c. 1998 Religion News Service
Ministry takes out ad supporting Baptist family statement
(RNS) FamilyLife, an affiliate of Campus Crusade for Christ, has taken out a full-page newspaper ad with the names of about 75 Christian leaders who support a controversial statement on the family adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention this spring.
Dennis Rainey, founder of the ministry based in Little Rock, Ark., gathered the signatures to demonstrate support for the Baptist statement. The ad appeared Wednesday (Aug. 26) in USA Today.
In June, Southern Baptists voted at their annual meeting to add an article on the family to their statement of faith called the”Baptist Faith & Message.”It affirms heterosexual marriage and the belief that the Bible mandates wives to”submit … graciously”to their husbands.
Rainey told Religion News Service he originally gathered the names to encourage Southern Baptists and like-minded members of other denominations but decided to take what has now become a $100,000 campaign a step further.”We just need to go public with this and just make a statement and say you’re right,”Rainey said.”In this age of tolerance, there are things that are unchanging and true and it’s the Scripture.” In addition to placing the newspaper ad, FamilyLife also put a two-page ad with the same message in the Aug. 22 edition of World magazine, an independent, politically conservative publication.”Southern Baptists … you are right!”reads the ad.”At a time when divorce is destroying the fabric of our society, you have taken a bold stand for the biblical principles of marriage and family life. We thank you for your courage!” The ad supports the Baptist affirmation that husbands and wives are of”equal worth before God”and that children are”a blessing and heritage from the Lord.” The named supporters include civic and business leaders, pastors and lay people from a range of denominational backgrounds. In many cases, the names of their spouses also are listed. A total of 175 names appear on a Web site at http://www.youareright.org. Rainey, whose ministry focuses on marriage and family issues, hopes pastors will download the ad for use in church bulletins.
Among the signatories are Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council; James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family; Bishop T.D. Jakes, a best-selling author and Pentecostal preacher; Bill McCartney, CEO of Promise Keepers; and Phyllis Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum.
Update: Poles defy bishops by erecting more crosses at Auschwitz
(RNS) Roman Catholic activists in Poland erected two more crosses at Auschwitz on Wednesday (Aug. 26), just one day after the nation’s bishops called for the removal of a sea of crosses that began appearing at the former Nazi death camp earlier this year.
The bishops, meeting in the southwestern city of Czestochowa, said some 220 smaller crosses should be removed from the site while the largest cross be permitted to stay. The large cross, which was used during a 1979 papal Mass at Birkenau, Auschwitz’s sister camp, was placed at its present site in 1988 and commemorates the 152 Poles killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1941.
Some 1.5 million people _ 90 percent of them Jews _ were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II, and many consider the site the largest Jewish graveyard in the world.
Jewish groups, who are calling for the removal of all the crosses, say the Christian symbols prevent them from praying at the site. They claim an international accord bans religious, ideological or political symbols at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Still, many Polish Catholics insist they have a right to commemorate their countrymen killed at Auschwitz by erecting the crosses. And Cardinal Jozef Glemp, Poland’s top Roman Catholic cleric, has expressed his disappointment with the Jew’s tough stance and their failure to”find words of compromise,”Reuters reported.
Poland’s chief rabbis have written the Vatican, urging the pope to intervene in the situation. Meanwhile, Israel has asked the Polish government to remove the crosses, but the government wants the church to settle the matter.
Missing pages of Anne Frank diary held in standoff
(RNS) Five missing pages of”The Diary of Anne Frank,”the now-classic World War II reflections of a Dutch Jewish teen, are being held from publication until the Holocaust expert who controls them is assured the proceeds from their publication will go to support his work.
Cornelis Suijk, 74, once a close friend and confidante of Otto Frank, Anne’s father, said the elder Frank gave him the five pages under the prevision they not be published until after the deaths of the entire family.
Suijk, who runs the New York-based Anne Frank Center USA, a Holocaust awareness group, admitted to having the pages earlier this month, the Associated Press reported.
The pages, which scholars believe are authentic, contain Anne’s”very critical”assessment of her parent’s marriage, according to the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, which is demanding Suijk turn over the documents.
But Suijk, who addresses schools and community groups about the Holocaust and coordinates a traveling Anne Frank exhibit, said he will not part with the missing pages until he receives assurances the proceeds from their publication, which could generate millions, go to support his institute.”We’ve asked a lawyer to try to find a way out of this,”David Barnouw, a spokesman for the Netherlands war institute, told the AP.
