c. 2007 Religion News Service
NCC’s Edgar to Take Helm of Common Cause
(RNS) The Rev. Bob Edgar, the outgoing general secretary of the National Council of Churches, has been named president of the public interest advocacy group Common Cause.
Edgar, 63, a former congressman from Pennsylvania and an ordained United Methodist minister, was elected by Common Cause’s governing board on Friday (May 18). His tenure at the NCC ends Dec. 31 and he will split time between the two organizations until then, according to representatives.
“With devastating consequences, powerful special interests distort and disrupt the democratic process in ways that shift political power away from the American people,” Edgar said. “I look forward to carrying on (Common Cause founder) John Gardner’s vision of … a people’s lobby both in Washington, D.C. and in the states.”
Edgar has served on Common Cause’s national governing board since 2005 and succeeds Chellie Pingree, who retired in February. The Washington-based nonpartisan group, which advocates for ethical, open government and campaign finance reform, among other issues, claims 300,000 members and supporters.
Edgar announced in October that he would not seek a third term at the NCC, where he has been since 2000.
In his 10 years at the National Council of Churches, Edgar is credited with turning around its dim financial outlook through active fundraising. When he took over, the ecumenical organization sat in deep debt; now it claims to have several million dollars in reserve.
_ Daniel Burke
Colorado Christian University to Appeal Tuition Assistance Ruling
(RNS) A Christian university in Colorado plans to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that a state education commission could deny tuition assistance to its students.
U.S. District Judge Marcia S. Krieger of Denver ruled Friday (May 18) that the Colorado Commission on Higher Education could exclude “pervasively sectarian” Colorado Christian University because that exclusion “operates to advance a compelling governmental interest.”
The state offers tuition assistance to low-income college students but its constitution prohibits the distribution of public money for religious education.
The college, which sued in 2004, argued that the commission’s “`pervasively’ sectarian” test violated aspects of the Constitution, including the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. It noted that students who attend the university and pursue studies in secular professions are disqualified while students at public institutions who have the same majors are not.
“… CCU’s designation as a pervasively sectarian institution suggests that a substantial portion of the `secular’ instruction its students receive is inextricably entwined with religious indoctrination,” Krieger wrote.
She said the school’s argument about secular education is “misplaced” because the secular instruction at other schools is “readily severable from any religious teaching.”
Colorado Christian University President Bill Armstrong said the school intends to appeal the case to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The effect of the ruling is to say that Colorado students will be denied state tuition aid for college if they want to attend a religious school,” he said. “Judge Marcia S. Krieger’s decision is a setback for the students involved and for religious liberty.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Radio Station Refuses Ads About Female Pastor
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (RNS) Mars Hill, a local Christian radio network, won’t accept paid advertising for an upcoming Christian crusade in Syracuse because a female pastor is participating.
“We can’t comfortably promote women in the role of pastor,” said Wayne Taylor, the general manager.
Mars Hill’s nine-member, all-male board of directors voted unanimously Tuesday (May 22) to accept an interpretation of Scripture that prohibits women from serving as church elders or pastors. That means the Syracuse-based network of four stations will not advertise or promote the two-day City Wide Crusade, which features a June 8 appearance by televangelist Pastor Paula White.
“It’s a doctrinal issue,” Taylor said. “It’s not about women preaching. It has to do with a woman taking on a pastor’s role.”
Some Christians say literal interpretations of the Bible describe specific roles for men and women. “We know it’s not going to be popular,” Taylor said of the board’s decision. “The word of God is what we’re taught.”
Bishop Robert Jones, founder of Syracuse’s Apostolic Church of Christ, the church whose 1970s neighborhood revival developed into the City Wide Crusade, disagrees with Taylor’s interpretation.
“I have no problem with women pastors,” Jones said.
White and her husband, Randy White, are co-pastors of Without Walls Church in Tampa, Fla. Neither White nor her publicist was available for comment Tuesday.
_ Renee K. Gadoua
Parishioners Protest Plans to Sell Church to Synagogue
BERLIN (RNS) Fifteen German churchgoers are about to enter the third month of a sit-in to save their church from becoming a synagogue.
