c. 1999 Religion News Service

Cache of `Jesus coins’ goes on display in Jerusalem

(RNS) The largest collection of ancient”Jesus coins”ever discovered has been put on display in Jerusalem for the upcoming millennium.

The coins were unearthed last November at an archaeological site near the Sea of Galilee.

Bearing Greek inscriptions such as”Jesus the Messiah, the King of Kings”and”Jesus, the Messiah, the Victor,”the coins date to the period of the last millennium, from the late 10th century to the latter part of the 11th century A.D., according to Hebrew University professor Yizhar Hirschfeld, co-director of the excavation.

Currently on display at the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, the coins were found at the site of ancient Tiberias, just south of the modern-day city on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

The excavations yielded some 82 bronze coins, 58 bearing a purported likeness of Jesus, and some with accompanying inscriptions. The coins are rare in that they contain neither the name nor the image of a political ruler of the period.

Archaeologists said the coins were minted during the Byzantine era at a time when Palestine was largely controlled by the Islamic Fatimid dynasty, and Tiberias was capital of the Urdun, or”Jordan”district.

Some 1,000 bronze items were found in the excavations, the largest cache ever found in Israel from this Islamic period. Finds included a large candelabrum and decorative bowls with Arabic script.

The items were found in three large clay pots hidden under the floor of a structure. The owner of the structure, archaeologists said, could have been a dealer in metal objects who hid his valuables when the Crusaders invaded around the end of the 11th century. At the time, Tiberias was home to a mixed Jewish, Muslim and Christian population, but in the Crusader invasion the city was destroyed.

Church official: ecumenical movement out of touch

(RNS) The ecumenical movement is out of touch with people in the churches and has”almost ceased to be taken seriously”as a spiritual force, according to the president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

Professor Choan-Seng Song, a systematic theologian at California’s Pacific School of Religion and Graduate Theological Union, said the ecumenical movement, including his own WARC, had failed to respond to the growing”spiritual”awareness among ordinary people, adding that the ecumenical movement’s”financial coffer is empty because the spiritual coffer of our member Christians is empty.”Or perhaps the Alliance’s (WARC) spiritual coffer itself, after more than a century, has become empty,”he added.

Song made his comments in an address to the executive committee of WARC, which is meeting through July 13 in Taipei, Taiwan.”I decided to be very frank this time _ we tend to be polite ecumenically,”Song told the Geneva-based Ecumenical News Service. He said that while the ecumenical movement had many achievements to its credit, he did not want to see it become a prisoner of its past.

In particular, Song was critical of what he called the”ecumenical mind-set,”which he said is far removed from both authentic spirituality and the day-to-day lives of the millions of Christians who attend worship services in the churches that are part of the movement.”I became alarmed because if this trend were to continue, the ecumenical movement that revitalized the history of Christianity in the post-World War II world would become a historical memory and merely a subject of doctoral dissertations,”he said.”As a matter of fact, it has almost ceased to be `the’ spiritual force to be taken seriously by the world,”he said.

He told the 35-member committee that it is not enough to lament the fact that ecumenical churches have lost a large number of people to charismatic movements that make spiritual experience their sole business.”We may not like the spiritual experience promoted by the charismatic Christian communities of diverse hues and colors,”he said,”but what alternative have we been able to suggest? What else have we been able to offer our people who struggle with genuine spiritual hunger?”

Letter suggests Pope Pius XII opposed creation of Israel

(RNS) An unpublished letter from a special representative of Pope Pius XII to a diplomatic emissary of Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II has shed new light on the late pope’s controversial attitudes toward Jews at the height of the Holocaust.

The letter, from papal representative A.G. Cicognani to U.S. Ambassador Myron Taylor, was uncovered by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as part of a research project on the late Roman Catholic leader. It was published last weekend in the English language Jerusalem Post.”It is true that at one time Palestine was inhabited by the Hebrew Race, but there is no axiom in history to substantiate the necessity of a people returning to a country they left 19 centuries before,”states the letter, dated June 22, 1943.”If a `Hebrew Home’ is desired, it would not be too difficult to find a more fitting territory than Palestine. With an increase in the Jewish population there, grave, new international projects would arise.” Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal center, was quoted describing the letter as an”indictment”of Pius XII.”Where is a similar letter to Adolf Hitler telling Hitler that the Vatican finds his policies against the Jews repugnant? But at the height of the Holocaust, the Vatican knew how to oppose the state of Israel,”he said.

Underground Chinese Catholic priest reportedly dies after being arrested

(RNS) Religious activists have appealed to the U.S. State Department to take action following reports that an underground Chinese Roman Catholic priest was found dead after being taken into police custody. A second Catholic was reportedly tortured.

The Rev. Yan Weiping, 33, was arrested in mid-May while celebrating Mass in Beijing without government permission. That night, he was found lying dead in a street, according to the Stamford, Conn.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation. The foundation said no cause of death has been given by Chinese authorities. Yan was last seen alive while in police custody.

That same month, seminarian Wang Qing was arrested at the home of a Catholic family in Hebei province and then tortured, the foundation said. Wang was said to have been left hanging by his hands for three days, beaten and force-fed.

China closely regulates religious expression and considers illegal all such activity that is not government-sanctioned. China has an official Catholic church that does not recognize Vatican authority. Catholics who maintain loyalty to the pope are considered members of an illegal, or underground, religious group.

Freedom House, a Washington human rights organization, Wednesday (July 7) said the two May incidents reflect a pattern of ongoing Chinese persecution of Catholics and other Christians.”For the sake of international religious rights, the United States must raise its voice in protest against this escalating martyrdom and persecution of Chinese Christian leaders,”Freedom House’s religious freedom director Nina Shea said in a statement urging Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to publicly address the issue.

Israeli court OKs secular calendar dates on tombstones

(RNS) For the first time, Israeli Jews can choose between religious and secular dates on their tombstones. Until now, only Jewish religious calendar dates were allowed.

On Wednesday (July 7), Israel’s Supreme Court ruled 2-1 in favor of granting the choice in a move seen by advocates of religious pluralism as further limiting the power of the nation’s ultra-Orthodox rabbis, who had insisted on Jewish calendar dates only.

A number of court decisions in recent years have steadily eroded the power ultra-Orthodox rabbis have had over Jewish life in Israel since the nation’s birth. That has led to ultra-Orthodox politicians seeking to pass laws that offset the court decisions.

The Jewish calendar is traditionally said to date from the creation of the world by God. The current Jewish calendar year is 5760.

The court ruling came in the case of a family that had requested secular, or Gregorian, calendar dates on the tombstone of a family member.

Quote of the day: reporter Chris Hedges

(RNS)”Ethnic conflict, whether between Serbs and Muslims or Hutus and Tutsis, are not religious wars. They are not clashes between cultures or civilizations, nor are they the result of ancient ethnic hatreds. They are manufactured wars, born out of the collapse of civil societies, perpetuated by fear, greed and paranoia. They are run by gangsters who rise up from the scum of their own societies and terrorize all, including those they purport to protect.” _ Chris Hedges, a New York Times reporter and Nieman Fellow in 1998-99 at Harvard University, writing in the Harvard Divinity School’s publication”Religion & Values in Public Life.” DEA END RNS