c. 2006 Religion News Service

Presbyterian Benefactor Beset by Money Woes, Newspaper Says

(RNS) The Denver man who pledged $150 million to help the Presbyterian Church (USA) start new churches has a house in foreclosure and mountains of debt and legal bills, according to a Denver Post investigation.

Stanley W. Anderson made the pledge _ the church’s largest one-time gift ever _ to the church’s new Loaves and Fishes Church Growth Fund to help start new churches, reinvigorate existing ones and expand multicultural ministries.

Anderson told the Post that the $150 million would come from his Trinity Foundation, and would be paid by “off-shore investments” that he and business partner Edwin A. Smith “have been working on for quite a period of time.”

But public records examined by the Post reveal a history of financial problems for Anderson and his companies, including a suit that charges he failed to repay a $100,000 loan; unpaid rent payments; an outstanding dentist’s bill for almost $1,200; a back tax bill of $54,069 that was eventually settled; and liens against his house from his local homeowners association.

Anderson, who founded a commercial credit card processing company, said all businessmen face “challenges” and “trials and tribulations,” but he was confident he could meet his pledge.

“With my long passion for the church, I would not have (promised the donation) if I didn’t believe I could deliver,” said Anderson, a member of Denver’s Central Presbyterian Church. “I just simply could not.”

Church officials also expressed confidence that Anderson would be able to keep his pledge, although they said they never investigated his financial background.

“If he says he will deliver it, he will deliver it,” John Detterick, executive director of the church’s General Assembly Council, told the Post. “I … have complete faith in his integrity.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

St. Vincent’s Not Blaming Incident on God

BAYONNE, N.J. (RNS) It could have been a scene out of “The Omen” on Sunday (June 18) at St. Vincent de Paul Church, when congregants making the sign of the cross saw their clothes stained where they had placed their fingers to their chests.

But it wasn’t the wrath of God _ it was bleach in the holy water.

The Rev. Camilo Lopez, the church’s associate pastor, said several parishioners who had dipped their fingers in holy water ended up with stained clothes after crossing themselves.

The Rev. James Manos, the church’s pastor, said he didn’t think it was a deliberate fouling of the holy water, but rather a worker had inadvertently left a mixture of bleach and water in the font after cleaning it.

_ Steven Lemongello

Methodist Membership Drops Below 8 Million for First Time in 80 Years

(RNS) A United Methodist Church report says church membership dipped to a new low last year, dropping to under 8 million in the United States for the first time in nearly 80 years.

The church’s General Council on Finance and Administration estimated U.S. membership at 7.98 million members in 2005. The church’s global membership is estimated at about 9.86 million.

Membership among the Methodists _ like most mainline Protestant churches _ has been dropping slowly but steadily since the formation of the denomination in 1968.

In addition to fewer members, church attendance dropped 1.63 percent from 2004 to 2005, to about 3.34 million each week, according to United Methodist News Service.

The trend of declining membership, however, is exclusive to the United States; regions of the church in Africa, Asia and Europe have increased membership more than 68 percent between 1995 and 2004.

At a convocation next year, bishops and other ministers plan “to focus on how we can make disciples of Jesus Christ and improve our efforts at strengthening local congregations,” said Bishop Scott Jones of Wichita, Kan.

That plan includes new congregations in the United States and outreach to Hispanics and immigrant groups.

_ J. Edward Mendez

Pope Clears Founder of Indiana College for Sainthood

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Mother Theodore Guerin, founder of an Indiana-based religious community, has been approved for sainthood, the Vatican announced on Friday (June 23).

A bulletin released by the Holy See press office confirmed plans to canonize Guerin, announcing a decree approving Guerin’s sainthood would be read during a July 1 ceremony at the Vatican.

Born in 1798 in France, Guerin, a member of the Sisters of Providence, moved to the United States in 1840, taking up service in what would later become the Archdiocese of Indianpolis.

A year later she established the Academy of Saint Mary of the Woods at Terre Haute, America’s first Catholic women’s liberal arts college. She died in 1856.

A campaign for her sainthood was initiated 1909, paving the way for Guerin’s beatification by the late Pope John Paul II in 1998 _ the last step before sainthood.

Once beatification is performed, one miracle must be attributed to the candidate before the pope can declare the individual a saint. According to Dave Cox, a spokesman for Guerin’s religious order, an employee of the order had his eyesight restored after praying for Guerin’s intercession. That miracle gained Pope Benedict XVI’s approval on April 28, he said.

_ Stacy Meichtry

American Jewish Committee Offers Bonus for Hybrid Cars

(RNS) The American Jewish Committee announced a program that will offer its employees bonuses of up to $2,500 for buying or leasing a hybrid car, practicing what it’s been preaching for a long time about promoting fuel alternatives.

“Everyone has a role to play in reducing our oil dependency from hostile nations. These are simple steps we are taking,” said spokesperson Kenneth Bandler, who recently wrote an op-ed in The New York Times about driving an electric car for three years.

