c. 2008 Religion News Service

Supreme Court declines case involving Bible reading in jury room

WASHINGTON (RNS) The Supreme Court on Monday (Oct. 6) refused to hear an appeal from a death row inmate who says a jury foreman improperly read the Bible to fellow jurors during deliberations.

The justices declined to comment on the appeal, letting stand the death sentence of Jimmie Lucero of Amarillo, Texas, who was convicted of murdering three neighbors in 2003.

During the penalty phase of Lucero’s trial in 2005, the jury foreman read a passage from Romans 13, in which St. Paul writes that a servant of God is “an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

Lucero’s lawyers argued that the Bible reading violated his Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals called the Bible reading a “harmless error.”

Lower courts have been split on whether introducing the Bible into jury deliberations violates a defendant’s constitutional rights.

_ Daniel Burke

Priest apologizes for sodomy `tattoo’ comments

LONDON (RNS) An Anglican chaplain to the London Stock Exchange has issued what he described as a “full and complete apology” for his suggestion that gays be forced to have “sodomy” warnings tattooed on their bodies.

The Rev. Peter Mullen, rector of St. Michael’s, Cornhill, and St. Sepulchre in London’s financial district, said he was just kidding.

Mullen came under fire from London Bishop Richard Chartres for suggesting on his blog that homosexuals should have the slogan “Sodomy can seriously damage your health” tattooed on their backsides.

In a statement issued through a spokesman, Chartres described the text of Mullen’s message as “highly offensive” and emphasized that it was “in no way reflective of the views of the Diocese of London.”

In his own statement, the priest insisted that “I did not intend to cause any upset, but I realized the remarks were injudicious.”

Mullen said that what he intended was “some joking remarks about homosexuals” and that he was “not actually meaning to criticize individual homosexual persons, but the promoters of gay culture.”

“I have caused offense,” he added. “I want to issue an apology.”

Nevertheless, Mullen said in his own defense, “anybody with an ounce of sense of humor or any understanding of the tradition of British satire would immediately assume that they are light-hearted jokes.”

David Allinson, a spokesman for the gay rights group Outrage, was not amused. “It’s the kind of remark you might expect from a drunk on a Saturday night,” he said, “not from someone in a supposedly responsible position.”

_ Al Webb

Study: Religious people more generous, helpful only with conditions

(RNS) Religious people are more helpful and generous than others _ but only on two conditions, according to a new study published in the prestigious journal Science.

University of British Columbia psychology researchers Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff concluded that religious people act more kindly than atheists on condition they believe their acts will enhance their reputations among their peers. The second condition is being freshly reminded, in a subconscious way, of the existence of a morally tinged God or supernatural being, the researchers said.

Religious people are inclined, under these conditions, to be more giving and honest than others because their belief in God assumes the existence of an all-knowing “supernatural police” force that monitors their behavior, Norenzayan said in an interview.

But once researchers remove the two conditions, Norenzayan said, “all of a sudden you don’t find any differences between the moral behavior of religious people and non-religious.”

Emphasizing that he is not out to either defend or attack religion, Norenzayan said the Science article goes beyond mere anecdotes about religion and looks at the “hard scentific evidence” that anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and others have gathered during the past 30 years.

“The debate has been so polarized in the past,” Norenzayan said. “All I want is for scientists to set aside their likes and dislikes and look at the empirical data.”

Norenzayan, who has gained international attention for his psychological experiments into how religion affects the way humans act, said the five-page Science article does not necessarily contradict those who argue religion exacerbates conflict between cultures.

That’s because the UBC researchers discovered in their survey of all the research available that religious people are often more generous and helpful (or “pro-social”) to members of their own religion, not necessarily to outsiders.

The scholarly article, titled “The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality,” shows that, while it has helped create moral behavior, religion has no monopoly on producing honest and empathic people.

The beneficial role that belief in an all-knowing, morally concerned God has played in history, Norenzayan said, is in some cases being replaced by non-religious mechanisms _ such as effective policing, courts and social surveillance.

Still, Norenzayan said, religiously motivated virtuous behavior has played a vital role throughout history _ by encouraging cooperation among large groups of genetically unrelated people.

_ Douglas Todd

Quote of the Day: Pope Benedict XVI

(RNS) “We see it now in the collapse of the great banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And so all these things, that seem the true reality to count on, are realities of secondary importance. He who builds his life on these realities _ on matter, on success, on appearances _ builds it on sand.”

_ Pope Benedict XVI, in remarks to the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops, referring to the global economic crisis.

KRE/LF END RNS