awareness about poverty in Africa and encourage G8 national leaders to increase aid to the continent.

MO/RB END RNS