c. 1999 Religion News Service
Adventists: No religious significance in the year 2000
(RNS) The Seventh-day Adventist Church, which has its roots in a failed prophecy about the second coming of Jesus, says the turning of the new Christian millennium has no religious significance.”The year 2000 has no particular prophetic significance,”the church said in a statement released Thursday (Sept. 30). It said it rejects”any speculation concerning its religious meaning.” Referring to the second coming, the statement affirms that Adventists”do not speculate about the precise historical moment”when Jesus will return.”If anything is of significance about the future, it is the hope we, as Christians, have in the soon return of Christ,”said Leo Ranzolin, vice president of the Adventist world body.”While others worry, we are a people who have and live out our Christian hope.” The statement was adopted Sept. 29 by the 330 members of the church’s executive committee, the worldwide denomination’s highest decision-making body. The denomination has more than 10 million members around the world, including some 825,000 in the United States.”Assigning spiritual dimension to a year’s end and to the turning of yet another new year would be going beyond the value we give to such occasions,”Ranzolin said.
In the statement, the church said Adventists”base their faith on the teachings of Scripture and believe that the passage of time is significant inasmuch as it brings us close to the most wonderful event that will be witnessed by human eyes.”We eagerly expect the visible return of Christ,”it said, but added:”Yet we do not speculate about the precise historical moment when that event will take place.”
Workplace accommodation bill introduced in the Senate
(RNS) A bipartisan group of senators has introduced legislation which would strengthen laws calling on employers to accommodate workers’ religious practices.”No worker should have to choose between their job and their most fundamental religious beliefs,”said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who is cosponsoring the bill with Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.
The legislation would require employers to accommodate workers’ religious observances as long as doing so would not impose an”undue hardship”on the employer. Supporters said, for example, an observant Jew who doesn’t want to work after the Sabbath begins at sundown Friday could elect to work more hours during other days of the week.
In addition, employers could not prohibit workers from wearing faith-related clothing such turbans or head coverings based on their religious beliefs.
The bill clarifies a provision of the 1972 amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which require employers to”reasonably accommodate”a worker’s religious practice. It would apply to businesses with more than 15 workers.
Richard T. Foltin, a lawyer with the American Jewish Committee, said roughly 200 complaints against business are filed each year with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with enforcing the law, the Associated Press reported.
Kerry said the problem with the 1972 statute is that courts have interpreted the law so broadly that virtually accommodation can now be considered an undue hardship.
The proposed legislation was hailed by the Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish group.”Because of our particular religious practices and needs, Orthodox Jews are often passed over in hiring and job promotions and are sometimes faced with the Hobson’s Choice of either sacrificing our livelihoods or compromising our sincerely held religious beliefs,”said Abba Cohen, director of the group’s Washington office.”This is a `choice’ that the law did not contemplate and should not now require,”he said.
Arizona Baptist convention added to suit against foundation
(RNS) One of the lawsuits filed against the financially troubled Baptist Foundation of Arizona has been amended to include the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention.
The foundation has been the subject of a fraud investigation by state officials. The foundation and two related corporations were ordered in August to stop selling investment products after the Arizona Corporation Commission found they were violating state securities law.
Several suits have been filed against the foundation, but one was amended to include the state convention, which owns the foundation.
Richard A. Kimsey and his wife, Ann, alleged in an amended suit filed Sept. 20 that the state convention assisted the foundation by persuading pastors and others to invest with the foundation. Kimsey reportedly invested $100,000 in profits from the sale of his home in the foundation less than a month before the foundation received a cease-and-desist order.”We can confirm that Steve Bass and the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention have been added to the lawsuit, but we really don’t have any comment regarding that,”Elizabeth Young, the convention’s director of communications, told Religion News Service.
The foundation sent a letter Sept. 25 to its clients that reiterated its plans to have a reorganization plan ready in October.”Many of you are aware that there have been lawsuits filed against BFA seeking to force some sort of faster payout to investors,”the foundation’s Executive Oversight Committee wrote.”One suit is a class action, claiming to represent the interests of all investors. We believe, however, that we are on track to deliver a solution which best considers the needs of all investors, a solution which could be seriously undermined if such a suit was successful.” The state convention has started a”Jerusalem Fund,”which is independent of the foundation. People who are facing hardships because they cannot use their foundation investments can apply for grants for”basic human needs such as food and housing,”said Young.
She could not say how much has been raised and cited confidentiality concerns when asked about the hardships people are facing.”All I can really say is that it’s up and running, that donations are being received,”said Young.”Grants have been made and will continue to be made.” More than 13,000 investors with more than $483 million in investment products were affected by the order the foundation received.
Japanese `doomsday’ sect leader sentenced to death
(RNS) One of the leaders of the Japanese Aum Shinri Kyo sect, found guilty of participating in the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system which killed 12 people, has been sentenced to death.
The Tokyo District Court handed down the death-by-hanging verdict Thursday (Sept. 30) on Masato Yokoyama, 35, said sources quoted by the Associated Press.
Yokoyama was one of a squad of five Aum members who released the nerve gas sarin in subway trains as they converged on Tokyo’s central government district during the morning rush hour. In addition to the deaths, thousands were sickened by the attack.
The leader of the sect, guru Shoko Asahara, is on trial for masterminding the assault.
The sentence came a day after cult leaders said they would stop recruiting new members, close branch offices and change their name, apparently in an effort to defuse a new rise in public sentiment against the group.
Some observers of the group have suggested that the group is on the rise again, amassing funds from computer sales and holding seminars around the country.
Two other members of the sect who participated in the gassing have been given life sentences.
Pope urges doctors to warn patients their behavior can cause cancer
(RNS) Addressing a group of specialists in gynecological cancer, Pope John Paul II today urged doctors to warn their patients that their own behavior,”including certain sexual behavior,”can cause cancer.
The pope also called on governments to spend more money on cancer research and health education and cancer prevention.”Work in the different fields of cancer research needs to be promoted and supported by adequate funding from public authorities responsible for scientific research,”he told participants in the Seventh Congress of the International Gynecological Cancer Society.”For all the talk about the rising costs of health care, particularly in the area of cancer treatment, there is a lingering sense that too little is being done and too little spent on health education and cancer prevention,”John Paul said.”Nor should there be any hesitation about pointing out clearly that cancer can be the result of people’s behavior, including certain sexual behavior, as well as of the pollution of the environment and its effects on the body itself,”he said.
The pope said doctors must resist”strong social pressure”to resort to abortion or euthanasia when patients are seriously ill with cancer.”Doctors are the guardians and servants of life,”the pope said.”This is the truth of what you are in your medical work.” He recommended the physicians draw on”the fruit of two millennia of Catholic moral thought”when they face the problem of a pregnant woman stricken with cancer.
And, he said,”While there exists today strong social pressure to use the least sign of risk or alarm as justification for gynecologists and obstetricians to have recourse to abortion, even when effective forms of treatment are available, advances in your field make it increasingly possible to safeguard both the life of the mother and the life of the child.” Calling euthanasia”a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person,”John Paul said doctors must”resist every temptation to end a patient’s life by a deliberate act of omission or by active intervention.”
Quote of the Day: Steve Rabinowitz of Washington’s Adas Israel Congregation.
(RNS)”Who says there’s no place in the traditional Jewish home for a Christmas tree?” _ Steve Rabinowitz, a member of the Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., joking about his synagogue’s use of Christmas trees as”skach,”the leafy covering Jews construct over the temporary structures built for the week-long holiday of Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles). Sukkot concludes Friday (Oct. 1).
DEA END RNS
