c. 2005 Religion News Service

Progressive Church Leaders Warn Bush, Congress on Budget Cuts

WASHINGTON (RNS) Citing an “obscene” 2006 federal budget that hurts the poor, progressive church leaders warned Monday (Nov. 21) that President Bush and Republicans will pay a price at the polls next November.

A bill that includes $50 billion in spending cuts barely passed the House on Friday in a 217-215 vote. GOP leaders say the cuts are needed to rein in federal spending, but critics _ including many church leaders _ say the cuts only hurt the poor while extending tax breaks to the rich.

“This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s a stark moral choice,” said the Rev. Jim Wallis, a progressive evangelical who heads the Call to Renewal anti-poverty campaign. “The House bill is obscene.”

Lawmakers will spend the next month trying to negotiate differences between the House bill and the Senate’s $35 billion version. Church leaders successfully lobbied to protect food stamps from proposed cuts in the Senate bill.

During a “Faith Summit on Poverty” convened by Wallis, the church leaders said they would press to have the Senate funding of food stamps retained in the final bill. They also oppose cuts in funding for low-income health care through Medicaid, child care and student loans.

“A Christian president better pay attention to what Christians think about this budget bill,” Wallis said, warning that lawmakers will “pay a political price for not protecting low-income people.”

Wallis and others, including Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action and the Rev. Glenn Palmberg of the Evangelical Covenant Church, said conservatives are slowly discovering that “God cares about the poor” in addition to hot-button social issues.

Some social conservatives, however, have not followed Wallis’ focus on the budget. Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, for example, urged his members to support the House bill to help restore “the fiscal discipline that families take for granted.”

But Palmberg said “compassionate conservatives” will not accept the budget cuts, and the Rev. Wes Granberg-Michaelson, head of the Reformed Church in America, cautioned Republicans against relying on so-called “values voters” for support.

“It is a profound political misreading that somehow this is a political approach that the church will be content with, and that the church will buy,” he said.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Study of Clergy Education Reveals Challenges for Seminaries

(RNS) A new study on the education of the nation’s clergy shows that theological schools are challenged to meet disparate needs of students as they prepare them to serve congregations and communities.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching released findings from a three-year study of theological education in Christian and Jewish settings on Friday (Nov. 18.)

Researchers working with the Stanford, Calif.-based foundation learned that theological students arrive on campus from far more diverse backgrounds than in the past. More women and minorities fill theological classrooms, the study found, and the student population has varied academic abilities and backgrounds.

Larry Goleman, a research consultant for the study, said Jewish and Catholic seminaries require some prerequisite coursework so students are familiar with some of the basics of the faith before they arrive on campus.

“Protestant seminaries, on the other hand, don’t, and this is a big issue for them,” said Goleman, director of the Sacred Visions and Social Good Program at the Dominican University of California. “They have to deal with students who just found God and students who’ve been living as baptized members of their community since they were babies.”

Researchers found that the majority of seminary alumni said they appreciated the theological school experience but did not feel prepared for some aspects of their work as clergy, such as management roles and counseling in difficult situations.

“Part of the responses came out of dealing with questions about the meaning of life, dealing with funerals and death,” said Charles Foster, director of the Carnegie Study of Clergy Education.

The 18 institutions that were part of the study included Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Conn.; Jewish Theological Seminary in New York; Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Ind.; Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.; and Howard University School of Divinity in Washington.

The results of the research have been published in a study guide titled “Educating Clergy: Teaching Practices and Pastoral Imagination” by Carnegie and Jossey-Bass.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Reform Jewish Leader Urges Conversions, Criticizes Religious Right

(RNS) In a departure from previous interfaith outreach efforts, the leader of the Reform Jewish movement told members gathered for the group’s biennial convention that they should focus more on urging non-Jews to convert to Judaism.

Also at the meeting, which drew 4,200 Reform leaders to Houston, Rabbi Eric Yoffie criticized the Christian right for what he called “bigoted” and intolerant beliefs and statements. Yoffie said that religious conservatives often exclude non-evangelicals from their definition of who is a “moral person.”

“We are appalled when `people of faith’ is used in such a way that it excludes us, as well as most Jews, Catholics and Muslims,” Yoffie said in his hourlong sermon Saturday (Nov. 19) to the gathering. “What could be more bigoted than to claim that you have a monopoly on God and that anyone who disagrees with you is not a person of faith?”

Yoffie’s emotional sermon also included his announcement about urging more non-Jews to convert if they are married to Jews. The Reform movement has long been outspoken in confronting the effects of high intermarriage rates on Jewish life. In addition to the outreach programs that it offers through synagogues and community groups, Yoffie said the Union for Reform Judaism is launching a new program to help synagogues attract converts and achieve “lifelong membership.”

“We want families to function as Jewish families, and while intermarried families can surely do this, we recognize the advantages of an intermarried family becoming a fully Jewish family, with two adult Jewish partners,” he said.

Yoffie’s sermon also criticized the movement for failing to be a strong moral voice on teen sexuality. He then announced a new initiative to curtail teen sexual experimentation, chiefly the rising rates of teen oral sex and casual “hooking up.”

