c. 2007 Religion News Service

Conservative wins second election as S.C. bishop

(RNS) The Episcopal Church on Monday (Oct. 29) approved the election of a conservative priest as bishop of South Carolina, one year after officials nullified his election amid fears he would lead the diocese to secede from the national church.

The Rev. Mark Lawrence, 56, formerly a priest in the traditionalist diocese of San Joaquin, Calif., has twice been elected bishop of South Carolina.

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori threw out the first election last March, ruling that Lawrence did not receive enough “consents,” or approval from a majority of U.S. dioceses, by the required date.

Bishops-elect must gain consents from a majority of the church’s 111 dioceses in order to be consecrated. Lawrence gained 57 last year, but Jefferts Schori ruled that some were submitted improperly.

The Rev. J. Haden McCormick, president of South Carolina’s diocesan standing committee, said Lawrence has already gained the necessary consents this time around. The exact number is still undetermined, however, since balloting remains opens, he said.

McCormick said the diocese has worked closely with Jefferts Schori on the election and has “nothing but a very positive relationship” with her.

He said some dioceses that had blocked Lawrence’s election “had a misunderstanding of Mark Lawrence, and they reconsidered and listened to what he said and what he wrote and had a change of heart.”

Lawrence, like many conservatives in the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church, has lamented its liberal drift, including the election of an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire.

Some dioceses, like Kansas, said they feared Lawrence would lead South Carolina to secede from the national church. Kansas now says it is convinced “that it is his intention to remain in the Episcopal Church.”

Lawrence will be consecrated Jan. 26, in Charleston, S.C.

_ Daniel Burke

Poll: Americans don’t want religious pitches from candidates

WASHINGTON (RNS) Though thousands of evangelicals flocked to Washington for the recent Values Voter Summit, more than two-thirds of Americans think presidential candidates should not use their religious beliefs to sway voters, a new poll shows.

The poll, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for the Interfaith Alliance in October, asked 1,000 adults to agree or disagree with the following statement: “Presidential candidates should not use their religion or faith to influence voters to support them.” Sixty-eight percent said they agreed.

Even regular churchgoers think presidential hopefuls should not use their faith as a campaign tool: Almost 60 percent of survey respondents who regularly attend religious services agreed with the statement.

The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, said candidates went “too far” at the Value Voters summit as they tried to “out-Christian” each other.

“We’re not electing a pastor-in-chief, we’re electing a commander-in-chief,” he told reporters on Tuesday (Oct. 30).

Candidates can certainly speak about their religion and beliefs as “points of identification for who they are,” Gaddy said, but they push the limits when they imply that voters should support them because of their religion.

“We are not electing a person on the basis of their theology or on the basis of their personal spirituality,” he said. Instead, the American people should be looking for a candidate who can support democracy and help the United States be a “good citizen of the world community.”

The poll also showed that about 58 percent of Americans think religious leaders should have little influence on voters’ decisions, and 78 percent believe it is important that the next president nominate Supreme Court justices who will maintain the separation of church and state.

The poll of 1,000 adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

_ Heather Donckels

Texas Baptists elect first female president

(RNS) The Baptist General Convention of Texas elected its first female president Monday (Oct. 29).

Joy Fenner, a former missionary from Garland, Texas, won on a 900-840 vote, defeating David Lowrie, a pastor of a church in Canyon, Texas.

Fenner, 70, who has served as a church secretary and executive director of the Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas, won with the smallest margin of victory in the state convention’s history, according to a BGCT news release.

Fenner’s election follows the convention’s election of its first black president, in 2005, and its first Hispanic president the previous year.

Convention spokesman Ferrell Foster said Fenner’s gender could have affected the voting.

“Some people believed it was time that we had a woman leader,” he said in an interview from the convention in Amarillo, Texas. “Others were not ready for that step. But there were also other issues. Neither one of the candidates made her gender a primary thing in why they were allowing themselves to be nominated.”

Fenner, who was first vice president of the convention before the election, pledged to emphasize increasing mission work by the 2.3 million-member convention.

Some of the more than 5,600 congregations affiliated with the BGCT are also affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, but the state convention has distanced itself from the more conservative denomination in recent years.

_ Adelle M. Banks

New Cleveland imam resigns before starting job

(RNS) The new spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Cleveland has quit before he worked a single day.

Imam Ahmed Alzaree announced Monday (Oct. 29) _ three days before he was to begin the job at Ohio’s largest mosque _ that he was resigning.

Alzaree said allegations by bloggers that he was anti-Semitic and had associated with an individual suspected of having terrorist ties so poisoned the atmosphere in Northeast Ohio that he and his wife, Marwa, decided to look elsewhere.

“Cleveland now is a nightmare for her,” Alzaree said. “It will never be a good start for me and the Jewish community.”

Zahid Siddiqi, general secretary of the mosque, said the Islamic Center would accept Alzaree’s resignation. “We certainly don’t want to impose on him and his family,” Siddiqi said.

Alzaree, 38, the former spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Omaha, was to be the mosque’s first permanent imam since its previous imam, Fawaz Damra, was deported last January on charges that he falsified his citizenship application by failing to disclose ties to extremist groups.

Leaders of the mosque said a major reason they hired him was his commitment to interfaith work. Reports from the Omaha mosque and others in Nebraska confirmed Alzaree was committed to explaining Islam in churches and synagogues.

Soon after the mosque announced the hiring, bloggers posted part of a 2003 “end times” sermon in which Alzaree quoted the Prophet Muhammad saying one sign of the approach of the Day of Judgment is that “the Muslims will kill the Jews.”

Alzaree said the sermon gave examples of Islamic teaching on the Day of Judgment and that it was clear that Muslims in the present were required to “strive and struggle in the world doing the good.”

_ David Briggs and Robert Smith

Quote of the Day: Robert Lewallen of San Diego

(RNS) “It’s kind of like, what’s next? Bring on the locusts.”

_ Robert Lewallen of San Diego, whose house burned down in the Southern California wildfires last week. He and his wife also lost their home in a fire in 1981. Lewallen’s father died earlier this year. He was quoted by the San Diego Union-Tribune.

KRE/RB END RNS