c. 2006 Religion News Service
Reform Judaism Leader Speaks to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University
(RNS) Relations between American Jews and evangelical Christians have warmed in recent years, with the two backing Israel amid the latest intifada.
But an address Wednesday (April 26) by the head of American Jewry’s largest movement at the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s university has broken new ground.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism _ which represents the most liberal stream of American Jewry and some 1.5 million American Reform Jews _ pressed for the separation of church and state in a convocation at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.
In response to an invitation from Falwell, Yoffie spoke about where each community intersects _ support for Israel and disdain for America’s deteriorating values _ and where they diverge _ issues of abortion and homosexuality. He called for a civil discourse.
“We need less anger and more thoughtful reflection, less shouting and more listening,” said Yoffie. “Even when we disagree, let’s do so without demonizing each other. I can discuss these issues and believe what I believe without calling you a homophobic bigot, and you can do the same without calling me an uncaring baby killer. Let’s promote respect for each other’s religious tradition, and let’s work for civility in public debate.”
He warned against quick fixes to the country’s problems by putting matters of religion into government hands, and referred to the legacy of the founding fathers, who created unity among citizens by separating the spheres.
Yoffie’s speech comes after he voiced harsh words for the “religious right” in his biennial sermon before the Reform movement at a Houston gathering in November 2005.
“In our diverse democracy,” he said back then, “Americans need a common political discourse not dominated by exclusivist theology. They do not want to hear that unless you attend my church, accept my God and study my sacred text, you cannot be a moral person.”
After his Liberty University address and a lunch with Falwell, whom he met for the first time, Yoffie said in an interview that he stood behind his earlier comments, but that he might soften his tone today.
_ Rachel Pomerance
Interfaith Alliance Calls for Shutdown of Faith-based Office
(RNS) Interfaith leaders have called for President Bush to close the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives a week after the resignation of the office’s director.
“The so-called faith-based initiative was a bad idea as a campaign promise in 1999 and it’s even a worse idea today after we have seen the bureaucratic and political realities growing out of this initiative,” said the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, speaking to reporters in a Wednesday (April 26) audio news conference hosted by his Washington-based organization.
“The faith-based initiative turns houses of worship who receive its funds into contract employees of the federal government.”
Jim Towey, the director of the office since 2002, announced his resignation on April 18. He will leave by June 2 to become president of St. Vincent College, a Catholic school in Latrobe, Pa.
Towey told Religion News Service shortly after his announcement that the office will stay open, despite the hopes of its critics.
“That’s wishful thinking,” he said. “The reality is this initiative has taken root in America and will carry on after the president leaves office.”
But opponents to the office question the connections it may foster between church and state. They charge that the office has sapped some religious groups’ ability to speak out against the government.
“If you’re bound to the government, it’s very, very difficult to have that kind of prophetic voice,” said Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon, senior adviser to the Interfaith Alliance board of directors and a retired Episcopal bishop of Washington.
Imam Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, said, “As an African-American, I’m deeply concerned about the fact that the faith-based initiative has been used in a partisan manner often to recruit African-American pastors into the Republican Party.”
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based watchdog group, also has urged Bush to close the office with Towey’s departure. The Rev. Barry Lynn, its executive director, said Towey “waged an unrelenting war against church-state separation.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Detective Says Crucifix May Have Been Used in Stabbing of Nun
TOLEDO, Ohio (RNS) Without ever uttering the word “ritual,” a Toledo detective testified that a crucifix may have been used as a template for nine stab wounds that killed a nun in 1980 _ leaving the perfectly defined shape of an inverted cross on her chest.
The stab wounds are just some of the more lurid details in the state’s case against the Rev. Gerald Robinson, a 68-year-old Roman Catholic priest on trial for the murder.
He is accused of stabbing and choking Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in the chapel of a local hospital, on the eve of Easter Sunday, 1980.
“Ritual” is a term often used to describe the slaying, which left 31 stab wounds on the 71-year-old nun’s partially undressed body.
The most chilling evidence so far in this trial came Tuesday (April 25) from Detective Terry Cousino of the Toledo Police Department’s Scientific Investigation Unit.
Using a mannequin on the courtroom floor to represent Pahl, he described how an altar cloth had been placed over her body before a blade was plunged into her heart nine times _ defining the cross.
He used the actual, bloody altar cloth for the demonstration, and described how it had been folded over and how tears in each half matched, and fit the tears in her clothing and flesh as well.
The cloth was removed for the other 22 wounds about her chest, neck and head.
Cousino said he looked for a crucifix to match the initial stab wounds because they were too perfectly aligned to have been done without a template. He also said three different blood stains matched the outline of a letter opener police took from Robinson’s hospital quarters in 1980.
Prosecutors believe the small, saber-shaped letter opener was the murder weapon.
Testimony from a forensic anthropologist and a deputy Lucas County coroner also supported the letter-opener theory.
Assistant County Prosecutor Dean Mandros said Friday that it fit a small wound in Pahl’s jaw like a key in a lock. Cousino said the wound and the tip of the opener were “similar.”
