c. 1997 Religion News Service

Chavis Muhammad’s ministerial standing suspended

(RNS) The ministerial standing of Benjamin Chavis Muhammad, who announced in February he had joined the Nation of Islam, has been temporarily suspended by the regional association of the United Church of Christ (UCC) that ordained him in 1980.

The action means Chavis should stop performing clergy functions, such as administering the sacraments and serving in other ways as a pastoral leader, until his status within the church is clarified.

Board members of the Eastern North Carolina Association took the action at a March 21 meeting.

The Rev. Rollin Russell, conference minister of the UCC’s Southern Conference, which includes the association, said Chavis Muhammad will appear at the regional group’s Church and Ministry Commission meeting April 24.

Russell told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that Chavis is expected to ask that he be permitted to keep his ministerial standing.”I told him about the suspension,”Russell told the newspaper.”Ben feels the press has misconstrued his intentions.” Chavis Muhammad reportedly described himself in March as a minister in the Nation of Islam, whose members believe in the inherent supremacy of blacks over whites and are considered heretics by mainstream Muslims.

Russell said the UCC regional group’s board of directors interpreted media reports about Chavis Muhammad’s conversion to mean he is no longer observing the Christian faith.

The suspension remains in effect at least until the April 24 hearing and any subsequent action of the board of directors.

Chavis Muhammad, who left his position as executive director of the NAACP in the midst of controversy in 1994, was a key organizer of the 1995 Million Man March, led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Prior to those affiliations, he served in a number of positions with the UCC’s racial justice unit from 1968 to 1993.

N.C. suit to rid court of Ten Commandments dismissed

(RNS) A North Carolina federal district judge has dismissed a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union that sought to remove the words of the Ten Commandments from a courtroom wall.

A similar case dealing with a wooden replica of the Ten Commandments in an Alabama courtroom has pitted that state’s governor against the ACLU. Lawsuits are pending in that case before the Alabama Supreme Court.

In North Carolina, Richard Suhre of Haywood County, N.C., sued his county to get the Ten Commandments removed from the county courthouse.

The abridged versions of the commandments are on marble plaques on a wall that also has a bas-relief of”Lady Justice,”the blindfolded figure who holds the scales of justice in one hand and a sword in the other. The commandments have been on the wall since the courthouse was constructed in 1932.

Suhre, an avowed atheist, said he was offended by their presence in the courtroom.

But U.S. District Court Judge Lacy H. Thornburg ruled that Suhre”failed to establish standing either as a citizen or a taxpayer”to bring the suit.”The Court does not find that the presence of an abbreviated version of the Ten Commandments on either side of Lady Justice constitutes an unwelcome religious exercise or the assumption of a special burden sufficient to establish standing,”Thornburg wrote.

The decision has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., said Suhre’s lawyer, George Daly of Charlotte, N.C.”Mr. Suhre is confident that he will ultimately receive justice in the case,”Daly said.

David Melton, southeast regional coordinator for the Charlottesville, Va.-based Rutherford Institute, a religious liberties legal advocacy group, welcomed the judge’s decision. An affiliate attorney of the Rutherford Institute assisted in the case.”The ACLU’s vendetta against any and all public displays of religious belief is unreasonable,”said Melton.”The Ten Commandments are a foundation of our entire legal system. Haywood County simply recognized that fact by means of a wall engraving.”

Bishop decries killing of missionaries around the world

(RNS) At least 46 Roman Catholic missionaries were killed last year, and persecution of Christians continues to be a problem in many parts of the world, Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of Newark, N.J., said Wednesday (April 2).

McCarrick, the chairman of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Committee on International Policy, said that in addition to the 46 known missionaries killed in 1996 _ including bishops, priests, and lay people _ several other missionaries were missing and thought to be dead.

The archbishop did not provide a specific breakdown of where the killings occurred but said”the large majority”were in Africa and he cited Zaire, Algeria and Burundi as especially dangerous for church personnel.

