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2001-229

News Briefs

Church World Service names team for UN racism conference 

     (NCC) Free and fair discussion of issues, including reparations, Palestinian 
rights, the plight of Dalits and other issues "deemed controversial by some," is 
essential to the integrity of the upcoming United Nations World Conference 
Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, said 
members of the National Council of Churches/Church World Service team going to 
the conference.

     Taking reparations as a case in point, Sammy Toineeta, the NCC's racial 
justice director, noted that "some states don't want to talk about reparations, 
but this is an issue of importance to a lot of people, including many church 
people.

      "The definition of reparations is being debated, but fundamentally, this is 
about setting things right," Toineeta said.  "It's about justice, human rights 
and the restoration of lost human dignity for Africans, people of African 
descent, indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups."

     Members of the NCC/CWS team affirmed their "commitment to studying 
reparations for persons of African descent, indigenous persons and other 
vulnerable groups, for past misconduct and for contemporary effects of continuing 
harm."

     As a participating non-governmental organization, the team will take part in 
the August 28-September 1 "NGO Forum," then observe the August 31-September 7 
conference of government delegations.

     The team is organizing a workshop on "Racism in U.S. Churches: Past 
Practices and Current Solutions," to be offered August 30, and will participate 
in a worship service and candlelight march set for August 31. The service is 
being organized by the Durban-based Diakonia Council of Churches at the request 
of the South African Council of Churches, and co-sponsored by the World Council 
of Churches.

     The Rev. John L. McCullough, CWS executive director and the team's leader, 
also has accepted an invitation to participate in a September 2 panel on 
religious tolerance, organized by the National Religious Leaders Forum of South 
Africa.

     Many religious non-governmental organizations are sending representatives to 
the conference, including a number of the NCC's 36 member communions--for 
example, the United Church of Christ, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), 
United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Episcopal Church, 
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Reformed Church in America and Quaker 
groups.  The World Council of Churches has requested a meeting space and plans 
daily briefings for the wider ecumenical community.

     The Episcopal Church will be represented at the conference by the Rev. Jayne 
Oasin, social justice officer for the Episcopal Church, and the Rev. James 
Williams and Lorine Williams, appointed missionaries from the Diocese of Western 
New York to the Diocese of Klerksdorp in South Africa.

     

India's churches reject suggestions that they are engaged in 'conversion' 

      (ENI) Remarks by India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, appearing to 
suggest that Indian Christians are engaged in "conversion," have led to angry 
scenes in parliament and have been condemned by churches.

     The controversy broke out following remarks by the prime minister in which 
he was reported to say that although "missionaries are engaged in laudable work, 
some have a conversion motive which is not proper."

     Unease about the remarks has been heightened by the fact that the prime 
minister chose to make them at a ceremony at his official residence in New Delhi. 
The ceremony marked the publication of a book about a leader of the Rashtriya 
Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the "national volunteer corps," a prominent Hindu 
nationalist organization.

     The prime minister's party, Bharatiya Janata Party, which governs India at 
the head of a 19-party coalition, is linked to the RSS, which many Christians 
allege is engaged in anti-Christian activities.

     The issue of whether or not Indian churches are engaged in conversion is 
highly sensitive. Mainstream churches reject the idea that their social or 
educational programs are intended to be a vehicle for the conversion of people of 
other faiths. They also fear that suggestions that they are engaged in conversion 
are being used to promote intolerance at a time of increasing anti-Christian 
violence.

     Half a dozen instances of anti-Christian violence have been reported since 
July, including the shooting of a nun near Ujjain in central India and the 
assault on a Catholic priest near Mumbai by Hindu fundamentalists.

     "Instead of reassuring the harassed Christians, it is unfortunate that the 
prime minister is making statements encouraging the fundamentalists," Vijayesh 
Lai, spokesperson of the Evangelical Fellowship of India, told ENI.

     V. S. Lall, vice-president of the National Council of Churches in India 
(NCCI) and the general secretary of the Church of North India, told ENI that 
Vajpayee's remarks were "unbecoming for the prime minister of a secular country." 
The prime minister should have shown "greater sensitivity" to the sentiments of 
the minority communities, he added.

     

Putin seeks inspiration from Russia's Christian roots 

      (ENl) Ten years after the coup attempt that triggered the end of Soviet 
communism, Russia's president has said that his country needs to seek its 
inspiration from its Christian roots.

