c. 2008 Religion News Service

Mich. man drops bid to remove cross from town shield

FRANKENMUTH, Mich. (RNS) The Frankenmuth cross controversy is finished as far as Lloyd C. Clarke is concerned.

“It is absolutely over,” said Clarke, a local resident who led a month-long charge to remove crosses from public spaces and from the city’s shield.

“After talking with family and friends, I have decided to discontinue my effort to remove the Luther cross from the Frankenmuth shield. It is causing too much turmoil in the lives of too many people. Although I think the city’s endorsement of a religion is a violation of the separation of church and state, I regret that my actions have caused such an uproar.”

The controversy started last month when Clarke contacted city officials about a series of foot-tall crosses on a local bridge. Officials removed the crosses at the recommendation of an attorney.

Then Clarke protested the city’s shield, which includes a shock of grain, an eagle, a Bavarian white-and-blue Harlequin pattern and a cross inset in a heart, the symbol at the center of the Luther Rose, the icon of Lutheranism.

The city, which grew out of a Bavarian Lutheran mission colony established in 1844, has used the shield since elected officials approved it in 1963.

Clarke said he didn’t anticipate the widespread emotional reaction he saw from local residents. “These were unintended consequences,” he said.

The Rev. Mark Brandt was among those who demonstrated against Clarke’s challenge to the cross. Brandt is associate pastor at St. Lorenz Lutheran Church of Frankenmuth, which distributed nearly 1,000 3-foot wooden crosses for city residents to display on their lawns.

Brandt said he was glad that Clarke had dropped his legal challenge, which he shared with his congregation on Sunday.

“They reacted the way we would have expected them to,” he said. “It has been a difficult issue for the citizens of the community, many of whom are members of St. Lorenz. We bear no animosity to Mr. Clarke or anyone else. We wish him God’s blessings.”

_ LaNia Coleman

Evangelicals launch campaign against global warming `alarmism’

WASHINGTON (RNS) Evangelical leaders who reject arguments that climate change is human-induced but are nevertheless concerned about the environment are trying to gather 1 million signatures of people who agree with them.

The “We Get It!” campaign, launched Thursday (May 15) at the National Press Club, includes a brief declaration that states “God created everything” and there is a God-given mandate to “tend his creation” and care for the poor.

“Our stewardship of creation must be based on biblical principles and factual evidence,” the four-paragraph statement reads. “We face important environmental challenges, but must be cautious of claims that our planet is in peril from speculative dangers like man-made global warming.”

The campaign is the latest in the back-and-forth battle between different strains of evangelicals. Some believe action is needed to protect the environment because human activity has caused its degradation, while others believe the notion of human cause is a fad and alarmist.

“We’re here to say evangelicals as a whole, evangelicals even as a significant part, have not suddenly embraced man-made catastrophic global warming alarmism,” said E. Calvin Beisner, spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance, one of the partner organizations leading the campaign.

Other participants in the launch of the new campaign included Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.; Institute on Religion and Democracy President James Tonkowich; and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

“You can be green without being gullible,” said Perkins. “We do believe we have a stewardship issue to care for the environment but we also have a stewardship issue to care for the economies that support families.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Student charged in turban fire pleads not guilty

HIGHTSTOWN, N.J. (RNS) A high school senior who allegedly burned a Sikh student’s turban pleaded not guilty on Wednesday (May 14) to charges of aggravated assault, bias intimidation, arson and criminal mischief.

Garrett Green, 18, went before Municipal Court Judge Gregory Williams, who ordered Green to appear in Superior Court in Trenton on May 21 to face the charges.

Green and his attorney had no comment. Green waved reporters away as he and an unidentified woman left a municipal building. He put his hand over his face as they drove away.

Green was arrested following the May 5 incident that occurred during a fire drill at Hightstown High School, where he allegedly set fire to the “patka,” a small turban, worn by a 16-year-old Sikh student.

“This has left a big impression on us, we are damaged mentally,” said Harjot Pannu, the victim’s uncle, who was at the hearing, and stood outside the municipal building as Green was walking out.

“If you endanger someone’s life, you’re guilty,” Pannu said, adding that his nephew, a junior at the school, is still angry about the incident, but has not missed a day of school.

“He’s got exams. He’s got no other option but to go to school,” Pannu said. Other than a few scorched pieces of hair, the victim was unhurt, Pannu said. Both he and his sister, the boy’s mother Sukjhot Kaur, have asked that the victim not be named in print.

Green was originally charged by police with arson and criminal mischief last week, but on Wednesday police additionally charged him with aggravated assault and bias intimidation.

On Tuesday, the East Windsor regional school district released a statement that Green is banned from the prom and from walking on stage at the June 19 graduation. He will receive home instruction because the district is still required to teach him, school officials said.

_ Carmen Cusido

Humanists launch godless Sunday School

WASHINGTON (RNS) The American Humanist Association has launched a curriculum that mirrors the “Sunday School” model used by churches and synagogues with one major omission _ God.

