c. 2007 Religion News Service
New counselor to Mormon president chosen
(RNS) One of the three top-ranking leaders of the world’s Mormons has been chosen for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
President Gordon B. Hinckley has selected Elder Henry B. Eyring, formerly a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, to be a member of the three-man First Presidency that serves as the church’s highest governing body.
The three-man First Presidency _ Hinckley, Thomas S. Monson and now, Eyring _ is the highest decision-making body in the church. Hinckley, 97, announced the selection Saturday (Oct. 6) during the church’s semiannual General Conference in Salt Lake City.
Eyring, who served twice as the church’s commissioner of education, became an apostle in 1995. He will be the second counselor in the First Presidency.
Eyring, 74, will be succeeded in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the church’s second-highest governing body, by Elder Quentin L. Cook. Cook, 67, has overseen the church’s worldwide missionary program.
Monson serves as first counselor in the First Presidency, and has been an apostle since 1963. The vacancies occurred with the death in September of President James E. Faust, who had served as counselor to Hinckley for a dozen years.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Court says Freemasons fall under religious protection law
(RNS) Freemasonry may rank with Christianity, Judaism and Islam as an official form of “religious exercise,” a California court of appeals suggested in a ruling on Oct. 3.
As such, Masons would fall under the protections of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), the landmark law that says government may not infringe on religious buildings without a compelling interest.
“We see no principled way to distinguish the earnest pursuit of these (Masonic) principles … from more widely acknowledged modes of religious exercise,” the statement said.
The case involves the Los Angeles Scottish Rite Cathedral (LASRC) and the Scottish Rite Cathedral Association of Los Angeles (SRCALA). The court concluded that “chief” Masonic principles include “the reverence of a Supreme Being and the embrace of other forms of religious worship.”
The court said it could find “no decisions analyzing whether Masonic practices are sufficiently religious in nature to qualify under RLUIPA,” which says the government cannot “impose or implement a land use regulation in a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person.”
The court’s statement countered a lower court’s opinion that “the `Freemason’ organization is (not) a religion.”
While the Masons may have received a victory as a religious group, the court ultimately ruled that the RLUIPA law did not apply in the specific case at hand.
In 2002, LASRC began leasing the Scottish Rite Cathedral, a Masonic temple on Wilshire Boulevard, from the association. Despite city codes that restrict the use of the cathedral to Masonic-related activities, the group rented out the building for non-Masonic events, including concerts and dance performances. As a result, the Los Angeles city council withdrew the Cathedral’s certificate of occupancy in 2005.
In response, the two Masonic associations went to court, claiming that their rights under RLUIPA were being harmed. The lower court initially rejected the case, but the appeals court ruled that since the cathedral was used for “a melange of cultural and commercial events with a declining nexus to Masonic principles or other religious exercise,” the Scottish Rite organizations could not claim protection under RLUIPA’s “religious exercise” clause.
_ Heather Donckels
Group warns British clergy to leave their collars at home
LONDON (RNS) A British church safety group is advising clergy _ from the archbishop of Canterbury on down _ to take off their clerical “dog collars” when they go out while off duty, to reduce the risk of being attacked.
A new report issued by National Churchwatch says members of the clergy are in danger from assailants who believe they have money or who bear some sort of “grudge against God.”
National Churchwatch, an independent organization that provides clergy with personal safety advice, said priests are attacked more often than those of other professions because they are considered unlikely to fight back.
Nick Tolson, who heads the safety group, said the clergy “have got to be aware that when they’re on their own, they’re at high risk. What we are saying is that when they are off duty _ say when they are shopping” at a supermarket, “they should slip off the dog collar and put it in their pocket.”
The report said “attacking a member of the clergy is seen by most criminals as no different to attacking a shopkeeper, robbing an old lady or any other member of society, if their own motivation demands this action.”
In Britain, five vicars have been murdered in the past decade, and in a survey of 90 members of the clergy that Tolson said he conducted last year, nearly half reported they had been attacked in some form during the previous 12 months.
Tolson conceded that for some clergy, safety advice “is real radical stuff” and that their “argument against it is it’s (the collar) their witness in the community _ their way of saying, `Hello, I’m the vicar’.”
“That fine _ when you’re being the vicar,” he said. But “there are times when you can be in church on your own and you look out and you see some buy who’s obviously off his trolley. You may want to slip off the dog collar before you see him.”
The Church of England was lukewarm about the safety advice, saying in a statement that while it was welcomed, church rules still say that “clergy should dress as clergy.”
“I feel much safer wearing my dog collar when I’m walking through the streets at night,” the Rev. David Houlding of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London told The Daily Telegraph newspaper. “There is still an air of respect to it,” and “most of the time, I wear it every day. It’s my uniform.”
_ Al Webb
Muslim women don pink hijabs for breast cancer awareness
(RNS) Hend El-Buri began wearing a hijab, or headscarf, in middle school. After eight years of watching non-Muslims warily eye her devout attire, she joked with some veiled friends that it might finally break the ice if they all wore bright pink hijabs to their University of Missouri classes one day.
The wardrobe whim has evolved into a national campaign involving thousands of other Muslim coeds, simultaneously aiming to tear down interfaith social barriers and raise money for breast cancer research.
“It might make Muslim women more approachable,” El-Buri explained, “and I thought it would be a good idea to help them be more active in their communities and show everyone that we might have different faiths and we might look different, but breast cancer can affect any of us.”
The 20-year-old college junior created a group on Facebook, a social networking Web site, proclaiming Oct. 26 as National Pink Hijab Day. Through word of mouth, more than 6,500 participants have signed up across the country, including young Muslim men who will wear rosy caps or shirts to show solidarity.
As a nod to October’s designation as Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Islam’s requirement of making charitable donations, participants are asked to give at least $5 to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a nonprofit organization dedicated to breast cancer research.
Ultimately, El-Buri said, the event’s goal is to build bridges between Muslim women and other Americans, on college campuses and beyond.
“I hope that when people see groups of Muslim women wearing pink scarves they will wonder what’s going on, and ask about the hijab,” she said. “Any chance for open communication and understanding between faiths is important and beneficial for everyone.”
_ Nicole Neroulias
Quote of the Day: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
(RNS) “It seemed self-evident … that the treatment of blacks in America cried out for the unequivocal condemnation of a righteous institution that proclaimed the inherent equality of all men. Yet the Church remained silent, and its silence haunted me. I have often thought that my life might well have followed a different route had the Church been as adamant about ending racism then as it is about ending abortion now.”
_ Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who attended but dropped out of Catholic seminary, writing in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He was quoted by The Washington Post.
KRE/CM END RNS
