c. 1996 Religion News Service
Anti-smoking forces claim victory in billboard campaign
(RNS)-Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company said Thursday (May 2) its 3M Media subsidiary will no longer accept billboard advertising for tobacco contracts.
Anti-smoking advocates, including the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a coalition of 275 Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jewish investors, hailed the announcement as a major victory.
In an unusual move, the announcement was made jointly by 3M and the ICCR. The religious corporate-responsibility group had planned to raise the tobacco advertising issue from the floor at the company’s annual meeting May 14.”This is an important breakthrough,”said the Rev. Michael Crosby, a Roman Catholic priest who heads the ICCR’s anti-smoking effort.”The country had to look at all those tobacco billboards for years with the letters 3M beneath them,”he told The New York Times.”But now, 3M is no longer promoting health with one hand while advertising a product that leads to death with the other hand.” The company’s health-care divisions make products ranging from surgical gowns and wound dressings to heart-lung machines.
Crosby said the 3M decision”was prompted by the morally driven shareholders, who want to combine the fiscal bottom line with their moral bottom line.” In addition, according to ICCR, some religious-affiliated hospitals had threatened to boycott 3M-manufactured hospital products.”We want to let the health-care industry know that we are serious about good health, and advertising tobacco doesn’t seem to fit with that goal,”Mary Auvin, a spokeswoman for 3M, said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. said it was disappointed with the decision and is”leery of attempts to restrict commercial free speech.”
Church groups want World Council assembly moved out of Zimbabwe
(RNS)-The new Common Global Ministries Board, a joint overseas mission agency of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ (UCC), has asked the World Council of Churches (WCC) not to hold its 1998 global assembly in Zimbabwe.
The WCC, based in Geneva, had no immediate comment on the request.
The assembly, held every seven years, brings together about 1,000 delegates as well as hundreds of observers and visitors from the WCC’s more than 300 member churches around the world.
The mission agency cited Zimbabwe’s official hostility to homosexuals as the reason for asking that the meeting be moved.
It noted that Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, has”made several public attacks on Zimbabwean gays and lesbians,”calling them”worse than dogs and pigs.” The joint Disciples-UCC mission agency suggested the meeting be moved to South Africa,”where homosexual civil rights are constitutionally protected.” Mugabe began his anti-gay campaign last July by barring the group Gay and Lesbians of Zimbabwe from having an exhibit at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. The ban was followed by a series of public comments by Mugabe in which he threatened to throw homosexuals in jail.
He called homosexuality an”abhorrent”Western import.”If we accept homosexuality as a right, as it is being argued by the association of sodomists and sexual perverts, what moral fiber shall our society ever have to deny organized drug addicts, or even those given to bestiality, the rights they might claim and allege they possess under the rubrics of individual freedom and human rights?”Mugabe said in an August speech.
In September, when Mugabe’s anti-homosexual campaign was at its height, WCC officials said they would seek assurances that the Zimbabwe government will not interfere with the assembly.
The Rev. Konrad Raiser, the WCC’s general secretary, said at the time the organization had already received assurances in writing that gays and lesbians attending the council assembly would not be harassed but would seek further assurances.
Prominent Hindu guru jailed over fraud charges in India
(RNS)-Nemi Chand Jain, better known as Chandraswami, a Hindu holy man famed as a spiritual adviser to politicians, celebrities and business leaders, was arrested and jailed Thursday (May 2) in connection with charges that he allegedly cheated a businessman out of $100,000.
Known as a spiritual adviser to Indian Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, Chandraswami, 46, is charged with cheating an expatriate Indian, Lakhubhai Pathak, by taking $100,000 from him in 1983 and promising to use his influence with the government to help Pathak win contracts for supplying newsprint, the AP reported.
Chandraswami claims actress Elizabeth Taylor and the Sultan of Brunei as among his disciples.
The Reuter news agency said Chandraswami was jailed after a court in New Delhi rejected arguments by the guru’s lawyer, Ashok Arora, that the holy man be allowed to go to the hospital. His lawyer said the guru suffers from hypertension, heart disease and other ailments.
According to Reuters, Chandraswami, sporting a flowing beard, long hair and heavy gold chains and rings, frowned throughout the proceedings but said nothing.
He is scheduled to appear in court May 14.
Former college president sentenced to more than seven years in prison
(RNS)-Former Mississippi College President Lewis Nobles was sentenced to more than seven years in prison Thursday (May 2), four months after he pleaded guilty to embezzling money from the Baptist-affiliated school in Clinton, Miss.
Nobles was sentenced to 87 months in prison during a two-hour hearing, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Jackson, Miss. He previously paid $442,000 in restitution as part of a plea agreement. The maximum penalty he could have received was 40 years in prison. Nobles was accused of diverting at least $1.7 million from the school.
Nobles pleaded guilty Jan. 17 in U.S. District Court to five felony charges, including mail fraud, money laundering and tax fraud. He had served as president of the college for 25 years before he resigned in 1993 after being confronted by college officials who accused him of stealing donations made to the school.
GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes honored by Franciscan university
(RNS)-Alan Keyes, a candidate for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination, will receive an honorary doctorate and deliver the commencement address at the Franciscan University of Steubenville (Ohio), school officials announced.
The ceremony at the Roman Catholic school is scheduled for May 11.
Keyes was hailed by the school for being a”magnificent orator … known for his efforts to revive America’s moral conscience through rousing campaign speeches, TV appearances, and a syndicated call-in radio program.” Although far behind Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole for the GOP nomination, Keyes has refused to concede the race and used his campaign to spotlight his sharply conservative views on such issues as abortion, the traditional family and affirmative action.
Quote of the day: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Christianity and economic systems.
(RNS)-U.S. Supreme Justice Antonin Scalia, in a speech Thursday (May 2) at the Vatican-chartered Gregorian University in Rome, warned that while capitalism can lead to the sin of greed, socialism has a false allure that is more dangerous.”The allure of socialism for Christians is that it means well, that it is altruistic … but it can also deprive Christians of a chance for sanctification. … Christ did not promise a chicken in every pot or the elimination of poverty in our lifetime.”
MJP END
