c. 2000 Religion News Service

Three African-American Women Named United Methodist Bishops

(RNS) The United Methodist Church has 13 new bishops, three of whom are African-American women, following its U.S. jurisdictional conferences.

The new women bishops, joining four African-American men and six white men in the episcopate, are the first black women to be named Methodist bishops since Leontine Kelly was elected in 1984. She served in the denomination’s San Francisco area for four years before retiring.

“It is great to no longer be the `only,”’ Kelly said in a United Methodist News Service report. “I am proud that across the church there has been a response to the diversity in the church in the election of three very strong women to the episcopacy. The church is blessed with the leadership of men and women of color, and to acknowledge that leadership in these elections is so very heartening.”

The elections, which occurred during conferences that ended July 15, happened in the same month that the African Methodist Episcopal Church elected its first female bishop. The Rev. Vashti McKenzie of Baltimore was elected July 11 at the quadrennial General Conference of the AME church.

The new African-American women in the list of United Methodist bishops are Violet Fisher of West Chester, Pa., who will serve the New York West area; Beverly Shamana of Eagle Rock, Calif., who will serve the San Francisco area; and Linda Lee of Detroit, who will serve the Michigan area.

The bishops will begin their new assignments Sept. 1. The five quadrennial jurisdictional conferences elect bishops to fill vacancies left by deaths or retirements. Bishops are elected for life but are assigned for four-year terms to specific geographic areas.

Serbian Orthodox Church Damaged in Explosion

(RNS) A late-night explosion destroyed a medieval Serbian Orthodox church in a heavily ethnic Albanian province in Kosovo, a U.N. official announced Monday (July 17).

The attack on the Church of the Holy Prophet Elijah in Pomazetin village came shortly before midnight Sunday (July 16), a U.N. police officer told the Associated Press. Sixty-six pounds of explosives were used in the explosion.

“(The church) was destroyed to the basement,” said Oleg Rubezhov, who supervises the area.

Two people were seen fleeing from the church a short time before the explosion. U.N. police said NATO peacekeeping troops were not guarding the church, but the anti-Belgrade Serbian Renewal Movement said peacekeepers bear responsibility for the explosion.

“Members of (the peacekeeping force) knew well enough that Albanian extremists systematically destroy Orthodox Christian churches, but they obviously do nothing to prevent them, which is proven by this latest crime,” said the Renewal Movement.

Serbian Orthodox monuments and Yugoslavia’s minority Serb population have suffered daily attacks from ethnic Albanian extremists during the past year, and some 86 religious objects have been damaged and destroyed, according to the independent Beta news agency.

Dutch Prosecutor Says Pope Has `Global Immunity’ From Criminal Charges

(RNS) Pope John Paul II will not face charges of discrimination against homosexuality because the pontiff is protected by global immunity from jurisdiction, Dutch authorities announced Tuesday (July 18).

The pope’s role as head of the Vatican state and the Roman Catholic Church gives him “universal legal immunity,” the Amsterdam public prosecutor’s office decided, the Agence France Presse reported. Dutch law prohibits courts from considering discrimination charges involving non-Dutch citizens and acts that occur outside the country.

The charges stemmed from a complaint filed earlier this month by an organization associated with the Dutch magazine Gay Krant. The Friends of Gay Krant contended that the pope’s remarks about lesbians and gays during a July 9 speech critical of a World Gay Pride parade in Rome gave “rise to hatred against or discrimination of certain groups of people,” according to the Associated Press.

During his speech the pope denounced homosexuality as “against the laws of nature” and said the gay rights march and parade were an “affront to Christian values.”

In its complaint, the Friends of Gay Krant also claimed the Catholic Church in the Netherlands did not disassociate itself from the pope’s viewpoint on homosexuality.

Update: Indonesia Says Some Soldiers Take Sides in Religious Fighting

(RNS) A spokesman for the Indonesian military admitted Tuesday (July 18) that some Indonesian soldiers have taken sides in religious violence between Christians and Muslims in eastern Indonesia.

“There are some members of Indonesia’s military who act emotionally, either because of their family names or where they come from,” said Rear Air Marshall Graito Usodo. “This is inevitable and we admit the existence of these cases.”

Usodo insisted the military has no policy favoring either Christians or Muslims in the religious fighting that has claimed some 4,000 lives in eastern Indonesia’s Maluku provinces since January of last year. But some soldiers have had a hard time fulfilling their duty to stop the violence because there are “psychological barriers when they (soldiers) need to take stern actions in their duties,” said Usodo, the Associated Press reported.

Christian leaders in Indonesia have repeatedly said that some Indonesian troops were helping Muslim fighters, and videotape released Sunday (July 16) by Associated Press Television News showed some Indonesian soldiers helping Muslims in an attack on a Christian neighborhood in Indonesia.

Usodo said the military intends to dispatch more infantry troops to the provinces, bringing the number of troops in the region to more than 11,000.

In the latest outbreak of violence in the region, two people died Tuesday (July 18) in fighting in Ambon, the capital of the provinces, said Muslim leader Ibnu Alwan. The attacks occurred a day after Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid urged the international community to help end the bloodshed. But Tuesday (July 18), the island nation’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Alwi Shihab said international peacekeepers will not be allowed to enter the provinces.

Southern Baptist Historian William R. Estep Dead at 80

(RNS) Southern Baptist historian William R. Estep died Saturday (July 15) in Fort Worth, Texas.

Estep, a distinguished professor of church history emeritus at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, was 80.

The Williamsburg, Ky., native worked at the seminary from 1954 until his retirement in 1990 but continued to teach until 1994, the seminary said. He wrote or edited 21 books on topics including Anabaptists, the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board and religious liberty.

James Leo Garrett, distinguished professor emeritus of theology at Southwestern, said Estep’s work reflected “a combination of the competence and diligence of a first-rate scholar with good teaching abilities and an interest in students and the life of the churches.”

A former pastor of churches in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Texas, Estep also was involved in several organizations focused on church history and kept in touch with missionaries as a ham radio operator.

Quote of the Day: U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat

(RNS) “This agreement does not end moral responsibility for the Holocaust, for nothing can erase the memory of those who died or the culture and potential achievements lost or the suffering of those who survived.”

_ U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who led the U.S. delegation in negotiations that led to the creation of a German foundation to pay as much as $5 million to almost a million survivors who worked as slaves and forced laborers under the Nazis.

DEA END RNS