c. 2000 Religion News Service
Complaint Filed Against Bishop In Same-Sex Union Decision
(RNS) A California woman has filed charges against the Rev. Melvin Talbert, bishop of the California-Nevada Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, for not taking proper action against 68 pastors who participated in a same-sex union ceremony last year.
Jacque Vance, a lay member of Orangevale United Methodist Church, filed the complaint against Talbert for failing to uphold the church’s Book of Discipline, which prohibits United Methodist clergy from officiating or participating in same-sex union ceremonies.
After 68 clergy gathered for the Jan. 16, 1999, ceremony, members of Vance’s church filed a formal complaint with Talbert’s office. Talbert referred the case to a church investigative committee, and after a nine-month review, the committee decided in February not to prosecute the 68 clergy.
But it was what Talbert said after that decision that really angered Vance, she said in a press release. Talbert said that while the investigative committee broke with official church law by not prosecuting the clergy, the annual (regional) conferences within the church are ultimately more important.
“The decision of this committee on investigation does not reflect the long-standing covenant commitments for inclusiveness and justice of the California-Nevada Annual Conference, within the spirit of our long-standing commitment to Jesus Christ as the people called United Methodists,” Talbert said after the decision.
Vance said she took that statement to mean that Talbert believes each annual conference can make its own laws and not abide by the laws of the larger church.
Talbert’s statement “gives a license to everyone in the United Methodist Church to disregard any and all parts of the doctrinal standards and the discipline of the denomination,” Vance said in a press release. A bishop “has no right to stand above the law without paying the consequences.”
Vance’s complaint was sent to the president of the church’s western region. After church officials decide who should handle the complaint, both sides will try to resolve the issue before sending it through a lengthy hearing process.
Talbert said he had no official response to the complaint being filed.
The issue of gays and lesbians in church life is expected to dominate the church’s General Conference meeting, which starts May 2 in Cleveland. Liberal factions within the church want to remove a church statement that declares homosexual acts “incompatible with Christian teaching” and allow clergy to participate at same-sex unions.
Chapman Dominates Doves
(RNS) Sparrow recording artist Steven Curtis Chapman again dominated the 31st Annual Dove Awards held Thursday (April 20) at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Tenn., taking home six of the Christian music awards, including his fifth Best Artist Award.
Chapman, who has won the most Dove awards with 44, also earned honors for Male Vocalist of the Year, Pop Contemporary Album of the Year and Pop/Contemporary Recorded Song of the Year. On the album and single awards he won as both performer and producer.
Songwriter of the Year Michael W. Smith also won Song of the Year (along with Wes King) for “This Is Your Time,” inspired by the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. That song also earned him an award for Short Form Music Video of the Year.
For the second year in a row, Jaci Velasquez earned Female Vocalist of the Year, while the pop crossover group Sixpence None the Richer won Group of the Year. Velasquez also earned Best Spanish Language Album with “Llegar A Ti.”
Ginny Owens won the New Artist of the Year award.
“Angel Band,” a duet performed by Vestal Goodman and country crooner George Jones, earned the Best Country Recorded Song award, and Dottie Peoples won for Best Traditional Gospel Recorded Song with “God Can.”
Kathie Lee Gifford hosted the annual event, performing “Only My Pillow Knows” with Dolly Parton. Award winners were chosen by the 5,500-member Gospel Music Association, an organization committed to promoting Christian music.
L.A. Times Drops Ad Campaign After Muslims Protest
(RNS) The Los Angeles Times has agreed to overhaul an ad campaign that featured bikini-clad women next to a woman in traditional Islamic dress, which angered both Muslims and Times employees.
The Times announced Thursday (April 20) it will revamp the multimillion-dollar ad campaign, which showed women in bikinis and Islamic dress on a California beach with the slogan “Connecting Us to the Times.”
In a letter to the newspaper’s management, the Los Angeles director of the Council on American Islamic Relations objected to the ad, saying “this campaign seems to ignore the fact that California is both multicultural and multireligious. It also indicates that the Times believes a Muslim woman in Islamic dress is somehow not one of `us.”’
Newsroom employees complained to the paper’s management about the ads and circulated a petition to end the campaign. Employees said the ads were “at best muddled and at worst repugnant.” The petition said the ad “risks alienating more readers and embroiling the Times in another controversy _ the last thing the paper needs at this point.”
