Thursday’s RNS report begins with two stories on chaplains. Adelle M. Banks reports that conservatives are pushing for free speech rights for chaplains: Political leaders and grass-roots petitioners have asked President Bush to issue an executive order that would allow chaplains to pray in public according to their religious beliefs. Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington-based legal organization, is spearheading a petition drive signed by more than 80,000 people. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., and dozens of members of Congress have made a similar request. The requests come at a time when the Air Force faces legal action about alleged proselytism in its ranks. In addition, the Air Force recently released interim guidelines about religious expression, fueling concern among Christian conservatives that their religious freedom is under assault. Sekulow called the issue “one of the hottest topics” on his live call-in radio show this year.
Kay Campbell’s story is about army chaplains grieving for soldiers lost in Iraq: He speaks several languages, including Latin. But when the talkative Maj. Gerze Rzasowski, an Army chaplain, opens a book holding pictures and brief biographies of the 870 soldiers who have died since last November on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, he runs out of words. “Just to open this and see the faces,” says Rzasowski, pausing as he leafs through the pages and stops to read for a moment, “it’s kind of, yes, sobering.” Rzasowski and a fellow chaplain, Maj. John Chun, grieve at a memorial to fallen soldiers in a corner of Redstone Arsenal’s Bicentennial Chapel. Over a display of empty boots, soldiers’ belongings and scattered pebbles to signify the desert setting of the current campaigns hangs a long banner printed with the names of the fallen.
An Oklahoma pastor’s change of heart has driven away much of his church, according to an article by Bill Sherman: A high-profile evangelical pastor who lost 90 percent of his 5,000 members after adopting a universalist theology has begun holding services in Tulsa’s oldest and largest Episcopal church. Bishop Carlton Pearson’s “gospel of inclusion” theology-that Christ died for the sins of the world, and therefore the whole world will be saved-went against evangelical orthodoxy that salvation requires a personal response to the message of Christ. Higher Dimensions, founded by Pearson in 1981, once was one of Tulsa’s largest and most prosperous churches. Its high-energy, sharp-dressing pastor appeared regularly on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and at national conferences, wrote several books, and hosted an annual Azusa Street conference that drew national speakers like T.D. Jakes, Time Magazine’s best preacher in America.
