c. 2005 Religion News Service

Churches of Christ Distance Themselves from UCC Gay Statement

(RNS) The recent decision by the United Church of Christ to endorse gay marriage has caused concern and confusion for some members of the more conservative Churches of Christ.

In Mississippi, six Churches of Christ congregations took out an ad in Brookhaven’s Daily Leader newspaper that disavowed any connection to the more liberal United Church of Christ.

At Abilene Christian University in Texas, officials distributed a statement that said “Abilene Christian University has NO affiliation with the United Churches of Christ” after parents of some prospective students expressed concern. About two-thirds of students come from the Churches of Christ, school officials said.

The Cleveland-based UCC, which traces its history to New England Congregationalists, has about 1.5 million members and is considered the most liberal of American Protestant churches. On July 4, church delegates approved a statement urging civil marriage rights for gay couples.

The Churches of Christ, meanwhile, claims 2 million members and traces its roots to a frontier revival in the early 1800s. The conservative, loose-knit denomination is perhaps best known for not using musical instruments during worship services.

“It’s fair to say that they are a theologically liberal group and we are certainly not that,” said Cecil May, dean of the College of Biblical Studies at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Ala., which is affiliated with the Churches of Christ.

The Churches of Christ is most popular in a wide swath of the mid-South that stretches from Tennessee across to Oklahoma and Texas. It promotes a form of “primitive New Testament Christianity” that tries to replicate the life of the early Christian Church.

Don Vinzant, the minister of Edmond (Okla.) Church of Christ, said confusion between the two churches is “fairly common but not all that frequent,” and said the Churches of Christ would never endorse homosexuality.

“We accept the Bible at face-value for what it is, and I don’t know anybody in the Churches of Christ who wouldn’t believe that the Bible condemns homosexual conduct as sin.”

Vinzant said his denomination would not adopt any churchwide statement, on homosexuality or any other issue. “As weird and crazy as it sounds, we don’t have a central headquarters,” he said.

And if it wasn’t confusing enough, both bodies swear off any affiliation with the International Churches of Christ, which is labeled a college-campus cult by critics.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Islamic Group Thankful for Arrest of Man who Threatened Bombing

WASHINGTON (RNS) The Council on American-Islamic Relations is thanking the U.S. Justice Department for the swift arrest of a man who threatened to bomb CAIR’s headquarters if the organization did not disband.

CAIR is America’s largest Muslim civil liberties group, whose mission is to “enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.”

Max L. Oakley, 50, of Toledo, Ill. is accused of sending multiple e-mail threats to CAIR’s headquarters in Washington during the early morning hours of July 29. Officers of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department’s Explosive Ordinance Disposal Unit searched CAIR’s headquarters with bomb-sniffing dogs but discovered no explosives.

FBI agents traced the origin of the threatening e-mail messages to Oakley and interviewed him. During the interview Oakley admitted that he had sent e-mail messages to CAIR and that the address from which the messages originated belonged to him, according to a Justice Department report. He was arrested Friday (Aug. 5).

“Law enforcement shows no tolerance for those who use e-mail to spread hateful anti-Islamic rhetoric and threaten violence against innocent people and organizations,”said U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein, in announcing the arrest.

If convicted, Oakley faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad expressed gratitude.

“We wish to thank the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Washington Metropolitan Police Department for their swift and professional actions in helping to apprehend the alleged perpetrator,” Awad said. “This arrest will send a clear message to Islamophobic bigots that intimidation of American Muslims and threats against their institutions will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted vigorously.”

_ Hugh S. Moore

Toronto Law School to Offer Courses in Islamic Law

TORONTO (RNS) The University of Toronto’s law school has hired two full-time professors to teach the institution’s first-ever courses in Shariah, or Islamic law.

“The early indications are that students are going to be beating down the doors, and it’s a testament to the timeliness of it, with Islamic fundamentalism in the news abroad,” acting law school dean Lorne Sossin told the Globe and Mail newspaper.

The move hits close to home in Ontario, which has been pondering whether to allow Shariah tribunals to settle private civil and family disputes between Muslims _ amid vocal protests, especially from Muslim women.

“Islamic law is not just about these rules about cutting hands off thieves or discriminating against women,” said one of the professors hired to teach Shariah, Anver Emon, who was recruited from Yale University. “It’s a living tradition in which jurists are trying to embrace and engage in active acts of interpretation.”

Shariah is being employed more and more outside the Muslim world, according to the other professor, Mohammad Fadel, a hire from private practice in New York who will incorporate Islamic legal precepts into his course in business law.

“It is increasingly relevant, say, for commercial transactions in which you have Islamic investors, and they want the contracts to be compliant. It’s not something that’s so obscure.”

Homa Arjomand, who heads the International Campaign Against Shariah Courts in Canada, said the hirings are “like a green light for Shariah. I’m so mad.”

