c. 2006 Religion News Service

Pope Defends Status of Pre-Implanted Embryos

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI told a Vatican symposium on the ethics of pre-implanted embryos on Monday (Feb. 27) that such embryos deserve the same respect as any human created by God.

“The love of God doesn’t make any difference between the newly conceived, still in the womb of his mother, and the baby, or the young person, or the mature man or the old man,” Benedict said at the symposium, sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Human Life.

Pre-implanted embryos are frozen for in vitro fertilization, a practice the church opposes, or screened for diseases and genetic traits, which can destroy embryos. Some scientists say these procedures are ethical because pregnancy does not begin until after implantation, a view at odds with the church’s teaching that life begins at conception.

Genetic testing on pre-implanted embryos, touted as one of the latest developments in screening unborn children for traits like gender and IQ, is more like eugenics than medicine, Monsignor Kevin T. Fitzgerald said at a Friday press conference discussing the symposium.

Benedict said the very idea of producing better offspring goes against “God’s boundless love independent of any other consideration _ intelligence, beauty, health, youth, integrity and so on.”

_ Kristine M. Crane

British Official: If Muslims Want Shariah Law, `Live Somewhere Else’

LONDON (RNS) The chief of England’s racial equality watchdog has suggested British Muslims who want to live under Islam’s Shariah religious law should find another place to live.

The remark by Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), was triggered by an opinion poll (Feb. 19) in London’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper showing four out of every 10 of Britain’s estimated 2 million Muslims would prefer life under the Shariah system in areas where they are the majority of the population.

“We have one set of laws” in Britain, Phillips said in an interview on ITV television Sunday (Feb. 26). “They are decided by one group of people, members of Parliament, and that’s the end of the story.”

“Anybody who lives here has to accept that’s the way we do it,” he said. “If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.”

“I don’t think that’s conceivable,” Phillips said, to the suggestion that Shariah law should rule in Muslim-dominated communities.

The Muslim Council of Britain told the Daily Mail newspaper that the CRE’s black chief, an outspoken critic of multi-culturalism in Britain, was mistaken if he thought that many Muslims wanted to see Shariah law govern anywhere in the country.

Council spokesman Inayat Bunglawala said “I don’t believe Muslims are really calling for the implementation of Shariah law.” Rather, he insisted, “the findings of the poll highlights, in our opinion, the importance many attach to living by a code of conduct derived from Islamic teachings.”

In a slap at Muslim fury over Danish newspaper cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, Phillips said “some minorities” should realize that in Britain, the right to give offense is “absolutely precious.”

“Short of people menacing and threatening each other,” he added, “we have freedom of expression. We allow people to offend each other.”

_ Al Webb

Methodists Reject City Over Name of Baseball Team, The Braves

(RNS) The United Methodist Church will not hold its 2012 leadership conference in Richmond, Va., because the name of the city’s minor league baseball team is racially charged, the church’s leadership has announced.

Members of the conference’s planning commission said they were unaware that Virginia’s capital was home to the Richmond Braves _ a team affiliated with the Major League baseball’s Atlanta Braves _ when they originally chose the city to host the Methodist Church’s General Conference.

“When the minor league Braves issue was brought to our attention after the original announcement, we felt we were obligated to revisit the issue,” said Gail Murphy-Geiss, who chairs the commission responsible for planning the conference.

The Methodists are now planning to hold the 2012 conference in Tampa, Fla., served by The Tampa Bay Devil Rays major league baseball team and Tampa Yankees minor league team. The region’s football team is The Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Held every four years, the Methodist General Conference brings together about 1,000 delegates from the denomination’s member churches to decide church law, voting on hundreds of issues affecting church life. The planning commission expects the 10-day gathering to attract an additional 4,000 people and generate about $20 million in local spending.

At the 2004 conference in Pittsburgh, the delegates passed a resolution to avoid holding meetings and events in cities that sponsor sport teams brandishing Native American names and symbols, which the resolution called “a blatant expression of racism.”

The resolution was passed partly in response to controversy regarding the church’s 2000 meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, home of the Cleveland Indians franchise.

“We are sad for the United Methodists in Virginia who were excited about hosting the general conference, but are pleased to take a strong stand against sports teams with offensive names,” Murphy-Geiss said.

_ David Barnes

Lutherans See Growth in Africa, Decline in North America

(RNS) Lutheran church membership went up in Africa but down in North America during the 2004-2005 reporting period, according to the Lutheran World Federation, a global communion of Lutheran churches.

Worldwide, there was a slight increase in membership, to 66.2 million from 65.9 million.

Membership in North American churches decreased by 1 percent, from 8.25 million to 8.15 million. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the second-largest member church of the Lutheran World Federation, also had a 1 percent decline in membership, to 4.9 million.

Africa was the brightest spot, reporting 900,000 new members in Lutheran churches, increasing total African membership to more than 15 million.

The fastest growing Lutheran denomination within Africa was the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Congo in the Republic of Congo with a 44 percent increase, from 1,268 members to 1,828.

Other countries that recorded increases in membership were Taiwan, India, Indonesia and Ireland. The membership numbers were released in mid-February at Lutheran World Federation headquarters in Geneva.

_ Enette Ngoei

Pastor Addressed in Martin Luther King Jr’s Jail Letter Dies

(RNS) The Rev. Earl Stallings, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Birmingham, Ala., and one of the eight white clergy Martin Luther King Jr. addressed in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” has died.

Stallings, 89, died Thursday (Feb. 23) in Lakeland, Fla., where he had been living in a retirement center.

He was pastor of First Baptist Church between 1961 and 1965 and angered many in his all-white congregation by allowing blacks to attend a Sunday worship service.

He gained a lasting place in history from the 1963 letter, which set forth King’s argument for racial equality and the immediate need for social justice. It was directed at and chastised white moderate clergy who had been urging King to delay his 1963 demonstrations in Birmingham.

At one point in his letter, King mentioned Stallings specifically. “I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue,” King wrote. “I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand on this past Sunday, in welcoming Negroes to your worship service on a non-segregated basis.”

On Good Friday, April 12, 1963, King was arrested and put in the Birmingham jail. On Easter Sunday, civil rights leader Andrew Young and two other black activists attended a service at First Baptist to see whether they would be turned away.

Stallings, a Southern Baptist, insisted they be welcomed to the worship service.

“Stallings was very adamant to his deacons that they let these people in,” Samford University historian Jonathan Bass said. “They were welcomed, they were greeted at the front door.”

He also greeted Young, smiling and shaking hands, at the front door after the service. “He asked them to please visit again,” Bass said. A picture of the moment appeared the next day on the front page of The New York Times, Bass said.

Stallings paid dearly for his decision.

“It was such an intensely volatile time for him, from segregationists within his church,” said Bass, author of “Blessed Are the Peacemakers,” which focused on the writing of King’s letter and the eight clergy King addressed.

“Behind the scenes, a lot of segregationists began blaming him for allowing the visitors to become a spectacle. It was unrelenting. He had a bleeding ulcer, people came to the hospital to harass him.”

_ Greg Garrison

Quote of the Day: United Methodist Bishop Tom Bickerton of Pittsburgh

(RNS) “The most shocking thing for me was to work hard for several hours, raise up my head, look around and realize how little we accomplished. There is an awesome need for people to come to Louisiana as work teams. The need will go on for years.”

_ Bishop Tom Bickerton, leader of United Methodists in the Pittsburgh area, speaking about the continuing needs in Louisiana after getting a firsthand view of hurricane damage. He was quoted by United Methodist News Service.

MO/JL END RNS