c. 2000 Religion News Service
NCC Representative Cheers INS Decision to Return Cuban Boy
(RNS) The former general secretary of the National Council of Churches has welcomed the decision by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service that 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez should be returned to Cuba.
“The decision of the INS to give custody of Elian Gonzalez to his father is right and just,” said the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell in a statement issued Thursday (Jan. 6). “This decision is to be affirmed and must not be tied to protracted legal battles that would delay the boy’s actual, physical return to Cuba.”
Campbell traveled to Cuba and met with Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elian’s divorced father, and other relatives on Monday. She has been working on the case with the Cuban Council of Churches. In her statement, Campbell mentioned the willingness of her New York-based ecumenical council to help with the physical return of the boy to Cuba.
“Our position has been that Elian needs to be with his immediate family, which is a position that the United States holds in relation to family issues, whether they be domestic or international cases,” she said. “We would rarely choose to place a child with an extended family rather than with the immediate family, particularly when the family is strong and loving as this one is.”
Elian’s case has prompted an international debate since U.S. officials gave his great-uncle in Miami custody of the boy in late November after he was found clinging to an inner tube off the coast of Florida. The boy’s mother and nine others died in an apparent attempt to immigrate illegally to the United States.
Crowds of Cuban-Americans in Miami protested the INS decision Thursday, blocking traffic and urging he stay in the United States.
Attorney General Janet Reno told reporters Thursday she did not expect to overturn the INS ruling, which was announced Wednesday.
“Based on all the information that we have to date, I see no basis for reversing it,” she said.
Asked about balancing the concerns of Cuban-Americans for freedom and the desire of a father to be with his son, Reno said: “We all hope the day will come when this won’t be an issue anymore between Cuba and the rest of the hemisphere. But this is a little 6-year-old boy. He’s got just his father left, in terms of parents. Let us work together to give him the relationship that the law and the right suggest is proper.”
Michigan College President Apologizes to Muslim Student
(RNS) The president of a Michigan community college apologized Tuesday (Jan. 4) to a Muslim student after an incident in which an instructor barred her from making a reference to God before a class presentation.
Saousan Kiwan, who emigrated to the United States eight years ago from Syria, began an oral presentation for an English-as-a-second-language class at Washtenaw Community College with the common Islamic phrase “bismallah alrahman alraheem,” translated into English as “in the name of God, most merciful, the gracious.”
Kiwan was stopped by her instructor, Margo Winnard Czinski, who told Kiwan the phrase was “inappropriate and unacceptable in an American classroom” and that she must adapt to the “cultural expectations of the United States.”
Czinski, who has taught English as a second language at WCC and the University of Michigan since 1975, also told Kiwan she would not be permitted to use the phrase again.
Larry L. Whitworth, president of the college in Ann Arbor, apologized to Kiwan after learning of the incident.
“The student who made this invocation did it orally, but it was brief and there is no reason why she shouldn’t be able to say that,” Whitworth told the Detroit News. “It appears that the instructor misunderstood the meaning of separation of church and state.”
Kiwan withdrew from the class and complained to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamic advocacy group based in Washington. The group demanded an investigation, a formal apology to the student and a formal reprimand of the instructor.
“The separation of church and state does not mean that the state can prevent individuals from expressing themselves in religious terms,” said CAIR board chairman Omar Ahmad. “No reasonable school administrator would try to prevent a student from saying `thank God’ when given an `A’ on a research paper.”
Kiwan will be allowed to complete the course, according to Janet Hawkins, coordinator of public information at Washtenaw Community College. Hawkins said the college is conducting an investigation into the matter, but would not say whether disciplinary action would be taken against Czinski.
Scholar: Three Wise Men were Arab Resin Traders
(RNS) A Danish history professor says the Three Wise Men, described in the Gospel of Matthew as bringing the newborn Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, were probably ordinary Arab resin traders.
“The Three Wise Men were in all probability just some of the many Arab traders in frankincense and myrrh resins who sold their goods in the Mediterranean region,” Adam Bulow-Jacobsen wrote in the Aarhus University periodical Sfinx, Reuters reported on Epiphany (Jan. 6). Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas, traditionally marks the visit of the Wise Men, sometime called the Three Kings or the Magi, to the stable manger in Bethlehem where Jesus was born.
Matthew is the only one of the four Gospels that tells the story of the Wise Men from the East who followed the star to pay homage to the infant Jesus.
“Matthew says nothing about three kings, referring instead to wise men from the East, or `magoi,’ the Greek for dream readers or bringers of omens,” said Bulow-Jacobsen, an expert in Holy Land history and archaeology.
He said that around 2,000 years ago, the Nabatean Arabs from Petra in Jordan built up a major trade in valuable resins from southern Arabia, transporting their wares to the Gaza Strip on a caravan trail that went through Bethlehem.
United Methodist Bishop Appointed as Maryland Church’s Interim Pastor
(RNS) In an unusual move, a United Methodist bishop has been assigned as the interim pastor of a Washington-area church whose pastor recently left the denomination and took the bulk of a megachurch-sized congregation with him.
The appointment of Bishop Forrest C. Stith, who has been on special international assignment for the Council of Bishops since his 1996 retirement, was effective Jan. 1.
“Bishop Stith is an exceptional preacher, administrator and pastor,” said Bishop Felton Edwin May, the bishop of the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. “He will provide the kind of compassionate and focused leadership the congregation needs during the next six months as it determines its future.”
Stith replaces the Rev. C. Anthony Muse, a former Maryland state delegate, who resigned as pastor of Resurrection Prayer Worship Center of the United Methodist Church in Brandywine, Md., in November. He formed an independent congregation and left behind an unfinished building with an estimated $6 million debt.
In 1998, the church reported having a membership of 4,259 and an average attendance at Sunday worship of 1,625.
When Muse departed, attendance at the church dropped below 100 but has increased to more than 300, said the Rev. Hal Henderson, associate pastor of Resurrection Prayer Worship Center.
Stith, 65, served as bishop of the New York West and New York areas of the denomination before his retirement. Since 1996, he has supervised mission projects and new congregations in East Africa.
Pepperdine University Names New President
(RNS) Andrew K. Benton, executive vice president of Pepperdine University since 1991, has been named the university’s seventh president by its board of regents.
“We are convinced that Andrew Benton is best equipped to lead Pepperdine University into the next millennium with academic excellence and Christian values,” said Thomas G. Bost, chairman of the board of regents.
Benton, 47, will succeed David Davenport, who will leave his position by June 30.
Prior to joining Pepperdine University, which is affiliated with the Churches of Christ, Benton served as assistant to the president of Oklahoma Christian University from 1975 to 1984 and practiced law.
Quote of the Day: Washington pastor H. Beecher Hicks Jr.
(RNS) “Consider the nations of the Pacific Rim, consider the sweatshops of developing countries where countless thousands suffer under the oppressive yoke of forced labor and little pay, fueled by American greed and materialism. Jesus is speaking now to more sufferers than ever before.”
The Rev. H. Beecher Hicks Jr., senior minister of Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., in a keynote speech Wednesday (Jan. 5) at the Baptist World Congress in Melbourne, Australia. He was quoted by Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
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