     "Without Christianity, without the Orthodox faith and culture which sprang 
from it, Russia would have hardly existed as a state," said President Vladimir 
Putin during a visit to the Solovetsky monastery, on the Solovki Islands, part of 
Russia's northern White Sea archipelago.

     He was accompanied by Patriarch Alexei II, leader of the Russian Orthodox 
Church.

     "Today, now that we are rediscovering ourselves, it is very important, 
useful and timely to return to these sources in our search for the moral 
foundations of our life," Putin told reporters on August 20.

     In what observers have described a carefully-timed vacation, the president 
has been visiting Orthodox churches and monasteries in northern Russia as his 
country marks the tenth anniversary of the attempted coup launched against the 
then Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, on August 19, 1991.

     The coup attempt, although unsuccessful, started a chain of events that led 
to Gorbachev's downfall, the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the rise of Boris 
Yeltsin as president of an independent Russian Federation.

     The wisdom of the coup is now the subject of heated debate in Moscow. Many 
of those directly involved, including Gorbachev, democracy campaigners and those 
who plotted the coup, have made statements in recent days about the events. But 
publicly, neither Putin, nor Yeltsin, nor Patriarch Alexei have uttered a word.

     Moscow commentators have criticized the failure of Putin to make any direct 
comment about the anniversary. However, his visit to the Solovetsky is seen as 
highly significant. The first Soviet labor camp was founded there in 1923 after 
the monastery was closed at the time of the Russian revolution. During Stalin's 
rule, many thousands of people, including many clergy, were shot or died at the 
camp. The monastery was re-opened in 1991.

     In his remarks at the monastery, Putin also appeared to distance himself 
from the "exclusivist" interpretation of Orthodox Christianity often propagated 
by Russian nationalists. "If God saved all nations, that means that all are equal 
before God," he said, referring to a famous statement by Metropolitan Hilarion, a 
famous 11th-century bishop of Kiev.

     This "simple truth," Putin continued, became the basis of Russian statehood 
"making it possible to build a strong and centralized multi-ethnic state" and a 
"unique Eurasian civilization." "Besides glorifying the Russian people, besides 
cultivating the national dignity and national pride, our spiritual teachers ... 
taught us to respect other nations," he said. He stressed that ancient Orthodox 
teaching was free of chauvinism or any ideology of nations chosen by God.

     "It would not hurt to remember this today. These are exactly the moral 
values which should form the backbone of domestic and foreign policy."

  

   

Nobel committee member criticizes pope over AIDS

     (Reuters) A member of the secretive Nobel Peace Prize committee lashed out 
at Pope John Paul II's opposition to using condoms to fight AIDS August 21, 
possibly showing the pontiff has little chance of winning the award. 

     Selection committee member Gunnar Staalseth, bishop of Oslo in Norway's 
Lutheran state church, said religious leaders should accept condoms as a way to 
combat a killer disease that has infected an estimated 36 million people 
worldwide. 

     "I challenge the Vatican to redefine its attitude to condoms,'' he told 
reporters after meeting UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is on a two-day 
visit to Oslo. "The current Roman Catholic theology is one that favors death 
rather than life.'' 

     "Religious leaders must be outspoken,'' he said. "Condom use should be 
tolerated as a way to stop the spread of AIDS.'' 

     Many Norwegians oppose the Pope's strict stance on birth control and 
morality, including his opposition to the use of condoms to prevent the spread of 
AIDS because they prevent conception. Roman Catholicism is a minority religion in 
Norway. 

     The pope is often rumored to be among favorites to win the Nobel Peace 
Prize, among other things for his contribution to the collapse of communism a 
decade ago. Members of the selection committee never comment on possible winners. 

     Staalseth said that the Roman Catholic church might find that its opposition 
to AIDS prevention could came back to haunt it in future decades as the toll from 
the pandemic rose. 

     The 2001 Nobel Peace Prize winner will be announced in October. 

     

Burglars sell stolen stained-glass

     (AP) The Rev. Loretta Ewell-Johnson sighed in exasperation as she pointed to 
a hole in the wall where light used to cascade through a stained-glass window at 
St. Paul United Methodist Church in Baltimore. Sixteen stained-glass windows--
some containing dedications to parishioners--have been stolen this summer from 
St. Paul. The latest thefts were discovered August 22. 

     ``It's just amazing that they would come into the church and steal windows 
that have been part of the church since 1913,'' Ewell-Johnson said. 

