c. 1997 Religion News Service

Legislation honoring Mother Teresa stalled in House

(RNS) Legislation to honor Mother Teresa has stalled in the House because Republicans are pushing to specifically mention the Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun’s staunch anti-abortion views.

GOP officials sought on Wednesday (Sept. 10) an immediate vote on the measure, which notes that Mother Teresa”acknowledged the sanctity of life”and called abortion”the greatest destroyer of peace in the world today,”the Associated Press reported.

But Democrats objecting to the references to abortion stalled the legislation. One Democratic official told the AP that a bipartisan compromise is under way for legislation that would refer to Mother Teresa’s”respect for all stages of life.” But Republicans said they intend to bring a version of the same legislation to the floor next week and insisted it would include the abortion references.

Earlier in the week, the Senate voted 98-0 to designate Saturday (Sept. 13), the day of Mother Teresa’s funeral, a national day of recognition to honor her work on behalf of the poor and dying. However, the Senate resolution contained no reference to abortion.”You can hardly ignore her crusade for the unborn,”said Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., an unwaivering abortion foe.”She spoke about it to the president and Mrs. Clinton at the (National) Prayer Breakfast, she mentioned it at her Nobel Prize award, and to talk about her as a glorified social worker without the spiritual component in this major cause of hers really would be like trying to eulogize Martin Luther King and never mentioning civil rights.”

Focus on the Family sponsors first women’s conference

(RNS) Focus on the Family, the conservative family-advocacy group, is sponsoring its first women’s conference Sept. 20 and has received such an overwhelming response that it has 10,000 names on a waiting list.

More than 18,500 women are expected to attend the 10-hour”Renewing the Heart”conference in Nashville. About 13,000 of the scheduled attendees are coming from outside the Nashville area _ from 47 states and Canada, organizers said.”The focus of the event is to really encourage women and to renew them spiritually,”said Caia Hoskins, Focus on the Family’s manager for public policy information.”We’re going to challenge them to evaluate what God’s priorities are for their lives.” Hoskins said the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based ministry has been overwhelmed by the response.”We see women are looking for something like this,”she said.”Women are stressed out just like men are.” Speakers will include Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family president James Dobson and chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force; Anne Graham Lotz, speaker, Bible teacher and daughter of evangelist Billy Graham; and Kay Coles James, dean of the School of Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va.

The conference is one of many in recent years designed to address the spiritual needs of women, paralleling the popular evangelical men’s movement Promise Keepers.

Other popular women’s conferences include a Chosen Women rally, which brought some 20,000 evangelical Christian women to the Rose Bowl in Southern California in May, and nationwide Keys for Abundant Living conferences sponsored by Renaissance Ministries in Dallas.

Focus on the Family plans at least two more similar events for women in 1998.

Conservative Baptists in Missouri criticize Baptist paper

(RNS) Two conservative Baptist groups in Missouri have accused the state’s Baptist paper of suppressing negative news about Baptist groups that are more moderate than the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Missouri Baptist Laymen’s Association and Southern Baptist Conservatives of Missouri jointly lodged their complaints about Word & Way, the Baptist paper, in a Sept. 8 statement.

The complaints specifically cited Word & Way editor Bill Webb and former editor Bob Terry, who supervised the paper for 20 years before moving to an Alabama newsjournal in 1995.”It has become evident that under the current leadership of Bill Webb, Word & Way will continue in the tradition of its former editor Bob Terry in the selective suppression of news and information that puts `moderate’ organizations like the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist Joint Committee (on Public Affairs) in an unfavorable light,”said Roger Moran, research director of the Missouri Baptist Laymen’s Association.”The strength of the moderate movement in Missouri is in large degree the direct result of Word & Way’s refusal to deal with the multitude of issues and concerns that have been raised about various `moderate’ organizations,”said Kerry Messer, president of the Missouri Baptist Laymen’s Association.

Webb, in response, said”My impression is that Word & Way through the years has been highly regarded in the areas of fairness and balance and, in general, journalistic integrity,”reported Baptist Press, the official news agency of the Southern Baptist Convention.

See You at the Pole prayer event slated for Sept. 17

(RNS) See You at the Pole, the annual event when students gather on campuses to pray for their schools and communities before the start of the school day, will be held Wednesday (Sept. 17).

Youth ministry officials estimated that as many as 3 million students worldwide participated in See You at the Pole events in 1996. They met at school flagpoles, churches, courthouses and other places.

The youth prayer movement began in 1990 when high school students near Fort Worth, Texas, began meeting at their schools to pray. In September of that year, more than 45,000 students prayed on 1,200 campuses. By 1995, the movement had reached thousands of students from elementary school through college, and in every state and five continents.

More than 90 denominations and ministries have endorsed the event, including Campus Crusade for Christ, the Assemblies of God, Focus on the Family, the Southern Baptist Convention and Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Quote of the day: “We all love the incense, the stained-glass windows, the organ music, the vestments, and all of that. It’s drama. It’s aesthetics. It’s the ritual. That’s neat stuff. I don’t want to give all that up just because I don’t believe in God.” James Kelley, an Episcopalian in Washington, D.C., and one of a small group of atheists at his local church, as quoted in the Sept. 12 edition of the weekly Washington City Paper.

END RNS