c. 2007 Religion News Service

Ministers lose job-tax exemption in Kentucky county

(RNS) Ministers in a Kentucky county will no longer be granted an occupational tax exemption after a local atheist sued to challenge the practice.

Edwin Kagin, national legal director of American Atheists Inc., filed his suit in 2005 to challenge Boone County’s exemption of ministers from the tax despite a state law prohibiting such exemptions.

Boone, which lies on the northernmost tip of the state, stopped requiring an occupational tax from ministers and other clerics in 2000.

“In my mind this could be viewed as a license fee for someone to preach the Gospel, and I disagree with that idea,” said Gary Moore, Boone’s judge executive.

“I am a Christian,” Moore said. “I feel that the First Amendment right of our clergy to preach the Gospel should prevail.”

Moore, who holds the highest public office in the county, said that he would have fought the suit had the county’s legal counsel not advised against it.

Kagin, an atheist who sued the county jointly with American Atheists Inc., said the exemption was unconstitutional.

“Why do they think they ought to be exempt?” Kagin said. “Anyone who has to pay an occupational tax ought to be outraged that the county should let the ministers not pay the tax.”

Kentucky passed a law in 2006 prohibiting ministerial tax exemptions.

“We chose to not enforce the state law,” Moore said.

Boone County ministers and other clerics will again be held to the county’s occupational tax.

“Now, this is going to be blamed on `Look what atheists are doing to those ministers,’ instead of `Look what ministers are doing to everyone else,”’ Kagin said.

_ Kat Glass

Reform Jewish leader calls for more attention to the Sabbath

(RNS) The leader of Reform Jews is spearheading a campaign for greater observance of a 24-hour Sabbath, including increased attendance at Saturday morning worship.

“In our 24/7 culture, the boundary between work time and leisure time has been swept away, and the results are devastating,” said Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, speaking Saturday (Dec. 15) at the biennial convention of the Union for Reform Judaism in San Diego.

“Do we really want to live in a world where we make love in half the time and cook every meal in the microwave?”

Yoffie said “stressed-out, sleep-deprived families” can benefit from abstaining from wage-earning work and reflecting on life.

“We are asked to put aside those Blackberries and stop gathering information, just as the ancient Israelites stopped gathering wood,” he said. “We are asked to stop running around long enough to see what God is doing.”

Yoffie’s proposal includes recommendations that congregations set up task forces to study their own Shabbat morning service and those of other congregations, and then suggest how to enhance their services.

Since 1869, Reform Jews have observed a Shabbat Eve service on Friday nights. But Yoffie said this practice did not generally lead, as hoped, to attracting people to a morning service the next day. Instead, Yoffie said, Saturday morning services have become “privatized,” with the focus primarily on families celebrating bar or bat mitzvahs.

“If I want to go to temple on Shabbat morning but I won’t presume to do so without an invitation from the bar mitzvah family, the time has come to try new things,” he said.

New research conducted for the Union of Reform Judaism found that half those surveyed said they attend most or all Shabbat Eve services, but a only a quarter said they worship Saturday morning in their congregations. The online survey was completed by more than 12,000 people.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Orthodox Jewish family fights to keep father on life support

TORONTO (RNS) A clash between faith and medicine is playing out in a hospital in Winnipeg, Canada, where the family of an Orthodox Jewish man on life support is fighting doctors who say the man likely will never recover.

A judge is considering whether to extend a temporary injunction keeping 84-year-old Samuel Golubchuk on life support. His family says it’s a violation of their Orthodox Jewish faith to remove him from life support, and their lawyer argued in court that removal would constitute assault and battery. The family believes it would be murder.

Golubchuk was admitted to Winnipeg’s Grace Hospital in October with a pre-existing brain injury. He went on life support Nov. 30. He can’t walk, speak or eat on his own, and needs a ventilator to breathe. Doctors believe he will not recover, and want to remove his breathing apparatus.

His son and daughter won a temporary injunction to keep him alive, arguing that Judaism forbids any action that would hasten death.

“They believe that an intentional act that will likely result in death is murder,” said their lawyer, Neil Kravetsky. “Orthodox Jewish people are of the view that where there’s life, there’s hope, and you don’t stop treating someone.”

The hospital’s lawyer argued that patients do not have the right to demand treatment, nor do they have a right to demand the continuation of treatment.

The Canadian Medical Association has warned that an extension of the injunction could set a precedent that would force doctors to provide futile or even potentially harmful medical care when a family demands it.

“We don’t want to see physicians making decisions with one eye on the lawyers,” said Jeff Blackmer, the CMA’s executive director of medical ethics.

A poll released this week shows Canadians on the side of the Golubchuk family. The Angus Reid poll showed nearly seven in 10 Canadians think family members _ not doctors or judges _ should decide when to remove a vegetative patient from life support.

_ Ron Csillag

Magi and guiding star are stuff of Christmas legend, Anglican head says

LONDON (RNS) Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan WIlliams says elements of the traditional Christmas story, such as the three Magi and the star of Bethlehem, are the stuff of “legend.”

In fact, Williams says, biblical accounts of events surrounding the birth of Jesus are vague, and interpretations built up through the centuries are sometimes misleading or even unlikely.

The archbishop, spiritual leader of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, particularly cited the tradition of the Magi _ the three wise men who followed the star of Bethlehem to Jesus’ birthplace in a lowly stable.

The Gospel of Matthew, Williams told the BBC Wednesday (Dec. 19), says that the Magi “are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire _ that’s all we are really told.”

Matthew “doesn’t tell us there were three of them, doesn’t tell us they were kings, doesn’t tell us where they came from,” Williams said. “It works quite well as legend.”

The archbishop stuck strictly to what the Bible says. It doesn’t mention any star guiding the Magi and stopping over a manger in a Bethlehem stable. Stars simply don’t behave like that, Williams said.

He also argued that there was little evidence to support the traditional Christmas card views showing the Virgin Mary cradling the baby Jesus amid a milling cluster of wise men, shepherds, oxen and asses _ scenes he described as misleading.

Also “very unlikely,” the archbishop said, was the traditional nativity depiction of December snow drifting down on the Bethlehem scene as Jesus was born.

In fact, Williams said, there’s no proof that the birth took place in December. That became a part of the story down through the centuries, and “Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival.”

_ Al Webb

Quote of the Day: Church music Professor Michael Hawn

(RNS) “It will take imagination and a willingness to break the ice. Singing is an act that naturally enhances a sense of community, whether it’s `Take Me Out to the Ball Game,’ the national anthem or Christmas carols.”

_ Michael Hawn, professor of church music at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, commenting to USA Today about the possibility of reviving Christmas caroling.

DSB/LF END RNS