c. 1998 Religion News Service

Clinton presses for religious freedom in China

(RNS) President Clinton worshipped Sunday (June 28) in Beijing’s oldest and largest Protestant church, a gesture his aides indicated was intended to remind China’s leaders about the importance the United States places on religious freedom.

In brief comments at Chongwenmen Church, Clinton expressed pleasure in the reported growth of Christianity in China and said,”I believe our faith calls upon us to seek unity with people across the world of different races and backgrounds and creeds.” While Clinton’s comments there were low-key, aides indicated his mere presence at the church, filled to overflowing with more than 2,000 worshippers, underscored U.S. concern over Beijing’s policy toward Christianity and other faiths in China. The Chinese government rigidly controls religious expression, and the church Clinton attended was an officially sanctioned, nondenominational”patriotic”congregation.

The government says China has about 10 million Protestant and Catholic Christians, although others say the number is much higher when also counting Christians who attend illegal underground churches. The leaders of such churches routinely face arrest and persecution, according to religious rights advocates.

Critics of Clinton’s policy of full engagement with China despite its human rights violations had urged the president to attend an underground church to definitively underscore U.S. support for religious freedom in China _ an issue currently before the Congress in the form of two competing bills calling for stronger American responses to the curbing of religious liberties in China and other foreign nations.

Joseph Kung, head of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, a Catholic group based in Stamford, Conn., that agitates for greater religious freedom in China, said Clinton’s visit to an official church amounted to”a statement by the U.S. government of approval for the Chinese government’s religious policy.” While Clinton made no direct reference to China’s restrictions on religious expression at the church, he did include the subject in a later address at Beijing University.

In a speech broadcast live on Chinese television, Clinton said,”We are convinced that certain rights are universal.”In addition to the right to”worship or not freely, however one chooses,”Clinton also mentioned”the right to be treated with dignity, the right to give voice to those opinions, to choose their own leaders, to associate with whom they wish …” The president also said freedom”is a powerful engine of progress.” Clinton also spoke out for human rights in a televised news conference with President Jian Zemin of China. The subject of Chinese occupation of Buddhist Tibet was also discussed.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled religious and political leader, told The New York Times that the discussion on Tibet could turn out to be”enormously helpful in the long run”in his campaign to gain limited autonomy for Tibet.

Clinton’s nine-day visit to China is the first there by a sitting U.S. president since the Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators nine years ago.

Amish, Hutterite sects that shun modern world face modern problems

(RNS) Pennsylvania’s Amish and Alberta’s Hutterites _ related Anabaptist groups usually seen by outsiders as largely immune to contemporary society’s ills _ have been rocked by legal problems generally unheard of in those communities.

Two Amish men have been charged with distributing cocaine within their community, while 12 Hutterite men and boys have been charged with a series of sex offenses over a number of years.

About 20,000 Old Order Amish, a strict Anabaptist sect who shun most wordly ways, dress in”plain”garb and require adult baptism, live in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, where they rarely make the news.

Recently, however, Abner Stoltzfus, 24, and Abner King Stoltzfus, 23 _ who are not related _ were charged along with eight members of a Pagans motorcycle gang for selling cocaine. Police said the Amish men purchased the drugs from the bikers and then resold them to other Amish youths.

The arrests shed light on a little known Amish practice called”rumschpringes,”or”running around.”It involves allowing Amish teenagers and young adults to spend several years driving cars, drinking and generally sampling the temptations of the modern world _ including, apparently, drugs. If and when the young people decide to become baptized and rejoin the church, they revert to the sect’s strict ways.

In Alberta, ten men and two boys have been charged with 34 sex offenses ranging from incest to fondling the genitals of young girls. Four of the group _ ranging in age from 17 to 22 _ have already pleaded guilty to fondling young girls and were placed on probation and ordered to perform community service.

Provincial Court Judge Gordon Clozza urged the Hutterite community, which numbers about 20,000 in Alberta and elsewhere in western Canada, plus another 40,000 in the United States, to establish a sex-education program for its young people.”They are terribly embarrassed and ashamed,”said Hugh Sommerville, a lawyer advising the Hutterites, who practice a form of communal living.

Suit asks for use of Indian religious articles in prison

(RNS) A group of prisoners has sued the Massachusetts Department of Correction, saying they should be allowed to use American Indian ceremonial pipes, beads, headgear, necklaces and herbs in prison religious ceremonies.

It’s the second such suit brought against the department by inmates at the state prison in Gardner. The first suit has yet to be resolved.

