c. 2008 Religion News Service

Warren and Lowery to deliver blessings at Obama inauguration

(RNS) Megachurch pastor Rick Warren and civil rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery will deliver the invocation and benediction, respectively, at President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration next month (Jan 20).

The roles of Warren, a best-selling author and leader of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., were announced Wednesday (Dec. 17) by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.

In addition to the swearing-in of Obama by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and the inaugural address, the Jan. 20 ceremony will include a range of musical performers. Aretha Franklin, widely known as the “Queen of Soul,” will sing, and violinist Itzhak Perlman and cellist Yo-Yo Ma will be members of a quartet performing selection composed by John Williams.

Yale University professor Elizabeth Alexander will read a poem and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the inaugural committee, will give welcoming remarks.

“The inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama will be an event of historic proportion,” said Feinstein, D-Calif. “It is appropriate that the program will include some of the world’s most gifted artists from a wide range of backgrounds and genres.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Religious abuse continues in Iraq, report says

(RNS) Iraq should be designated as a “country of particular concern” because its government tolerates the abuse of religious communities, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The federal commission said many Iraqi religious minorities, including Christians, Yazidis and Sabean Mandaeans have fled, threatening their faiths’ existence within the country.

“The lack of effective government action to protect these communities from abuses has established Iraq among the most dangerous places on earth for religious minorities,” said Felice D. Gaer, chair of the commission at a Washington news conference.

Only five of the nine commissioners agreed with the “country of particular concern” designation, the report noted. That designation is used when a government has engaged in “systemic” and “ongoing” religious freedom violations. But the report said all of the commissioners agreed that the Iraqi government needs to take more action to address the plight of religious minorities.

Commissioners encouraged President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration to make prevention of abuse a high priority and to seek safety for all Iraqis and fair elections.

They also asked the U.S. government to appoint a special envoy for human rights in Iraq and Iraqi officials to establish police units for vulnerable minority communities. They also seek changes in Iraq’s constitution, which currently gives Islam a preferred status, to strengthen human rights guarantees.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R, Va., co-chair of a congressional caucus addressing human rights, said that religious pluralism in Iraq is “rapidly diminishing.” He said about 500,000 Christians, or 50 percent of the population of that faith in Iraq in 2003, have fled the country.

The U.S. State Department designated Iraq as a “country of particular concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act from 1999 to 2002. It dropped the designation in 2003 after the U.S. war in Iraq began and Saddam Hussein’s government collapsed.

In May 2007, the commission placed Iraq on its watch list due to escalating sectarian violence and the conditions affecting religious minorities.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Pope sees silver lining for Christmas in economic crisis

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI voiced the hope that the global economic crisis will spur a revival of Christmas’s spiritual meaning, ridding the holiday of its “consumerist and materialist incrustations.”

Benedict made the remarks on Wednesday (Dec. 17) at his weekly general audience at the Vatican.

“Unfortunately, under pressure from hedonist consumerism, Christmas risks losing its spiritual meaning in order to be reduced to a mere commercial occasion for buying and exchanging gifts!” he said.

The pope followed that lament, a traditional theme of seasonal preaching by Christian clergy of all denominations, by invoking current headlines as cause for optimism.

“In truth,” he said, “the difficulties, uncertainties and the very economic crisis, which so many families have been experiencing in these months, and which touches all of humanity, can be a stimulus for rediscovering the warmth of simplicity, friendship and solidarity, values typical of Christmas.”

“Stripped of consumerist and materialist incrustations,” Benedict said, “Christmas can thus become an occasion for welcoming, as a personal gift, the message of hope that the mystery of Christ’s birth sends forth.”

_ Francis X. Rocca

Quote of the Day: Gary Tobin of the Institute for Jewish and Community Giving

(RNS) “This will probably end up being the worst scandal ever for American philanthropy.”

_ Gary Tobin, president of the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish and Community Giving, about the fraud investigation of financier Bernard Madoff, whose investment firm drew millions of dollars from Jewish philanthropic groups. Tobin was quoted by The Washington Post (Dec. 17).

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