c. 1999 Religion News Service

Southern Baptists criticized again for their outreach to Jews

(RNS) An ad hoc coalition of Jewish leaders representing all four of the faith’s mainstream movements has sent a letter to Southern Baptist Convention President Paige Patterson urging him to end his denomination’s”deceptive”and”offensive”claims that one can be both a Jew and a Christian.

In a letter to Patterson dated Monday (Nov. 8), the Jewish leaders said:”Our quarrel with the Southern Baptist Convention is not over its right to proselytize. Rather, the Jewish community is deeply offended that the SBC has formally embraced a strategy that attempts to deceive Jews into believing one can be both a Jew and a Christian.”The deceptive forms of proselytizing endorsed by the SBC are constitutionally protected behavior. However, when symbols and rituals, sacred exclusively to Judaism, are expropriated for use as props for the sake of converting Jews to a distinctly different religion, to us that is deceptive behavior.” The letter _ signed by the heads of the leading modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist seminaries and the president and executive vice president of the New York Jewish Community Relations Council _ was sent to Patterson in response to an earlier exchange between the evangelical leader and the JCRC’s point man on Christian evangelization.

Jews are upset with the SBC, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, for issuing a prayer guide to members at the time of the Jewish High Holy Days that urged them to pray for Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah.

They are particularly upset that Messianic Jews _ Jews who accept Jesus, insist they are still Jews and worship in a style they consider Jewish _ have been embraced by Southern Baptist leaders.

Mainstream Jewish belief holds that to accept Jesus as the Messiah makes a Jew an apostate. Baptists, and many other evangelicals, maintain that Jews _ like Italians, Spaniards or anyone else _ retain their ethnic identity even if they accept Jesus.”I find it ironic for Jewish activists to assert that believing in Jesus as the Messiah disqualifies one from being a Jew, but one can be an atheist and still be considered a Jew,”said Mark Kelley, a Southern Baptist spokesman.”The Jewish heritage is a Christian’s heritage too. … It is not deceptive for a Christian or Messianic Jew to participate in Jewish ceremonies or use Jewish symbols because they are deeply meaningful for us, too,”he said.

Hindus and Muslims _ both of whom also have been targeted recently by SBC missionary efforts _ also have been critical of Southern Baptist methods.

On Berlin Wall anniversary, pope, Georgian leader urge peace in region

(RNS) Pope John Paul II and President Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia, key figures in the events that brought the Cold War to a close, marked the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall Tuesday (Nov. 9) with a joint appeal for peace in the Caucasus and international action to end terrorism in the region.

The Polish-born Roman Catholic pontiff and the Georgian leader, who served as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s foreign minister, hailed the fall of the wall and subsequent”reunification of Europe”as”one of the greatest conquests of the 20th century.” In the joint communique, issued by their spokesmen, John Paul and Shevardnadze urged”the peaceful settlement of all conflicts, including that in Abkhazia, on the basis of the fundamental principles of international law.”Rebels in Abkhazia, an autonomous region within Georgia, began an uprising in 1993 to seek independence.

The communique warned that ethnic, racial or religious crimes against humanity”create serious threats for peace and stability throughout the world.” Referring indirectly to Russia’s invasion of Chechnya in response to terrorist bombings on its territory, the communique said that terrorism”has become particularly present in recent years and represents a serious menace to the independence and democratic future of the states of the region as well as to efforts throughout the world to consolidate peace and stability.” The pope and the Georgian president”request of the international community a closer and more effective collaboration against terrorism for the defense of the rights of man and of peoples,”the communique said.

In contrast to the unwillingness of Georgia’s Orthodox leaders to discuss ecumenism, Shevardnadze said he hoped that closer relations between Georgia and the Holy See would”favor reconciliation between Catholics and Orthodox.” John Paul met with Shevardnadze in the Georgian capital on the last day of his five-day trip to New Delhi and Tbilisi. He was scheduled to return to Rome Tuesday evening.

Although the pope, who is 79 and ailing, appeared to be near collapse on his arrival Monday (Nov. 8), his spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls, said he was suffering from the cold weather and had recovered by Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, he celebrated a Mass in the Tbilisi Sports Palace for members of the small Roman Catholic community. The ruling body of the Georgian Orthodox Church, the Holy Synod, reportedly instructed members of the Orthodox Church that their presence at the Mass would be”inadmissible.” Shevardnadze attended the Mass to represent the state, but Georgia’s Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II did not.

The pope’s meeting Monday (Nov. 8) with Ilia and other members of the Orthodox hierarchy produced a joint appeal for the peaceful settlement of lingering conflicts in Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and the North Caucasus, which includes Chechnya.

But the patriarch was silent on the pope’s invitation to make the start of the third millennium of Christianity the occasion for concerted ecumenical dialogue aimed at ending the division between the Orthodox and Latin churches.

