c. 2007 Religion News Service
Interfaith Leaders Commend North Korean Nuclear Pact
(RNS) An interfaith coalition of religious leaders is congratulating the Bush administration for reaching an agreement with North Korea to shutdown its nuclear weapons facilities.
“The agreement with North Korea demonstrates the value of diplomacy in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons,” the leaders said in a statement released Tuesday. The statement was signed by Catholic and Episcopal bishops as well as Presbyterian, evangelical and Muslim leaders.
“It validates the preferential use of words, rather than war, as a response to conflict. Our religious traditions teach that efforts should be made to explore every alternative in resolving a conflict before going to war,” the faith leaders said.
The State Department announced Saturday that it had been informed that North Korea had shut down its Yongbyon nuclear complex. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Wednesday that five facilities, four at Yongbyon and one at Taechon, have been shut down.
The interfaith statement, developed by Faithful Security: The National Religious Partnership on the Nuclear Weapons Danger, was signed by a dozen leaders of Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths.
The signatories included Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori; Sayyid M. Syeed, national director of the Islamic Society of North America; the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA); Rabbi Gerald Serotta of Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, Md.; Bishop Thomas G. Wenski, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Policy; and Ronald J. Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action.
They asked the administration to consider a similar strategy with Iran.
“The United States should engage Iran in direct negotiations without preconditions to achieve the goal of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and enhancing regional security,” they wrote.
Faithful Security, based in Goshen, Ind., developed after the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin, a Protestant social activist, convened a meeting of religious leaders in 2005 to discuss how faith leaders could address the elimination of nuclear weapons.
_ Adelle M. Banks
President of Evangelical Covenant Church to Retire
(RNS) The president of the Evangelical Covenant Church has announced that he will retire next year.
The Rev. Glenn R. Palmberg, 62, told the church’s executive board of his plans to retire effective Aug. 31, 2008, during its June meeting. A search process for his successor will begin in October.
Palmberg had planned two four-year terms but continued into a third.
“One of the goals, when I was elected president, was to establish a new Department of Compassion, Mercy and Justice, and I was able to see that dream fulfilled,” Palmberg said.
During the denomination’s annual meeting in Portland, Ore., in June, he installed the first executive minister as the leader of that department.
Palmberg, who will have served 10 years by his scheduled retirement date, said he is looking forward to fewer days on the road.
“I would like to spend the years of service I have left doing less travel and focus my attention on issues about which I have a lot of passion, especially hunger and poverty,” he said.
The Evangelical Covenant Church is based in Chicago and was founded in 1885. About 166,000 people attend the denomination’s approximately 800 local churches on an average Sunday.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Bangladesh Gives Lock of Buddha’s Hair to Sri Lanka
CHENNAI, India (RNS) The small Buddhist community in Bangladesh is donating a few strands of a lock of hair said to have come from the Buddha as a goodwill gesture to Sri Lanka.
The hair relic has been preserved since the 1930s in a wooden box at an ancient Buddhist monastery in Chittagong, Bangladesh. It was donated by a Tibetan monk, Shakya Bhikku, and is on public view each May on the occasion of the Buddha’s birthday.
A ministerial delegation from Sri Lanka, led by Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama and including several Buddhist religious leaders, is in Bangladesh this week to receive the gift and carry it back to their country.
The presentation ceremony at the Chittagong monastery, organized by the Bangladesh Buddhist Federation, took place Wednesday (July 18).
Approximately one million Bangladeshis follow Buddhism; the majority of Bengladesh’s 140 million population is Muslim.
In Sri Lanka, the sacred hair relic is to be kept at the Senanayake Aramaya temple at Madampe, on the country’s southwestern coast.
Before being taken to Madampe, the hair relic will be displayed for a few days at a temple in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital. The Buddha, also known as Shakyamuni Buddha or Gautama Buddha, lived during the 6th century B.C. in what is now Nepal.
_ Achal Narayanan
Jews Set to Observe Annual Day of Mourning
NEW YORK (RNS) The Friday the 13th that fell this month caused some anxiety for people who believe in unlucky days.
For many Jewish believers, however, the fearful focus remained two weeks ahead, on the summer day marking at least a dozen calamities in their history.
Tisha B’Av, the day of collective Jewish mourning, falls at sundown on July 23 this year. Among many tragedies, it marks the destruction of the first and second Jewish temples about 2,500 and 2,000 years ago, Spain’s 1492 expulsion of its Jews, and the 1942 Warsaw Ghetto deportations to the Treblinka concentration camp.
Observers commemorate Tisha B’Av by fasting, going to synagogue and performing traditional mourning observances, such as sitting on low stools and refraining from bathing and sexual relations.
For the sixth year, hundreds Jews worldwide who can’t get to a synagogue that day plan to watch or listen to the Orthodox Union’s online service.
OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb will present his four-hour commentary from the group’s New York headquarters. The service is unique for traditional Jewish observances, because electronic recording is permitted, explained Stephen Steiner, OU spokesman.
“Viewers, of course, can come and go as they please. We have received enough e-mails over the years, however, to indicate that people do indeed spend the entire four hours watching, often transfixed,” Steiner said.
For his theme this year, Weinreb will discuss “The Tragedy of Failed Leadership,” including how it pertains to the Holocaust, imprisoned Israeli soldiers, the Intifada and 9/11 attacks. In addition to traditional sources, he will reference writings of victims of historical catastrophes, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Daniel Mendelsohn’s book “The Lost.”
“I am always preparing,” Weinreb said.
The webcast will air on http://www.ou.org from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (EST) on July 24, and will be archived for later viewing.
_ Nicole Neroulias
Quote of the Day: Encyclopedia Author Christopher H. Partridge
(RNS) “A misconception is that these people are all the mad and the gullible and the stupid.”
_ Christopher H. Partridge, author of the Encyclopedia of New Religions, discussing how new religions begin almost weekly across the globe and attract a few or many thousands of people, who often are well-educated. He was quoted by The Washington Post.
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