c. 2006 Religion News Service

Religion Newswriters Association to Move to University of Missouri

(RNS) The Religion Newswriters Association will move its headquarters to Missouri by 2008 as Debra Mason, its longtime executive director, becomes director of a center based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

Mason, who has headed RNA for 10 years, will also serve as executive director of the Center for Religion, the Professions & the Public at the University of Missouri-Columbia, replacing Ed Lambeth, who retired Sept. 1. Mason will continue as RNA executive director on a part-time basis.

The move was unanimously approved by the Missouri School of Journalism and RNA’s board of directors in August. The RNA will join other journalism groups, including Investigative Reporters and Editors, housed at the journalism school.

Currently based in Westerville, Ohio, RNA is the nation’s only professional association for journalists who write about religion.

Under Mason, RNA’s nonprofit foundation has received more than $5.4 million in grant funding to help journalists on the beat, including an online reference library and a source backgrounder distributed to more than 5,000 reporters regularly.

Somali Radio Station Back on the Air _ Minus Love Songs

(RNS) Islamic militants in Somalia are allowing a radio station to air again _ as long as it stays away from music, according to wire reports.

Radio Jowhar was closed Saturday (Sept. 9) because Islamist clerics said the radio was playing love songs that encouraged immorality.

That decision was altered on Monday (Sept. 11), allowing the station to reopen if it pledged to only broadcast news, readings from the Quran and Islamic lectures. Jowhar is a small farming town in Somalia, 56 miles north of the capital Mogadishu.

Some listeners are angry about Radio Jowhar’s new restrictions, Islamist spokesman Abdirahman Ali Mudey said, but he said the rules are reasonable in the predominantly Muslim nation.

“Since the media operators are Muslims, they should know they also have a role to protect and preserve our Islamic norms,” Mudey told Reuters.

The new group of Islamic militants, which swept into southern Somalia in June, has imposed a series of religious restrictions since taking control.

Islamist clerics banned movie viewing, publicly lashed drug users and stopped a wedding ceremony where women and men were socializing together, the Associated Press reported.

_ Kat Glass

Court Says Atheists Not Harmed By Boy Scout Recruiting

PORTLAND, Ore. (RNS) The Oregon Supreme Court has ruled that Portland Public Schools didn’t discriminate against atheist students by allowing the Boy Scouts to recruit during school hours.

Even though the Boy Scouts require a belief in God to become a member, the court ruled that no discrimination took place at school because neither the recruiter nor the Scout material distributed during lunchtime to elementary school boys mentioned religion.

“It is in the later enrollment in the organization that the Boy Scouts differentiate among those who do not profess a belief in a deity and those who do,” Justice W. Michael Gillette wrote in an opinion issued Friday (Sept. 8). “That enrollment, however, is not done by the school district.”

The 6-1 opinion reversed the Oregon Court of Appeals, which last year held that the school district had contributed to discrimination by allowing the Boy Scouts to recruit during school hours in 1996 at Harvey Scott Elementary School.

The mother of a first-grader, Remington Powell, sued because the Scouts don’t allow atheists to join. The high court, however, said the school district isn’t responsible for that policy.

“By its conduct in this case, the school district has done nothing more than permit a community group to provide nondiscriminatory information to parents and students, who may then voluntarily decide the extent of their involvement, or noninvolvement, in such activities,” Gillette wrote.

Justice Rives Kistler dissented, arguing that the recruitment effort “divided the elementary school children into two groups: those whose religious views agreed with the Scouts’ views and those whose views did not.”

The ruling drew praise from the Boy Scouts.

“It’s the right decision,” said Don Cornell, field director of the Columbia-Pacific Council of the Boy Scouts of America. “It’s going to allow Portland Public Schools to help parents find out about all community organizations available to their kids.”

Nancy Powell, an atheist who filed the suit on behalf of her son, called the ruling “a blow to my family … and a blow to Oregon.”

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

As it stands now, groups can ask to have the district send home recruiting materials and other information with students, which allows the district to note that the organizations are not sponsored by Portland Public Schools. To qualify, a group’s mission has to be primarily to support students. That caveat allows the district to bar hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan from sending home materials, said Jollee Patterson, a lawyer for Portland Public Schools.

_ Steven Carter and Scott Learn

Catholic Schools Petition for Cleanup Aid in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Officials of the Archdiocese of New Orelans say the state’s recovery effort is unfairly excluding Catholic schools from receiving millions of federal aid to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.

At issue is a recent announcement from the Louisiana Recovery Authority that it will tap $200 million in federal Community Development Block Grants to help rebuild schools. It is unclear whether private schools will be eligible for the aid.

One year after a host of Catholic schools in New Orleans opened their doors to thousands of public school students, even making two same-sex schools coed to accommodate displaced students, the archdiocese said Friday (Sept. 8) that it deserves a share of the federal assistance.

“We did right by the state of Louisiana,” said the Rev. William Maestri, superintendent of Catholic schools, which he said are facing an $84 million repair bill from uninsured losses. “We think it’s only fair the state also treat us fairly.”

The archdiocese is asking for 10 percent of the $200 million block grant and will submit an application to the Louisiana Recovery Authority for “brick and mortar projects,” he said.

Pat Forbes, director of the LRA’s infrastructure policy _ which has a $2 billion budget to repair public buildings damaged by last year’s floodwaters _ said, “Our needs are in the multiple billions of dollars for absolutely critical recovery and reconstruction projects.”

Of the $2 billion allotted for rebuilding infrastructure, Forbes said, $1.7 billion is spoken for. He encouraged the Catholic schools to apply for funding and denied accusations that Catholic schools had been excluded.

Catholic schools in New Orleans have used their own money to repair and renovate flood-damaged buildings, and students, teachers and families have volunteered to scrub and clean up in the citywide spirit of do-it-yourself renewal, he said.

Any exclusion from federal aid for private schools, Maestri said, goes against the spirit of fairness.

_ Gwen Filosa

Quote of the Day: Pope Benedict XVI

(RNS) “I would not say that the church in Germany is tired; there is fatigue everywhere.”

_ Pope Benedict XVI, speaking while on a tour of his native Germany. He was quoted by the Los Angeles Times (Sept. 10).

KRE/RB END RNS