Tutu to NCC: `God is proud of you’

(RNS) Retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, laid up in an Atlanta hospital following surgery, still opened the National Council of Churches’ 50th anniversary celebration Tuesday (Nov. 9), telling the NCC”God is proud of you.” Tutu, who had been scheduled to keynote the opening luncheon of the five-day celebration and business meeting, was forced to cancel his appearance to undergo cryosurgery to treat a recurrence of prostate cancer.”As you celebrate,”Tutu said in a message read to the luncheon audience by the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, NCC general secretary,”celebrate what you helped God achieve in South Africa.”Thank you. God is proud of you _ God says: `Aren’t they neat, aren’t they something _ real cool, man.'” Tutu reminded the audience that he first encountered the NCC in 1972 while working for the World Council of Churches and had been impressed by”how cosmopolitan, how truly catholic, ecumenical and worldwide the involvement of your council seemed to be.”But I was to experience the fervor of your love and caring most wonderfully in the exhilarating and daunting days of the anti-apartheid struggle when I was general secretary of the South African Council of Churches,”he said.”You were quite exceptional. You were steadfast _ unflinching, incredibly generous in your money and other help.” In a separate action on the first day of the meeting, leaders of Church World Service, the NCC’s relief and development agency, adopted a resolution calling on the United States to pay all U.S. arrears and obligations to the United Nations.

The issue, involving upwards of $1 billion in back dues and other payments, remains unresolved in budget negotiations between the White House and the Republican-dominated Congress.

The resolution called the dues issue”of the utmost importance”and said the failure of the United States to pay up has”resulted in the loss of U.S. leadership in an institution that it helped found, and which clearly serves the national security goals and interests of our government.” Dennis Frado, director of the Lutheran Office for World Community and a member of the CWS committee, told RNS the United States could be expelled from the U.N. General Assembly if Congress refuses to pay the back bills.

Frado said the CWS resolution reiterates the NCC’s long-standing position that the United States should”pay its legal obligations and arrears on time, in full and without conditions.”It is essential that we fulfill our moral and legal obligations to which our nation’s leaders, and thus we as a people, agreed to more than 50 years ago,”he said.”The United Nations is critical to our lives as well as those of our neighbors in maintaining international peace and security and securing a dignified life for every one of our brothers and sisters, wherever they may live.”

Israel steps back from Holy Sepulchre door controversy

(RNS) Israel, which has been criticized by Holy Land Christian leaders over its handling of a Nazareth mosque dispute, has decided not to intervene in another controversy involving Christian sensitivities _ opening a new door to Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

A second open door at the church, built over the site where tradition holds that Jesus was buried, is needed to accommodate the large numbers of millennial pilgrims expected to visit in the coming months. There is currently just one way to enter and exit the church in Jerusalem’s Old City, a situation Israel says is dangerous for the pilgrims should a fire or some other emergency occur.

However, the six Christian denominations that lay claim to parts of the church have disagreed over the location of a new door and who should control its key. Last week, a senior Roman Catholic Church official asked the Israeli government to intervene.

No way, an unnamed Israeli official said Tuesday (Nov. 9). The official told the Associated Press that the Israeli government did not want to be accused of fomenting religious animosity.

The Jerusalem government already has been criticized for attempting to settle a dispute in Nazareth between Christians and Muslims fighting over construction of a mosque on land the church wants for a plaza to handle millennial visitors to the Basilica of the Annunciation. The basilica is built over the site where tradition says the Virgin Mary was told by an angel that she would give birth to Jesus.

Wadi Abu Nassar, a Catholic Church spokesman in Israel, agreed with the government’s decision not to get involved in the Holy Sepulchre dispute. Involvement would only give the controversy a”political dimension,”he said.

Meanwhile, a Catholic Church official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was reported as saying Christian leaders would not allow a second entrance and exit for the Holy Sepulchre unless Israel prevents Nazareth Muslims from building a mosque on any of the land next to the basilica.

Percentage of babies born to unwed parents increases fivefold

(RNS) The percentage of babies born to unwed parents has increased fivefold since the 1930s, a new U.S. Census report reveals.

The report, released Tuesday (Nov. 9), examined first births to women between the ages of 15 and 29.

In the period from 1990 to 1994, 41 percent of these births were out-of wedlock, compared to just 8 percent in the period from 1930 to 1934.

The report also gave details about how many couples marry after learning that they have conceived a child _ but before it is born.

Until the 1960s, about 50 percent to 60 percent of couples married after discovering a pregnancy. That figure dropped to 29 percent in the early 1980s, the Associated Press reported.

The report attributes changes in the intervening years to the relaxation of abortion laws and the greater likelihood that women are educated.”Declines in the propensity to marry to avoid an out-of-wedlock birth by this generation of women may also reflect the questionable stability of a forced marriage, especially if the father of the child may not be able to maintain the family after marriage,”the report states.

Quote of the Day: Berlin Lutheran Bishop Wolfgang Huber”The jubilation about Nov. 9, 1989 is joined with mourning for the victims of Nov. 9, 1938. One cannot be separated from the other in this country.” _ Berlin Lutheran Church Bishop Wolfgang Huber, noting that the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall coincided with the 61st anniversary of Kristallnacht _”Night of the Broken Glass”_ when Nazi thugs set fire to hundreds of Jewish synagogues and businesses in Germany and Austria in a preview of the Holocaust to come. Huber was quoted by the Associated Press.

AMB END RNS