c. 2006 Religion News Service
Black Clergy Pledge Help for Katrina Recovery
NEW ORLEANS (RNS) A national group of black clergy and lay leaders touring the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast said Wednesday (Aug. 16) that they will demand the federal government release money for rebuilding.
Standing outside the flood-damaged Mount Nebo Bible Baptist Church in the Lower 9th Ward, members of the Gamaliel Foundation’s African American Leadership Commission said they are on a fact-finding mission, dubbed the “Drowning on Dry Land/Connecting Covenant Visit,” to learn how they can provide support to the people of the Gulf Coast, particularly the poor.
“We’re here to support the faith community, allies and organizations in their ongoing Katrina/Rita restoration strategies,” said the Rev. Joseph Jackson Jr., pastor of Evergreen Missionary Baptist Church of Milwaukee, Wis., and co-chairman of the commission.
“We’re here visiting with clergy, public policy and public officials to pursue a unified national strategy for releasing all of the resources _ real money _ to rebuild the Gulf Coast and, more importantly, the people.”
The Gamaliel Foundation is a network of more than 60 affiliates in 21 states in America and five provinces in South Africa, according to its Web site, http://www.gamaliel.org. The foundation represents more than a million multifaith, multiracial church members who work on social justice campaigns.
One member of the tour, Deacon Gerry Hughley of Cincinnati, said he couldn’t believe the devastation left by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “This is blowing me away,” he said. “This is a year later. I’m really blown away by that.”
The Rev. Sharon Smith of East St. Louis, Ill., said the group is ready to go to Washington to demand that the federal government rebuild the Gulf Coast. Storm survivors are weary and losing faith in the government, she said, and “it is time for the church and the people of faith beyond the Gulf Coast … to come together in faith rebuilding the Gulf Coast. We stand with and for the survivors of Katrina and Rita.”
This is what Mount Nebo’s pastor, the Rev. Charles Duplessis, wanted to hear. He said he needs help to rebuild the church he has led for 19 years.
“I believe these are people of integrity,” Duplessis said. “They didn’t have to come here. My faith says they are going to do something.”
_ Valerie Faciane
UCC Pioneer for Gay Rights Leaves Post
(RNS) The Rev. Ann B. Day, a United Church of Christ minister who helped open the denomination’s doors to people of differing sexual orientations, has announced that she will retire in 2007.
As coordinator of the “Open and Affirming” (ONA) movement since 1987, Day, 53, encouraged churches, campus ministries and seminaries to publicly support the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons. She has also urged UCC seminaries and churches to study issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.
“Quite frankly, there would not be an Open and Affirming movement were it not for the commitment, vision and tireless work of the Rev. Ann B. Day,” the Rev. William R. Johnson, the first openly gay man ordained in the U.S., said in a church news release.
Historically at the forefront of liberal causes, the UCC’s General Synod in 1985 urged its churches to adopt a policy of “non-discrimination” toward persons of varied sexual orientations.
Now, more than 600 UCC churches in 45 states have declared themselves “Open and Affirming,” according to the church. The UCC has 5,633 churches and 1.2 million members.
Day “was the one who envisioned and created the perimeters of the ONA program … who spent countless hours speaking with local church pastors and members about the ONA study process,” Johnson said.
The Massachusetts woman and her partner, Donna Enberg, who also works at the ONA program, will retire at the UCC’s next synod, in 2007.
Though frustrated at times by the indifference of some heterosexuals, Day said the ONA program is changing the UCC in positive ways. “I am very hopeful for the church,” she said.
The Rev. Michael Schuenemeyer, the UCC’s minister for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender concerns, said that because of Day and Enberg “thousands of UCC members have been empowered to live into the values of God’s extravagant welcome and the whole church is richer for it.”
_ Daniel Burke
Andrew Young Resigns Wal-Mart Post After Comments on Jews, Arabs
LOS ANGELES (RNS) Andrew Young, a former National Council of Churches president and onetime Atlanta mayor, has resigned his post as chairman of a Wal-Mart advocacy group after making negative comments about Jewish, Arab and Korean store owners.
Since February, the longtime civil rights leader and former United Nations ambassador has been doing outreach for Wal-Mart as chairman of its advocacy group, Working Families for Wal-Mart.
In an interview published Thursday (Aug. 17) in the Los Angeles Sentinel, Young was asked about mom-and-pop grocery stores in urban areas being forced to close by new Wal-Mart stores.
Young said mom-and-pop grocers in urban areas “are the people who have been over-charging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs; very few black people own these stores.”
Those comments brought swift condemnation from Jewish groups, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and also Wal-Mart, which on Thursday posted an online statement saying, “Ambassador Young’s comments do not represent our feelings toward the Jewish, Asian or Arab communities … we were outraged when the comments came to our attention. We also support his decision to resign from the post of chairman of Working Families for Wal-Mart.”
Rabbi Steve Jacobs, rabbi emeritus at the Reform synagogue Kol Tikvah in Woodland Hills, Calif., appeared in the 2005 DVD documentary “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.” In an interview, he said, “The people in the civil rights community and the African-American community have been very unhappy with him (Young) because he followed the money and signed up with Wal-Mart.”
