c. 2003 Religion News Service
Faith Groups Lobby to Expand Health Insurance Coverage
WASHINGTON (RNS) An unusually broad coalition of religious groups says expanding coverage for 41 million uninsured Americans must be a priority for people of all faiths in the 2004 elections.
A group of Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and Catholic leaders who rarely agree on theological or political issues said Tuesday (March 11) that care for the poor and sick transcends religious labels.
“In America, the wealthiest, most bountiful country in the history of the world, with the best doctors, the best hospitals, the best health care available, it’s a moral shame that we have 41 million people uninsured,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
In a conference call hosted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of Cover the Uninsured Week, the religious leaders called on churches, mosques and synagogues to force political candidates to address the issue.
“I think the role of the faith community is to call the nation to be their brother’s keeper, to say that this is an unacceptable level of suffering,” said Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant church.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimates that 75 million Americans went without health insurance for at least part of 2001 and 2002, including half of Hispanics, 40 percent of blacks and one-third of the non-elderly. Studies show that those without health insurance are more likely to die as a result of illnesses that go either undetected or untreated.
The Bush administration on Monday proposed increased coverage by expanding community health centers, revamping Medicaid for poor people and instituting a series of tax credits to offset medical expenses. The religious leaders said their first task is to raise the issue, and debate the proposals later.
“I think we’ll be able to find the difference between fundamental convictions and tactical judgments … and I suggest that we’d find more in common than we have differences,” said the Rev. Michael Place, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association.
The Rev. Eileen Lindner, deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said getting bogged down in debates on prescription drug coverage, for example, misses the larger point.
“That’s an example of where we can be penny-wise and pound-foolish,” she said. “Keeping people well is more effective, to say nothing of more dignified and more humane, for us as a society.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Honor in Muslim, American Society Debated at Ethics Center
WASHINGTON (RNS) Rapid global development has robbed many Muslims of their sense of honor toward other peoples, allowing the violent messages of people like Osama bin Laden to resonate with them, according to an Islamic scholar.
Akbar S. Ahmed, chair of Islamic studies at American University and a Religion News Service columnist, said the globalization movement has created a “post-honor world” and “shaken the structures of traditional society.”
Ahmed spoke Monday (March 10) at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was joined by James Bowman, a resident scholar at the center who is writing a book on the history of honor in the 20th century.
It is in the United States’ self-interest to understand Islam, including its concept of honor, because there are more than 1 billion Muslims in the world and 55 Muslim countries, including a number “pivotal” to U.S. foreign policy, Ahmed said.
Ahmed warned that Islam is on a collision course with other civilizations, in part because of the loss of honor caused by global development. He said development forces groups to dislocate or live near other groups. “They have little patience with the problems of others,” he said. “They develop intolerance and express it through anger.”
Ahmed said this causes the disintegration of Muslim society, creating circumstances ripe for influences like those of bin Laden.
Exaggerated senses of group loyalty have replaced honor in the Muslim world, Ahmed said. Disenfranchised Muslims believe they reassert the honor of their group by dishonoring others, he explained.
“The dangerously ambiguous notion of honor, and the even more dangerous idea of loss of honor, propels men to violence,” Ahmed said.
He said that these problems aren’t restricted to the Muslim world. “Even those states that economists call `developed’ fall back to the notions of honor and revenge in crisis,” he said.
Ahmed said President Bush spoke in terms of honor and revenge after Sept. 11, using phrases like “dead or alive.”
Bowman disagreed. He said Bush used the “language of good and evil,” not of honor. Bowman said this language was appropriate because the United States has lived in a “post-honor world” since World War I. He said the big question is whether Islamic societies will move toward democracy or whether the United States will move back toward “an honor society” based on revenge.
Ahmed said there is a strong impulse for democracy in Muslim society, but Bowman countered that many people in Arab countries have beliefs that run contrary to democracy. While people in Islamic countries express a desire for democracy in numbers similar to those in the West, their attitudes toward divorce, homosexuality, abortion and related issues are very different from those of the Western world, Bowman said.
Those attitudes, which are bound up in the culture of honor, represent the real clash of civilizations, Bowman argued.
_ Barbara C. Neff
New Muslim Advocacy Organization Founded
(RNS) Two major American Muslim advocacy organizations have announced they will dissolve to form a new group, the National American Muslim Federation.
The NAMF, which will emerge from both the American Muslim Council and the American Muslim Alliance, was agreed upon on March 1 in a “memorandum of understanding.” The organization plans to begin work by the end of May.
The new organization will combine the functions of the AMA, which works in electoral politics from its San Francisco office, and the Washington-based AMC, which lobbies on various policy initiatives and works with the media on issues important to American Muslims.
The NAMF will maintain offices on the two coasts, combining the resources of the AMC and AMA.
Leaders say the new group reflects a change in the way Muslims participate in American policy and politics and will also serve to unite a community during difficult times.