Executive Director David A. Harris announced the program as “integral to AJC’s long-term commitment to developing a serious energy policy in the U.S.”

The organization employs about 200 people in the United States, and about 300 abroad. So far, no employee has taken advantage of the program.

The program comes on the heels of the Vehicle and Fuel choices for American Security Act, a bill that promotes improving the technology in hybrid cars, which AJC supports.

“It is important that we act in a fashion that is consistent with our traditions,” said Legislative director Richard Foltin. “Certainly the obligation to be good caretakers of the earth that we’ve been given by the creator.”

_ J. Edward Mendez

Oregon Woman Plans to Give `Jesus’ Brick Some Divine Company

BEAVERTON, Ore. (RNS) Nancy Baiter was shocked to see Jesus in front of Beaverton City Library.

It’s not the second coming, merely the name “Jesus” engraved on a plaza brick. But it surprised Baiter nearly as much as if she had seen the Galilean carpenter himself.

Another library patron, Linda Gosse, had paid $100 as part of the city’s “Pave the Way” fundraising campaign to have the brick inscribed and placed.

The city began selling the bricks nearly three years ago, said library director Ed House. Only 115 have been sold. After expenses, the city has banked a little more than $7,000 in a trust account.

But Baiter, a retired librarian, thinks the city should have rejected the brick because she considers it a public agency’s endorsement of religion. Now she has a plan to both state her case and win a laugh.

“I think it’s outrageous that there’s a religious brick there,” she said. “That bothers me. So I try to make the point with humor.”

The name “Jesus” meets the city’s standards for the bricks, said City Attorney Alan Rappleyea. City rules reject symbols, profanities, trademarks or quotations. But they allow names and brief dedications.

But Baiter thinks the brick violates another portion of the policy, which states, “The wording will be limited solely to a personal or family name, or the name of a business or organization.”

Rappleyea said the city doesn’t know or care whether the name refers to the Son of God or a Latino man. “We said, `A name is a name, put a name down,”’ he said.

Baiter thinks the city is being disingenuous. “Clearly this is intended as a religious statement,” she said.

Gosse, who purchased the brick, says it does refer to the Messiah. She says she first thought of honoring her parents. “But then I thought, who do I honor above all? And that’s when the name Jesus came to mind.”

Baiter already bought one brick and now wants to buy more bricks and inscribe them with the names of the Egyptian gods Isis and Osiris and their son Horus. City officials are fine with that, Rappleyea said.

So is Gosse. As far as she’s concerned, the more supreme beings, the better. “If she or anyone else wants to put deity names out there,” Gosse said, “they’re welcome to do that.”

_ David R. Anderson

Survey Finds Deep Divide in Western-Muslim Perceptions

WASHINGTON (RNS) Westerners associate fanatacism with Muslims, Muslims associate selfishness with Westerners, and both groups associate violence and arrogance with the other, according to the latest report of The Pew Global Attitudes Project.

The report, entitled “The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims view each other,” surveyed 14,000 people in 13 Western and Muslim countries face-to-face and over the phone.

“This was a bad year for Muslim and Western relations,” said project director Andrew Kohut, referring to riots over cartoon portrayals of Muhammad, a major terrorist attack in London, and the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report said the rift between the West and Muslims peaked earlier this year when a cartoon depicting Muhammad was published in a Danish newspaper and then across Europe. More than 60 percent of the Americans, French and Germans surveyed said Muslim intolerance is to blame for the controversy of cartoons, while more than 80 percent of the Jordanians, Egyptians, Indonesians and Turks surveyed said Western disrespect is to blame.

There is also a chasm between how both view the other’s treatment of women. More than 59 percent of non-Muslims surveyed in Great Britain, France, the United States, Germany and Spain said Muslims are not respectful of women. More than half of Muslims surveyed in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan and Pakistan said the same thing about Westerners. Muslims surveyed in Western countries generally held that Westerners are respectful of women.

The study drew criticism from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, vice president of CLAL, a Jewish think tank in New York and a veteran of Muslim-Jewish relations.

“This kind of study may actually perpetuate the problem by focusing the attentions of each community on the other, and reinforcing their already growing sense of us vs. them,” he said. “It perpetuates the capacity to examine others in the absence of any self-reflection.”

_ J. Edward Mendez

Baptist Group Returns Jesus Reference to Constitution

(RNS) The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly approved a new constitutional preamble that once again includes a reference to Jesus Christ.

About 4,100 people attended the annual meeting of the moderate Baptist group from June 22-23 in Atlanta. During a business session, the assembly approved language that states: “We gladly declare our allegiance to Jesus Christ as Lord and to his gospel as we seek to be the continuing presence of Christ in this world.”

At their meeting last July, the Baptists adopted language that matched the Atlanta-based group’s mission statement. But that language omitted a reference to Jesus Christ, prompting concerns from both fellowship members and Southern Baptist leaders with more conservative theological views.

