c. 1996 Religion News Service
U.S. opposes inclusion of Hiroshima on U.N. heritage list
(RNS) The United States has announced its official opposition to the inclusion of Hiroshima on the United Nations'”World Heritage List”of important international cultural locations.
At a U.N. World Heritage committee meeting in Mexico this week, Japan proposed that a memorial marking the site where the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945 be included on the list.
But State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the United States had decided to”respectfully decline to support”Japan’s suggestion.”We don’t believe that war-related sites are within the scope of the convention,”Burns said at a State Department briefing on Wednesday (Dec. 4).”War-related sites by their nature are inherently controversial, and we believe that it’s probably best not to include them on the list of sites that the World Heritage Committee takes up,”Burns said.
A State Department spokeswoman told RNS that U.S. opposition would likely not affect the final decision of the committee.
New Era trustee requests interim distribution
(RNS) The trustee of the now-defunct Foundation for New Era Philanthropy has requested that a federal bankruptcy judge quickly approve an interim distribution of $30 million to non-profit groups caught in the charity’s financial scandal.
The trustee, Arlin M. Adams, said the 154 organizations that lost a total of $76.9 million by investing in New Era would share in the interim distribution if it is approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Bruce I. Fox, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Adams’ attorney, Stuart M. Brown, said the plan to distribute $30 million would amount to a partial payment to assist affected charities until the bankruptcy case is resolved and a final distribution is made. He estimated that the interim distribution would allow the average organization to receive 25 percent to 30 percent of the amount it lost by investing in New Era.
Although the judge has voiced his eagerness to get back to creditors as soon as possible, a hearing on the motion, made Tuesday (Dec. 3), had not been set as of Wednesday (Dec. 4).
Most of the 154 creditors are”charities that desperately need the funds promptly,”Adams said in his motion.”If an expedited hearing is scheduled … it is possible that the trustee may be able to disburse the proposed interim distribution before the end of 1996.” Evangelical Christian charitable and religious institutions were among those hardest hit by the scandal. Adams’ motion lists Young Life International Service Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., as the creditor sustaining the greatest loss, $2.3 million.
Other religious groups that lost money include World Concern in Seattle, $2 million; Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., $1.99 million; International Missions in Reading, Pa., $1.3 million; Philadelphia College of the Bible in Langhorne, Pa., $1.3 million; and Campus Crusade for Christ’s Jesus Film Project in San Clemente, Calif., $1.1 million.
Federal investigators say that New Era’s”matching grant”program was a Ponzi scheme that created the illusion of financial success by using contributions from new investors to pay previous ones. New Era collapsed in 1995 after Prudential Securities moved to freeze the charity’s assets to cover a $45 million credit line it had extended to New Era’s founder John G. Bennett Jr. Bennett was indicted in September on 82 counts of fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.
Israeli rabbi declares war on economic `desecration’ of Sabbath
(RNS) Israel’s chief rabbi is urging ultra-Orthodox Jews to join him in a declaration of war against Tel Aviv businesses that stay open on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.
At a rally in Tel Aviv Wednesday (Dec. 5), Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, chief rabbi of Israel’s European Jews, told more than 10,000 demonstrators that the Sabbath must be protected. “When one Jew desecrates the Sabbath, he harms every Jew,”Lau said.
Rally leaders demanded that all businesses shut down on the Sabbath, and they called for an economic boycott against all companies that do not. While many Israeli businesses observe the Sabbath, numerous stores, night clubs and theaters in Tel Aviv remain open on Saturdays.
However, Tel Aviv Mayor Roni Milo told religious leaders on Wednesday evening that he would not be intimidated, the Associated Press reported.”If you try to change my city … we will fight it,”Milo said.
Observers said this latest Sabbath controversy demonstrates the growing political influence of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. In last May’s elections, religious parties won 23 of 120 seats in the Knesset and were included in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.
Tensions between religious and secular Jews have been on the rise in Israel in recent years. According to a new survey published in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper on Monday (Dec. 2), 47 percent of Israelis believe to varying degrees that religious divisions will lead to a Jewish civil war.
Egyptian Christian jailed for conversion from Islam
(RNS) An Egyptian man who converted from Islam to Christianity five years ago has been held in a prison north of Cairo for more than two months on charges that his conversion disturbed the security of Egyptian society.
State security police arrested Mohammed Wajdi Mohammed Dura, 22, in the village of Tanta on Oct. 3, according to his lawyer, Morris Sadek, a prominent Coptic Christian attorney in Cairo. A formal hearing in Dura’s case is expected to be held Monday (Dec. 9), Sadek told Compass Direct, a California-based Christian news service that covers religious liberty issues.
Compass Direct reported that Dura was also arrested in January 1995 and in April 1996 and accused of”instigating dissension between Muslims and Christians.”On both occasions, he was jailed for several days and then released.
Dura’s conversion was the subject of an article published last May in the Islamist El-Shaab newspaper under the headline”Mohammed becomes Michael.”Although Dura’s last name was not mentioned, Sadek said enough details were included to easily identify the former law student. Dura went into hiding after the article was published, but returned to his village 25 miles north of Cairo shortly before his arrest.
Under Islamic law, apostasy, or abandoning Islam, is a serious crime.
China cautions Vatican to stop interfering in religious affairs
(RNS) A Chinese Foreign Ministry official has warned Pope John Paul II to”stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, including using religion to interfere in China’s affairs.” In a telephone interview with the Reuter news agency Thursday (Dec. 5), an unidentified government spokesman responded to the pope’s appeal earlier this week that China legalize the Roman Catholic Church.
In China, the Roman Catholic Church is officially banned, and Catholics are required to affiliate with the government-sanctioned Catholic Patriotic Association, which does not recognize the ultimate authority of the pope.
The government spokesman also told Reuters that China wanted to have diplomatic relations with the Vatican, but in order for that to happen, the Vatican must first break its official ties with Taiwan. China has considered Taiwan a renegade province since 1949.
Several human rights groups have reported that Chinese Catholics who remain loyal to the Vatican and Protestant Christians who meet in unauthorized or”underground”house churches have faced a severe crackdown by security officials over the past year.
According to the New York-based human rights group Freedom House, at least four Catholic bishops were arrested this year, including Bishop Su Chimin, the 64-year-old auxiliary bishop of Baoding who has already spent a total of 15 years in prison because of his unauthorized religious activities.
Bishop Zeng Jingmu, 76, remains in detention after his arrest in late November 1995. The bishop is reported to be suffering from a serious case of pneumonia he contracted during another prison term earlier in 1995, according to the Connecticut-based Cardinal Kung Foundation.
Quote of the day: author Bill McKibben
(RNS) Bill McKibben is the author of several books including”The Age of Missing Information”(Plume) and”The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job and the Scale of Creation”(Eerdmans). In his article”Christmas Unplugged,”published in the Dec. 9, 1996, issue of Christianity Today magazine, McKibben argues that spending less and turning off television should be part of the church’s mission to the world, especially during the Christmas season:”Christmas is a school for consumerism _ in it we learn to equate delight with materialism. We celebrate the birth of One who told us to give everything to the poor by giving each other motorized tie racks.”
MJP END RNS
