c. 1996 Religion News Service
Clinton launches celebrations for Hanukkah, Christmas
(RNS) President Bill Clinton officially launched the holiday season in Washington, D.C., on Thursday (Dec. 5), hosting a special ceremony in the Oval Office to mark the beginning of Hanukkah and then riding across the street to light the national Christmas tree at the annual Pageant of Peace.
At sundown on Thursday, Jews around the world began the celebration of Hanukkah, the eight-day holiday commemorating the time 2,100 years ago when Judah the Maccabee and his followers recaptured the temple in Jerusalem from their Syrian oppressors.
In the Oval Office ceremony, cantor Laura Croen lit the first candle in a small menorah on the president’s desk and briefly explained the meaning of the holiday to Clinton and 18 youngsters from the Temple Sinai Nursery School in Washington, D.C.
The children sang several Hanukkah songs and then Clinton joined them spinning a dreidl, the traditional Hanukkah game played with a four-sided top. The president insisted on playing until all the children had a turn.
In a statement released for Hanukkah, Clinton said the holiday has many lessons for today:”that faith in God can sustain us through any adversity; that peace ultimately comes to those who persevere; and that, just as the shammas passes its light to each candle in the menorah, so too must we share our hope and faith and joy with one another.” An hour after the Hanukkah ceremony, Clinton and the First Lady rode via motorcade to the Ellipse park across from the White House for the Pageant of Peace, the annual holiday program where the national Christmas tree is lit.
Before he flipped the switch to light the tree, Clinton reminded the crowd that Christmas celebrates”the birth of a child who came into the world … to teach the lesson of love and peace that has truly changed the world.” The president noted that are numerous places”from Bosnia to the Middle East to the Korean Peninsula”where there is no peace this season.”At Christmas and throughout the year, the greatest gift of all we can give our own children is to make their world more safe, more peaceful and more possible for them to make the most of their God-given potential,”Clinton said. “It is for our children that we must dedicate ourselves to making peace wherever we can, around the world, in every community, in our own homes and, perhaps most important, in our own hearts,”he said.
American Christian freed in Vietnam
(RNS) An American Christian detained for four weeks in Vietnam for distributing religious materials including pens with crosses on them has been released from house arrest after her husband paid a $1,000 fine.
Man Thi Jones, a 54-year-old nurse from Sacramento, Calif., was escorted to Ho Chi Minh City by a U.S. consular official on Dec. 3 after her release.
An evangelical Protestant and a member of the Cham ethnic minority group, Jones was born in Vietnam but became a naturalized U.S. citizen 21 years ago. She entered her home village in the southern coastal lowlands on a tourist visa in early October.
Jones was called in for questioning by authorities after she began distributing pens and Bible cassette tapes to her relatives. She was held under house arrest in Phan Rang since Oct. 5, and according to her husband, she was subjected to almost daily interrogation about her activities.
On Thursday (Dec. 5), Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., urged the State Department to officially protest Jones’ arrest and fine. The congressman said he is concerned that the U.S. government not back away from the case now that Jones has been released.
Wolf noted that since the U.S. normalized trade relations with Vietnam in 1994, at least ten American Christians have been detained, fined and expelled in the southeast Asian nation because of peaceful religious activities. “We are all relieved that Mrs. Jones will be home for Christmas, but it will only be a matter of weeks before another Christian is picked up and harassed in Vietnam,”Wolf said.”The U.S. government must urge the Vietnamese government to stop persecuting Christians at the same time it is urging them to make deals with American companies,”Wolf added.
Wolf was among 35 members of Congress who wrote to Secretary of State Warren Christopher on Nov. 26 expressing”deep concern”about Jones’ case.
Meanwhile Vietnamese government officials announced on Friday (Dec. 6), that a 395-year-old temple sacred to unsanctioned Buddhists has been declared a”national heritage site.” An official at the national United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Hanoi told Reuters news agency the decision means that Vietnam’s Culture Ministry can determine the Linh Mu temple’s future usage.
Earlier this week, the Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau had warned that the government would attempt to take control of the temple. The Buddhist agency said some 200 police had surrounded the temple last month and arrested two monks in a sweep against religious dissidents.
The two monks are members of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, which is officially banned by the government.
Government officials told Reuters this was not a raid against the monks and others at the pagoda, but an”administrative matter”where officials”invited them politely to move to the other place.”
Southern Baptist Convention layoffs begin
(RNS) In the first of what is expected to a be significant number of layoffs, five employees of the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission (RTVC) have been given severance packages and will be out a job on Jan. 5.
