c. 2008 Religion News Service
Obama’s Muslim outreach director quits after two weeks
WASHINGTON (RNS) Mazen Asbahi, the Chicago lawyer who recently was appointed as the Muslim outreach director for Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, has resigned less than two weeks after taking the job.
“Mr. Asbahi has informed the campaign that he no longer wishes to serve in his volunteer position, and we are in the process of searching for a new national Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator,” said campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.
Asbahi told the campaign in an e-mail message Monday (Aug. 4) that questions about his brief affiliation with an Islamic investment fund caused him to resign.
“Since concerns have been raised about that brief time, I am stepping down from the volunteer role I recently agreed to take on with the Obama campaign … in order to avoid distracting from Barack Obama’s message of change,” Asbahi told the campaign.
Asbahi, who was appointed July 26, said he agreed to serve on the board of the Dow Jones Islamic Index Fund in 2000 but resigned within weeks when he learned of allegations against another board member.
The Wall Street Journal reported that at that time the board included Jamal Said, an Illinois imam whose mosque was controlled by fundamentalists. The newspaper also said Said was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator last year in a racketeering trial of alleged Hamas fund-raisers that ended in a mistrial.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Nuns, priests issue call to protect environment
(RNS) Echoing recent calls from the Vatican to combat climate change, twin umbrella groups of U.S. Catholic priests and nuns urged members to take action against global warming.
At a joint assembly in Denver, the Conference of Major Superiors of Men and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious unanimously approved a resolution calling on members to protect the environment.
“That the Earth’s climate is warming is no longer a matter of serious scientific controversy,” the resolution stated. “This increase in temperature will likely have widespread consequences, from mass extinctions to devastating impacts on the lives and livelihoods of the poorest and most vulnerable human beings.“
The resolution outlined ways in which Catholics can take action, including pressuring politicians for new legislation, and purchasing incandescent light bulbs, locally grown produce, and hybrid cars.
“Many of our individual congregations have been working in different ways to address climate change over the past several years, but this resolution gives us an opportunity to corporately address that,” said Sister Marie Lucey, associate director for social mission for the LCWR.
The two organizations represent over 86,000 Catholic priests, nuns and religious brothers in the United States.
_ Tim Murphy
`Ugly’ D.C. church files suit over historic preservation ruling
WASHINGTON (RNS) A Christian Science church that some have called the city’s ugliest church has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the historic landmark designation on the windowless 37-year-old building.
Leaders of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist on Thursday (Aug. 7) called the current structure “bunker-like” and “unwelcoming,” and reiterated their desire to replace the stark concrete building with a new church on the same location.
“Little is more representative of a church’s religious exercise than its architecture, and we do not feel this architecture properly represents us to our community,” said Darrow Kirkpatrick, a former lay leader at the church.
The city’s Historic Preservation Review Board contends that the building, located three blocks from the White House, offers a unique example of modernist architectural style known as “Brutalism.”
“Third Church is a rare Modernist church in the city and the complex possesses amazingly high integrity … down to the original carpeting and seat upholstery in the church auditorium,” said David Maloney, the state historic preservation officer for the District of Columbia, in a statement.
The lawsuit alleges that the designation ignores two federal statutes that protect religious groups’ freedom of exercise.
Anita Hairston, chief of staff for the city’s office of planning, said the department does not comment on litgation that is pending or under way.
Araldo Cossutta, an associate of the famed architect I.M. Pei, designed the building, which was completed in 1971. Shortly thereafter, Kirkpatrick said, church members began to complain about their new house of worship.
Kirkpatrick said the building’s interior design forces the church to spend as much as $8,000 per year on scaffolding to replace light bulbs, and drives up heating and air conditioning expenses.
The board granted the building landmark status last December over the protests of church members; on July 24, a church application to demolish the building was denied. Under city law, members now have a right to a hearing with a third party from the mayor’s office. Kirkpatrick said a positive ruling from the mayor’s agent could cause him to reconsider the lawsuit.
_ Tim Murphy
Church-state group, Hindus and Jews protest highway crosses
(RNS) A church-state watchdog group has joined Hindu and Jewish organizations in arguing that a Utah court erred in ruling that a highway cross memorializing a fallen state trooper is a “secular symbol of death.”
A friend-of-the-court brief was filed Wednesday (Aug. 6) in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and several other groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Union for Reform Judaism and the Hindu American Foundation.
“When used as a burial marker, the cross does not signify death in the abstract,” they argued. “Instead it connotes the deceased’s Christian faith.”
Last November ruling, U.S. District Judge David Sam ruled that the Utah Highway Patrol Association could continue to erect 12-foot crosses, as it has for 14 troopers.
“The cross is the pre-eminent symbol of Christianity,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based Americans United. “For the government to claim that the cross is a secular symbol is deeply offensive and betrays a poor understanding of religion and our Constitution.”
