c. 1996 Religion News Service
Churches urge U.S. action on environment
(RNS) The National Council of Churches and a dozen Protestant and Orthodox bodies called Tuesday (July 16) for greater U.S. leadership in reducing the emission of”greenhouse gases”that many scientists believe are changing the Earth’s climate.”These are profound issues of global justice,”the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches told a Washington news conference.”While we will all suffer from the consequences of climate change, it is the poor in the United States and in other nations who will be most severely affected and who will have the least recourse.” Climate change, or global warming, is caused by the emission of so-called greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, which are released into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil in electricity generation, heating and automobiles.
Many experts believe the climate changes will increase the volatility of weather patterns, which could disrupt agriculture and magnify the effects of storms and floods. Some climate changes can cause micro-organism proliferation, and in turn, health problems. It could also affect forest ecosystems and raise sea levels, which would impact low-lying coastal areas.
At the United Nations-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the United States, along with other governments, signed the Convention on Climate Change in which the countries agreed, as a first step, to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at their 1990 level by the year 2000.
However, Campbell said the United States is not acting aggressively enough to meet its commitment.”We have met with members of the administration and members of Congress on this issue to express our dissatisfaction with the United States’ slow progress on limiting the release of gases that cause global warming into the atmosphere,”she said.”We have concluded that our government is just not hearing enough from people who care about the future of God’s good creation.” In response, the NCC and the other church agencies are mounting a petition campaign to urge the government to meet the Earth Summit obligation and to”support, not resist adopting a binding international agreement … to achieve greater reductions … after the year 2000.” The petition campaign is part of an international effort spearheaded by the World Council of Churches.
Signers of the Convention on Climate Change are currently meeting in Geneva to draw up an agreement that would set reduced levels of greenhouse gas emissions for the period after 2000.”The threat of climate change touches the religious mind in a special way,”the Rev. Sam Kobia, director of the World Council of Churches’ Justice, Peace and Creation Unit told the international meeting in Geneva on July 12.”It reminds us of our fundamental dependence upon creation,”he said in testimony before the U.N.-sponsored meeting.”Nature, we believe, is a gift of God. It must not and cannot be dealt with as if it were our property.” World Council officials said they expect petitions to be circulating in 15 industrialized nations by September.
Anglicans: church halls, not sanctuaries, okay for non-Christian worship
(RNS) The general synod of the Church of England has decided that Anglican churches may allow non-Christian faiths to use their church halls _ but not their sanctuaries _ for worship services.
Leicester Bishop Tom Butler said Monday (July 15) the decision was a step toward what he called”missionary hospitality.” Under terms of the statement adopted by the synod, which is holding its annual summer meeting, the renting of space to non-Christian groups should take place within the framework of interfaith dialogue and the space should not be used for making explicit attacks on the Christian faith.
England has a large immigrant population _ including sizable communities of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs _ in need of places to meet and worship.
Church of England properties are controlled by the Church Commissioners, a national panel that oversees the denomination’s finances, rather than by the local congregation.
A second part of the report recommending the principle of”missionary hospitality”raised the question of whether so-called”redundant”_ empty or unused _ churches could be sold to another faith.
According to the report, the Church of England has some 1,520 unused churches whose care and responsibility belongs to the Church Commissioners.
In the past, these churches have met a number of fates _ some have been preserved as historic sites, while others have been demolished, used for secular purposes such as a museum, or sold for commercial use. A few have been sold to other Christian bodies.
But according to the report, only one _ St. Luke’s in Southampton, England _ has been sold to another faith group. It has been a Sikh temple since the early 1980s. The Church Commissioners have turned down two other such requests.
In one of those cases the local Muslim community sought to purchase a church for use as a mosque. Instead, the commissioners decided to demolish the building.
The report recommended that the commissioners, in responding to such requests, should bear in mind the desires of the entire local community and not just the members of the affected parish, the effect of the decision on Christian relations with other faiths in England, and the possible impact on Christian churches overseas.
Queens College Jewish studies head, a Catholic, resigns citing”bigotry” (RNS) Thomas Bird, appointed just two weeks ago as the new director of the Jewish Studies program at Queens College of the City University of New York, resigned Monday (July 15), saying that he was”the object of primitive religious bigotry at the hands of a few academic colleagues.” Bird, 58, has been teaching in the program for 25 years. He is an expert in Yiddish, the language once spoken by Jews in central and eastern Europe, and gained a reputation as an advocate for the freedom of Soviet Jews.
But he is also Roman Catholic and the post of director of the Jewish Studies program at Queens College has always been held by a Jew.
Last Friday (July 12), Bird’s appointment was questioned in two major New York Jewish newspapers, both of which quoted another Queens College professor, Samuel Heilman, a former director of the program.”That’s like making me head of the Black Studies program,”Heilman told The Jewish Week.
