c. 2007 Religion News Service

Bishop Asks Commuters to Spend Three Minutes Doing Nothing

LONDON (RNS) An Anglican bishop has asked thousands of British rail commuters to spend a few minutes each day doing … well, precisely nothing.

To help them keep track of the three minutes of total idleness that he was urging upon them, Bishop of Reading Stephen Cottrell handed out miniature egg-timers to travelers on Monday (June 4) as they rushed by him at the train station.

It was the bishop’s one-man campaign to beat stress. To be sure, more than a few of the harried commuters rebuffed his offer (“I don’t have the time,” said one beleaguered passenger), but Cottrell was undeterred.

What he did _ or tried to do _ was challenge as many as he could in the hurrying masses to “take three minutes of silence a day to transform your life” _ a total stoppage, as it were, that he insisted could lead to “an adventure of self-discovery and creativity.”

“By learning to sit still, slow down, by discerning when to shut up and when to speak out,” he told journalists, “you learn to travel through life differently.” Cottrell suggested that by using the tiny egg-timers _ what he called his “gift of time” _ to sit silently and still each day, commuters would give themselves the chance to experience a new adventure.

Warming to his theme, the bishop also suggested that families set aside a “happy hour” every day during to turn off the televisions and radios. For good measure, he suggested they bake their own bread and eschew instant coffee and tea in favor of the traditional brewed variety.

“There is a new delight and purpose in the mundane and the ordinary things of life,” Cottrell said. “Making tea becomes a treat, traveling to work an adventure.”

The cleric took his cue from a recent study by Britain’s University of Hertfordshire that found the walking speeds in 32 cities around the world had increased by 10 percent over the past decade.

The bishops did, however, concede that “it’s a bit weird when you see a bishop handing you an egg timer.”

_ Al Webb

Interfaith Gathering to Focus on Hunger

WASHINGTON (RNS) Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Christians from almost every denominational stripe will gather next week (June 11) at the Washington National Cathedral for an interfaith convocation dedicated to ending hunger and poverty.

The convocation is sponsored by the Christian anti-hunger group Bread for the World’s as part of its three-day conference that will gather hundreds of religious leaders from across the country, including featured preacher William J. Shaw, president of the National Baptist Convention, USA.

“I don’t know of any event in U.S. religious history that involves such a range of national religious leaders,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, Bread for the World’s president. “Anybody who tries to talk to God knows that you can’t have a relationship with the sacred if you walk by a hungry person.”

Beckmann said Bread for the World’s first interfaith conference in 2005 brought together Christians from diverse backgrounds for the first time and helped solidify support for the new ecumenical group Christian Churches Together in the USA.

As evangelicals and conservative Christians expand their advocacy to include a broad range of issues _ from global warming to HIV/AIDS _ Beckmann said they’re finding common ground with mainline Protestant, Catholic and historically African-American churches.

Beckmann said he’s hoping a similar partnership centered on ending hunger emerges between Muslims and Jews attending this year’s meeting.

“It is a uniting issue,” he said. “Muslims, Christians and Jews together understand that God wants more of our nation than what we’re doing.”

After the interfaith convocation, the 700-odd participants in Bread for the World’s “Gathering 2007” will head to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress on the 2007 Farm Bill, which Beckmann said is “just not just.”

“There’s large amounts of money going to well-off people that’s bypassing poor people,” he said. “This system is doing damage. It’s eating up money from the people who really need it.”

_ Daniel Burke

Religion Professor Sentenced for Soliciting Sex from Minor

HARRISBURG, Pa. (RNS) A former Elizabethtown College religion professor was sentenced Friday (June 1) for soliciting sex with what he believed were preteen girls.

Saying the crime “cries out for incarceration,” Judge Scott A. Evans sentenced David B. Eller, 61, to 2 1/2 to 10 years in state prison followed by 5 years of probation.

“This was a fictitious victim, but there are a great many more victims here than there are in most crimes,” Evans said.

Eller tearfully hugged his wife before he was led away by sheriff’s deputies.

An ordained minister and the former chairman of the college’s Department of Religious Studies, Eller was arrested in July when he arrived at a parking lot in Lower Paxton Township, Pa., to meet what he thought was a 12-year-old girl seeking a sexual encounter.

Instead, it was agents of the state attorney general’s office Child Predator Unit, who had been conversing online with Eller using four preteen identities.

He pleaded guilty in February to attempted unlawful contact with a minor and criminal use of a communications facility.

More than 50 supporters packed the courtroom on Eller’s behalf. His attorney, Brian Perry, said he had forwarded more than 70 letters of support to the judge.

“If a scarlet letter ever fit in a present-day case, this is it,” Perry told the judge, saying that Eller lost his job, had to move and became estranged from his daughter and grandchild since his arrest. “This is a man who, in a week and a half, lost everything.”

Eller said he is seeking counseling for a “sexual addiction” that had overtaken his life. He said the girl’s age was not in his mind and that he doesn’t know what he would have done if there had really been a girl there to meet him. He said he might have counseled her.

“I knew I needed help before, but my pride and my ego prevented me from getting it,” he told Evans. “I’m a good person, a child of God who got caught up in something he couldn’t control.”

But Deputy Attorney General Anthony Forray said Eller still seemed to be rationalizing his actions. He reminded Evans that Eller was reaching out to four agents posing as 12- or 13-year-olds. In the chats, Eller talked of a girl performing oral sex on him and vice versa.

“He came here for one reason and one reason only,” Forray said. “That is to consummate what he talked about with this child.”

_ Pete Shellem

Quote of the Day: Author and Former Pastor Brian McLaren

(RNS) “The tragic thing is to think how many churches this Sunday will be treated to safe, nice, harmless, insignificant, intramural and trivial-pursuit sermons. There are going to be an awful lot of sermons preached in Christian churches … that actually probably help the world become a worse place.”

_ Author and former pastor Brian McLaren, speaking at a Festival of Homiletics in Nashville, Tenn., which concluded on May 25. He was quoted by Associated Baptist Press.

KRE DS END RNS