c. 2003 Religion News Service

Court to Decide if Presbyterian Leader Interfered with Petition Drive

(RNS) The highest court in the Presbyterian Church (USA) will decide whether a top official broke the rules when he refused to convene a special assembly to debate church policy toward gay pastors.

The church’s Permanent Judicial Commission will meet on March 17 to determine if the church’s moderator, the Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, improperly interfered with a petition drive to recall delegates from last summer’s General Assembly meeting.

Westminster Presbyterian Church in Canton, Ohio, charged that Abu-Akel “acted unconstitutionally” in trying to convince petitioners to change their minds. When enough petitioners dropped out, Abu-Akel said he was no longer mandated to call the assembly.

Church elder Alex Metherell of California, who led the petition, said a special assembly was needed to discipline churches that allegedly have openly defied a church ban against non-celibate gay pastors.

Abu-Akel was elected to a one-year term last June. His term will expire when a new General Assembly convenes in Denver in May. A statement from his office said he “and his counsel are considering the decision and will cooperate fully.”

The Ohio church also filed conspiracy and interference charges against the denomination’s stated clerk, the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick. After preliminary oral arguments on Feb. 28, the court dismissed those charges.

The court will, however, decide whether Abu-Akel was required to call the meeting, if he was allowed to ask petitioners to change their minds, how the signatures should have been verified and if signatures can be removed from an official petition.

Paul Rolf Jensen, a Virginia lawyer who has filed multiple charges against churches that ordain gays and lesbians, said Abu-Akel should not have interfered with the process. “It is not up to the moderator to decide if this is not a good idea. … He should have asked, `Is this your signature?’ and that is all,” he said, according to Presbyterian News Service.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Religious Freedom Violators List Falls Short, Groups Charge

WASHINGTON (RNS) When the State Department singled out six countries last week as the world’s worst violators of religious freedom, it left some prime suspects off the list, critics charge.

The State Department named Burma, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Sudan to be “Countries of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act _ the same countries selected in 2001 when the list was last compiled.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent federal agency that advises the government on religious freedom abusers, criticized the State Department for passing over six additional nations where “egregious abuses persist or have increased” in the past few years.

The commission said it had also recommended India, Laos, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam _ countries that “even the State Department’s own religious freedom reports” document as severe violators.

“Even the State Department’s own report states that religious freedom `does not exist’ in Saudi Arabia,” said Commission chair Felice D. Gaer in a statement. “We urge the Department to continue to assess the religious freedom violations in these countries and make CPC designations throughout the year.”

Human Rights Watch, a Washington-based watchdog group, accused the State Department of turning a blind eye to abuses in partner countries. In Uzbekistan, it said, thousands of independent Muslims have been persecuted in the past five years, and Turkmenistan _ “one of the most repressive countries in the world” _ did not even make the “watch list” of probable human rights violators.

“The Bush administration says it wants to promote human rights in the Muslim world,”said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “But it can hardly say it’s trying if it’s afraid to state the simple truth about some of its partners.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell had rejected calls to give a CPC designation to Saudi Arabia, a major Gulf ally, but U.S. officials denied the decision was related to preparations for war. “We’re not going to list them, but we are going to press them on this,” a senior official told Agence France-Press last week. “We think there is an opportunity to push really hard this year.”

Responding to questions on possible U.S. pressure for religious freedom, Saudi Arabian Defense Minister Prince Sultan told reporters last weekend that “this country was the launch pad for the prophecy and the message and nothing can contradict this,” according to the Associated Press. He added that Saudi Arabia is “not against religions at all … but there are no churches _ not in the past, the present or future.”

_ Christina Denny

E-mail Campaign Chips Away At Missouri Synod Missions Shortfall

(RNS) A grass-roots e-mail campaign has made a small dent in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s shortfall in world missions funds.

Prompted by an e-mail request from a church member in Omaha, Neb., more than $38,000 in individual donations have been received for the operating fund of the denomination’s World Mission, the LCMS reports.

Church member Paul Koehler sent out e-mails to fellow members asking them to contribute “at least $1 for each member of your household” and send the e-mail on to other Missouri Synod Lutherans. He was inspired to make the gesture after reading in a denominational magazine that the mission’s shortfall of $2 to $3 million amounted to about a dollar a member.

Money started coming in on Jan. 17 and has continued since, in what the director of World Mission Support considers an unprecedented effort.

“… I see stacks of mail four or five inches high with gifts for this effort,” said the Rev. Ronald Nelson.

His St. Louis office has received donations such as one envelope with three $1 bills wrapped inside a copy of Koehler’s e-mail message.

Koehler is pleased with the results of the campaign.

“Exciting to see God’s hand at work, isn’t it?” he said. “Hopefully, the awareness raised will help produce a longer-term solution to this critical situation.”

The World Mission is not the only denomination-related entity with financial woes. Concordia University, River Forest, Ill., is continuing to reduce its faculty and staff as it deals with about $43 million in debts.

The university’s board of regents cut four faculty positions at a mid-February meeting, bringing the total reductions for the academic year to 36 staff and 21 of its 92 full-time faculty.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Physician-Assisted Suicides Reach High of 38 in Oregon in 2002

(RNS) Thirty-eight people in Oregon killed themselves through physician-assisted suicide in 2002, the highest number in the five full years since a state law allowed the procedure.

A state report in the March 6 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that 38 people committed suicide in a year when doctors wrote 58 prescriptions for terminally ill patients who qualified under the law, the Associated Press reported.

