c. 2005 Religion News Service
Christian Church Is First Major Mainline Denomination to Elect Female Head
(RNS) For the first time in the denomination’s history, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has elected a woman to be its general minister and president.
The Rev. Sharon Watkins was elected general minister and president of the 750,000-member denomination on Tuesday (July 26), which also made her the first woman given the top spot of a major mainline Protestant denomination.
Watkins was elected by acclamation, as expected, by delegates to the Disciples’ General Assembly meeting in Portland, Ore. She succeeds the Disciples’ interim leader, the Rev. William Chris Hobgood.
“Today is not about me,” she said after delegates stood to affirm her election. “It’s about all of us joining together and letting God work with us and through us … so that we can ultimately share God’s love with others.”
Watkins, 51, is currently senior pastor at Disciples Christian Church in Bartlesville, Okla. She was nominated for the post in April.
She will move with her husband to church headquarters in Indianapolis.
“God is calling us to sing a new song,” Watkins told delegates. “Sometimes we will sing different notes, and sometimes there will be discord, but when we all blend together we will be blessed and God will be glorified.”
In other business, delegates approved changes to the church’s constitution, known as “the Design,” that will increase the number of delegates each local church can send to the biennial General Assembly meetings.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
National Chairmen of Major Political Parties Address AME Group
(RNS) The national chairmen of the Democratic and Republican parties made an unusual joint appearance before a politically active group representing one of the country’s largest predominantly black denominations.
Both Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, spoke Tuesday (July 27) in Houston before the AME Church International Lay Organization, representing the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
In their remarks, both referred to equality using spiritual language.
“The dream upon which our nation was founded was based in a strong faith,” Mehlman said in prepared remarks. “We are all children of God.”
Dean said: “We believe that everyone is equal in the eyes of God.”
Both men also acknowledged shortcomings of their parties in relating to African-Americans.
“Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,” said Mehlman. “We were wrong. … No matter how many elections Republicans win, no matter how many times we hold the White House … the party of Lincoln will not be whole again until more African-Americans come back home.”
In his prepared remarks, Dean said, “The Democratic Party has taken the African-American vote for granted; we will not do that again.”
Both men also leveled criticism against the other party, even as they encouraged further connections between blacks and their own party.
“I know it is not in my interest as chairman of the Republican Party for close to 90 percent of African-Americans to vote for the Democrat every election,” Mehlman said. “But more important, it’s not in the interest of African-Americans for 90 percent to vote for the Democrat every election.”
Dean, for his part, said: “The Republican leadership likes to talk about their connection with African-Americans and their heritage as the party of Lincoln. This new stump is chock full of apology but light on true repentance.”
The AME Church International Lay Organization, whose biennial convention ends Friday, is involved in political efforts, including an emphasis on voter mobilization.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Lawyers for Abuse Victims Say Progress Stalls With Bankrupt Archdiocese
(RNS) Lawyers for nearly 70 plaintiffs in a case against the bankrupt Archdiocese of Portland involving priest sexual-abuse complaints say intractable differences with the archdiocese are threatening court-ordered mediations.
“Over the last week or so,” plaintiffs’ lawyer David Slader said in a Tuesday (July 26) hearing on the stalemate, “I feel like a bride who showed up at the wedding, and the groom had brought a girlfriend along and had a different idea of what commitment was.”
In a Tuesday letter to the judge overseeing the archdiocese bankruptcy, the church’s attorney Thomas V. Dulcich contended that the plaintiffs’ lawyers, after many months of discussion, had, in essence, caught them off-guard with new demands.
Dulcich wrote that last week, the Roman Catholic archdiocese first received a proposed form of settlement agreement “that unilaterally imposed a series of previously undisclosed conditions to mediations.” He said the conditions far exceed the scope of the Feb. 28 court order that mandates mediation for every abuse claim against the archdiocese.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Elizabeth Perris left no doubt in the Tuesday hearing that she expects mediations to begin Aug. 8, as scheduled.
“I’ve ordered everybody to go to mediation, which starts in about a week,” Perris told Slader after he said that “no way can the plaintiffs negotiate without knowing what they’re getting.”
“You act like it’s optional to show up,” Perris said.
The mediations are important not only because they will resolve many of the more than 200 pending sex-abuse claims, but also because the settlement amounts will help the archdiocese estimate how much it will cost to settle remaining and future claims.
On July 6, 2004, the Archdiocese of Portland declared bankruptcy in federal court as it was about to go to trial in cases asking for more than $135 million in claims for sex abuse by priests.
_ Steve Woodward
Poll: Fewer Americans Say Islam Encourages Violence
(RNS) More Americans hold favorable views of Muslims today than before 9-11, and fewer Americans say Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
The study, which was also sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, interviewed 2,000 American adults by telephone between July 7, the date of the first terrorist attacks on London, and July 17. The margin of error for the study was plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage points.
A majority, 55 percent, of those surveyed expressed a “favorable” view of Muslim Americans, a figure that has risen from 45 percent before the 9-11 attacks.
Fewer people, 39 percent of those surveyed, said they hold a “favorable” view of Islam in general.
The survey reported that the number of Americans who believe Islam encourages violence is falling, with 36 percent of respondents ascribing to that view, down from 44 percent in 2003.
Basic knowledge about Islam was found to correlate with favorable views of the world’s second-largest religion.
About half of those surveyed were able to identify the Quran as the Islamic holy book, and the same number correctly identified Allah as the Muslim name for God.
Among those with a basic knowledge of Islam, 61 percent of those surveyed expressed a positive view of Muslims, and 49 percent had a favorable opinion of Islam. Among those with the lowest knowledge of Islam, the favorability ratings are 47 percent and 24 percent, respectively.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Death `Curse’ Reportedly Put on Israeli Prime Minister
JERUSALEM (RNS) A group of religious Jewish extremists opposed to the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reportedly placed a death curse on Sharon on July 21.
Ynet, an Israel-based news Web site, reported that approximately 20 extremists took part in the “pulsa denura” ceremony, during which they prayed that Sharon would die within the coming 30 days.
Rooted in the Kabbalah, a sytem of Jewish mystic philosophy, the ceremony made headlines in Israel a decade ago, when extremist right-wing rabbis prayed for the death of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was later gunned down by an Orthdox Jew in 1995.
In an interview with the newspaper Ha’aretz on July 26, Michael Ben-Horin, one of the ceremony’s organizers, said that the death curse was necessary because security around Sharon “is 10 times tighter than (was) the security around Hitler and Stalin.”
The curse comes at a time of heightened tensions in Israel due to the Israeli disengagement from Gaza and northern West Bank scheduled for mid-August. Some rabbis have told their student-soldiers to refuse orders to remove Jewish settlements from Gaza, and hundreds of young religious Jews have holed up in Gaza, despite Sharon’s recent decision to make it off-limits to non-residents.
_ Michele Chabin
Quote of the Day: Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.
(RNS) “The question you didn’t ask was about Mormonism, whether it would hurt him (Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney) in a national campaign. The answer is no. We’ve moved on. That died with my brother Jack.”
_ U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, quoted in an Atlantic Monthly story about the Mormon faith of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is widely thought to be considering a run for the White House.
MO/JL END RNS