Also during the meeting, Emmanuel McCall, pastor of Baptist Fellowship Group in East Point, Ga., became the first African-American to serve as moderator, the fellowship’s highest elected post.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Rick Warren to Preach in Communist North Korea

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (RNS) Evangelical pastor Rick Warren has been invited to preach this summer to some 15,000 Christians in North Korea, a communist country infamous not only for its nuclear threats but also for its religious persecution.

Warren, author of the bestselling book, “The Purpose-Driven Life,” said he would make the trip as part of a nearly 40-day journey to meet with the leaders of 13 foreign countries.

“I want to ask you to pray for me,” Warren told about 5,000 worshippers at his Saddleback Church on Sunday (June 25). He said he would be embarking on a “grueling” tour, meeting with presidents, business leaders and pastors in countries such as Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Rwanda and South Korea, where he would preach at the world’s largest church.

And then, he told the crowd, “I’ve received another invitation.” Warren said North Korea would allow him to preach in a stadium seating 15,000, but that he could preach in a larger venue if he could fill the seats.

A collective gasp arose from the worshippers. Then, claps and cheers. The sense of excitement spilled over into conversations after the service.

“God’s using Rick Warren as a vessel for peace,” said Sue Foley, a photographer for the church.

Alan Bennett, a self-employed worshipper from Orange County, said he was “shocked” to hear the news, but said it was “awesome. … I was really taken aback that they would allow a Christian speaker, let alone an evangelist,” to preach.

Since 2001, the State Department has designated North Korea a “country of particular concern” for religious freedom violations. Religious freedom essentially does not exist in the highly centralized state, where Kim Jong Il reigns as Supreme Being.

The communist regime prohibits citizens from belonging to unauthorized religious groups. And its authorized groups are largely propaganda, organized for the benefit of foreigners, according to a 2005 U.S. State Department report on International Religious Freedom.

Believers who proselytize or have ties to evangelical groups in China are arrested, tortured or executed, the report said. Still, religious leaders like Billy Graham have visited North Korea in highly choreographed trips. Warren said he had asked Graham for advice on his upcoming trip.

“I know they’re going to use me,” Warren said, responding to a question about whether he was concerned that the invitation could be a set-up, a ruse to draw out Christians so that the government could punish them.

“So I’m going to use them.”

_ Sarah Price Brown

Insurance Policy for Raising Infant Jesus Revoked

LONDON (RNS) A $1.8 million insurance policy _ taken out by three Scottish sisters in the event one of them gave birth to Jesus on his second coming _ has been withdrawn by the insurance company following a complaint from a Catholic.

The policy was originally taken out in 2000 by the three women in the same family living in Inverness, Scotland. They were paying annual premiums of about $180 each. The premiums _ now totaling about $3,240 _ have been refunded.

The proposal was one of a number of “weird requests” received by British Insurance Limited, of Braintree, Essex, around the time of the millennium. The company’s main business is unemployment insurance.

The insurancy policy was meant to cover expenses related to raising the young Messiah. “I thought the request legitimate, albeit weird,” explained the company’s managing director, Simon Burgess.

But Burgess said the company was mindful of people’s sensitivities and did not want to cause any offense. So when a woman telephoned him, saying she was from the Catholic Church in Scotland, and asked him if he would reconsider what he was doing, he decided to withdraw the coverage and refund the premiums.

However, according to the Scottish Catholic press office, no official complaint was made by the Catholic Church in Scotland.

_ Robert Nowell

Fewer Americans Think Government Should Promote `Moral Values’

(RNS) The number of Americans who believe the federal government should promote “moral values” has dropped significantly in the last 10 years, according to a recent Gallup poll.

In 1996, 60 percent of Americans thought the government should promote moral values, but that number fell to 48 percent in 2006.

“Moral values” are not defined in the poll. So-called “values voters” emerged after the 2004 elections when exit polls found that “moral values” ranked highest among voters’ concerns.

The change appears to be a “fairly recent phenomenon,” according the Gallup News Service. In September 2005, half of Americans said the government should promote “traditional values” and 47 percent said it should not favor any values.

Prior to that, there had been roughly a 10-point margin in favor of promoting “traditional values,” according to Gallup.

More than 60 percent of conservatives and people who attend church weekly believe politicians should legislate morality or promote ideology. Sixty-six percent of liberals disagreed.

A separate Gallup poll found that almost three-quarters of Americans say they’ve maintained the same religious preference during their entire lifetime. Of those that did change preferences, 40 percent said they did so because they disagreed with the teachings on their original religion.

Each of the three polls was conducted by telephone interviews of a national sample of 1,002 adults. The maximum sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

_ Daniel Burke

Quote of the Week: Humorist Art Buchwald

(RNS) “I believe there is a God, but he’s not the one all the religions claim. The Christian religion, the Jewish religion, the Muslim religion _ if you believe in their God, other people will say you’re an infidel. There’s a God out there, but not the one that causes all the trouble in the world.”

_ Humorist Art Buchwald, in an interview with Time magazine.

KRE/PH END RNS