c. 2008 Religion News Service
Methodist, NCC officials urge civility in campaign
WASHINGTON (RNS) In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, two top U.S. faith leaders are urging a return to civility between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain.
The political discourse has shifted from important issues facing the country to “acrimonious, disrespectful and divisive rhetoric,” according to Bishop Gregory V. Palmer, president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops.
Palmer and the Rev. Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, sent open statements to McCain and Obama urging a “focus on the critical challenges that threaten the future of our nation and the world.”
A recent New York Times/CBS News poll revealed that the latest McCain campaign ads, featuring sharp personal attacks on Obama, have actually hurt McCain’s public standing. The rhetoric of political campaigns is often based on “divisiveness, hyperbole, half-truths and innuendo,” Kinnamon said.
“We call on people of faith to raise their voices to challenge all political parties and leaders to embrace a public discourse that is free of divisive and demeaning rhetoric,” Palmer said.
In his statement, Kinnamon expressed concern that the U.S. leaders govern “by surrounding themselves with an isolating barrier of like-minded cronies.” Open dialogue is only possible if candidates are willing to “expand the circle of internal discussion,” he added.
“Respectful, principled, and vigorous debate on the issues which demand attention is the only way to move into a future that offers hope and solutions for our common problems,” Palmer said.
_ Ashley Gipson
BBC head says Muslims should be treated differently
LONDON (RNS) The head of the British Broadcasting Corp. says the media should treat Islam more sensitively than Christianity because Muslims are a religious minority in Britain.
BBC Director General Mark Thompson concedes that the BBC takes a different approach to Islam, which has an estimated 1.6 million adherents in Britain, than it does to the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church.
“I don’t want to say that all religions are the same,” Thompson said in an address to the religion research organization Theos on Monday (Oct. 13). But “to be a minority, I think, puts a slightly different outlook on it.”
Thompson, himself a practicing Roman Catholic, added that “my view is that there is a difference between the position of Christianity which I believe should be central to the BBC’s religious coverage and widely respected and followed.”
But “what Christian identity feels like,” he said, “is a little different to people for whom their religion is also associated with an ethnic identity which has not been fully integrated.”
However, Thompson also insisted that “there’s no reason why any religion should be immune from discussion.”
Some leaders of Hindu and other minority religions in Britain have accused the BBC of favoring Muslims over their own faiths, and one British comedian, Ben Elton, said the network programmers “let vicar gags pass but not imam gags.”
_ Al Webb
Rastafarian files suit after UPS tells him to cut dreadlocks
HARRISBURG, Pa. (RNS) After being hired as a driver for UPS Freight, Nieland Bynoe, a Rastafarian, attended an orientation meeting last year and was told that he would have to shave his beard and cut off his dreadlocks to comply with the company’s grooming policy.
Bynoe, of Harrisburg, told company officials the next day that he was prohibited by his religion from doing what the company asked and requested a reasonable accommodation, but the company immediately fired him, according to a recent lawsuit filed on his behalf by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
UPS Freight officials did not return repeated calls for comment.
A federal judge is being asked to settle this dispute, and some experts said such cases are becoming more common as the country’s work force becomes more diverse.
The EEOC investigated 2,880 religious discrimination complaints in 2007, a record high and an increase of 13 percent from the previous year.
According to a manual the EEOC published this summer, employers must “reasonably accommodate” workers’ and applicants’ sincerely held religious beliefs unless doing so would impose an undue hardship, such as lowering efficiency or decreasing safety. The guidance is based on part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to the EEOC.
Some people have said “undue hardship” is a vague standard that might have been purposely written that way, said Michael J. Crocenzi, an employment lawyer with Goldberg Katzman in Harrisburg.
“That’s the conundrum, because if you start coming out with a list of rules, it would be a very, very long list,” Crocenzi said. “And what may be an undue hardship for a smaller company may not be an undue hardship for a larger one. … You have to take these situations on a case by case standpoint. These are difficult cases.”
But Terrence Cook, a supervisory lawyer for the EEOC, said the law is clear. Employers have trouble when they don’t have competent human resources personnel or legal counsel to help them with specific situations, Cook said.
Human resources “is an area that is simply ignored, particularly by smaller employers, but in this day and age, that’s a bad practice,” Cook said. “But in the UPS Freight case, a company of that size should have no question about the law. They probably have more lawyers than we do.”
_ Carrie Cassidy
Quote of the Day: Former New England Patriots safety Je’Rod Cherry
(RNS) “I wrestled with which ring to give away. … It came down to the fact the first one means the most to me. It says I’m serious about this cause and it also reflects my faith, that I’m going to give up my best, what I care about the most.”
_ Former New England Patriots safety Je’Rod Cherry, describing his decision to auction his first of three Super Bowl rings to benefit Asia’s Hope, a charity that builds orphanages for kids rescued from slave trafficking in Asia and Africa. He was quoted by The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.
KRE/LF END RNS