Due to falling attendance, Germany’s Evangelical (Protestant) church agreed to sell the Paul Gerhardt Church in Bielefeld to the local Jewish community, which wants to turn it into a synagogue. The decision sits poorly with longtime church members who feel their church has been sold out from under them.
“I’m going to stay here until I’m certain it (the sale) won’t happen,” said Hermann Geller, a 66-year-old retirees, quoted in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Southern German Newspaper), as he prepared to bed down on an air mattress for the 58th day of his vigil earlier this week.
The Paul Gerhardt congregation merged with the Church of Mary in 2005. At the time, the Gerhardt church’s congregation had dwindled to 1,600. When a vote came up in 2006 about whether to keep the Gerhardt church, built in 1958, or the Church of Mary, which was built in the 13th century, the vote came down clearly in Mary’s favor.
Geller and others say they were tricked and never told that their old church would be sold. The sale, according to a church spokesman, cannot be stopped.
Some opponents have argued that letting a Jewish congregation take over an old Christian landmark could lead to an outbreak of anti-Semitism in Bielefeld. Geller, speaking for the protesters, says there is plenty of space on the church’s plot of land for a synagogue alongside the church. He just wants his church to remain open, and to remain Christian.
Church officials have ruled out clearing the church by force.
Rabbi Henry Brandt says protesters are blocking “a project that could show that Jews have a place in German society once again.”
_ Niels Sorrells
Former Disciples Leader to Head Ecumenical Group
(RNS) The ecumenical group Christian Churches Together named a former head of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) as its first executive administrator.
The Rev. Richard L. Hamm, who served 10 years as general minister and president of the Disciples, will be the first full-time staffer at the fledgling Christian Churches Together.
“I have always been drawn to the vision of the various parts of the church of Jesus Christ in the United States seeking common ground and working together in all ways possible,” Hamm said in a statement.
Composed of 36 churches and denominations, Christian Churches Together was officially organized in 2006 and held its first meeting in February. The group draws members from five Christian “families”: Catholics, evangelicals and Pentecostals, Orthodox, mainline Protestants and racial/ethnic churches. The coalition has placed an early focus on evangelism and reducing poverty.
The Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America and a president of Christian Churches Together, said Hamm “was involved with CCT during its formative time and … understood the necessity of deepening fellowship between leaders of Christian `families’ who, in many cases, had little relationship with each other.”
Hamm is also founder and president of the Columbia Partnership, a Christian consulting firm. He said that CCT has “an appropriate post-modern model, with its focus on networking, consensus building and action. The prospect of helping to shape and grow such a post-modern organization for the sake of common witness and mission is truly exciting.”
_ Daniel Burke
American Legion, Legal Groups To Defend Religious Symbols on Memorials
WASHINGTON (RNS) The American Legion has joined forces with two conservative legal groups in a campaign to defend religious symbols on veterans’ memorials.
Reacting to suits by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups that have challenged crosses at memorials in San Diego and the Mojave Desert, the veterans organization hopes to halt future efforts that would remove religious symbols.
“We stand here today to put the ACLU and any other organization on notice that filing self-enriching lawsuits for the removal of religious symbols that are on veterans’ memorials will not be tolerated,” said American Legion Past National Commander Tom Bock at a news conference on Thursday (May 25).
In an interview, Bock said memorial religious symbols other than crosses would also be defended.
“The religious symbols on them reflect the service of that veteran regardless of that belief,” he said. “We’re a free nation. We have many, many beliefs in this nation.”
The American Legion intends to create a private database of local veterans memorials. Two other groups, the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, and the Texas-based Liberty Legal Institute, intend to help defend city and county governments that may be sued for having religious symbols on those memorials.
Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said the symbols that often appear on veterans’ memorials “end up being majority religious symbols” and the government should not be promoting them.