“Now it’s not only about Jews; it’s about Asians and Arab-Americans,” Jacobs said. “And for a man with his position and power, after the Mel Gibson incident (of making anti-Semitic remarks during a recent drunken-driving arrest), he should have been super-sensitive.”
Young issued a statement Friday on Wal-Mart’s corporate Web site. “I recently made some comments about former storeowners in my neighborhood that were completely and utterly inappropriate,” he said. “Those comments run contrary to everything I have dedicated my life to. I apologize for those comments. I retract those comments. And I ask for the forgiveness of those I have offended.”
_ David Finnigan
Virginia Priest Consecrated Bishop for Nigerian Group
(RNS) Crossing geographic borders and traditional lines of authority, the Church of Nigeria consecrated a conservative American priest Sunday (Aug. 20) as bishop of a U.S.-based group.
The Rev. Martyn Minns, of Fairfax, Va., will head the Convocation for Anglicans in North America under the direction of Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola. Minns is pastor of Truro Church, a flagship of the Episcopal Church’s conservative wing.
Though the U.S. group was originally founded to minister to Nigerian expatriates, it now will welcome anyone disaffected with the Episcopal Church, according to Minns.
The move by Minns and Akinola may be yet another maneuver in the battle between liberals and conservatives in the worldwide 77 million-member Anglican Communion and its American arm, the Episcopal Church. Already, a dissident conclave of conservative North American dioceses and churches has invited CANA to join their group.
The Convocation for Anglicans in North America includes about 20 churches, according to news reports, though it is not clear how many members it has. Calls to CANA’s office at Truro Church were not immediately returned.
In appointing Minns, Akinola said he intends “not to challenge or intervene in the churches of (North America) but rather to provide safe harbor for those who can no longer find their spiritual home in those churches.”
Nigeria is one of nine African provinces to declare themselves in “impaired communion” with the Episcopal Church since the election of an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire.
Divisions over homosexuality and the authority of Scripture are threatening to tear apart the fragile Anglican Communion and the 2.1 million-member Episcopal Church.
Minns, 63, will continue his duties as rector of Truro Church until another rector is found, according to a church news release.
But Bishop Peter Lee of Virginia has called that situation “impossible” and has said that Minns’ consecration is “an affront to traditional Anglican provincial autonomy.”
Lee said he met with Minns Aug. 12 and the two will release a statement in late August to respond to the “various jurisdictional and pastoral challenges that are presented by this development.”
_ Daniel Burke
Companies That Produced `Clean’ Movies Close Doors
(RNS) CleanFilms and CleanFlicks, two companies that edited violence, profanity, nudity and sex scenes from DVD movies for family viewing, have closed their businesses, rather than appealing a federal judge’s July 6 ruling that they were violating copyright law, according to Baptist Press.
The Utah-based businesses had carved a niche over the past several years with Christians and conservatives concerned about movies’ content, especially for family viewing.
Both companies bought movies and then edited out objectional material before selling or renting to their customers.
“Anyone who goes to see a movie on occasion will tell you that many of today’s films contain scenes of gratuitous sex, violence, nudity and foul language that for many people (particularly families with small children) are unacceptable,” read a statement from CleanFilms’ response to the motion filed by Motion Picture Studios.
The motion from Motion Picture Studios argued that the companies’ business practices violated the Copyright Act by distributing “unauthorized content-edited versions of the Studios’ motion pictures.”
CleanFilms and CleanFlicks argued that the companies were within legal bounds because they operated on a one-to-one practice: For each DVD they rented or sold, they would keep an original version of the movie in their inventory.
Troy Romero, an attorney who represented CleanFilms and CleanFlicks, told Baptist Press that he estimated fighting Motion Picture Studios would be a four- to six-year legal battle _ too long for the small companies.
Both CleanFilms and CleanFlicks are currently offering liquidation sales through their Web sites.
_ Kat Glass
Baptist Church Removes Woman From Teaching Sunday School
(RNS) A Baptist church in Watertown, N.Y., has dismissed an 81-year-old female adult Sunday school teacher, citing a biblical passage that prohibits women from teaching men.
Rev. Timothy LaBouf, pastor of First Baptist Church, said in a statement that “based on the consistent teaching of Scripture,” both men and women have roles within the church, but women are barred from teaching men.
The church’s board of deacons mailed a letter Aug. 9 announcing the decision to Mary Lambert, 81, who had taught an adult Sunday school class for 11 years, on Aug. 9. The letter quoted the New Testament book of 1 Timothy: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”
LaBouf said in an interview that the decision to remove Lambert was “multifaceted” and did not solely rest on the male-female designations in the Bible.
He cited a lawsuit that Lambert had threatened in May. According to LaBouf,the lawsuit, which was later dismissed, said that each new member should be scrutinized before joining the church. The church’s membership has skyrocketed from 18 to 200 members since LaBouf was hired as pastor two years ago.
But, LaBouf said, a legal counsel recommended that the deacons board stick to arguments with an ecclesiastical basis rather than other issues with Lambert, to avoid slander.
