c. 1999 Religion News Service
Clinton appointees round out international religious freedom panel
(RNS) President Clinton has named a Muslim, a Baha’i and an American Baptist to the three remaining open seats on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The White House Wednesday (May 5) announced the appointments of Dr. Laila Al-Marayati, past president of the Muslim Women’s League; Firuz Kazemzadeh, external affairs secretary of the U.S. National Spiritual Assembly of Baha’is; and Washington State Supreme Court Judge Charles Z. Smith, an American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. past president.
The trio joins six other previously named voting members of the panel selected by congressional Republicans and Democrats. Former World Vision president Robert Seiple was named by Clinton to be ambassador-at-large for religious freedom issues, and will serve as the panel’s tenth and only non-voting member.
The commission was established last year by passage of the International Religious Freedom Act, which makes the treatment of religious believers by foreign governments an official U.S. foreign policy concern.
The commission is responsible for evaluating and recommending U.S. responses to violations of religious freedom by foreign governments. Its conclusions are advisory only.
A State Department spokesman said the commission has its first meeting unofficially scheduled for May 18.
Al-Marayati, an obstetrician-gynecologist with an office in Glendale, Calif., also served on the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, a group to be replaced by the new commission. She also was a White House appointee to the U.S. delegation to the 1995 U.N. conference on women in Beijing.
Kazemzadeh, from Alta Loma, Calif., is a former Yale University Russian history professor who has frequently testified before Congress about the persecution of Baha’is in Iran. He serves as the American Baha’i community’s principal spokesman.
Smith, from Seattle, was president of the general board of the American Baptist Churches from 1975-1977 and has long been active on religious freedom and human rights issues. From 1977-85, he was a member of the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry.
Previous appointments to the commission include Roman Catholic Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of Newark, N.J., and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Washington-based Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, both appointed by Senate Democrats.
Senate Republicans _ who as the majority party filled four slots on the panel _ named former Colorado Sen. Bill Armstrong, an evangelical Christian; John Bolton, a former State Department official under presidents Reagan and Bush; Elliot Abrams, a former Reagan assistant secretary of state for human rights who is Jewish; and Nina Shea, a Catholic who directs Freedom House’s religious freedom program in Washington.
Update: Georgia Methodist pastor resigns to lead dissident congregation
(RNS) The Rev. Charles Sineath, senior pastor at the 5,200-member First United Methodist Church in Marietta, Ga., will resign from the United Methodist ministry and lead a break-away congregation of former First Church members.
The split has been in the works for more than a year following the decision by the congregation’s board of stewards to withhold apportionments, or funds, asked of every congregation to support the work of the church on the national and regional levels.
At first, the board of stewards voted to”redirect”certain funds earmarked for national programs of the church to ministries it deemed worthy of support.
But after Bishop Lindsey Davis earlier this year announced Sineath would not be reappointed as pastor of the congregation, the board voted to withhold all apportionments and place them in escrow.
Some members of the congregation have been unhappy with denominational positions or the views of seminary professors, bishops and other church leaders that they regard as too liberal and which Sineath has charged”strike at the heart of our faith.” In particular, the dissidents cite views on the incarnation, the atoning death of Jesus and his bodily resurrection as well as positions on the authority of Scripture and what some members of the congregation view as the advocacy within the denomination of”radical feminist theology”and the full acceptance of gays and lesbians within the church.
When Sineath announced he would be the pastor of Wesley Fellowship, an independent church formed by breakaway members of First United, leaders of the North Georgia Conference asked for his resignation.”Since the new church is being formed primarily by persons who are members of Marietta First, I and the cabinet (conference officials) feel there is a severe conflict of interest which results in Rev. Sineath’s divided loyalty,”Davis said.”You can’t be a United Methodist minister and serve a congregation that splits off from a United Methodist church,”he added.
Mar Thoma priest excommunicated for novel on the life of Jesus
(RNS) Samuel Nettiyadan, a priest of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church in India, has been excommunicated because of a controversial novel he has written that church officials say denigrates Jesus.”The believers in the church have been outraged by the novel,”Metropolitan Alexander Mar Thoma, head of the 1 million-member church told Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
Tradition says the Mar Thoma was founded by St. Thomas in the first century. It is headquartered in the Indian state of Kerala.
The excommunication, announced April 12, followed Nettiyadan’s suspension from priestly duties in February and an investigation by a three-member church commission.
The 176-page novel,”Joseph the Carpenter,”was written in Malayalam, the principal language of Kerala and published last July under a pen name.
In it, Nettiyadan depicted Jesus as the son of a Roman soldier who sexually assaulted Mary. Joseph, a carpenter and social activist, took pity on her and married her. The novel also fills in the details of Jesus’ life between the ages of 13 and 30, and, according to ENI, describes him as a person of rather loose morals.
Bishop Joseph Mar Irenius, who led the probe of the novel and the novelist-priest, said the book”challenges the very foundation of Christian faith and (the) role of the Holy Spirit.”He said when Nettiyadan spoke to the panel,”he was unrepentant”about the novel and justified it”as a mere work of imagination.” Nettiyadan called the church’s action”harsh”and”unexpected.””The novel is not a treatise on faith. It could have been taken lightly.” Nettiyadan had published eight books, including three plays, two novels and two short story collections and a collection of essays before”Joseph the Carpenter.””I never thought it would create a scandal in the church or embarrass it,”he said.
Kuwait Parliament dissolved over mistakes in Koran
(RNS) The emir of Kuwait has dissolved the Gulf nation’s Parliament after lawmakers threatened to oust his Islamic Affairs minister for mistakes in 120,000 copies of the Koran printed by the government.
Sheik Jabar al-Ahmed al-Sabah called for new elections July 3, more than a year ahead of schedule, the Associated Press reported Tuesday (May 4).
In an emotional five-hour session on Tuesday, lawmakers lambasted the minister, Ahmed al-Kulaib, accusing him of attempting to”disfigure the faith of Muslims”by allowing the Koran, Islam’s holy book, to be printed and released with verses missing, repeated or misplaced.”I regret that the defense of God’s holy book is the reason for dissolution,”said Abbas al-Khodari, a member of Kuwait’s minority Shi’ite Muslim community and a leader in the parliamentary questioning of the Islamic Affairs minister.”This (the errors) is a horrendous mistake that cannot be forgiven,”he said.”Trying to correct it later does not make it go away. … This has to do with the great book of God.” Al-Kulaib acknowledged the errors and said they were made in the collating and binding stages but did not change the text.”Nobody is denying that an unintentional mistake has been made,”he said.”The mistakes do not include any intended change in the meaning”of the verses of the Koran.
Still, 20 lawmakers in the 50-seat house submitted two motions for a vote of no-confidence in al-Kulaib and a vote on his removal appeared likely to pass, prompting the emir to dissolve the Parliament and call new elections.
Quote of the day: Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America
(RNS)”No abolition of constitutional rights, no executive order, no congressional law, no fiery rhetoric will ever salvage a child’s conduct or locate a missing moral code.” _ Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, testifying May 4 before a Senate committee and arguing that the moral shield erected by parents, churches and schools are the best antidote to youthful violence.
DEA END RNS