The number of suicides is more than twice the number of patients who took their own lives in 1998, the first full year the law was in effect. That year, 16 patients committed suicide when doctors wrote 24 lethal prescriptions.

The key reasons cited for committing suicide under the law included loss of control of bodily functions, loss of independence and a decreasing ability to take part in activities that bring joy to life. Many of those who ended their lives were older, well-educated cancer victims, said Dr. Mel Kohn, state epidemiologist and co-author of the report.

Assisted suicides accounted for 0.1 percent of deaths, much less than the 2 percent to 5 percent predicted by experts when the law was being drafted in the early 1990s, said Dr. Steve Miles, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

“People say they want the option, but very few people are really interested in availing themselves of this option,” Miles said.

Nation’s First Buddhist High School to Open in Hawaii

(RNS) The first Buddhist high school in the country is scheduled to open in Hawaii this August with an emphasis on peace.

Pacific Buddhist Academy in Nuuanu will include instruction on communication and conflict resolution and will highlight the values of interdependence, harmony and community service, the Associated Press reported.

“We’re going to go beyond developing happy, successful students,” said Pieper Toyama, who will head the school. “We’re going to develop happy, successful students who make peace.”

The school is set to open with 30 ninth-graders and officials plan to add a new grade each year, with hopes of eventually enrolling 250 students.

It will join other schools on a campus that already features the Hongwanji Mission School, which teaches 300 preschoolers through eighth-graders, and the Buddhist Study Center for college students and adults.

The high school is funded through a $1.5 million donation from the international headquarters of Hongpa Hongwanji in Kyoto, Japan.

Bishops Bristle at Exclusion from Thistle

LONDON (RNS) Roman Catholic bishops are demanding to know why members of their faith appear to have been excluded from the Order of the Thistle, the ancient order signifying the highest honor that Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II can bestow upon her subjects in Scotland.

The Bishops’ Conference, which represents the eight Catholic dioceses in Scotland, said it intends to write to the monarch to tell her that omitting Catholics from the order leaves her and other royals open to accusations of religious bigotry as well as harming efforts to eradicate sectarianism in the province.

During her 51-year reign, the queen has never appointed a Catholic to the 16-member order, the Scottish equivalent of England’s better known Order of the Garter. Now that an opening has come up with the death of one member, Viscount George Younger, the bishops believe it is time she rectified the situation.

A replacement for Younger is expected to be announced on St. Andrew’s Day, Nov. 30. St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland.

The Order of the Thistle, a reward for outstanding achievement in public life, dates from 1249, during the reign of Scotland’s King Alexander III.

Peter Kearney, spokesman for the Bishops’ Conference, suggested the situation is linked to Britain’s 1701 Act of Settlement, which expressly bans Catholics from ascending to the British royal throne.

“It is worrying and regrettable that no Catholic in Scotland has been honored by the monarch through membership of the Order of the Thistle,” Kearney said. “Those advising the monarch may wish to explain their decisions to the Catholic community in Scotland.”

“It leaves her open to possible accusations of bigotry,” he added.

A spokeswoman at Buckingham Palace in London put the lack of any Catholics in the order down to “pure coincidence.” She insisted “there is absolutely no question of discrimination.”

The order, whose members are known as “knights (or ladies) of the Most Noble Order of the Thistle,” is largely honorary and doesn’t meet all that often, save for the occasional service at St. Giles Cathedral during the queen’s annual week at Holyrood castle, the royal residence Edinburgh.

_ Al Webb

Moses Hogan, Editor, Arranger of Spirituals, Dead At 45

(RNS) Moses Hogan, an arranger of spirituals who put a modern touch on songs such as “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” died last month (February) in New Orleans.

Hogan, who suffered from a brain tumor, died at the age of 45.

His friends remember him as one of the most extraordinary musicians they ever encountered _ a private, funny, intense master in whose hands the black slave spiritual, conceived in captivity, in secrecy and hope, rose to the level of art.

For more than 20 years, Hogan took old spirituals and refurbished them with new arrangements that seemed to make startlingly fresh something that was always there, his admirers said.

At his death on Feb. 11, Hogan was one of the world’s foremost interpreters of that material, in demand internationally to perform, record and write. His seven recordings include his direction of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and he was the editor of “The Oxford Book of Spirituals,” the standard reference work in the field.

“He arranged this music so you could feel the suffering these people felt,” said Brendolyn McKenna, a soprano Hogan used for decades in several groups. “The music is simple and direct. The dialect is unpolished, but you could still visualize the images. He’d keep the melodies and do rich, sophisticated harmonies that were so colorful, … so eloquent.”

The classically trained pianist grew up playing piano and organ in a black inner-city Baptist church. He attended the Juilliard School of Music in New York and began leading choral groups in the 1980s. He was known for his leadership of the New World Ensemble, the Moses Hogan Chorale and the Moses Hogan Singers.

His legacy, his friends said, is a fresh take on American spirituals that, but for him, might have remained in the background of American music until discovered anew by another musician with his gifts and passion.

“He always said to me he felt he had to bring them back,” said Lula Elzy, a friend since their high school days.

“He said we’re not going to miss ’em until we don’t have ’em.”

_ Bruce Nolan

Quote of the Day: Gary Morgan, Pastor of the Cowboy Church near Dallas

(RNS) “That’s why a cowboy church sermon is different. We preach about love. Our people already know their lives are screwed up. They need me to tell them there’s a God who knows this and cares and wants to help them get back on track.”

_ Gary Morgan, pastor of the Cowboy Church of Ellis County, south of Dallas. He was quoted by USA Today.