“We are the most creative and forward-looking movement in Jewish life, but in the realm of personal behavior, we are reluctant to ever use the word `forbidden.’ Yet in dealing with kids engaged in destructive behavior, the concept of autonomy leaves us unable to set limits and make sound judgments,” he said.

At the convention, the movement voted overwhelmingly to oppose the nomination to the Supreme Court of Judge Samuel Alito Jr., saying that his confirmation “would threaten protection of the most fundamental rights” that the movement values, specifically civil rights, women’s rights and the scope of federal power.

The Reform movement claims 1.5 million members and more than 900 synagogues nationwide.

_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Thousands Take Course on Spiritual Lessons of Holocaust

(RNS) The adult education arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic Jewish sect that focuses on outreach to all Jews, has launched an international course that seeks to examine the moral and spiritual lessons of the Holocaust.

“Beyond Never Again: The Holocaust _ A View From the Soul” is a new approach to Holocaust study, its backers say _ a philosophical exploration rather than the customary catalog of history and suffering.

An estimated 10,000 adults are taking the six-week course launched Nov. 7 in 160 locations worldwide. It comes amid the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps and the anniversary of Kristallnacht, “the Night of Broken Glass” _ the 1938 riots against German Jews, their businesses and synagogues _ which some consider the start of the Holocaust.

The timing also marks a new moment in Holocaust remembrance, according to The Jewish Learning Institute, Chabad’s adult education program.

After the shock of the Holocaust, the last few decades have seen a tremendous urge to document the catastrophe _ nearly every major U.S. and European city now hosts Holocaust memorials or museums, said Rabbi Efraim Mintz, director of The Jewish Learning Institute.

“We’re now at the tail-end of that era,” he said. “Where do we go from here?”

Mintz answers himself by voicing the course’s mission _ to find the Holocaust’s moral and spiritual meaning for contemporary American Jewry.

By exploring how Holocaust victims found strength for life and studying Jewish text, today’s students, who are primarily Jewish, will learn how to sustain themselves “in the face of our sort of smaller horrors, if you will.”

On a philosophical level, the Holocaust shows the danger of a godless society, exemplified by Germany at the time, Mintz said.

Man my twist and rationalize moral standards, but an “absolute moral compass can only be set by God,” he stated by e-mail.

But for one of Mintz’s students, 81-year-old Jacob Koltun, finding his own faith after enduring the Holocaust is an ongoing struggle.

Forced to search his Polish town to bury dead Jews in a mass grave he had to help dig, Koltun lives with the memory of infants shot dead in their cradles. “It’s in my mind forever,” he said.

In one of Mintz’s recent classes, he sang aloud the Hebrew prayer, which translates to “I believe,” sung by Jews as they marched to the gas chambers.

“It reminds me that we were pleading to God and God wasn’t here.”

Asked why he attends the class, and continues to study Jewish text, he said, “Maybe I do it because they have an answer.

“I want to believe,” he said.

“I don’t know if I can ever be that religious, but I know that I am attached to Judaism, you know, I’m part of it,” he said. “I’m going to do it forever as long as I live, and I’m not a youngster anymore.”

_ Rachel Pomerance

Pope Declines Invitation to Visit San Antonio

(RNS) Pope Benedict XVI has declined an invitation to visit San Antonio for next year’s 275th anniversary of San Fernando Cathedral, the oldest active cathedral in the United States.

Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, deputy secretary of state at the Vatican, informed San Antonio Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of the news in a letter.

“Although it is not possible for him to accept your kind invitation, he sends heartfelt good wishes for the occasion,” Sandri wrote, according to a Nov. 16 statement by Deacon Pat Rodgers, a spokesman for Gomez.

San Fernando Cathedral will mark its 275th anniversary March 9. At the same time, the archdiocese will celebrate the completion of a $15 million restoration campaign at the cathedral.

“The presence of Pope Benedict XVI would have indeed been a wonderful way to celebrate this historic event in the life of the church of San Antonio,” Gomez said in response to the Vatican letter. “However, we welcome the Holy Father’s prayers and good wishes.”

Benedict XVI smiled and responded, “We’ll see,” when Gomez extended the invitation during a July 1 gathering for archbishops who received the pallium, the principal symbol of their office, the day before.

Founded March 9, 1731, by 15 families who came from the Canary Islands at the invitation of King Phillip V of Spain, the San Fernando church was planned as the center of life in the new settlement. The cornerstone of the building was laid in 1738, making it the oldest parish church in Texas. Today, San Fernando Cathedral draws more than 5,000 to each weekend’s Masses.

Pope John Paul II prayed and spoke to students in religious formation at San Fernando on Sept. 13, 1987, as part of a 22-hour visit to San Antonio in which more than 1 million people saw him _ more than in any other city on that 10-day tour to the United States.

_ Bobby Ross Jr.

Quote of the Day: Elementary school principal Deborah Dancy

(RNS) “I certainly welcome it. The children who participate in the program are much more courteous, cooperative and respectful. Anything we can do to reduce discipline problems and develop character we are willing to do at this school.”

_ Deborah Dancy, principal of William Ellery Channing Elementary School in Hyde Park, Mass., where Child Evangelism Fellowship opened a Good News Bible Club. She was quoted by The Boston Globe.

MO/PH END RNS