“It would be better if they were planning cases that would be keeping the government out of sponsoring religious symbols,” Gunn said. “The religious symbols are things that people, families, religious institutions should all be able to post, but we should not be using the government and taxpayer dollars to be erecting religious symbols that the Alliance Defense Fund and the American Legion like.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Church of England to Review Sexual Abuse Policies
LONDON (RNS) Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says the Church of England is launching a review into child abuse in the wake of sex scandal convictions involving a cleric, a former choirmaster and a church warden dating back decades.
All three have been jailed, and Williams told BBC radio in an interview Friday (May 25) that “I acknowledge that errors were made in the period that is being discussed.”
The church, he conceded, had “let people down in various ways.”
Williams conceded that until 1995, the church’s “practice (involving child abuse accusations) was very variable, very uneven and often not very competent or well-informed about the law or best practice”
Williams insisted that the Church of England now has a “very clear policy” when it comes to handling child abuse cases, but he stressed that “we have got to make it work _ we have got to get this into the bloodstream.”
“We don’t just want to look good,” he said. “We want to do it properly.” And if it is deemed that an independent inquiry is necessary, he pledged, the church will seek “adequate, professional independent advice.”
In the latest abuse case cited by Williams, the Rev. David Smith of Clevedon, in southwest England, was jailed after he was convicted of the sexual abuse of six boys over a 30-year period.
The other two cases saw Peter Halliday, a 61-year-old former choirmaster from Farnborough, England, sentenced to 21/2 years in prison for sexually abusing boys in the late 1980s, and Derrick Norris, a church warden in Northampton, England, jailed for 81/2 years for abusing a young girl and sexually abusing a teen-age boy.
_ Al Webb
Indian Conversion Laws Come Under Government Review
CHENNAI, India (RNS) India’s National Commission for Minorities has asked several Indian states that have adopted controversial anti-conversion laws to provide data about how many people have been convicted under the new laws.
The commission is trying to assess the reasons for, and the impact of, the anti-conversion laws passed in various Indian states, including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Orissa, Chattisgarh, and Himachal Pradesh.
Religious conversion has become a volatile social and political issue in India, where pro-Hindu political parties in some states are cracking down on Christian missionaries and social workers.
The laws stipulate that a person intending to convert from one religion to another must give at least 30 days’ notice to the district magistrate, who then “shall get the matter inquired into by such agency as he may deem fit.” Failure to give notice is punishable by a fine. No notice is required if a person reverts to his original religion, however.
In the northern state of Rajasthan, which passed its law last year, officials said the bill was necessary to prohibit religious conversion “by use of force, allurement or fraudulent means,” and to check the activities of Christian missionaries in some parts of the state. Church leaders strongly condemned the move.
The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party holds sway in several northern and western states _ the same areas where cases of discriminatory action against minority communities have been reported.
According to reports submitted to the federal commission, the states that already passed the law have yet to provide any evidence of forcible conversions.
_ Achal Narayanan
Pope Upgrades Interfaith Outreach Office
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI will upgrade a Vatican office in charge of dialogue with the Islamic world, a little more than a year after subordinating it to another body.
The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue will become “a dicastery in its own right,” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as secretary of state is the Vatican’s No. 2 official, said in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa.
Dicasteries _ committees that implement policy and are typically staffed by cardinals and archbishops _ are the Vatican’s equivalent of government ministries.
In February 2006, Benedict reassigned the council’s president, Archbishop Michael L. Fitzgerald, the Vatican’s most prominent liaison with Islam, to Cairo, where he has since served as apostolic nuncio (ambassador) to Egypt.
A month later, the council was effectively downgraded by being placed under a joint presidency with the Pontifical Council for Culture.
Observers have already described the latest change in policy as an effort to improve the Vatican’s strained relations with Islam.
“This is a sign, to Muslims and people of other faiths, that the policies of Pope John Paul will continue,” said the Rev. Christophe Roucou, director of the French church’s National Service for Relations with Islam, in an interview with the Reuters news agency.
The late Pope John Paul II was well known for warm rapport with other religions, including Islam. Benedict, meanwhile, provoked an uproar last September with a speech in Germany in which he quoted a medieval Christian emperor describing the teachings of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman” and “spread by the sword.”
