c. 1996 Religion News Service

Poll: Dole fails to impress religious voters

(RNS) Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole is failing to connect with key conservative religious groups, according to a new poll by the Barna Research Group.

The poll, taken a month before the Republican’s Aug 12-15 national convention, showed President Clinton holding an overall 45 percent to 32 percent lead over Dole. One reason, according to the Barna Group, is Dole’s failure so far to maintain support among what Barna calls”born-again Christians.” Barna’s poll labeled as”born-again”those who say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus and who say they will go to heaven after they die because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus as their savior.

Overall, 38 percent of the adult population and 43 percent of registered voters meet that definition, according to Barna.

Among the born again population, according to the poll, the presidential race is dead even. Clinton is preferred by 39 percent of born again voters and Dole by 38 percent. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

But evangelicals _ counted by Barna as a subset of the”born again”population _ favor Dole over Clinton by a three-to-one margin, 55 percent to 17 percent.

Barna describes evangelicals as those who say they are born again but also hold that the Bible is totally accurate in its teachings. They also believe that they have a personal responsibility to evangelize, that Jesus was not a sinner, that Satan is real and that a person cannot earn their way into heaven. Overall, Barna said, 8 percent of the population meets this criterion as does 7 percent of all registered voters.

The poll also showed that Dole and Clinton were virtually deadlocked among those who describe themselves as part of the religious right, with 41 percent saying they favored Clinton and 40 percent saying they preferred Dole.

In San Diego, Calif., where the GOP is meeting, Mike Russell, a spokesman for the Christian Coalition, dismissed the poll results and said he’d never heard of the Barna Group.

Bob Bobosky, a delegate from Portland, Ore., who sat on the individual rights subcommittee of the platform committee and described himself as a religious right supporter, predicted the numbers would change once leaders of conservative religious groups spread the word of their support for Dole.

He said platform fights that suggested differences among religious conservatives were not important.”Those are just arguments over words and that’s not as important as getting rid of Bill Clinton. We’re (the religious right) going to rally enthusiastically for Dole-Kemp in the weeks to come.” Among self-described theological liberals, who make up 39 percent of the population, Clinton held a wide lead _ 58 percent to 19 percent.

Pope John Paul II reported ill, undergoes medical tests

(RNS) Pope John Paul II, apparently suffering from a”mild”abdominal illness, has undergone a series of medical tests and the Vatican has pronounced his health normal.

The Rev. Ciro Benedettini, a Vatican spokesman, told the Associated Press that the pope had a CT (computerized tomography) scan Wednesday (Aug. 14) but the tests showed nothing worrisome. The tests were done at a hospital near the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, Italy.

Benedettini said the CT scan was part of periodic tests the pope has had since his 1992 bowel surgery, but the examination was done ahead of schedule because there was concern that his abdominal illness might be related to the removal of a tumor four years ago.

According to Reuters, Benedettini said the pope’s health was”normal”for a man his age.

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s secretary of state, celebrated Mass for the pontiff in the parish church near the pope’s vacation home. He said the pope’s illness was”mild,”according to the Associated Press.

When asked by a man who shouted at him,”How’s the pope feeling?”Sodano replied,”He’s all right. Even a pope can get sick.” After skipping the Mass celebration, the pope sounded tired and weak when he greeted a crowd in the courtyard of his summer home.

The 76-year-old pontiff has been plagued by a number of medical ailments in recent years. In addition to the removal of the tumor, he had surgery after he broke his leg in a fall.

Klansmen admit to church arsons; rebuilding proceeds

(RNS) Three days after two Ku Klux Klansmen pleaded guilty to burning two black churches in South Carolina, federal and religious agencies will pool their resources to help in the rebuilding process of churches that have been the victims of arson. Agency representatives plan to gather with church members from Georgia and the Carolinas Saturday (Aug. 17) at Allen University in Columbia, S.C.”If the intent of the arson was to divide people, this seminar, and all the many diverse groups participating, will show that it had the opposite effect,”said Andrew Cuomo, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).”It didn’t pull us apart. It brought us together.” Representatives from HUD, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Justice are working with the National Council of Churches, the Congress of National Black Churches and other national religious, non-profit and lending institutions in the effort.