At the time of last year’s decision, a state trooper’s widow said she was pleased the symbol could stand.
“We made this sacrifice along with him, and we get to have this symbol of what happened,” Andrea Augenstein, widow of Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Dan Harris, told The Salt Lake Tribune.
_ Adelle M. Banks
California court reverses itself, declares home schooling legal
(RNS) A California court Friday (Aug. 8) reversed its previous ruling and decided that most forms of home schooling are legal.
Last February, the California Court of Appeal ruled in a juvenile court case that public school enrollment is generally required unless a child is tutored by a credentialed person or enrolled in a full-time private school.
In the new ruling, the court determined that while original education laws seemed to prohibit home schools in the definition of private school, later laws could be interpreted differently.
“The most logical interpretation of subsequent legislative enactments and regulatory provisions supports the conclusion that a home school can, in fact, fall within the private school exception to the general compulsory education law,” the court concluded.
“We therefore conclude that home schools may constitute private schools.”
But the court added that “an order requiring a dependent child to attend school outside the home in order to protect that child’s safety” is constitutional.
The case, which involved a family that home-schooled their children and had them tested occasionally at Sunland Christian School in Sylmar, Calif., drew the attention of home-school advocates including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.
“This is a tremendous victory for thousands of home-schooling families in California,” said Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, which represented the Christian school.
_ Adelle M. Banks
UpDATE: Poultry plant reinstates Labor Day with Muslim holiday
(RNS) Responding to intense criticism, a Tyson Foods plant in Tennessee that deemed a Muslim holy day one of its eight paid holidays has changed its stance.
The poultry processing plant in Shelbyville, Tenn., decided last year to drop Labor Day and instead count Eid al-Fitr _ which marks the end of Ramadan _ as a day on which all union members could either stay home or work for extra pay. The policy has been revised, and Labor Day is once again a paid holiday.
Outraged by a recent story in the Shelbyville Times-Gazette, many residents launched complaints at Tyson headquarters and at the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which drafted the original agreement to comply with requests made by a workers committee.
The union represents 1,000 of the plant’s 1,200 employees, 250 of whom are Somali.
Some letters accused the union of being unpatriotic, asking if it had forgotten the attacks of Sept. 11, according to the New York Times.
The vitriol had an impact. Union employees will have nine paid holidays this year. That includes both Labor Day and Eid al-Fitr.
After this year, the union will again cover only eight days, one of them a “personal holiday” that can be taken any day of the year _ including on Eid al-Fitr. The new policy affects only the Shelbyville plant.
“The union membership voted overwhelmingly Thursday to reinstate Labor Day,” the Tyson release said. “Tyson made this request on behalf of its Shelbyville plant employees, some of whom had expressed concern about the new contract.”
Representatives from the union and Tyson did not immediately respond to inquiries from the Religion News Service.
_ Mallika Rao
Episcopal Church to apologize for slavery
(RNS) Continuing its efforts to address a practice some members call “a stain on the church,” the Episcopal Church will hold a “Day of Repentance” to publicly apologize for its involvement in the slave trade.
The ceremony, mandated by a 2006 resolution at the church’s General Convention, will take place Oct. 3-4 in Philadelphia.
“We hope to set a model for other denominations about how to face this dark, tragic part of our history because we believe that only when you repent can you move on,” said Jayne Oasin, program officer for the church’s Anti-Racism and Gender Equality program.
In recent years, Episcopalians have attempted to come to grips with their church’s compliance in the “peculiar institution” of slavery.
After previous unsuccessful attempts, delegates to the 2006 convention overwhelmingly passed a resolution acknowledging the “deep and lasting injury which the institution of slavery and its aftermath have inflicted on society and on the church.”
That same year, delegates passed a resolution supporting efforts by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., to create a special commission for the study of reparations, although they did not explicitly endorse such payments.
Although the trans-Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States in 1808, and slavery was prohibited at the end of the Civil War, some church members have long felt that the church continues to benefit materially from its involvement.
Many of its older churches were funded in part by profits from the slave trade, and the nation’s most famous Episcopalian, George Washington, was a slave-owner.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will conduct the service at the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, which was founded by a former slave in 1792.
_ Tim Murphy
Court: University of California can reject Christian school classes
(RNS) A California federal judge has ruled that the University of California had a “rational basis” for rejecting science and history courses taught at Christian high schools.
Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, Calif., and the Association of Christian Schools International had charged that the university had an unconstitutional admissions process because it refused to certify courses that taught creationism and other beliefs.
Private school students are required to meet certain high-school requirements before they can be eligible to apply to one of the undergraduate campuses of the University of California.
U.S. District Court Judge S. James Otero ruled Friday (Aug. 8) that concerns about a course whose primary text was called “Biology: God’s Living Creation” was deemed by UC experts to have failed at teaching critical thinking or the theory of evolution in an adequate manner.
