c. 2006 Religion News Service
Religious Leaders Urge Attention on U.S. Hunger
WASHINGTON (RNS) As debate over banning gay marriage began in the Senate, one religious leader across town argued that another issue deserved more religious attention _ hunger.
“There are some in the ministry concerned about homosexuality,” said the Rev. Lennox Yearwood of Washington’s youth-oriented Hip Hop Caucus. “I don’t care what is going on in the bedroom. I don’t care if there’s whips or chains or whatever. … Those days are over. It is time for us to be concerned with what is going on in the kitchen.”
Yearwood and six representatives of religious organizations made impassioned pleas Monday (June 5) for an end to hunger. The panel discussion was sponsored by the national food bank network, America’s Second Harvest, on the eve of the fifth annual National Hunger Awareness Day (June 6).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said 38.2 million Americans lived in households unable to purchase enough food in 2004, an increase of 2 million from the previous year. America’s Second Harvest claims that one out of every four people in a soup kitchen line is a child.
“This is embarrassing …,” Yearwood said. “In the richest country in the world, in the most powerful, beautiful nation in the world … how do we bring hunger into the 21st century?”
The panelists called for the strengthening of anti-hunger programs, such as emergency food assistance and food stamps in the Farm Bill, expected to be debated and rewritten by Congress next year.
“This kind of farm bill is good for U.S. farmers, it is good for hungry people, and it is also a piece that we need to move to the Shalom of God,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of the Christian anti-hunger lobbying group, Bread for the World.
Other panelists included Judith Podja, of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference; the Rev. Rudy Rasmus, co-founder of Houston’s Bread for Life food drive; and Sister Christine Vladimiroff, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group of Catholic nuns
Imam Misbahudeen Rufai, member of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, criticized the country for wasting so much food, saying that the Quran teaches that “God does not love those who waste.”
And Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit, director of outreach and external affairs for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, expressed his outcry, in English and Hebrew, through song.
“And you shall eat and be satisfied and then you’ll have the right to give thanks,” Zevit sang. “We share in a vision of wholeness and realize where every child is nourished we all live in peace.”
_ Piet Levy
Membership Drops 2 Percent in Presbyterian Church (USA)
(RNS) Membership in the Presbyterian Church (USA) decreased by more than 2 percent in 2005, the largest decline since 1975, according to the denomination’s research office.
Membership in the largest Presbyterian body in the country fell by 48,474 to 2,313,662 in 2005, according to the research office. The numbers only include Presbyterians who have been baptized in the church and retain active membership.
The church has been losing members since 1966, and the membership has declined by at least 1 percent since 1969, Jack Marcum, the church’s associate for survey research, told the Presbyterian News Service.
Between 1970 and 1975, there was an “acceleration” in the loss of members, but since 1975, the decline has “been somewhere between 1 (percent) and 2 percent,” Marcum said.
The decline in membership occurred in virtually every statistical category,according to the Presbyterian News Service.
Though almost 125,000 people joined the denomination last year, 28,680 transferred to other churches, 36,191 members died and more than 108,000 dropped out or moved to churches “not in correspondence” with the PC(USA).
Despite the drop in membership, total giving at the church increased by more than 5 percent, to $3.07 billion.
The denomination is holding its 217th General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala. June 15-22.
_ Daniel Burke
ACLU Backs Student’s Right to Sing Christian Song
FRENCHTOWN, N.J. (RNS) The American Civil Liberties Union filed a legal brief Monday (June 5) supporting an elementary school student’s right to express her religion by singing a pop Christian song at a school talent show.
Maryann and Robert Turton sued the district last year after the school struck the act from its performance list. School officials said the Turtons’ daughter, Olivia, then in second grade, could not sing the song “Awesome God” at the evening talent show because it was too religious for a school setting.
After the suit was filed in federal court in Trenton, the ACLU asked to intervene in the case.
School officials banned Olivia from singing the song, arguing its content was unsuitable for the school-run talent show held in May 2005. Concerned about crossing the line separating church from state, they said the performance might lead the audience to believe the school endorsed Olivia’s religion.
Olivia did perform, but sang a song from “Annie” along with a group of friends.
A hearing in the case has been tentatively set for July 3 before U.S. District Judge Stanley Chesler.
Demetrios Stratis, attorney for the Turton family, said he hopes for a summary judgment, in which the judge would decide the case on the basis of oral arguments rather than proceeding to trial.
Catherine Lent, president of the Frenchtown Board of Education, last year said the school does not want to be viewed as being against religion.
“We’re not anti-Christian; I went to a Christian college,” Lent said. “We’re just anti-this song.”
In court documents filed last week, the school board said the song was not appropriate for several reasons, including “violent imagery,” and cited lyrics that read, “There is thunder in his footsteps and lightning in his fists” and “It wasn’t for no reason that He shed his blood.”
_ Bev McCarron and Joe Tyrrell
British Muslims Elect New Leader Amid Terrorism Probe
LONDON (RNS) Britain’s largest Islamic group has elected a new leader _ and he has immediately found himself catapulted into a new furor over arrests by police of two Muslim men as suspected terrorists.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, a 52-year-old Bangladeshi, was chosen Sunday (June 4) to take over from Iqbal Sacranie as general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, the largest lobbying body for the nation’s estimated 1.6 million Muslims.
In his acceptance address at the organization’s annual general meeting, Bari said the council’s duty is “to reassure British Muslims they can live lives in Britain as good British citizens and as devout Muslims.”
But he conceded that “many Muslims may feel unsettled and perhaps fearful” after a June 2 police raid at a house in London that nabbed two Muslim brothers suspected of making a chemical bomb and that “some younger people may even be feeling angry about what happened.”
The man whom Bari succeeded, Iqbal Sacranie, had held the Muslim Council’s top job since 2002, with the tricky task of guiding Britain’s Muslims in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States and the July 7, 2005, terror bombings that claimed 56 lives, including four Muslim bombers, on London subway and bus networks.
Heightened concern over terrorism means the task will be no easier for Bari, who had served as Sacranie’s deputy secretary general for the past four years.
“British Muslims are under the spotlight after recent events,” said Bari, who also is chairman of the largest mosque in east London. “We know that many British Muslims are feeling unsettled and fearful in the light of recent anti-terrorism raids.”
He also said that among the tasks facing him are those of “the elements of extremism and radicalism in a tiny section of the community, and of course the wider society _ Islamophobia, racism, xenophobia.”
_ Al Webb
Quote of the Day: Ambassadors Ministries Spokesman Jan Piet
(RNS) “I don’t think the devil has much more to do today than on any other day of the year. He causes discord and celebrates some victory just about every day.”
_ Jan Piet, spokesman for the Ambassadors Ministries, a Dutch religious group that organized a nationwide 24-hour prayer marathon on Tuesday (June 6) as a “counterweight” to groups that planned to mark the date _ 06/06/2006 _ with events related to the devil. He was quoted by the Associated Press.
KRE/JL END RNS