Anne’s diary ends in August 1944, just before her family, who hid for years in a secret annex behind a movable bookcase, was betrayed. After her arrest, Anne was sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died in the spring of 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated.”The Diary of Anne Frank”has become required reading in many schools and has spawned numerous books, films and a Broadway play.
Zimbabwe churches backs military intervention in Congo
(RNS) The Zimbabwe Council of Churches, an umbrella organization for Protestant churches, has given its support to the nation’s military intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where ethnic Tutsi-led rebels are seeking to overthrow President Laurent Kabila.”We believe Zimbabwean troops and their colleagues from other … countries are there to bring peace and create a conducive environment for negotiations to start,”Densen Mafinyani, the council’s general secretary, told reporters Aug. 24.
Mafinyani said the troops _ along with those from Angola _ were in Congo at the request of the Kabila government. The Tutsi rebels have the backing of Rwanda and Uganda.”There is no way we as the churches can want to see blood being shed,”Mafinyani said.”We strongly believe the … forces are in the DRC to stop that.” The conflict has created sharp divisions within the political and religious communities of southern Africa.
South African President Nelson Mandela, for example, opposes the military intervention.
The All Africa Conference of Churches, the umbrella organization of 144 Protestant and Orthodox churches throughout Africa, has been non-committal on the conflict.”It would be premature for me to give a comment because there still is a lot that we don’t know about goings-on in the DRC,”Canon Clement Janda, the AACC’s general secretary, said during a visit to Zimbabwe, reported Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
He said the situation was too”fluid”for the churches to come to any conclusion.
But he did warn the crisis in Congo could lead to a wider regional conflict.”Our prayer as the AACC is that this crisis be brought to a speedy end and a process of reconciliation is started and that just peace and stability be restored to the region so that delayed process of development could start again,”Janda said.
ENI also reported that Zimbabwe’s Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace announced earlier this week that it opposed Zimbabwean military intervention.
British Catholic publisher likely to face labor board over firings
(RNS) The publisher of Britain’s largest Roman Catholic weekly, The Universe, may be taken before an industrial tribunal _ similar to a labor relations board _ following the dismissal Friday (Aug. 21) of five of the paper’s journalists.
The publisher, Manchester-based Gabriel Communications Ltd., is 80 percent owned by a number of Roman Catholic dioceses and religious orders through the Catholic Media Trust. Bishop Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth, England, is chairman of the trust.
The dismissals ended a process of restructuring that involved slimming a combined editorial and production staff of 30 down to 16 who will be responsible for producing not only The Universe but also its sister weekly, the Catholic Times, the monthly Catholic Life, and a number of annual publications, including the official Catholic Directory for England and Wales.
Under the process required by management, all staff members had to reapply for the posts available. Five journalists, including The Universe’s deputy editor, Paul Burnell, who had worked on the paper for eight years, and two leaders of the National Union of Journalists’ chapel, or union local, were refused re-employment.
However, there are still four unfilled vacancies on the slimmed-down staff.”There was not a match between the skills offered and our requirements,”said David Bould, a spokesman for Gabriel Communications Ltd.
But the union will take the cases of the five sacked journalists before an industrial tribunal, said John Toner, the union’s northern organizer. He said it appeared the aim of the restructuring was to destroy the union organization that had been built up in the office.
Catholic social teaching affirms the right of workers to form unions without retribution.
Richard Pittman, pioneering Wycliffe translator, dies
(RNS) Richard Pittman, the pioneering former director of Wycliffe Bible Translators’ efforts in Asia and the Pacific, died Aug. 21 of cancer. He was 83.
Pittman and his wife, Kay, were working for Wycliffe _ which translates the New Testament into native languages worldwide_ in Mexico when they were asked in 1951 to extend the evangelical organization’s efforts to the Philippines. At the time, Wycliffe translators had worked only in Latin America.
Pittman’s endeavors eventually opened up other Pacific and Asian nations to Wycliffe.
Born in Streator, Ill., Pittman had recently lived in Waxhaw, N.C. He continued to advise Wycliffe until earlier this year, when he fell ill.
Quote of the day: The late Jerry Clower, comedian
(RNS)”I am convinced that there is only one place where there is no laughter, and that’s hell. I have made arrangements to miss hell. Praise God, I won’t ever have to be anywhere that there ain’t no laughter.” _ Jerry Clower, a popular country comedian and Mississippi Baptist layman, who died Aug. 24, as reported by Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
DEA END RNS