Heilman said that program”exists to give Jewish students a role model, just like any other ethnic studies program. It’s not that you have to be Jewish to teach Jewish studies _ you don’t. However, there is a role model aspect of it. There is a communal outreach part of it, in the same way there is with women’s studies, with black studies. No one would dare break this mold with other programs.” Heilman also said he objected to the fact that Bird does not have a doctorate, doesn’t speak Hebrew and hasn’t published widely in the area of Jewish studies.
Bird, in his resignation letter, said he believes the”attempt to trash my academic record”is”a fig leaf for objections to my being a Gentile,”The New York Times reported.
The attack on Bird was protested by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.”A legitimate argument can be made that in certain academic programs it makes sense to give considerable weight to the ascribed characteristics of candidates seeking to direct the program,”said William Donohue, president of the Catholic League.”But insistence on a litmus test is not acceptable, and that is precisely what Professor Bird’s critics are arguing.”If a Catholic can be summarily challenged on the basis of Catholicity from directing a Jewish studies program, what is to stop the displacement of merit from other academic posts?”
Polish parliament shelves concordat with the Vatican
(RNS) The Polish Parliament has voted to shelve ratification of a 1993 treaty between the government and the Vatican that many secular Poles and members of the nation’s non-Catholic religious minorities believe gives preferential treatment to the Roman Catholic Church.
About 95 percent of Poland’s population are baptized Catholics.
The 29-article agreement, known in Vatican terminology as a concordat, was to have been signed in Warsaw on July 28. But on July 3, the 460-seat Sejm, the Polish lower house of parliament, voted 199 to 170 with 11 abstentions to postpone ratification until a national constitution has been adopted.
Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news service, reported that leaders of Poland’s minority churches have welcomed the vote.”The state should neither enslave the churches through domination, nor be too kind to them,”said Metropolitan Bazyl, the head of Poland’s 570,000-member Orthodox Church.
Under the concordat, the Catholic Church would have special rights in the teaching of religion in schools and in such areas as marriage. Seven Roman Catholic feast days would be observed as state holidays.
Andrzej Wojtowicz, director of the Poland’s Ecumenical Council (PRE), questioned claims by Catholic officials that the concordat would also benefit minority churches.”Confessional issues should be regulated by a constitution first,”he told ENI.”The real issue is how to cope with a democratic state.” In May, the Catholic Bishops Conference rejected a draft constitution that had been drafted by several of Poland’s political parties. The bishops’ conference said the draft endorsed”moral relativism”and would establish a”secular, atheist state.”
International Commission of Jurists criticizes U.S. death penalty
(RNS) The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), an independent group that links judges and lawyers from around the globe, said Tuesday (July 16) that death sentences in the United States were arbitrary and weighted against blacks.
In a 260-page report, written by four judges and lawyers, the ICJ also said obligations taken on by the U.S. government under international human rights and anti-discrimination treaties were largely unfulfilled, the Reuter news agency reported.
The report was released in Geneva.
In the past, the ICJ has been sharply critical of the Soviet Union and, during the Cold War, Moscow routinely accused the group of being in the pay of the CIA.
The ICJ report said it was most disturbed about the influence of electoral politics on judges and district attorneys.”The (ICJ) mission finds that the prospect of elected judges bending to political pressure in capital punishment cases is both real as well as dangerous to the principle of `fair and impartial’ tribunals,”the report said.
The ICJ itself takes no position on the death penalty but argues for a global”Rule of Law”that would be insulated from political pressures.
Korea Assemblies of God joins National Council of Churches in Korea
(RNS) The Korea Assemblies of God has become the eighth member church of the National Council of Churches in Korea and is the first conservative religious body to join the generally mainline council.
The Assemblies of God application was unanimously accepted by the council on July 11, said Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news service.
According to ENI, the National Council now represents about 4.7 million Christians, 40 percent of Korea’s 12 million church members.”I hope this will serve as a chance to unite the Korean churches, which have been divided into progressive and conservative,”said Kim Dong-Wan, general secretary of the council.”I also hope other churches will join us and contribute towards the reunification of the Korean Peninsula and towards church unity,”he said.
Quote of the day: Radio talk show host Dennis Prager on the need for patriotic rituals.
(RNS) Dennis Prager, a talk show host on KABC Radio in Los Angeles, wrote in the Tuesday (July 16) edition of The Los Angeles Times that Americans must find ways of marking their national holidays if they expect their children to be patriotic. A key element of that, he said, is developing rituals:”Without ritual, we either lose our national memories or retain only negative ones. Both are destructive to any group.”Without rituals to commemorate Independence Day, Americans are losing any meaning associated with our country and its birthday; it becomes just another day off, symbolized by hot dogs and occasional fireworks. Without rituals, President’s Day, for example, is merely a day for department store sales.”
MJP END RNS