“In China and Vietnam, Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, as well as Buddhists continue to suffer gravely for their religious beliefs and practices,” McCarrick said.

“Reports have been received in just the last days of new attacks against one of the underground bishops (in China), presumably in an effort to frighten people away from Holy Week and Easter worship,”McCarrick said in a reference to a pre-Easter crackdown on China’s underground Catholics.

And even as the archbishop’s statement was being released, the U.S.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation reported a new raid on the underground Roman Catholic Church in Shanghai, where government officials seized religious articles, cash and electronic equipment.

The foundation said it was impossible for Roman Catholics to celebrate Easter Mass in most of China this year because of government suppression.

“We look forward to the day when China, and all states, will replace the manipulation and control of religious belief and practice with the respect for `freedom of thought, conscience, and religion’ that the world community enshrined as a fundamental right” in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, McCarrick said.

Poll: Many scientists believe in a god

(RNS) Although a majority of scientists in the United States do not believe in a god, the number who do _ 40 percent _ is unchanged from 80 years ago, researchers reported Wednesday (April 2).

In 1916, researcher James Leuba shocked Americans by finding only 40 percent of scientists believed in a supreme being, and he predicted that as education improved, “ungodliness” would become more common among scientists.

“To test that belief, we replicated Leuba’s survey as exactly as possible,” wrote Edward Larson, a historian at the University of George, and Larry Witham of Seattle’s Discovery Institute, in a commentary for the science journal Nature.

According to a Reuter news service report, the men surveyed 1,000 scientists chosen at random from the book “American Men and Women of Science,” similar to the publication Leuba used.

The survey included questions about whether scientists believed in a god who answers prayers, in human immortality, and in an afterlife. The margin of error for the study was not reported.

They found that although 40 percent of scientists believe in a god, most scientists today “have no use for God or the afterlife.”

“To the extent that both surveys are accurate readings, traditional Western theism has not lost its place among U.S. scientists, despite their intellectual preoccupation with material reality,” Larson and Witham found.

According to their research, mathematicians are most inclined to believe in a god _ 44.6 percent _ while the highest rate of disbelief is found among physicists and astronomers.

Japanese court rules against tax money for religious shrines

(RNS) Japan’s Supreme Court has handed down a landmark decision on the separation of church and state, ruling Wednesday (April 2) that a local government’s use of tax money as offerings at a Shinto war shrine was unconstitutional.

The Grand Bench, Japan’s 15-member judicial body, ruled 13-2 that offerings at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan’s war dead are commemorated, violated Japan’s constitutional provision separating church and state.

According to a Reuter news service report, the court ordered local authorities in Ehime Prefecture, 450 miles south of Tokyo, to return 166,000 yen _ about $1,360 _ to the public coffers for offerings it made between 1981 and 1986.

Residents of Ehime complained in 1982 that officials were violating Japan’s U.S.-imposed constitution, which prohibits religious organizations from receiving any state privileges.

The court’s decision was based on a 1977 ruling that said state actions should be judged by whether they are religiously motivated or a social custom.

“It is unlikely that the ordinary person will evaluate the offerings in the current case as a social practice,” the court said.

The Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals hung by allied forces are symbolically enshrined as Shinto deities, has often caused controversy because the shrine and Shintoism were used during the war to promote nationalism.

When Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto visited the shrine last year, China, South Korea, and other countries protested because they believe such visits encourage Japan’s nationalists and right-wing extremists.

Quote of the Day: Jerry Rose of the National Religious Broadcasters

(RNS) On Tuesday (April 1), the Supreme Court upheld the so-called”must carry”regulation requiring cable TV systems to carry local broadcasting, which has traditionally provided access to cable systems by local religious broadcasters. Broadcaster were fearful if the rule was struck down, religious broadcasters would be denied access to cable systems. Jerry Rose, an executive committee member of the National Religious Broadcasters, praised the High Court’s decision:”The Supreme Court decision on `must carry’ is how I spell relief. … With must carry intact, it levels the playing field and takes the control of our future out of the hands of cable.”

MJP END RNS