Times management said the bikini ad will be withdrawn immediately from print and television, and billboards will be replaced as soon as possible. The ad campaign will be revamped and continued with different art.
“We appreciate the Times’ willingness to address Muslim concerns,” said Nihad Awad, director of CAIR’s national organization.
Church of Scotland Looking at Declining Numbers
(RNS) The Church of Scotland is being challenged to come to terms with a declining number of members and to no longer think of success in terms of mass membership.
In a report to the Kirk’s (church) General Assembly, which meets May 20-26 in Edinburgh, the Assembly Council argues “the time is ripe for profound changes” but questions whether the denomination is in fact ready to face them.
Membership in the Church of Scotland, the Presbyterian body that is Scotland’s official church, has declined from nearly 1.3 million in 1961, when active church members made up a quarter of Scotland’s total population, to just under 650,000 in 1998.
But, the Assembly Council said, “numbers are only one index of success and strength.” It suggested the model of the Old Testament kingdom of David has provided the church’s sense of identity since the Reformation and might now need to be replaced by the model of the remnant exemplified by the prophets of the Old Testament exile period.
Indeed, such a model might even chime in better with Jesus, who never had the majority of the people supporting him, and the early New Testament church, which was always weak in numbers, the report said.
It said criteria other than numbers _ strength of commitment, obedience and spirituality _ were important measures of the church.
“After centuries of mass membership, buttressed by law and social convention, the church needs to rethink its identity model and its role and way of operating from a position of weakness,” the report said. “If it is God’s will it may grow strong again in the future, although numbers will not necessarily be an indicator of that strength.”
`Greek Elian’ Center of Family Custody Dispute
(RNS) In a meeting Thursday (April 20) with two parents fighting to regain custody of their son _ dubbed the “Greek Elian”_ from his grandfather in Egypt, Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou announced no plans to demand the toddler’s return.
“We do not want to politicize the problem,” Papandreou told Egyptian-born Gehan Mohamed Fathi Ali Ahmed, 25, and her Greek husband, Yiannis Diamandis, 31. “We have to be completely sensitive toward the human side.”
The boy’s Egyptian-born mother said she was disappointed with the meeting.
“Nothing happened,” complained Ahmed. “(Papandreou) said … `We have a good relationship with them (Egypt) and we don’t want to destroy political things with them.’
“If I’ve lost my kid, I’ve lost everything,” Ahmed told the Associated Press.
Mohamed Ali Ahmed, the child’s grandfather, refused to return the boy to Greece last month as he had promised when Ahmed took her son to visit her estranged family in Alexandria, Egypt.
Ahmed and her husband said the grandfather does not want the 21-month-old child to be raised in Greece as an Orthodox Christian like his father. The grandfather wants the child raised in the Islamic faith, they contend, with a Muslim name.
“He has no authority over the kid, no authority on my wife,” said Diamandis, who met his wife in the United States. The two were married in March 1998 in a civil ceremony in New York, then moved to Greece a month later so that Diamandis could fulfill his military obligation.
Diamandis said that in an effort to appease his wife’s family and regain custody of his son, he even converted to Islam in February, and he and his wife renewed their marriage vows in Egypt in an Islamic ceremony.
The grandfather said it is true he wants the boy to become Muslim, but he claims Diamandis threatened him when he broached the issue.
On Monday (April 17), Greek Orthodox Archbishop Christodoulos hinted the grandfather could be motivated by Islamic zeal.
The case has received no media attention in Egypt where the family has chosen not to communicate with reporters, but in Greece the media and opinion polls support the child’s return to his parents.
“He’s our `Elian,”’ declared a report aired on Greece’s private television channel, referring to the political tug-of-war in the United States over custody of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy rescued off the coast of southern Florida last November.
Quote of the Day: The Rev. Jose Luis Menendez
(RNS) “Herod _ Castro _ is waiting in Cuba. Pontius Pilate is washing his hands in Washington, and that is President Clinton. And the suffering of this child is the suffering of the Cuban people.”
_ Menendez, pastor of Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Miami, likening the ongoing tug-of-war over Elian Gonzalez to the Passion of Jesus during Holy Week, as quoted in The Washington Post.
DEA END RNS