Lambert, who has been a church member for 54 years, was not available for comment.
LaBouf, who is also a member on the Watertown City Council, countered criticisms that the church’s decision could carry over to his political role.
“I believe that God has a special role for both men and women within the church setting,” he said in the interview. “I don’t believe that those special roles make one more inferior than the other. … And I believe that that ends at the church.”
The church has classes for children, men only, women only and both men and women. Lambert was teaching a co-ed class of about four men and women.
_ Kat Glass
Woman Tapped to Lead Orthodox Synagogue in Manhattan
NEW YORK (RNS) A woman will lead an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Manhattan, in what is seen as a breakthrough in a religious movement that does not ordain women as rabbis.
Dina Najman, 38, will be called the “rosh kehillah” (“head of the community”), not the “rabbi,” of Kehilat Orach Eliezer, a small congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
In her new role, Najman, the mother of three, will teach, rule on questions of religious law and counsel congregants. The congregation, which was founded in 1992, is not affiliated with an Orthodox synagogue association, but is Orthodox in practice.
Najman will not lead services or read Torah from the pulpit. Such functions are routinely performed by laymen in many Orthodox synagogues. She also will not officiate at religious ceremonies such as weddings.
While the American Reform and Conservative movements ordain women, the Orthodox movement does not. Several large Orthodox synagogues have created formal professional roles for women, with such titles as “religious mentor,” to provide religious education and counseling.
“I think it is a breakthrough,” said Blu Greenberg, the founding president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance. “But it is not a totally radical departure; it is cumulative.”
While women are barred from certain functions in the Orthodox tradition, the boundaries have been expanding. Orthodox women teach Talmud, are advocates in rabbinic courts and are trained as authorities on questions of family purity law.
“The first step was women’s learning. That is what qualifies a woman _ or a man _ to be the leader of a community, of a congregation,” Greenberg said. “It is not a sacramental role, but the affirmation and mastery of rabbinic and sacred texts.”
Najman, a specialist in bioethics, is a member of a new generation of scholarly Orthodox women. She has studied at the Drisha Institute in New York, a center for women’s study of classical Jewish texts, and in Jerusalem. “We now have a critical mass of learned (Orthodox) women, and it is a natural extension for these women to function in this role of leadership,” Greenberg said.
Najman will take her new post on Sept. 16, the beginning of the Jewish penitential period known as the High Holy Days, and 22 years after Greenberg published her first article questioning when the Orthodox would ordain women.
“I thought it would happen in my lifetime, and here it is,” Greenberg said. “We still don’t have (an Orthodox) woman with the title of rabbi. I think the issue of titles is very important, but this is a great date: `rosh kehillah.”’
_ Marilyn Henry
Catholic Church in Southern Africa Speaks Out Against Traditional Customs
(RNS) In the latest attempt to suppress widely held traditional African beliefs, the Catholic Church in southern Africa lashed out against the mingling of Christian theology and “fear of the spirit world.”
The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference _ a body of church leaders from Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland _ issued a statement Aug. 11 condemning elements of traditional religion that fly in the face of Catholic doctrine.
“We notice with a measure of concern that many African Christians, during difficult moments in their lives, resort to practices of the traditional religion,” the conference said in the statement.
“What is even more disturbing is the fact that some priests and the religious and lay people from other professions have resorted to becoming diviner-healers.”
Millions of blacks across the continent have embraced an altered form of Christianity since the days of colonial rule, often mixing the central tenants of Catholicism with centuries-old traditional beliefs including ancestor worship, divination and anti-witchcraft rituals.
According to 2001 census data, approximately 7.1 percent of South Africans say they are Catholic; in the tiny nation of Swaziland, 25 percent identify as Catholic. Thousands go to weekly Mass each Sunday but find little contradiction in visiting healers _ known as sangomas _ throughout the week to consult with spirits of dead relatives or to counter the mischief of local “witches.”
The strongly worded statement from the Catholic Church bars such activity in no uncertain terms: “NO to fortune telling; NO to witchcraft; NO to simony; herbs YES, magic medicines NO.”
Given their prevalence, affordability and cultural significance, sangomas remain the most powerful spiritual and medical figureheads in South Africa’s apartheid-era townships. The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 80 percent of black South Africans seek their counsel. Similar figures exist for Botswana, Swaziland and most other nations in sub-Saharan Africa.
The conference said the belief that ancestors “are endowed with supernatural powers borders on idolatry” and those practicing such beliefs “no doubt” afford ancestral spirits more recognition than Jesus Christ.
“Priests and religious (must) desist from practices involving spirits, and channel their ministries of healing through the sacraments and sacramentals of the Church.”
_ Jason Kane
Quote of the Week: Country singer Willie Nelson
(RNS) “I believe that all roads lead to the same place. We’re taking different ways to get there, but we all end up in the same place. It’s kind of like Kinky Friedman’s statement, `May the God of your choice bless you.’ That’s the main thoughts that I have about life.”
_ Country singer Willie Nelson, author of the recently published “The Tao of Willie,” responding to a question from Time magazine about how his views about Tao may differ from his Methodist roots.
KRE/PH END RNS