     Police blame drug addicts living in this blighted neighborhood who sell 
stained-glass windows to antique and secondhand shops to finance their habits. 
About one in eight adults in Baltimore has a drug problem, according to the city 
health department. 

     Stealing stained glass to buy drugs is not new in the city with the 
country's highest rate of heroin addiction. Baltimore's row houses, where stained 
glass dates to the early 20th century, have been losing windows for years. But 
the thieves have only recently begun to target churches. 

     Baltimore isn't the only place where thieves have set their sights on 
valuable church windows. 

     In Rochester, New York, police charged a man with stealing three stained-
glass windows, valued at about $4,500, from the 94-year-old Grace United 
Methodist Church. Officer Scott Peters said the thefts were drug-related. 

     A thief targeted 101-year-old Buckland Memorial Chapel in Pontiac, Michigan, 
last year, stealing seven cathedral-style windows valued at $4,000 each. 

     In both cases, the windows were recovered. 

     Perhaps the most notorious stained-glass theft case was in New York, where 
an expert on Tiffany windows was convicted in 1999 of working with a graveyard 
bandit to sell art stolen from cemeteries over a 15-year period. 

     Thieves sell stained-glass windows, valued at about $300 apiece, to stores 
for about $50. The stores can sell them for up to $500 to builders, collectors 
and people remodeling their homes. 

     Bill Bird, executive director of the Art Glass Suppliers Association, said 
churches are easy targets because they often don't protect the windows or 
register them with insurance companies. 

   

  

Alcoholics Anonymous conversations are 'religious communication'

     (AP) A federal judge overturned a manslaughter conviction in August, saying 
conversations among Alcoholics Anonymous participants should not have been used 
as evidence because such exchanges are a form of confidential religious 
communication.

     US District Judge Charles Brieant said treating AA meetings with less 
protection than any other form of religious communication, which carries 
assurances of confidentiality, is unconstitutional. The entire AA relationship, 
he wrote, "is anonymous and confidential."

     Paul Cox had been convicted of two counts of manslaughter for stabbing to 
death Laksman Rao Chervu and his wife, Shanta, in their home in 1988. Cox claimed 
he was in an alcoholic stupor when he broke into the home, where he had lived as 
a child. He did not know the couple. His trial featured testimony--some obtained 
by subpoena--from AA members who said Cox had discussed memories of the 
stabbings.

     Cox was sentenced to a minimum of 16 years in prison. He appealed, claiming 
his statements to fellow AA members were confidential and should not have been 
admitted as evidence.

     Brieant said a Federal appeals court held in 1999 "that AA is a religion." 
That conclusion, he said, was reached in a case that said a criminal defendant 
could not be ordered to attend AA meetings "because of the religious nature of 
the 12 steps." The 12 steps are tasks AA participants are asked to complete as 
they fight alcoholism.

     In his ruling July 31, Brieant said that, based on AA being considered a 
religion, disclosures of wrongs to fellow members should be protected by "a 
privilege granted to other religions similarly situated." He also cited a state 
Court of Appeals finding that "adherence to the AA fellowship entails engagement 
in religious activity and religious proselytization."

     A spokesman at AA's general services office in New York, who insisted that 
his name not be used because he is a member, said today that the organization 
would have no comment. He said the ruling "falls under the guidance of our Tenth 
Tradition, which states that we would have no opinion on an outside issue. Our 
interpretation is that a court ruling or a medical advance, even though it may 
have something to do with us, is still an outside issue." 

  

   

Churches to be offered insurance coverage for violence 

     (AP) The top insurance company for US churches said August 18 that it would 
begin offering coverage for shootings, bombings and hostage standoffs because of 
recent violence at places of worship. The coverage is the first of its kind 
offered to religious organizations, said Gerald Whitburn, chief executive officer 
of Church Mutual Insurance Company. 

     The company's research found at least 12 shootings or bombings at churches 
in the United States in the past three years that would have been covered under the new 
program. 

     Gretchen Schaefer, spokeswoman for the American Insurance Association in 
Washington, DC, was unaware of any commercial insurers offering similar coverage 
to churches. "It sounds pretty unique," she said. 

     Church Mutual's policy is designed to cover tragedies such as a shooting last 
May in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where a man allegedly shot and killed his estranged 
wife and another woman during a revival meeting. 
     Church Mutual is the leading insurer of churches and other religious institutions 
in the United States. Founded in 1897, the company has more than 73,000 policyholders, 
insuring churches and their schools and camps.