The Kochhar Humanist Education Center will distribute pre-designed course materials, electronic books and other resources about humanism to its 119 chapters across the United States. The classes are broken into four age groups: pre-schoolers, teens, college students and older adults.

The courses focus on social justice, “God-free ethics,” church-state separation and humanity’s relationship to nature.

“Religious organizations have long had educational programs and institutions for passing their values to each new generation,” said Bob Bhaerman, education coordinator of the center. Now is the time, he said, for a broad group _ humanists, atheists, agnostics or even religious groups like Buddhists or pagans _ to join and create their own viable institution.

Humanism is an ethical movement that believes that people can connect to one another through their common humanity and universal, non-theistic moral values.

The center is named after Pritpal Singh Kochhar, the owner of a New York real estate agency. Kochhar said he had experienced religious discrimination as a Sikh after the Sept. 11 attacks and “saw a need to defend minority faiths.”

Approximately 16 percent of Americans are unaffiliated with any religion, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey earlier this year. Four percent of those surveyed identify themselves as either atheist or agnostic.

_ Jonathan D. Rubin

Coast Guard grants religious exemption on vaccine

WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Coast Guard has granted a religious exemption to an officer who sued after being denied a waiver from receiving a Hepatitis A vaccine that he believed was derived from aborted fetuses.

Lt. Cmdr. Joseph J. Healy, a Catholic from Catonsville, Md., sued the Coast Guard in 2007 after his original request for an exemption was denied. He had stated his Catholic beliefs caused him to oppose abortion, and he believed the vaccine is derived from the cells of aborted fetuses.

“Christians shouldn’t be punished for abiding by their beliefs against abortion,” said Matt Bowman, legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which represented Healy and planned to seek a dismissal of the suit.

“The Coast Guard has done the right thing in recognizing that those who lay their life on the line to defend our shores are entitled to the same freedom as anyone else not to have their particular beliefs disregarded.”

In 2006, the Coast Guard announced that all active-duty members were required to receive the Hepatitis A vaccination unless they could prove immunity. Healy argued in his suit that receiving the vaccination would cause him to “be impermissibly participating in the evil of abortion.”

Eric Young, a litigation lawyer for the Coast Guard, said a notice was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on May 9 stating that Healy had been granted a temporary religious exemption.

“The Coast Guard rescinded its original denial letter and looked at it under a new set of glasses, essentially, and reached a decision that it was appropriate to grant a temporary exemption,” Young said.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Protestants join Virginia fight over church property

(RNS) Sixteen Protestant denominations and regional districts have joined a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia in contesting a Reconstruction-era state law that governs church splits.

The post-Civil War splintering of Methodist and Presbyterian churches in 1867 prompted the Virginia law, which allows congregations to keep their property when seceding from a church or “religious society” that’s dividing.

This spring, however, the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA), two of the largest U.S. mainline Protestant denominations, say the law is unconstitutional.

On Friday (May 16), a judge in Fairfax County, Va., ruled that the UMC, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the Worldwide Church of God may participate in oral arguments May 28 to assess the law’s constitutionality.

The amicus curiae brief is a sign of how closely Protestants are following the multimillion-dollar battle between the Episcopal Church and 11 conservative congregations that left to join a branch of the Anglical Church of Nigeria.

What began as a tussle over the Episcopal Church’s liberal stance on homosexuality has become a contentious legal fight over church property.

The Protestants’ amicus brief says the law draws “civil courts into a theological thicket” and favors congregational-based denominations over hierarchical churches.

The Episcopal Church, the UMC, the PC(USA) and other denominations argue that local congregations hold property _ from the stained glass to bank accounts _ in trust for the denomination. Their hierarchical structures, they say in the amicus brief, are religiously based, and civil courts have no business resolving “fundamentally religious questions.”

The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, and Virginia-area districts of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Church of the Brethren have also joined the amicus brief.

Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell and lawyers for the Congregation of Anglicans in North America, the umbrella group of breakaway churches, will defend the law at oral arguments.

Jim Oakes, co-chair of the Anglican District of Virginia, which is part of CANA, said Protestants’ concerns are not relevant to the lawsuit.

“It’s almost like they’re hyperventilating, saying, `This will destroy hierarchical churches,”’ he said. “It will do nothing of the sort.”

The property dispute is expected to take years to settle; Oakes said CANA has already paid $2 million in legal fees.

_ Daniel Burke

Canadian Lutherans ordain openly gay married man

TORONTO (RNS) Despite stern warnings and threats of discipline, a Lutheran church north of Toronto on Friday (May 16) ordained an openly gay man who is legally married to another man.

Lionel Ketola, 45, will now serve as associate pastor at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Newmarket, Ontario, and will also assume the non-official title of “ambassador of reconciliation.”

It was the first Lutheran ordination of a non-celibate gay pastor in Canada, following at least 14 such ordinations in the United States.

“It’s a privilege, but it’s about so much more than one individual,” a beaming Ketola said just before the ordination ceremony, held before a packed church. “It’s about claiming justice within the church.”