The three federal agencies are jointly responsible for the new National Rebuilding Task Force, which is meeting for the first time at the historically black university. Among the participants are African Methodist Episcopal churches from Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The event will occur three days after Gary C. Cox, 22, and Timothy A. Welch, 24, admitted burning the Mount Zion AME Church in Greeleyville, S.C. and Macedonia Baptist Church in Bloomville, S.C. last summer.

The men, who said in court Wednesday (August 14) that they were KKK members at the time of the fires and have since renounced their membership, could be sentenced to up to 55 years in prison, the Associated Press reported.

Organizers of the South Carolina meeting this weekend hope it will not only help religious institutions rebuild but also create lasting partnerships between the religious and business community.”Communities have saved and sacrificed over the years to build places where everyone can come and worship,”said Cuomo.”We cannot allow others to tear down what they have made without consequence and without assistance.” Part-time minister in Texas says he wants to be Southern Baptist president

(RNS) A part-time minister in Texas has announced his candidacy for next year’s presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Dan Bates, 51, a minister of music at First Baptist Church in Hearne, Texas, announced his plans in the July 31 edition of the Baptist Standard, the Southern Baptist newspaper for the state of Texas.

Bates, who also works at a funeral home, said he would”run against Tom Elliff’s re-election as president of the SBC in Dallas in June 1997.” Elliff, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Del City, Okla., was elected in June as president of the 15.6 million-member denomination. Traditionally, Southern Baptist presidents are re-elected to a second one-year term, often without opposition.

Catholic bishops decry Burundi’s”deadly spiral of chaos” (RNS) Two of the nations top Roman Catholic bishops Wednesday (Aug. 14) decried what they called Burundi’s”deadly spiral of chaos and destruction”and warned against efforts to impose a military solution to the conflict.”The U.S. bishops believe that there is no military solution to the problems of Burundi,”said Bishop John H. Ricard, president of Catholic Relief Services, and Bishop Daniel P. Reilly, chairman of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s committee on international policy in a statement.”Military intervention in the absence of a political strategy for Burundi and the region will almost certainly fail to provide a lasting solution to the conflict,”they said.”We, however, cannot support actions which prevent humanitarian relief from entering the country, thereby threatening the well-being of hundreds of thousands of people.” The bishops said they could support preparations now underway at the United Nations to deploy a stand-by force in Burundi”to be used in the event of an extreme emergency.” Burundi has been slipping into chaos and anarchy for the past year, with hundreds of civilians killed in raids and retaliatory massacres by rival Hutu and Tutsi groups.

On July 25, Major Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi, seized power in a coup that ousted President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, a Hutu, leading to an economic blockade of the landlocked nation by other African nations attempting to force a return to civilian rule.

Frank K. Means, Southern Baptist mission leader, dies

(RNS) Frank K. Means, an official of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board for 23 years, died Wednesday (Aug. 14) after a long illness. He was 84.

Means was an area secretary of the board from 1954 until his retirement in 1977, serving in Latin America, the Caribbean and South America, reported Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.

He was one of the few people chosen as a director of Southern Baptist overseas mission work who had not worked as a missionary.

Prior to arriving at the Richmond, Va.-based board in 1947 as secretary for missionary education and promotion, Means was a professor of missions at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, for eight years.

Quote of the day: Assemblies of God General Secretary George O. Wood

(RNS) Rev. George O. Wood, general secretary of the 1.4 million-member Assemblies of God, spoke at the recent annual session of his denomination’s General Presbytery in Springfield, Mo. Although the church reported that 384,057 people converted to Christianity at Assemblies of God churches in 1995, an increase of 20.3 percent over the previous year, Wood said the increase should not prompt less enthusiastic evangelization efforts:”Church statistics, even when they look good, can be deceptive. No matter how much grain is in the barn, there is still more in the fields. No matter how many persons worship inside the church, still more outside remain unreached.”

MJP END