c. 2008 Religion News Service

Episcopal legal bills result in deficit

(RNS) The Episcopal Church has spent nearly $2 million on legal expenses this year, more than four times its budgeted amount, and will run a deficit of $2.5 million in 2009, according to the church’s news service.

The denomination’s Executive Council, meeting in Helena, Mont., this week (Oct. 20-24), budgeted $450,000 for legal expenses in 2008 but spent $1.97 million, according to Episcopal News Service. The well-heeled denomination is engaged in a number of costly legal battles with conservatives who’ve left the Episcopal Church but seek to retain parish property.

Also, the stock market decline has decreased the value of the Episcopal Church’s endowment funds by 30 percent, said church treasurer Kurt Barnes.

The church anticipates $54.6 million in revenue for 2009 and about $57 million in expenses, according to ENS. The church ran surpluses of $1.2 million in 2007 and $2 million in 2008, the news service reported.

_ Daniel Burke

Justice Department permits World Vision’s hiring policy

WASHINGTON (RNS) The U.S. Justice Department recently disclosed a 2007 ruling by its Office of Legal Counsel that permitted the relief agency World Vision to keep a $1.5 million grant despite its policy of hiring only Christians.

World Vision successfully sought an exemption from a statute that requires grant recipients to refrain from hiring discrimination on the basis of religion. The grant was for a program aimed at reducing youth involvement in gangs.

“We determine that it is reasonable to conclude that requiring World Vision to comply with the nondiscrimination provision as a condition of receiving the grant would `substantially burden’ its religious exercise,” wrote Deputy Assistant Attorney General John P. Elwood in the opinion issued June 29, 2007.

Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said the delay between the signed opinion and its Oct. 14 publication online followed an “ordinary course” of review.

“The department stands strongly behind the opinion, which is narrowly drawn and carefully reasoned,” he said.

Robert Tuttle, law professor at George Washington University Law School, said the opinion is an “unusual and broad” reading of the view of “substantial burden” in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

He said it comes after unsuccessful attempts by the Bush administration and congressional Republicans to remove provisions in some statutes that restrict religious employers’ hiring practices.

“It certainly would open the door for a group to get a grant, then claim that they are entitled … to prefer people of their own faith,” he said of the opinion, which could be overridden by a legal decision made in the next administration.

The decision was criticized by Washington watchdog group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“Nobody expects a Baptist church to hire a Buddhist as its pastor,” wrote Joseph Conn, communications director for Americans United on the organization’s blog. “But it is not OK for the United States government to fund public-service jobs and then force applicants to submit to an inquisition to see if they’re eligible.”

World Vision’s Web site notes under its employment qualifications that U.S. applicants will be “screened for Christian commitment.”

In a statement, Richard E. Stearns, president of World Vision, U.S., said, “A faith-based organization can retain its identity through its hiring freedoms and still receive government funding.”

He said World Vision has a policy against proselytizing and does not discriminate in its delivery of services.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Archaeologists find fragments linked to High Priest

JERUSALEM (RNS) Israeli archaeologists have discovered a fragment from an ancient sarcophagus cover that bears a carved inscription with the words “The Son of the High Priest” in Hebrew.

The High Priest was ancient Judaism’s highest religious official and the only one entrusted with entering the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of the Jewish Temple that once housed the Ark of the Covenant, once a year.

The fragment, which was discovered in late September during a “rescue” excavation to recover artifacts prior to the construction of part of Israel’s security barrier around northern Jerusalem, is only the second known archaeological reference to a High Priest, and the first discovered during an archaeological dig.

The first artifact was stolen from a site in Jerusalem and made its way to the black market before archaeologists were able to examine it in the field.

Naftali Aizik, the archaeologist who co-directed the dig for Israel’s Unit of the Archaeological Staff Officer of the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria (West Bank), said the sarcophagus inscription “is unique because we were able to see it in context. It was found in ruins from the early Muslim period, during the seventh and eighth centuries. It must have been taken from its original site, presumably a burial cave, and used as a building stone.”

Aizik said the sarcophagus appears to have belonged to the son of a High Priest who officiated at the Temple between A.D. 30 and 69-70.

“Unfortunately we didn’t find the fragment with the priest’s name, but even so, its discovery was very, very dramatic.”

_ Michele Chabin

Quote of the Day: Israeli Minister of Social Affairs Isaac Herzog

(RNS) “The attempt to turn him into a saint is an exploitation of forgetfulness and lack of awareness. Instead of acting according to the biblical verse `Thou shalt not stand against the blood of thy neighbor,’ the pope kept silent _ and perhaps even worse.”

_ Israeli Minister of Social Affairs Isaac Herzog on Vatican steps toward beatifying Pope Pius XII, who served as the Vatican secretary of state, and later as pope during World War II.

KRE/PH END RNS