The state has only hinted at a motive _ a falling out between the priest and nun _ and produced no eyewitnesses that can place Robinson at the scene.
Defense attorneys have characterized the state’s evidence as incomplete and contradictory and are expected to call their own experts.
_ James Ewing
Conservative Groups Call for Government Crackdown on TV Indecency
(RNS) A coalition of conservative organizations has renewed its call for national legislation that cracks down on TV indecency.
In a Tuesday (April 25) conference call, representatives from four groups discussed their desire that the Senate take action to prevent what they deem indecent programming from reaching households across the United States.
The groups have a fight on their hands. On April 13 and 14, the four major television networks filed lawsuits with the aim of overturning recent indecency rulings from the Federal Communications Commission.
The lawsuits filed by NBC, ABC, Fox, and CBS, Hearst-Argyle Television and their affiliates called into question the government’s role in deciding what viewers can and cannot watch on TV. The suit claims that parents have the tools necessary to decide what is seen or not seen in their homes and that much of the responsibility should lie with them.
Spokespersons for the Parents Television Council, Concerned Women for America, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council say it’s time the U.S. Senate enact legislation.
“Parents are not those given a license for broadcasting. … (They) are not the violators, broadcasters are,” said Daniel Weiss, senior analyst for media and sexuality at Focus on the Family.
The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 was passed in the House of Representatives, but has yet to go to a vote in the Senate.
“We are not advocating any specific form of legislation,” said L. Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council. “What we want is for the Senate to take action, to put real meat on the bones of these fines.” Bozell referred to current fines placed on programs cited for indecent content as “chop suey.”
Representatives from these four groups say that current fines are not enough to deter networks from airing content. Weiss cited a $550,000 fine handed out in connection with the Janet Jackson halftime show of the 2005 Super Bowl, deeming it too small to have an effect.
The group also questioned why Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, hasn’t brought up the proposed decency law on the Senate floor.
_ Nate Herpich
Lawsuit Alleges Department of Veteran Affairs Endorses Religion
(RNS) An organization representing atheists and agnostics is suing the Department of Veterans Affairs for policies the group says constitute using federal funds to endorse religion in VA hospitals.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation filed the suit April 19 in the U.S. District Court, Western District of Wisconsin. The organization states the lawsuit is its seventh legal action against faith-based initiatives.
In the suit, Freedom From Religion states the VA “now goes beyond providing chaplain services for free exercise purposes, and the VA instead has integrated pastoral care services as part of its protocol for providing substantive medical services to patients.”
Veterans Affairs administers the largest health-care system in the country. The Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Faith-based and Community Initiatives offers federal grants to religious organizations that provide services to veterans.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation claims the VA “expects chaplains to be involved as part of the medical treatment team for all patients, and a spiritual/faith assessment is to be made of each patient admitted into the VA medical system.”
The suit lists several examples of policies the organization says overstep the boundary between church and state, such as the requirement at the VA Health Care Network Upstate New York that patients receive a pastoral visit within 24 hours of admission, and a spiritual needs assessment that is included in patients’ medical records.
Policies such as these, according to the complaint, serve to “create the appearance of increased value for chaplain services, as a basis for increased chaplain funding” at the taxpayer’s expense, and “gives the appearance of the government’s official support for and advocacy of religion.”
The Department of Justice, which will decide where the case will be brought to court, said it would not comment as the agency has not yet received the suit from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Madison.
_ Anne Pessala
Eds: “a Common Place” is cq in the list of “Best in Class” winners.
Associated Church Press Names Annual Contest Winners
(RNS) Sojourners magazine, the Mennonite Weekly Review and U.S. Catholic magazine were among top winners in the “Best in Class” categories of the annual Associated Church Press awards.
Sojourners won an “Award of Excellence” in the ecumenical magazine category. The Mennonite Weekly Review won the same honor for national or international newspapers. U.S. Catholic won the top prize for denominational general interest magazine.
The awards were presented April 25 during the organization’s annual meeting in Orlando, Fla.
Other top “Best in Class” winners were:
Regional newspaper: Central Florida Episcopalian
Special-interest magazine: a Common Place
Journal: Touchstone
Newsletter: At Home With Our Faith
News Service: Presbyterian News Service
Independent Web site or E-zine: Cafe.
Religion News Service received a second-place “Award of Merit” in the “Best in Class” category for news services.
RNS Senior Correspondent Adelle M. Banks won an Award of Excellence for coverage of the Southern Baptist Convention in June 2005.
The Associated Church Press, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary, is believed to be the oldest religious press association in North America.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Day: United Methodist Bishop Michael Coyner
(RNS) “There is one number in our denomination which keeps going up. It is the percentage of churches that did not receive even one person as a new member by profession of faith, a number that is now up to 43 percent. … It is causing all kinds of other numbers to decline, including our ability to stand before God and say we are doing a good job in making disciples.”
_ United Methodist Bishop Michael Coyner of Indiana, lamenting the percentage of churches that are not gaining members who join the church based on a personal statement of faith (as opposed to joining through baptism). He was quoted by United Methodist News Service.
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