c. 2007 Religion News Service

Gay Bishop Says Exclusion is an `Affront’ to U.S. Church

(RNS) Openly gay Episcopal bishop V. Gene Robinson reacted angrily to his exclusion from a key meeting of Anglican leaders in England next year, saying it is “an affront to the entire Episcopal Church.”

“It is time the bishops of the Anglican Communion stop talking about gay and lesbian people and start talking with us,” said Robinson, who was elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

“The refusal to include me among all the other duly elected and consecrated bishops of the church is an affront to the entire Episcopal Church,” Robinson said Tuesday (May 22).

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, sent the first round of invitations to the 2008 Lambeth Conference scheduled for next July in Canterbury.

Held every 10 years, the conference brings together bishops and leaders from throughout the Anglican Communion’s 38 regional and national churches, all of which trace their roots to the Church of England.

Also left off the invitation list was Bishop Martyn Minns, a leader of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a conservative splinter group under the aegis of the Anglican Church of Nigeria.

“While the immediate attention is focused on the invitation list, it should be remembered that this crisis in the Anglican Communion is not about a few individual bishops but about a worldwide communion that is torn at its deepest level,” Minns said.

As the spiritual head of the world’s 77 million Anglican Christians and convener of the meeting, Williams said he reserves “the right to withhold or withdraw invitations from bishops whose appointment, actions or manner of life have caused exceptionally serious division or scandal within the Communion.”

Williams also said that “there are currently one or two cases on which I am seeking further advice,” but a top Anglican official seemed to indicate to The Associated Press that Williams has decided not to invite Robinson and Minns.

“At a time when the Anglican Communion is calling for a `listening process’ on the issue of homosexuality,” said Robinson, “it makes no sense to exclude gay and lesbian people from that conversation.”

Minns said, “One thing is clear, a great deal can happen and will happen before next July.”

_ Daniel Burke

Firm Says Phelps’ `God Hates the World’ Parody Violates Copyright

WASHINGTON (RNS) The Hollywood-based company that owns the rights to the 1980s benefit single “We Are the World” has asked a controversial Kansas church to remove its “God Hates the World” parody from its Web site.

But officials at the Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church, citing their right to satire and free speech, refused. What’s more, they’re standing by their version’s warning that Americans are doomed to eat their children.

“You’ll eat your kids, you hateful people,” church members sang on the church’s Web site against scrolling images of picketing Westboro members. “It’s too late to change (God’s) mind.”

The song takes its theme from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, which says, “Thou shalt eat … the flesh of thy sons and daughters,” said Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Topeka-based church.

“No,” she said in an interview, “we’re not being metaphorical.”

Asked to clarify, Phelps-Roper said that America is damned, and although individuals can still act to save themselves, they probably won’t. Besides, she said, the saved already have been chosen by God _ leaving everyone else to face heaven’s wrath.

The original “We Are the World,” written by Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson, raised $50 million for famine relief in Africa. Warner/Chappell Music Inc., which owns the copyright to the song, said in a letter dated May 8 that the church is infringing on its rights and asked that it take the song off the church’s Web site.

The church and its founder have gained national notoriety for loud protests at the funerals of soldiers and AIDS victims. The church claims that the United States will be destroyed by God because the nation insufficiently condemns homosexuals.

_ Charles O’Toole

Alberta Court Allows Photo-less Licenses for Hutterites

TORONTO (RNS) A Hutterite community in Alberta that believes being photographed is a sin has won the legal right to obtain drivers’ licenses without a photo.

The Canadian province’s Court of Appeal agreed with their arguments that requiring them to be willfully photographed violates their religious rights.

Last week, the court upheld a lower court decision from last year that the provincial regulation requiring photographs on driver’s licenses violated the Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony’s religious freedoms guaranteed under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The court ruled that the risk of harm from photo-less licenses was “minimal,” while requiring a photograph would cause the rights of Hutterites to be “totally infringed.”

“This is good news. Not being photographed is one of the Ten Commandments,” said John Wurz, head of the Wilson Hutterite colony, located in southern Alberta.

About 30,000 Hutterites live in Canada, and many believe that the Second Commandment, which forbids graven images, prohibits them from willfully having their picture taken. Some even believe it is a sin for that photograph to be seen by another person.

The Alberta government used to allow those with religious objections to hold photo-less driver’s licenses. About 450 such licenses were issued, just more than half to Hutterites.

But in 2003, that exception disappeared with the introduction of new documents and the creation of a provincial database of faces to prevent one person from holding more than one license.

While the Hutterite community fought the legal case, the government issued them interim licenses that don’t require photographs. Eighty such licenses were issued, but they are not considered a legal form of identification.

Other provinces with large Hutterite populations, such as Manitoba and Saskatchewan, allow driver’s licenses without photos for religious reasons.

_ Ron Csillag

Quote of the Day: Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu

(RNS) “I am fine. I am slightly older than I was yesterday.”

_ Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, 75, speaking about the return of his prostate cancer. He was quoted by the London Times.

KRE/CM END RNS