“This act of unity, we believe, will help create a new grammar of hope, a broader agenda for activism, a far more diversified leadership and a far more effective vehicle for gaining efficacy as citizens of the United States,” said Agha Saeed, chairman of the AMA.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Three Adventist Relief Agency Workers Die Amid Liberian Fighting
(RNS) The Adventist Development and Relief Agency International has confirmed three of its workers died in the midst of recent fighting in Liberia.
Emmanuel Sharpulo, acting country director for Liberia; Kaare Lund, director for Norway; and Musa Kita, a chief driver, were killed during an outbreak of rebel fighting on their way to a Norwegian-funded ADRA refugee shelter project near Toe Town in eastern Liberia.
The three workers had been reported missing on Feb. 28 amid heavy battles between rebels and troops of Liberian President Charles Taylor’s government, Agence France Presse reported.
“ADRA workers operating in war-torn regions are increasingly at risk of being in harm’s way, but are dedicated to relieving the suffering of refugees and others affected by war,” said Charles Sandefur, president of ADRA International, in a statement.
The relief agency, which is based in Silver Spring, Md., commended the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for assisting in the search for the agency’s employees under very dangerous conditions.
Lund, 53, began working with ADRA as country director in Pakistan in 1989. ADRA said his report after returning from Liberia in late 2002 said: “Technically, we ought to withdraw from all of Liberia, but they need help more than any of the others we are working with. If everyone pulls out, theirs is a destiny no one deserves! We should press on.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quran to Be Translated Into Irish
(RNS) With the backing of the Al Maktoum Foundation of Dubai, a project has been launched to translate the Quran into Irish for the benefit of the growing number of Irish Muslims, especially those among them who are Irish-speakers.
There are an estimated 18,000 Muslims in the Republic of Ireland, with two mosques in Dublin, one in Cork, one in Limerick, and one in Galway.
The project is in its very early stages and a meeting has yet to be held to set up a translating committee. The aim is to translate direct from Arabic into Irish and avoid going through English.
Whereas for nearly all Christians translations of the Bible have necessarily to be accepted as a primary source, for Muslims translations of the Quran are secondary to the original, which ideally needs to be studied and used for prayer in the original Arabic.
_ Robert Nowell
Orthodox Claim Victory in Closing of Gay Nightclub in Russia
MOSCOW (RNS) With the recent closure of a gay nightclub, Orthodox Christian activists are claiming victory over the “evil ulcer” that operated for just 20 days in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s third-largest city.
“Our world is soaked in sin, so a 100 percent win is not possible,” said Russian Orthodox Abbott Flavian (Matveev) by telephone from his Yekaterinburg monastery. “There will be attempts made to open new clubs. We need to be vigilant.”
Matveev, other priests and the local Brotherhood of Orthodox Students picketed, collected 3,000 signatures and threatened a hunger strike unless local authorities shut down the Clone nightclub. The activists said Clone promoted a “sinful” gay lifestyle that endangered youth in the city of 1.3 million.
The Orthodox campaign, and a modest counter-protest by local gay activists, generated substantial and somewhat bemused media interest in what is a local election year.
In the face of the intense negative publicity, the owners of Clone decided Feb. 28 to close the club down rather than risk upsetting local politicians, said Sergei Tonkov, Clone’s art director.
Tonkov said there are no immediate plans to open another club but added, “There is a big enough demand.”
Meanwhile, the Orthodox activists will move on to other projects, Matveev said, declining to name them.
“We’ve got a really bad situation here in terms of morality,” he said, pointing as an example to a local man who changed his name recently to “Harry Ivanovich Potter” so as to boost his chances as a candidate in an upcoming election.
The Harry Potter book series, immensely popular in Russia, is criticized in conservative Russian Orthodox circles as promoting witchcraft, Satanism and New Age beliefs.
_ Frank Brown
Eventual Successor for Global Pastors Network Announced
(RNS) Bill Bright, the ailing founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, has chosen his eventual successor as chairman of Global Pastors Network.
Author and speaker John C. Maxwell, chairman of the INJOY Group in Atlanta, will succeed Bright, the co-founder of the network, following Bright’s death. Bright has pulmonary fibrosis, a life-threatening disease.
Global Pastors Network is a worldwide Internet operation that distributes training materials to pastors worldwide. Construction of a headquarters facility for the network, The Bill Bright Leadership Center, is being planned near the Orlando, Fla., headquarters of Campus Crusade for Christ.
Maxwell, who is involved in global efforts to train Christian leaders, will eventually work with other evangelical Christian executives to oversee the network.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Day: Mark Stevens, Southern Baptist Missionary in the Philippines
(RNS) “Don’t worry about the missionaries and don’t call the IMB (International Mission Board) and tell them to send missionaries home. This is part of our calling; it happens _ hopefully not often, but it happens.”
_ Mark Stevens, a missionary with the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board in Davao City, Philippines. Fellow missionary Bill Hyde died from injuries from a bombing at the city’s airport when he went there March 4 to pick up Stevens’ family. He was quoted by Baptist Press.
DEA END RNS
