c. 2008 Religion News Service
Work procedes slowly on Anglican `covenant’
CANTERBURY, England (RNS) Anglican bishops gathered here for a once-a-decade meeting say a new “covenant” that would outline their beliefs may be the best hope to settle bitter divisions over homosexuality and the Bible.
While the 650 Anglican bishops gathered here for the Lambeth Conference will not vote on the yet-to-be finalized covenant, a number of bishops voiced support for the idea.
“This is a way ahead that could prevent future crises,” Bishop Mouneer Anis of North Africa said Friday (Aug. 1).
Similar to a constitution, the covenant would list the central principles that unite the 38 autonomous provinces in the worldwide Anglican Communion, including its U.S. branch, the Episcopal Church.
It would also provide a means to discipline churches that break the agreement, said Archbishop Drexel Gomez of the West Indies, who’s chairing the group designing the covenant.
“To date we have no mechanism for solving our problems” Gomez said. “Our overall aim is working to hold the Anglican Communion together.”
The covenant is at least a year away from completion, however. A second draft was circulated among the bishops here Friday (Aug. 1) for their comments, with a third draft due next year. Each national church, or province, would then have to agree to the covenant, a process that could take at least several more years.
Divisions in the Anglican Communion have steadily grown since the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. Many conservative Anglicans say homosexuality violates biblical morality.
Each of the communion’s provinces, or national churches, are autonomous, but would have to cede some of that autonomy for the covenant to work, said Archbishop Phillip Aspinall of Australia.
“It’s not a stick to whack people over the head with, but if people enter into it voluntarily the expectation is that they will observe it,” he said.
Bishop Duncan Gray of Mississippi said fellow U.S. bishops may be reluctant to give up their autonomy, but he supports the covenant because Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the communion’s spiritual leader, has thrown his weight behind it.
“If the archbishop wants me to sign off on a covenant, then I’ll sign off on a covenant,” Gray said.
_ Daniel Burke
Christian, Muslim leaders report progress at Yale talks
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (RNS) Following up on a public exchange of letters last year about the need for Christian and Muslim understanding, leaders and scholars representing both faiths have begun the task of trying to make their calls more “concrete.”
One of the “practical outcomes” of a four-day (July 28-31) meeting at Yale University was to call for Christian and Muslim clerics to speak publicly during a designated week each year in praise of the other’s tradition.
Asked at the conclusion of the meeting how this might be implemented, Ibrahim Kalin, the director of the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research in Ankara, Turkey, suggested the idea could be taken to the United Nations.
Such a proposal might strike outsiders as limited, but theologians and religious leaders here said it represents a small but necessary step toward reducing tensions in a post-9/11 world.
“I see a dark and dangerous storm of Christian-Muslim tensions menacing the world in which we all live,” Miroslav Volf, the founder and director of Yale’s Center for Faith & Culture, said on Tuesday (July 29). “Not since the Crusades have relations between these two faiths, which comprise more than half of humanity, been lower than they are today.”
However, Volf and others said the dialogue that started last fall with a letter from Islamic leaders, entitled “A Common Word Between Us,” and its response from hundreds of Christian leaders, represents a promising turning point and start of fledgling dialogue.
“Religious leaders don’t make policy, but they do have influence,” Kalin said.
The meeting at Yale and subsequent meetings planned through 2009 at Cambridge University, the Vatican, Georgetown University and in Jordan are now part of a process with the “Common Word” imprimatur.
Volf and others acknowledged that such dialogue can be challenging, and told reporters that “exchanges have been characterized by frankness and honesty” _ code words usually used in the diplomatic world to describe difficult talks. “We didn’t come to blows,” he said.
But such honesty is needed, he said, in trying to settle the question of “How do we make the `common word’ part of the common good?”
_ Chris Herlinger
N.J. court says faith is no laughing matter
NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) Making jokes and comments about a person’s religion can create a “humiliating and painful environment” and be a form of on-the-job discrimination, New Jersey’s highest court ruled Thursday (July 31).
The New Jersey Supreme Court said remarks about someone’s faith _ even as a form of ribbing or “breaking of chops” _ cannot be tolerated in the workplace.
Clarifying anti-discrimination laws, the court declared that a person claiming religious-based harassment does not face a higher legal hurdle than people who claim they were discriminated against because of their sex or race.
“It is necessary that our courts recognize that the religion-based harassing conduct that took place … in this `workplace culture’ is as offensive as other forms of discriminatory, harassing conduct outlawed in this state,” Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote for a unanimous court.
The ruling holds the borough of Haddonfield in Camden County accountable for discrimination claims made by a Jewish police officer whose co-workers made crass comments _ claimed to be poor attempts at humor _ about his ethnicity and pasted stickers of the flags of Israel and Germany on his locker.
The decision is an important victory for all workers enforcing the principle of equality, said Jon Green, who represented the state chapter of the National Employment Lawyers Association.
Attorney Clifford Van Syoc, who represented the officer, said, “There is no reason to make fun of people’s religion or race or anything.”
Added Etzion Neuer, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of New Jersey, “It sends a clear and unequivocal message that anti-Semitism has to be treated with the same degree of severity as racial harassment.”
The attorney representing Haddonfield warned the decision would have a chilling effect. “The court has raised the bar on the hostile work environment _ now you can’t even joke in the workplace,” Mario Iavicoli said.
_ Kate Coscarelli
Obama campaign appoints Muslim affairs coordinator
WASHINGTON (RNS) Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has appointed a Chicago lawyer as its national coordinator for Muslim affairs.
Mazen Asbahi represents Muslim and Arab American businesses in his corporate law practice, reported Politico.com.
A community blog on the Obama campaign’s Web site announced July 25 that Asbahi will serve as national coordinator of Arab American affairs and be based at the campaign’s Chicago headquarters.
The move was welcomed by the Muslim Public Affairs Council. “The inclusion of a Muslim American voice in the presidential campaign reinforces the principle of pluralism in the electoral process,” the council said, urging Sen. John McCain to take similar steps.
In the Obama campaign announcement of Asbahi’s new assignment, blogger Amanda Scott wrote: “The Obama campaign is working hard to connect with Americans of every faith and ethnicity in an unprecedented grass-roots movement to build an America rooted in compassion and a government that, in the senator’s words, `reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all.”’
Representatives of Obama’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Day: Geoff Tunnicliffe of the World Evangelical Alliance
(RNS) “Just as we promise to seek to move beyond the stereotyping of Muslims found in the media, can I ask you, my Muslim friends, to get to know us beyond what is reported in the newspapers and television programs?”
_ The Rev. Geoff Tunnicliffe, international director of the World Evangelical Alliance, speaking about the meeting of Muslim and Christian scholars that ended at Yale Divinity School on Thursday (July 31). He was quoted by Reuters.
KRE END RNS