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, to which Holy Cross Lutheran belongs, narrowly defeated an attempt last summer to allow churches to bless same-sex unions. It does not allow for the ordination of practicing gay or lesbian clergy.

In the lead-up to the ordination, the bishop for the church’s eastern synod, the Rev. Michael Pryse, warned that Holy Cross would face disciplinary action if the ordination and hiring of Ketola went ahead.

“I am fearful that your actions have the potential to do irreparable damage to the already fragile connecting fabric of our church,” Pryse wrote in one letter posted on the denomination’s Web site.

He also sent a separate letter to Lutheran ministers telling them they would be subject to disciplinary action if they took part in the ordination service in an official capacity.

_ Ron Csillag

Texas megachurch pastor charged in sex sting

(RNS) A minister to married adults at Prestonwood Baptist Church, a prominent Dallas-area Southern Baptist megachurch, has resigned after being charged in an Internet sex sting.

Joe Barron, 52, was charged Friday (May 16) with soliciting a minor online, the Associated Press reported. Police said he had communications of a sexual nature with undercover officers posing as a 13-year-old girl for a couple of weeks and then drove almost 200 miles to meet her in Bryan, Texas, where he was arrested.

“We are appalled by the disgraceful and grievous actions and subsequent arrest of one of our ministers,” Prestonwood pastor Jack Graham, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told his congregation Sunday. “I am so very, very sorry for the injury this has caused to individuals and certainly our testimony in the community.”

Graham said the church requested and received Barron’s resignation.

“We have taken a hit from the enemy, a huge hit, and the Scripture is true,” Graham said. “Satan is roaming about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, but I’m certain by the grace and the power of Jesus that we will rise above this dark hole.”

A written statement from the church in Plano, Texas, added that staffers will cooperate with the police investigation.

“We have not had record or knowledge of prior improprieties, or observed any inappropriate behavior in the 18 months Joe Barron has served on our staff as one of our ministers to married adults,” it reads.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Vatican reports highest growth in Africa

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Africa is the Catholic Church’s region of biggest growth, with rising numbers of faithful, clergy and religious orders, according to Vatican statistics. The church’s growth in the Americas has largely stalled, meanwhile, and Europe’s share of the world’s largest church continues to decline.

The findings appeared in the Sunday (May 18) issue of the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, in an article summarizing the new edition of the church’s statistical yearbook, which features a survey of worldwide Catholicism in the period 2000-2006.

Though the world’s proportion of baptized Catholics remained roughly the same over the seven-year period _ 1.1 billion Catholics, or 17.3 percent of the world’s population _ its geographical distribution shifted markedly.

The most notable change was in Africa, whose share of the worldwide church rose from 12.4 percent to 14 percent. Even more dramatic was the increase in church personnel there. While the world total of Catholic priests barely increased, and the number of female religious actually fell, the church in Africa reported nearly a quarter more priests and almost one-sixth more nuns after seven years.

The Western Hemisphere held steady with about half of the world’s Catholics and 30 percent of its priests. Asia’s share of the world’s Catholic population also remained unchanged at 10 percent, yet the continent produced an increasing share of the world’s priests and nuns.

The church continued to shrink in its traditional heartland, Europe, whose portion of the world’s Catholics fell from 26.8 percent to 25 percent, and where the number of priests declined by nearly 6 percent.

In an indication of future trends, fewer than one-fifth of all men preparing for the Catholic priesthood were studying at European seminaries at the end of 2006, the study showed, down from nearly a quarter in 2000.

_ Francis X. Rocca

IRS clears pastor on Huckabee endorsement

WASHINGTON (RNS) The Internal Revenue Service has concluded that a Southern Baptist pastor’s endorsement of former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was a personal one that does not jeopardize his church’s tax-exempt status.

Pastor Wiley Drake of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., received a May 12 letter from the IRS about its investigation of his ministry.

“… The IRS has concluded that Buena Park First Southern Baptist Church did not engage in prohibited political campaign intervention,” the IRS concluded in its letter to Drake.

Last August, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based watchdog group, urged the IRS to investigate Drake.

Drake, a former second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, said Monday (May 19) that he only used information about his church and talk show to identify himself and not as part of an endorsement.

“The church didn’t endorse anybody nor did the radio program,” he said in an interview. “I personally did.”

Drake was assisted by lawyers affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund and has signed onto the Arizona-based legal group’s new initiative that encourages pastors to challenge IRS rules about discussing political candidates from the pulpit.

“Christians should not be penalized for expressing their beliefs, and that includes pastors,” said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. “We are pleased the IRS recognized that the attempt to have this church’s tax-exempt status revoked was without merit.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Quote of the Week: Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of South Africa

(RNS) “Sadly, foreign people are labeled, abused and killed, but those from other countries who live among us are just as much are neighbors, whom we are commanded by Jesus to love as ourselves. Foreign nationals are God’s people, too.”

_ Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town, South Africa, pleading for peace in riots that have targetted foreigners living in South Africa.

KRE END RNS