Alia Hogben, executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, said Canada’s legal system should be completely secular.

Ontario’s attorney general is expected this autumn to decide whether to permit Shariah-based legal tribunals. A report issued earlier this year, after six months of research, recommended that religious law keep a place in family arbitration as long as safeguards are built in to protect women and children.

Some American law schools, including the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago, offer courses in Shariah.

_ Ron Csillag

New Christian Reformed Church Executive Director Says Church Will Recover

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. _ Despite the resignation of its top administrator over an allegedly inappropriate relationship with a female colleague, the Christian Reformed Church will recover and heal, its newly named executive director says.

“We will survive this,” said the Rev. Peter Borgdorff after being named Wednesday to replace the Rev. Calvin Bremer. “We’ve been through crises before. We know something about the God we serve, and he will sustain us in difficult times.”

At a press conference, Borgdorff said he will direct CRC staff and board members to meet with churches this fall to help members recover and move forward following Bremer’s resignation at denominational leaders’ request.

Officials allege Bremer, who was to assume his post Aug. 22, sought to promote a woman with whom he had an inappropriate relationship to be the CRC’s director of development. Both are married. Bremer denies having a sexual relationship with her.

The woman worked for RACOM Associates, a nonprofit agency that raises funds for the Back to God Hour.

She also resigned from her position.

The CRC’s executive committee tapped Borgdorff to fill a leadership void left by Bremer’s sudden departure, as well as the recent retirement of the Rev. David Engelhard, the former general secretary who is battling brain cancer.

Borgdorff also was due to retire this month as executive director of ministries. He readily agreed to stay on until the CRC Synod can hire a permanent top administrator next June.

A CRC minister for 36 years, Borgdorff, 65, offers wide experience at a time the denomination needs stability, said the Rev. Wayne Leys, president of the board of trustees.

“He understands what’s needed right now in the church, and is willing to give himself wholeheartedly to it.” said Leys, a minister from Lockport, Ill.

Borgdorff will fill a newly created position that combines many of his duties with those of Engelhard, for whom he has covered since Engelhard was diagnosed in February.

Among his top tasks will be organizing the 2006 Synod, communicating with other denominations and preparing for the CRC’s sesquicentennial in 2007.

Borgdorff’s appointment quickly followed the CRC’s disclosure that Bremer had resigned on July 29 both as executive director of the CRC and of the Back to God Hour, a broadcast ministry he led for nine years.

_ Charles Honey

Civil Rights Group Defends Employee Who Called Homosexuality `Perversion’

(RNS) A national civil rights group has taken up the case of a William Paterson University employee who was reprimanded for sending a professor an e-mail describing homosexuality as a “perversion.”

Jihad Daniel, a graduate student and employee of the Wayne, N.J., school, was found guilty last month of violating state discrimination and harassment laws after he sent the head of the women’s studies department the e-mail. In it he complained about an invitation he received to an on-campus showing of a film about a lesbian relationship.

“These are perversions,” Daniel wrote. “The absence of God in higher education brings on confusion. That is why in these classes the Creator of the heavens and the earth is never mentioned.”

The professor said she found Daniel’s one-paragraph e-mail threatening and filed a complaint with officials on the public university’s Wayne campus. They launched an investigation that eventually resulted in a letter of reprimand in Daniel’s permanent employee file.

“William Paterson’s punishment of Mr. Daniel is a direct attack on freedom of speech,” said David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil rights group that has taken up Daniel’s case.

“For the university to convict a student of `harassment’ for sending a single, non-threatening e-mail dangerously trivializes real harassment,” French added.

University officials declined to discuss the case.

The case began March 8 when Daniels received a campuswide announcement in his e-mail account inviting him to a viewing and discussion of the film “Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House” in the campus library.

The announcement, sent by Professor Arlene Holpp Scala, described the film as a “lesbian relationship story.” The event was in honor of Women’s History Month.

Daniel replied to Scala with a one-paragraph message asking not to be sent any more announcements related to homosexuality. Scala, chair of the women’s studies department, filed a discrimination complaint with university officials two days later.

“Mr. Daniel’s message to me sounds threatening and in violation of our university non-discrimination policy,” Scala wrote in her complaint. “I don’t want to feel threatened at my place of work when I send out announcements about events that address lesbian issues.”

_ Kelly Heyboer

Quote of the Day: Washington-area Latter-day Saint Rachel Morrissey

(RNS) “You have to be thin and pretty and smart, and you’re not allowed to be sad that you’re not with someone, because that makes you feel like you messed up, but you’re not allowed to be happy about not being with someone, either, because that’s wrong. It’s a hard church to be single in.”

_ Rachel Morrissey, a Washington-area member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was quoted by the Washington City Paper.

MO/JL END RNS