c. 1999 Religion News Service

Lutherans take up social issues

(RNS) After approving closer ties with both the Episcopal and Moravian churches, voting members at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Churchwide Assembly have turned their attention to more worldly matters, including the farm crisis and women and children in poverty.

The delegates, by an 833-10 vote, adopted a resolution calling on the church’s 5.2 million members to stand with farmers, their families and rural communities, including advocacy with government for policies that aid farmers hurt by the crisis, and aid to support groups that help victims gain access to social services, including mental health services.”I thought the farm crisis of the 1980s was well past,”said delegate Gary Preston from Wisconsin.”But it’s ongoing.

In addition, the assembly received a report from its six-year-old Women and Children Living in Poverty project calling for the church to move beyond providing social services and to work for justice for those in poverty.

Tina Dabney, the project director, said congregations in the church are providing shelters, food pantries, day care for children, adult literacy programs and job training.”But we’ve been there, we’ve done that. Justice must become the church’s primary objective,”she said, arguing that poverty can be eradicated if churches and other institutions set their minds to it.

The delegates also adopted a resolution expressing the church’s concern about the problem of youth violence, especially those”at risk from racism, sexism, hunger, violence, abuse, drugs and poverty, including those who are in prison.”

Brent Walker nominated as new executive for Baptist Joint Committee

(RNS) Brent Walker has been unanimously nominated to serve as the next executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs after serving the committee as one of its lawyers since 1989.

Walker, an attorney and ordained Baptist clergyman, currently is the general counsel and associate executive director of the Washington-based committee.

If his nomination is confirmed at an October meeting of the committee’s board, he will succeed James Dunn, who is retiring from the post. Dunn will become president of the Baptist Joint Committee Foundation and a visiting professor of Christianity and public policy at Wake Forest Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C.”The (search) committee was led ultimately to Brent Walker because of his enthusiasm for education and for igniting the flame of religious liberty in a new generation of Baptists and young people,”said the Rev. Aidsand F. Wright-Riggins III, chairman of both the Baptist Joint Committee and the search committee, in a statement.

Walker, 48, began his work at the Baptist Joint Committee as an associate general counsel. He also is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He is a member of a moderate Baptist church in Falls Church, Va.

Update: Mississippi school board to reconsider Star of David ruling

(RNS) A Mississippi school board has decided to review its decision that banned a Jewish student from displaying a Star of David pendant.

The Harrison County School Board had earlier informed Ryan Green, a junior, that he could not wear the Star of David unless it was under his shirt because a school policy banned wearing anything visible that could be considered a gang symbol.

The decision led the American Civil Liberties Union to threaten a lawsuit and religious groups to complain.

School board members met privately Thursday (Aug. 19) with representatives from law enforcement, the Jewish community and tourism bureaus. The groups later issued a joint statement saying they agreed the decision was not motivated by religious prejudice but rather by safety concerns, the Associated Press reported.

Luis R. Dorfman, president of the Southeast Region B’nai B’rith, said all at the meeting agreed that the board is sincerely interested in safety and”is not motivated by anti-Semitism or religious discrimination.” School Superintendent Henry Arledge said the board likely will make a decision about the necklace policy on Sept. 7.”I would think the board will just review it on the grounds of it being a religious symbol and try to come to some kind of resolution to make it acceptable,”he said.

David Ingebretsen, who heads the Mississippi branch of the ACLU, said the pledge to review the decision would not end his plans for a lawsuit.

The Star of David, one of Judaism’s central symbols, is sometimes incorporated into gang symbols, law enforcement officials said.

Assemblies of God members pass resolution on same-sex unions

(RNS) Ministers and delegates attending the recent biennial General Council of the Assemblies of God passed a resolution forbidding clergy from performing same-sex union ceremonies.”No minister shall perform any type of marriage, cohabitation or covenant ceremony for persons who are of the same sex,”states the resolution.”Such a ceremony would endorse homosexuality which is a sin and strictly forbidden in God’s word …. Any minister of our fellowship who performs a ceremony for this type of disapproved marriage will be subject to discipline by the fellowship.” The resolution, passed during the meeting in Orlando from Aug. 10-13, was one of 18 that were considered by the 3,221 ordained ministers and 630 delegates who formed the voting body of 3,851 individuals.

Among other topics covered by the resolutions were pornography and prayer.

The resolution called on church, school and government leaders to”join together in their own communities to win the battle against pornography and obscenity through education, appropriate law enforcement efforts, and by helping those who have been harmed.” The prayer resolution urged”five rhythms of prayer,”from daily to annual sessions in recognition of”a moral and spiritual crisis facing our nation.” Total registration at the meeting, including visitors and those attending auxiliary events such as a youth congress, was 14,821, the largest registration since 1989, when the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Pentecostal denomination was celebrated.

Tutu calls for freeing of Timorese independence leader

(RNS) Retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speaking Thursday (Aug. 19) on the eve of demonstrations against Indonesian rule in East Timor, called for the freeing of Timorese rebel leader Xanana Gusmao.”I call for the immediate release of Xanana Gusmao, currently under house arrest in Jakarta; the withdrawal of the Indonesian military from East Timor; their replacement by a United Nations peacekeeping force and an end to terror and violence in the region,”the Anglican prelate and Nobel Peace Prize winner said in a statement.

The statement was released by Tutu’s office at Emory University in Atlanta where he teaches theology.

Indonesia invaded the eastern half of Timor island in 1975 and annexed the former Portuguese colony the next year. Timorese have been fighting for their independence ever since.

On Friday, thousands of separatists gathered to celebrate the 24 years of guerrilla war against Indonesia, the Associated Press reported. The rallies come just 10 days before an Aug. 30 vote on the future of the territory.

The Indonesian government has said it will not release Gusmao until after the Aug. 30 vote.

Tutu was also critical of the violence inflicted by anti-independence militias as the election draws near.”The whole process is being subverted by violence and intimidation perpetrated by groups linked to the Indonesian military.”

Catholic bishop goes on trial for genocide in Rwanda

(RNS) Roman Catholic Bishop Augustin Misago went on trial Friday (Aug. 20) on charges he failed to offer sanctuary to victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Attorneys for the bishop, the highest-ranking Rwandan cleric to face charges stemming from the massacre, asked the judge to release the jailed prelate on bail and requested more time to prepare their defense, the Associated Press reported.

The judge then adjourned the proceedings until Aug. 25 in order to consider the motions.

Misago, a Hutu, was jailed in April over sharp protests from the Vatican.

More than 500,000 people died in Rwanda during the four-month frenzy of violence, most of them minority Tutsis. Some 150,000 people are estimated to have been slaughtered in Misago’s Gigonkoro diocese. The prelate is accused of denying safe haven to Tutsi girls who disappeared and were thought to have been killed by Hutu death squads. He has said he was forced to make difficult choices in order to protect his bishopric and is being made a scapegoat.

Last year, two Roman Catholic priests were convicted of participating in the genocide and sentenced to death for their role in the deaths of 2,000 Tutsis who had taken sanctuary in their church. Several other priests and nuns are among the tens of thousands waiting trial by the Rwandan courts for allegedly participating in the killings.

Quote of the day: author Ann Lamott

(RNS)”I have a simplistic baby Christianity. I don’t have an interesting theology; I don’t understand much doctrine. I read the Bible, but I read it every day in small takes, as operating instructions.” _ Writer Ann Lamott, author of”Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith,”in an interview in Common Boundary magazine.

MJP END RNS