The inmates who have brought the second suit _ four who say they have Indian ancestry and another man _ said in court papers that”just as Catholics use rosaries, Protestants uses crosses and Jews use the Torah, the (plaintiffs) use ceremonial pipes, tobacco and natural smudge, etc., to express our religion.” The five said they are members of the prison’s Native American Spiritual Awareness Council and meet daily for prayer and discussion. They also said they were allowed to use Indian religious objects until April, when prison officials took them away.

However, a spokesman for the Department of Correction disputed the claim that any of the men are Indians.”A good number have taken this (identity) on since entering the system,”Tony Carevale told the Boston Herald.”It may be a way to give a poke to the system.” Nonetheless, he added,”Native American ceremonies fall under the purview of religious practices, which is an incredibly sensitive area. … They certainly have a number of rights when it comes to practicing their faith. The issue is what materials can they be allowed to access that will not compromise the safety and security of a prison facility and the people in it.” Among the crimes the five prisoners have been convicted of are aggravated rape, the rape of a child, manslaughter and indecent assault and battery on a child.

Britain’s Jewish population dropping

(RNS) For the first time this century, Great Britain’s Jewish population has dropped below 300,000.

A new demographic study shows there are 285,000 Jews in Britain, down from 308,000 a decade ago, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency news service reported Sunday (June 28).

The study by the Board of Deputies of British Jews blamed assimilation, intermarriage and low birth rates for the decline. About 44 percent of British Jews currently marry non-Jews.

If the present trend continues, the study also said, Britain’s Jewish population will dip below 200,000 within the next 25 years.

Quebec Presbyterian congregation votes to keep gay pastor

(RNS) A Presbyterian congregation outside Montreal voted Sunday (June 28) to retain their gay pastor despite a threat from national church officials to expel them if they did so.

The 90-member St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Lachine, Quebec, Canada, voted by secret ballot to retain the Rev. Darryl Macdonald, the Associated Press reported. The vote count was not disclosed. Three St. Andrew’s officials counting the ballots simply announced a majority had voted to retain Macdonald.

During the past three years, the 237,000-member Presbyterian Church of Canada has repeatedly ordered St. Andrew’s to fire Macdonald. Earlier this month, the church was given a final warning to either fire Macdonald or be expelled from the denomination.

Macdonald, who was not at Sunday’s voting session, had previously said the dispute centered on his sexual orientation.”It’s the question of the Presbyterian Church putting more stock in its rules than it does in the membership’s beliefs and convictions,”he told the Montreal Gazette earlier this month.

In the United States, sexuality issues have rocked Presbyterians for some 20 years. At its recent annual meeting, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted overwhelmingly not to hold formal discussions on sexual standards for clergy.

Low voter turnout nullifies Portugese abortion vote

(RNS) A national referendum to ease access to abortion in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Portugal failed to draw the required number of voters to legally settle the issue.

With just 32 percent of Portugese voting Sunday (June 28), the abortion referendum failed to meet the 50 percent voter turnout requirement needed, leaving lawmakers in a dilemma over whether to press ahead with a controversial project to permit abortion on demand through the 10th week of pregnancy, the Associated Press reported.

It was the lowest voter turnout in Portugal since the 1974 revolution that ushered in a fully representative government.

In the voting, 51 percent voted against the measure. If more than half of the nation’s 8.4 million registered voters had cast ballots, the referendum to decriminalize most abortions would have been defeated and legally binding on Portugal’s parliament.

Under current Portugese law, abortion is permitted only for limited medical reasons or in cases of rape, and only up to the 12th week. Women can be imprisoned for up to three years for having an illegal abortion.

In February, lawmakers narrowly passed a bill easing the restrictions on abortion. But antiabortionists successfully mounted a campaing against the law, resulting in Sunday’s referendum, which would have either overturned or ratified the measure.

The influential Catholic Church in Portugal and conservative political parties lobbied for the defeat of the referendum, while the main opposition Social Democratic party lobbied for its passage. The low turnout puzzled most observers since opinion polls had given no indication of the potentially high abstention rate.

Quote of the day: journalist Wesley Pruden”They assume that theirs is the version of the faith that will go unchallenged in the classroom. This was often true in the America that a lot of us grew up in, but that America is gone with the wind.” _ Washington Times editor in chief Wesley Pruden, writing about conservative Republican lawmakers who, because they support school prayer, have rushed to the defense of Mildred Rosario, the Bronx, N.Y., public school teacher who was fired recently for praying with students, as quoted in his June 26 column.

IR END RNS