c. 2005 Religion News Service

Christians Sentenced for Allowing Muslims to Attend Sunday School

(RNS) Three Indonesian women who ran a Christian Sunday school program were convicted and sentenced Thursday (Sept. 1) to three years in prison for allowing Muslim children to attend their school.

The judges cited the Child Protection Act of 2002, which forbids “deception, lies or enticement” of children that might lead to their conversion.

The program, called “Happy Sunday,” was run out of the homes of the three women, Rebekka Zakaria, Eti Pangesti and Ratna Bangun. Launched in September 2003, the program’s purpose was to provide Christian education for Christian students. As it grew in popularity, though, the women admitted some Muslim students who had verbal consent from their parents.

According to media reports, none of the Muslim students converted to Christianity, and the teachers sent home any students who did not have parental permission to attend.

The women were arrested in May after their school was closed by the Muslim Clerics Council. According to the human rights organization Jubilee Campaign USA, based in Fairfax, Va., the Clerics Council and other Muslim groups shut down 35 churches in August and at least 60 in the past year.

Religious freedom experts worry that the conviction signifies a shift in the attitude toward religious minorities in Indonesia, which is home to the world’s largest Muslim population.

“It’s especially troubling and worrisome since it occurred in Indonesia, a country long known for its relative religious freedom,” Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, told Compass Direct, a Christian news organization that monitors religious freedom around the world.

“If it signifies the future direction of the country, the consequences will be terrible,” he said.

_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Nominee’s Record Found Wanting by Church-State Separation Group

(RNS) A Baptist church-state separation group has investigated the record of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts and concluded it is “troubling.”

In a report released Thursday (Sept. 1), the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, based in Washington, cited positions Roberts took as a government attorney.

“(Roberts’) briefs and comments all point in the same direction: toward lowering the wall of separation,” the group said in a statement on its Web site.

The committee, which does not endorse political candidates but evaluates their church-state records, cites several friend-of-the-court briefs filed by Roberts and comments he made to the media.

“Evidence from Roberts’ career show(s) sympathy for more relaxed standards for religious activity in the public schools,” the report states, “such as religious displays or prayer at school events.”

The evaluation also highlights an amicus brief Roberts wrote as deputy solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush, in which Roberts urged the court to abandon the Lemon test, the current court standard for upholding the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

The committee said that Roberts’ record suggests support for a more permissive standard that would prohibit government only from establishing an official church or coercing religious practice.

“That change would most certainly allow for more government funding of religious activities, government-sponsored religious displays and religious activities in public schools,” the evaluation states.

The committee acknowledged that it is “risky” to equate Roberts’ positions as a lawyer for the government with his personal positions, but said his record as a judge offers little to consider.

“The nominee has been a judge only since 2003,” wrote K. Hollyn Hollman, the group’s general counsel. “His judicial record in general is thin,” and “non-existent” regarding the First Amendment’s religion clause.

The Baptist Joint Committee is supported by Baptist churches _ but not the Southern Baptist Convention _ advocating for church-state separation. The report echoes the concerns of another church-state separation group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is formally calling on the Senate to reject Roberts.

Roberts’ Senate confirmation hearings are scheduled to begin Tuesday.

_ Nicole LaRosa

Papal Apartment to Be Refurbished for New Pope

VATICAN CITY (RNS) For the first time in 30 years, the Vatican’s papal apartment is getting a major facelift.

It includes an expansion of the study and the addition of a jet-black grand piano to replace the worn instrument then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is said to have used for late-night renditions of the works of Mozart and Beethoven.

The apartment was last refurbished in 1975, near the end of the papacy of Paul VI. John Paul I, who was pope for just 33 days in 1978, did not have time to make any changes to the 16th-century building, and John Paul II is said to have been unparticular about the state of his living quarters.

When Ratzinger was installed as Benedict XVI in April, little could be done to the apartment except apply a coat of fresh paint and remove the medical equipment placed there during John Paul’s final days.

But now, taking advantage of the fact that Benedict has not spent the night at the apartment since July and is likely to stay away until late September, the papal residence is getting a complete makeover.

The part requiring the most work is the expansion of the papal study _ the room from which John Paul often addressed the crowds in St. Peter’s Square _ which will double in size, mostly at the expense of nearby office space for support staff. The adjacent study of Don Georg Gaenswein, Benedict’s personal secretary, is also being improved.

Additionally, three lay nuns assigned to look after the pontiff’s needs will each have her own room, rather than a single room for the three of them, as in the past.

New furniture _ Vatican media has described it as “modern and simple” _ is being brought in to replace older furnishings. The centerpiece will be the piano, imported from Benedict’s native Germany. The pontiff is known to be a fan of classical music and an accomplished pianist.

Benedict moved into the papal residence April 30, exactly four weeks after John Paul II’s death, and stayed there every night until July 11, when he left for a vacation in the Italian Alps.

The pope is to return to the Vatican in late September, once the renovations are complete.

_ Eric J. Lyman

Quote of the Day: Hurricane Victim Bernadette Washington of New Orleans

(RNS) “I thought we were going to die out there. We had to sleep on the ground. Use the bathroom in front of each other. Laying on that ground, I just couldn’t take it. I felt like Job.”

_ Bernadette Washington, a New Orleans homeowner, whose family was rescued from her roof by a helicopter and then delivered to a patch of land beneath a freeway. She was quoted in the Washington Post.

MO/PH END RNS