The judge also said UC reviewers found that a text published by Bob Jones University titled “United States History for Christian Schools” taught that “the Bible is the unerring source for analysis of historical events” and did not include modern methods for historical analysis.
In these cases, and in reviews of English and government texts, Otero said the Christian school defendants did not adequately refute the findings of UC’s reviewers. The judge also found that the university system did not reject the courses out of animosity.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Supreme Court asked to consider student’s candy cane case
(RNS) The U.S. Supreme Court was asked on Monday (Aug. 11) to consider whether a fifth-grade student’s religious expression on a classroom project can be considered “offensive” and subject to censorship by school officials.
In December 2003, Joel Curry, then 11, made candy cane-style Christmas ornaments with a note that school officials considered “religious literature.” The note attached to the ornaments, titled “The Meaning of the Candy Cane,” referred to Jesus six times and God twice.
Curry, who copied the message from an ornament at a Christian bookstore, is now a rising sophomore at Heritage High School in Saginaw, Mich.
“It’s unfortunate it has to be pushed this far,” said his father, Paul Curry. “When children step out in the world, they have to deal with different faiths and religions. It’s a good way for teachers to educate students as long as no one is proselytizing or pushing it down someone’s throat.”
At the time, the boy made the ornaments as part of a classroom project in which students develop and “sell” products. School officials told the youngster to remove the message, even though he received an A on the assignment.
Attorneys filed a lawsuit against the Saginaw School District and the school’s principal in 2004, arguing that school officials violated the boy’s right to equal protection because students previously had been allowed to sell religious-themed items.
In 2005, a federal judge ruled in favor of the boy, but a three-judge panel for the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned that decision.
_ LaNia Coleman
Body of likely British saint OK’d for move
LONDON (RNS) The British government, at the urging of the Vatican, has approved the exhumation and reburial of a 19th century English cardinal who is likely on the road to possible sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.
The remains of Cardinal John Henry Newman are to be dug up from a rural cemetery and reinterred in a marble sarcophagus at the Oratory Church of the Immaculate Conception, in Birmingham, probably later this year.
The Ministry of Justice confirmed that a license for the shifting of the cardinal’s remains was issued Monday (Aug. 11), the 118th anniversary of his death.
“The decision to exhume Cardinal Newman’s remains was taken in response to the wishes of the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church (for his canonization),” the ministry said in a statement.
No mention was made of the remains of Newman’s long-time companion _ Ambrose St. John, described as the cardinal’s one great love of his life, and alongside whom Newman was buried at Rednal Hill cemetery, outside Birmingham, after his death in 1890.
The Roman Catholic Church opposes homosexuality, but whether Newman and St. John’s relationship was an actively sexual one has never been clear.
The Ministry of Justice’s approval for the cardinal’s exhumation came only after months of haggling over a Victorian-era law in Britain that forbids the transfer of bodies from graves to church tombs. It made an exception in this case after receiving the Vatican’s request.
London’s Daily Mail newspaper reported that Pope Benedict XVI “has long been an admirer of (Newman’s) `theology of conscience”’ and that his entombment in a sarcophagus “is a victory for the Vatican, which wants Newman moved into a setting where he can better be venerated.”
The Vatican is reportedly close to attributing one miracle to Newman _ a Catholic deacon in Boston recovered from a crippling back ailment after praying to the cardinal _ but another confirmed miracle would be needed for canonization.
_ Al Webb
Chicago archdiocese agrees to $12.7 million settlement
(RNS) The Archdiocese of Chicago has reached a $12.7 million settlement with 16 survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, Cardinal Francis George announced Tuesday (Aug. 12).
Fourteen of the cases involve abuse by 10 priests between 1962 and 1994, the archdiocese reported. Former priest Daniel J. McCormack, who pleaded guilty in 2007 to abusing five children, is responsible for remaining two.
George has apologized for not removing McCormack, who is now serving a five-year prison sentence, from ministry sooner. One case involving McCormack remains to be settled by the archdiocese.
“My hope is that these settlements will help the survivors and their families begin to heal and move forward,” George said. “I apologize again today to the survivors and their families and to the whole Catholic community.”
The 11 priests whose abuse led to the settlement have resigned, died, been sentenced to prison, or otherwise been removed from ministry, according to the archdiocese.
Since 1950, nearly 11,000 claims of sexual abuse by clergy have been made against the U.S. Catholic Church. The abuse scandal has cost the church more than $2 billion and bankrupted six dioceses.
_ Daniel Burke
Quote of the Week: Houston megachurch co-pastor Victoria Osteen
(RNS) “I love people. I’m guilty of that.”
_ Victoria Osteen, wife of Houston megachurch pastor Joel Osteen. She testified Friday (Aug. 8) in a trial in which a flight attendant has accused her of assault over a spill on a first-class seat. Osteen, who co-pastors Lakewood Church with her husband, was quoted by the Associated Press.
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