c. 1998 Religion News Service
Netanyahu: New anti-missionary bill will not be approved
(RNS) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given his assurances that his government will not support a new bill designed to limit Christian missionary activities in Israel.
Both the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (ICEJ) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in New York said they received letters this week from Netanyahu’s office conveying such assurances.
For more than a year, efforts have been afoot in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, to limit Christian missionary activities in Israel. The efforts were sparked by the mass mailing of a Hebrew-language missionary pamphlet to Israeli homes by San Diego-based televangelist Morris Cerullo.
The mailing angered Orthodox Jewish political leaders, who introduced legislation that would have made possession of religious materials used in conversion attempts punishable by a year in jail.
The bill prompted an outcry among U.S. Christians, who said the law was so broad as to make possession of a New Testament illegal. Netanyahu then said he would not allow the bill to become law, and it was eventually shelved when some Christian groups operating in Israel agreed to refrain from activities that might induce Jews to convert.
Following that, however, a new anti-missionary bill was introduced by an Orthodox member of the prime minister’s ruling coalition and Netanyahu, who is also a Knesset member, cast a preliminary vote in favor of its further consideration. That raised new concerns among Christians and others, who view the proposed law as a violation of free speech and religious freedom.
The new bill calls for a three-year jail term and a fine of about $15,000 for those convicted of”preaching with the intent of causing another person to change his religion.” In a letter dated June 10 received by the ICEJ, an evangelical Protestant agency that works on behalf of Israel, Netanyahu adviser David Bar-Illan said Netanyahu’s vote in favor of the new bill was routine and part of the process of sending the measure to committee, where it will”die.””Let me assure you again that Israel will pass no laws which limit freedom of religion and contravene international conventions to which it is a signatory,”Bar-Illan wrote.
In a letter to the ADL, a Jewish defense agency that involves itself in various civil liberties issues as well, Netanyahu used that same language to insist he would not allow the new bill to become law.
Current Israeli law only prohibits the giving of material inducements to prompt conversion.
First direct U.S. aid flight in two years lands in Cuba
(RNS) The first plane in two years to fly directly from the United States to Cuba carrying humanitarian supplies landed in Havana Thursday (June 11).
Catholic Relief Services chartered the DC-6 plane that brought about $800,000 of medicines and medical supplies to Cuba. The flight originated from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida.
Direct charity flights from the United States to Cuba were suspended by the U.S government in 1996 after Cuba shot down two unarmed planes flown by Cuban exiles opposed to Cuban strongman Fidel Castro’s communist government. Four exiles died in the incident.
President Clinton lifted the ban after Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Cuba in January.
The supplies will be distributed in Cuba by Caritas Cuba, a Catholic Church relief agency.
House panel seeks to limit teen-age travel for abortions
(RNS) A House panel has approved legislation aimed at making it more difficult pregnant teen-agers to travel out of state for abortions.
The bill, approved Thursday (June 11) by the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, would make it a crime for a person other than a parent or guardian to evade parental consent laws by escorting the girl to states that don’t impose such requirements.
The subcommittee voted 7-2 to approve the bill.
Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., said vulnerable girls too often are taken from their families to out-of-state abortion clinics”in flagrant disregard for the legal protections states have provided.” Opponents argued the bill will force girls who fear telling their parents about their pregnancies to seek dangerous alternatives to legal abortion.”This bill is unnecessary,”said Rep. Maxine Walters, D-Calif.”It makes it a federal crime to exercise one’s constitutional right.” The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice also criticized the bill, saying it constitutes a violation of the religious freedom of clergy, other responsible adults and young women in need of an abortion.”This punitive and mean-spirited legislation would violate my vows as an Episcopal priest to help those in need,”said the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, chair of the Religious Coalition.”People of faith who are acting out of compassion and conscience would be sent to jail for helping a young woman obtain a legal abortion.” In a separate but related abortion law development, Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles vetoed legislation Thursday that would have required young women under 18 to give their parents 48 hours notice before getting an abortion.
Chiles, a Democrat, said the law threatened privacy rights.
The Florida Supreme Court has already ruled that privacy rights in the state Constitution”encompasses a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy, and that right applies to minors as well as to adults.” Charlene Carres, lobbyist for the Florida Coalition of Independent Abortion Providers praised the veto, calling the legislation”harmful.”But John Dowless, director of the Christian Coalition of Florida, said Chiles'”lack of concern for life and the value of life is incredible,”the Associated Press reported.
Update: California-Nevada Methodists threaten to withhold funds
(RNS) Conservatives in the California-Nevada Annual (regional) Conference of the United Methodist Church, rebuffed in their appeal for a separate”evangelical”jurisdiction, are threatening to withhold money for the conference’s programs and activities.
In a June 3 letter, five leaders of the Evangelical Renewal Fellowship, said that unless the annual conference offered a”more creative response”than rejecting their request for a separate jurisdiction, they would end their financial support of the conference.
The evangelicals are upset at what they see as the liberal drift of the annual conference, especially on issues of homosexuality and same-sex marriage.
On May 20, leaders of the annual conference rejected the evangelicals’ request for creation of a separate jurisdiction.”Separation has never been required, nor is it now in order to engage in the varied ministries that different local churches seek to fulfill,”they said.
In response, the evangelicals said the conference leadership”seems to honor every sort of theological diversity except traditional Wesleyan theology.”An evangelical conference would curb the acrimony of the ordination process, provide evangelical churches with the sort of pastors they want, and provide healthy competition between the new conference and the denominational `regulars,'”they said.
The evangelicals’ request to separate stems in part from the acquittal earlier this year of the Rev. Jimmy Creech, an Omaha, Neb., pastor, on charges he violated church law by performing a same-sex union ceremony.
The acquittal has sent shock waves through the denomination and prompted fears among theological conservatives that the church, despite its strong stance condemning homosexual practices as”incompatible with Christian teaching”and its ban on the ordination of gays and lesbians, is drifting toward the acceptance of homosexuality.
Quote of the day: the Rev. Michael Scanlan, president of Franciscan University
(RNS)”There are three active levels within us. There is the level of pleasure: It senses, but it won’t last. There is the level of the heart: It gives us the happiness of achievement, but it won’t last because there is always something else to achieve. Then there is the level of the spirit: It deals with joy. It operates even if you are not pleasing the senses. The inner life is so much more exciting than the outer life, and it is God who makes the difference.” _ The Rev. Michael Scanlan, president of Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, in a June 7 homily during the celebration of a Mass.
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