c. 2005 Religion News Service

`End of Poverty’ Author Tells U.N. Audience He’s Not Writing Fiction

NEW YORK (RNS) Striking a theme that is earning him increasing recognition in the world of global economics and ethics, a prominent adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday (April 8) that extreme world poverty can be ended within two decades.

“Poverty is not a condition of fate,” Jeffrey D. Sachs said at an event at the United Nations commemorating the 50th anniversary of the death of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Chardin was a French Jesuit priest whose theology many credit for helping lay the foundation for much current thought on religion, the environment and creation.

“These challenges are solvable by practical means and good ethics,” said Sachs, who is director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and is advisor to Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, a series of eight global objectives that include halving extreme poverty by 2015. The goals have been championed by a wide spectrum of religious groups.

Speaking on global ethics and sustainable development and echoing themes developed in his recently published book, “The End of Poverty,” Sachs said extreme poverty _ a condition that is experienced by about 1 billion people _ can be overcome with small but concrete measures taken by rich nations.

The transfer of 0.7 percent of gross national product (GNP) _ or 70 cents of every $100 of income _ by wealthy nations would allow 1 billion persons “to escape from the poverty trap,” Sachs said.

“This is what stands between life and death for millions,” he said, noting that $3 billion could eliminate malaria, an utterly treatable disease that nonetheless kills 3 million persons, most of them children, every year.

The Friday event was one of several being held in New York at the United Nations and the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine to commemorate Teilhard’s death, which occurred April 10, 1955, in New York City.

In a related address at the U.N. event, Mary Evelyn Tucker, a professor of religion at Bucknell University and the vice president of the American Teilhard Association, said that Teilhard’s unitary vision of the “spirit of the earth” is helping move humanity “from viewing ourselves as isolated individuals and competing nations (to) realizing our collective presence as a species on the planet.”

_ Chris Herlinger

Evangelicals and Jews Team Up to Expose North Korean Abuses

(RNS) Evangelicals and Reform Jews are teaming up to release video footage of recent public executions in North Korea, one of numerous human rights abuses the groups say are occurring there.

Christian and Jewish leaders and religious freedom advocates gathered Thursday (April 7) to watch the video recording at a conference hosted by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who says the footage will be sent to each member of Congress.

The footage _ obtained by Japanese television networks _ shows three executions March 1 and 2 of North Koreans charged by police with illegal border crossing.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Washington-based Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said religious and human rights organizations were coming together to urge the U.S. government to make ending human rights abuses such as public executions, forced labor and torture a top priority.

“As Jews, we know well the plight of refugees,” Saperstein said.

The Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the Washington-based National Association of Evangelicals, also said calling for an end to human rights abuses in North Korea is a religious matter.

“As evangelicals, we have committed ourselves not to commit the sin of silence,” Cizik said, “and not to commit the sin of omission, the failure to act.”

The religious leaders and human rights advocates called on the U.S. government to pressure China to end its support of North Korea.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the U.S. should use economic sanctions or a relocation or boycott of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing to lean on China to change its stance.

“When China eats watermelon, North Korea spits seeds,” Land said, expounding on the importance of China’s role in North Korea.

Others speaking at the conference included Suzanne Scholte, vice chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, based in Fairfax, Va., and Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, a Washington-based religious freedom organization, and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization.

_ Celeste Kennel-Shank

Palestinian Christian Group Calls for Ending Investments in Israel

WASHINGTON (RNS) A Palestinian Christian advocacy group based in Jerusalem has released a report encouraging churches worldwide to pull investments out of Israel _ a move Jewish leaders described as an “anti-Semitic act.”

Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, which says it advocates a nonviolent resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, cited the controversial model of selective divestment recently recommended by the Presbyterian Church USA and the World Council of Churches. The Sabeel report urges churches to pull money out of companies that benefit from the conflict in Israel.

“The international community has been helpless to prevail upon Israel to halt its oppression of the Palestinians,” read the report, released March 29. “As churches examine their own investment policies and show willingness to make moral and ethical investment decisions, they pick up where the political global community has failed to date.”

Divestment has long been used as “a vehicle to bring about positive social change,” according to John Marttila, president of Boston-based Marttila Communications Group, which recently conducted a study on anti-Semitism for the Anti-Defamation League.

But Marttila says divestment activities directed exclusively at Israel held the country to an unfair double standard, with no others subjected to such scrutiny.

“When churches wake up one morning and decide to focus on divestment … where do they focus? They focus on Israel,” Marttila told ADL officials at a Washington conference on Monday (April 4). “Treating Israel in a manner not used for other countries is an act of anti-Semitism.”

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church called last year for its member churches to adopt a model of selective divestment _ pulling out money from companies and groups in Israel and Palestine that the church sees as aiding in the military conflict.

Representing Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox churches worldwide, the Geneva-based World Council of Churches _ voiced its support for divestment in February, saying the involvement of multinational corporations in “violations in international law” could no longer be ethically supported by its member churches.

“Illegal activities in occupied territory continue as if a viable peace for both peoples is not a possibility,” the WCC recommendation stated.

Divestment was first used against South African companies, in protest of the country’s oppressive regime of racial apartheid.

_ Shawna Gamache

Southern Baptist Seminary Focuses Counseling Courses on Bible

(RNS) Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has announced plans to revise its counseling courses to focus more on Scripture and less on secular psychology.

“This new vision for biblical counseling is historic and groundbreaking in Southern Baptist life,” said Russell D. Moore, dean of the school of theology at the Louisville, Ky., seminary.

“It will mean moving beyond the clinical professionalism of what historically has been dubbed `pastoral care’ in the therapeutic guild, but it will mean recovering true `pastoral care’ as defined by the Scriptures.”

The new emphasis, which is scheduled to begin in the fall semester, will greatly revise the school’s counseling curriculum, he said. The school’s master of divinity degree with an emphasis in pastoral counseling will be renamed the master of divinity degree with an emphasis in biblical counseling.

Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. said the program will focus on teaching pastors and other church leaders how to apply Scriptural truths to the challenges of their congregants’ daily lives.

“In this psycho-therapeutic age, it is really important that we think as Christians _ that we employ authentically Christian thinking, biblical thinking, to human life,” he said. “And that we do this in a way that, without apology, confronts and critiques the wisdom of the age and seeks the wisdom that can come only from God and from God’s word.”

Mohler said other schools may offer a different approach.

“But this is an institution that serves the church and, as such, our responsibility is to make sure that pastors and other Christian ministers know how to be effective biblical counselors,” he said.

Southern Seminary is the oldest of the six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Quote of the Day: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.

(RNS) “I think the outpouring of affection and appreciation for John Paul II is a reflection of the yearning that people have to be connected, to believe, to have some greater purpose and meaning in their lives.”

_ Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., speaking at the annual Religious Freedom dinner Thursday (April 7) in Washington. She was quoted by The Washington Times.

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