_ Francis X. Rocca
Fund Helps Secure Amish Presence in Shrinking Ohio Heartland
MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio (RNS) To slow the loss of farmland to encroaching development, the Amish in Geauga County have decided to invest in a unique solution: themselves.
Over the past two years, the community has dug into its pockets and built a $4.5 million loan fund to help young families purchase property and solidify the rural Old Order settlement. Earlier this month, the nonprofit Geauga Amish Loan Fund _ in essence a small savings and loan _ granted its 40th mortgage.
The money has secured homes and a few hundred increasingly valuable acres, giving the Amish more elbow room in a landscape that’s gradually being carved into modern subdivisions.
The fund serves as an economic tool to help the Amish compete for property and maintain their way of life, said one of the organization’s founders and board members.
County records show that property values in the southeast corner of Geauga _ where the more than 10,000-member Amish settlement is concentrated _ rose roughly 15 percent between 2002 and 2004, the period before the loan fund began.
“If we’re going to stay around here, we’ve got to be able to keep up with land prices,” said one Amish man who, like others interviewed for this story, asked that his name not be used, a typical request within a culture where it’s taboo to display pride.
The fund is modeled after those established in other Amish communities. The Amish Helping Fund, in Ohio’s Holmes County, held mortgages exceeding $74 million, according to 2005 tax documents filed by the nonprofit organization.
A similar program called the Old Order Amish Helping Program in eastern Pennsylvania declared $56 million in loans in its tax papers filed for that same year.
The willingness to invest reflects the strong Amish belief in helping each other, said Donald Kraybill, an Elizabethtown College professor who studies the Amish culture. He described the loan fund as a financial version of the traditional barn raising.
“It’s an expression of their religious values,” Kraybill said.
Only Amish can invest in or borrow money from the Geauga loan fund, according to another of the organization’s board members. The program offers mortgages at below-market rates, making it easier for young families to acquire property within the settlement.
“We want to give people their best chance at success,” one organizer said.
_ John Horton
Calvin Seminary Adds Women to All-Male Faculty
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (RNS) Calvin Theological Seminary is moving to diversify its all-male teaching faculty by appointing two female professors.
Seminary trustees have voted to hire the Rev. Mary Hulst and Mary VandenBerg, subject to approval by the Christian Reformed Church’s Synod. It is the first time the CRC seminary has hired two female faculty members at once.
The women were recommended by a special search committee to fill two new teaching positions. The appointments reflect the seminary’s commitment to bring more women and ethnic minority teachers to the 300-student seminary while maintaining excellence, said its president, the Rev. Cornelius Plantinga Jr.
“The committee was not told, `Get us two women or two ethnic minorities,’ but it was told to bear in mind that the faculty is not particularly diverse,” Plantinga said.
The decision to create the posts followed last September’s departure of Ruth Tucker, Calvin’s first female professor, who said she could not continue teaching because she was “held to a different standard” than male professors.
Plantinga said Tucker’s charges were “painful to hear, so of course we had that in our minds.” But he insisted the seminary wanted to diversify long before her allegations.
“We’ve got a whole lot of white, Dutch males who have been here for quite awhile,” said Plantinga, a longtime supporter of women in church office. “The board thought, `We’re not going to wait for everybody to start retiring.”’
If approved by the Synod, Hulst and VandenBerg would be the only two women on the full-time teaching faculty at a seminary with 51 female students. Hulst was approved as an assistant professor of ministry effective this fall. She was the CRC’s first female minister in the United States when ordained at Grand Rapids’ Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church in 1996, where she served until 2003.
_ Charles Honey
Quote of the Week: Christian Comedian Chonda Pierce
(RNS) “ … I share with my comedian friends who primarily work comedy clubs that if they want a real challenge, come try to make a roomful of Baptist deacons laugh without a two-drink minimum! Then we’ll see how funny you really are!”
_ Christian comedian Chonda Pierce, quoted by Today’s Christian magazine.
END RNS
