c. 1999 Religion News Service
UCC elects president, approves restructuring plan
(RNS) The Rev. John H. Thomas has been elected president of the United Church of Christ, which has also approved a restructuring plan that had been in the works for a dozen years.
Thomas, 48, known for his efforts in ecumenical circles, was elected at the 1.4 million-member mainline Protestant denomination’s General Synod meeting in Providence, R.I. The biennial business meeting concluded Tuesday (July 6).
Thomas succeeds the Rev. Paul Sherry, under whom he served since 1992 as an assistant for ecumenical affairs.
On July 1, 2000, Thomas’ title will become general manager and president in accordance with the restructuring plan also adopted at the meeting. The plan reduced the number of denomination officials from more than a dozen to just five with more or less equal authority and responsibilities.
The five will be known as the Collegium of Officers. The intent is to move away entirely from a hierarchal leadership model, something the Cleveland-based liberal church has gradually sought to eliminate over the years.
The other four officers _ all elected with Thomas _ were the Rev. Jose A. Malayang, executive minister of Local Church Ministries; Edith A. Guffey, associate general minister; Dale L. Bishop, executive minister of Wider Church Ministries; and Bernice Powell Jackson, executive minister of Justice and Witness Ministries.
Thomas and Malayang were elected for two years but are eligible to serve an additional two four-year terms. Jackson was elected for six years and may serve an additional four years. Guffey and Bishop were elected for four-year terms and are eligible to serve two additional four-year terms.
White supremacist church one in name only
(RNS) The white supremacist suspect in the Fourth of July weekend shooting spree that left two dead and nine wounded was a member of a hate group that called itself the World Church of the Creator.
But the”church”preached hatred of Christians as well as Jews and other minorities, and apparently had no theology other than racism.
Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, who was 21, ended his attacks in Illinois and Indiana by killing himself Sunday (July 4) in rural southern Illinois as police tried to pull him out of the stolen van he had crashed while fleeing.
According to federal agents, Smith began his shooting spree Friday night by aiming at Orthodox Jews in Chicago. He then killed former Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong, who was black, in nearby Skokie, Ill. Before he was finished, he also killed Won-Joon Yoon, an Asian student at Indiana University.
The World Church of the Creator was formed in 1973 by Ben Klassen, a Florida real estate man originally from Ukraine. Klassen became wealthy by inventing an electric can opener. He committed suicide in 1993 after a WCC member was convicted of beating a black sailor to death in Florida.
The group is led today by Matt Hale, 27, and run out of his parents’ home in East Peoria, Ill. The group is reported to have 46 chapters and several hundred active members around the country, but appeared to exist in organized form mostly on the Internet.
Still, individuals said to be associated wih the church have in the past year been accused of pistol-whipping and robbing a Jewish video store owner and of beating a black man and his son. Both incidents took place in Florida.
Membership costs $35. The group’s rallying cry is RAHOWA, which stands for”racial holy war,”and its rhetoric includes diatribes against blacks, Jews and other minorities it refers to as”mud races,”whom the group believes should be eliminated.
Christianity is seen as”suicide”for white people.
The WCC Web site said:”Christianity teaches love your enemies and hate your own kind. We teach exactly the opposite, namely hate and destroy your enemies and love your own kind. Whereas Christianity’s teachings are suicidal, our creed brings out the best creative and constructive forces inherent in the White Race.” The group’s Golden Rule is:”That which is good for the White Race is the highest virtue; that which is bad for the White Race is the ultimate sin.””This is a religion for and created by sociopaths,”said Mark Potok, a researcher with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups.
Marijuana campaign prompts Florida churches to drop polling sites
(RNS) Three Baptist churches in the Jacksonville, Fla., area will no longer be used as public polling places after a group campaigned for the legalization of marijuana on their property.
Jack Snell, pastor of Hendricks Avenue Baptist Church, arrived at his church during last fall’s elections and was surprised to see Floridians for Medical Rights set up on the path leading to the voting booths.
Several members of the Southern Baptist church in Jacksonville voiced concern about the group supporting a stance the church did not advocate, reported Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
With the help of a police officer already at the location, the group was asked to leave the church property. The officer acknowledged the group’s legal right to petition within 50 feet of the polling place, but noted the group’s members were on church premises.
The group claimed it had been harassed, but Snell believes the church was justified in asking the campaigners to depart.”They were on our property without our permission,”he said.”We had the right to ask them to leave.” Floridians for Medical Rights filed suit, and a federal judge ruled May 11 in favor of the group. The judge said the group had a legal right to petition at any of the city’s polling places if they remained at least 50 feet from the polls.
Snell’s church was not named in the suit, but the pastor was advised that the church would have to permit any petitioners outside its facility when it served as a polling center.”I was told when a church agrees to allow (the supervisor of elections) to use the facilities, the church becomes a public place and must allow groups to petition,”Snell said.
In addition to Hendricks Avenue Baptist, two other churches have decided not to be polling centers in the future after Floridians for Medical Rights petitioned outside their buildings. They are Bay Meadows Baptist Church, an independent Baptist church in Jacksonville, and First Southern Baptist Church in Mandarin, Fla.
Pope appoints new bishop of Helena, Mont.
(RNS) Pope John Paul II has appointed the Rev. Robert C. Morlino of Kalamazoo, Mich., to fill the vacant post of bishop of Helena, Mont., the Vatican said Tuesday (July 6).
Morlino, 52, has been attached to the Diocese of Kalamazoo since 1983 and presently holds the posts of moderator of the curia and priest of the cathedral. He also has taught moral theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit since 1991.
The Diocese of Helena covers all or part of 24 western Montana counties with a Catholic population of 66,500 out of a total population of 424,000 people. Morlino succeeds Alexander J. Burnett, who was appointed archbishop of Seattle in 1997.
A native of Scranton, Pa., Morlino received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from New York’s Fordham University and master’s degrees in philosophy from Notre Dame University and in theology from the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass.
After his ordination as a priest for the Jesuit Province of Maryland in 1974, he did further graduate work in philosophy at Notre Dame and in 1990 received a degree in moral theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
Morlino was director of youth activities in the parish of St. Bartholomew in Needham, Mass., from 1972 to 1974; assistant chaplain at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Concord from 1973 to 1975; director of the Diocesan Seminary Program and assistant professor of philosophy at Notre Dame University from 1976 to 1978; director of pre-ministerial studies at Loyola College in Baltimore and priest of the Rutena Mother of God Parish from 1978 to 1981; and episcopal vicar for spiritual development in the Diocese of Kalamazoo from 1981 to 1983.
Quote of the Day: Sufi master Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
(RNS)”We can’t always be free from circumstances, but we can always attempt to find freedom in ourselves.” _ Muslim Sufi master Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, writing in his autobiography”Awakening: A Sufi Experience”(Tarcher/Putnam).
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