The terminations are a result of a restructuring and downsizing of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination’s national agencies, including the merger of three agencies _ the RTVC, Home Mission Board and Brotherhood Commission _ into a single North American Mission Board.
The agencies employ about 500 people but the new mission board is expected to employ only 350 to 375 people, meaning that 150 people could lose their jobs by the time the reorganization is completed in June.
Jack Johnson, president of the RTVC, told Associated Baptist Press, an independent Baptist news agency, that there will be more layoffs at his agency, but he declined to say how many.
The RTVC will have 87 employees by Jan. 5, when the first five terminations take effect.
The Brotherhood Commission has already lost more than 20 people to attrition, most of whom have not been replaced and it now has about 60 employees.”It has not been as urgent to begin to downsize (the brotherhood commission) because the staff began to downsize itself,”Jack Childs, vice president of support services at the commission told APB.
The Home Mission Board employs between 330 and 350 people and employees were recently told to expect no terminations before January.
British Catholics launch church reform petition campaign
(RNS)”We Are Church,”the international Roman Catholic progressive movement aimed at reforming the church, will be launched in Britain on Saturday (Dec. 7) but has already drawn criticism from the nation’s top Catholic prelate.
Cardinal Basil Hume said the movement, a petition drive that began in Austria 18 months ago calling for ordination of women as priests, an end to mandatory priestly celibacy and the popular election of bishops, contains a number of general affirmations and hopes with which all in the church could agree.
A similar drive, hoping to gather 1 million signatures, is underway in the United States. Other campaigns have or taking place in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain and Canada.”All would hope for a church of love, in which each person’s gifts are respected and used; all would acclaim the priesthood of all the baptized _ which is, of course, different in kind from the ordained priesthood; all would want a church which is committed to justice and peace, and which accepts responsibility for actions taken,”Hume said in a statement.
But Hume said that the call for the ordination of women is a proposition that has been clearly ruled out by the pope and”should therefore have no place in a Catholic document.” Hume also said the”We Are Church”declaration’s assertion that a person’s individual conscience is foremost in the making of moral decisions and its call for the church to affirm the human rights, sexual orientation and marital status of all, were”ambiguous.””Of course we must always have respect and concern for individuals in whatever situation they find themselves,”the cardinal said.”But to `affirm’ a person must not include condoning actions contrary to the teachings of the church.” The petitions are to be taken to Rome at an international gathering of Catholics on Oct. 11, 1997, the 35th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council.
Muslim and African symbols adorn New York’s Grand Central Station
(RNS) For the first time in its history, New York City’s Grand Central Station has been decorated with the Muslim symbol of the crescent and star and Kwanzaa candles to mark the holiday season.”We have attempted to be inclusive in recognizing the religions of the world and the traditions of various segments of society,”Marjorie Anders, spokeswoman for Metro-North told the Associated Press on Friday.
Harlem Councilwoman Virginia Fields expressed approval of the Kwanzaa candles.”It gives recognition to the fact that this is a very important holiday in the lives of many people,”Fields said.
In the past, according to Mohammad T. Mehdi, general secretary of the National Council on Islamic Affairs, only the Christmas tree and the Hanukkah menorah have been a part of the winter holiday decorations.”This is an historic event, recognizing the Muslims as part of the American society,”Mehdi said in a statement.
The inclusion of Muslim symbols at Grand Central is a turnabout from last year, Mehdi said, when station officials removed the traditional tree and menorah rather than add the crescent and star.
Quote of the day: Robert Seiple, president of World Vision
(RNS) In his Christmas message to friends and supporters of World Vision, the Federal Way, Wash.-based evangelical relief agency, Robert Seiple, the agency’s president, compared the”romanticized, secular myth”of Christmas with the story of fear, doubt, faith, hesitation, love and obedience found in the Bible. He compared the story that unfolded in Bethlehem to the story unfolding in the refugee camps of Africa such as Goma, Zaire:”There are tragic parallels to Jesus’ day: political unrest; mass displacement of people from their home; thousands of children dying _ some of them murdered, but most from hunger, thirst and disease. It’s not the picture one would choose for a Christmas card. … Reconciliation. Calvary. The empty tomb culminates. God bringing us together at the cross, despite our differences. God reconciling Himself to us, so that we can begin the hard work of becoming reconciled to one another. This is the Good News that the world desperately needs to hear today. The church must proclaim this Good News _ in Bethlehem, in Central Africa, and to the people sitting next to us in our pews this Christmas.”
END LAWTON/ANDERSON
