c. 1999 Religion News Service
United Methodist bishops urge end to ethnic cleansing, NATO bombing
(RNS) The bishops of the United Methodist church have called for an end to the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo and to the NATO bombing of Serbia.
The resolution was adopted by the Council of Bishops during their May 1-7 meeting in Chattanooga, Tenn.”While we condemn the processes of ethnic cleansing, weep for its victims, and condemn its ideology and practice, we note that the bombing, while failing to alter this evil reality, has intensified the suffering of real people, our sisters and brothers, who are representative of different sides in this conflict,”the bishops said in the resolution.
The resolution’s four points began by calling on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic”to cease the practice and refute the ideology of ethnic cleansing NOW (cq), and to provide for the safe return of all refugees to their homeland.” It also called on NATO to stop the bombing”and the denial of the delivery of essential goods to the people of Yugoslavia,”and called for the negotiation of a”just”peace under United Nations auspices and the creation of”an immediate `Marshall Plan’ for the suffering people of the Balkans.”
New Polish law allows removal of Auschwitz crosses
(RNS) Poland’s president has signed a law designed to facilitate the removal of hundreds of crosses placed outside the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz by conservative Catholics and protested by Jews.
The law signed Saturday (May 8) by President Alexsander Kwasniewski restricts development and public gatherings in a 100-yard perimeter around Auschwitz and more than a half-dozen other former Nazi death camps in Poland.
The law calls for government intervention if the peace and dignity of the former camps are threatened, the Associated Press reported. The law will allow the government to terminate a lease held by the Polish Association of War Veterans on land outside Auschwitz where Catholics have erected some 300 small crosses.
Catholic groups began erecting the crosses last year after Jewish leaders objected to the placement of a 26-foot-tall cross outside Auschwitz. The cross, which was used in a 1979 papal Mass, is visible from inside the camp.
Jews maintain the crosses are an affront to the memory of the 1 million Jews who died at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. The Catholics say they are merely seeking to also memorialize the 152 Poles slain at the Birkenau death camp next to Auschwitz.
The Polish Catholic hierarchy and the Polish government have opposed the additional crosses at the site, although the government has said the papal cross will remain.
Five Canadian Sikhs convicted in bloody temple melee
(RNS) Five followers of a conservative Sikh faction have been convicted of mischief for smashing tables and chairs at a Sikh temple in late 1996.
The actions of the convicted members of the militant International Sikh Youth Federation sparked a bloody melee on the same day between rival Sikh groups at Guru Nanak temple in the Vancouver, British Columbia suburb of Surrey.
The five men convicted Friday (May 7), several of whom were former executives of the Guru Nanak temple, claimed they were trying to uphold Sikh tradition by stopping moderate Sikhs from sitting at tables and chairs in the temple dining room. They argued that true Sikhs must eat while sitting on the floor, as Sikhs do in India.
The ramifications of the intra-Sikh battle are still being felt today. British Columbia’s 150,000 Sikhs are breaking off into smaller groups and temple elections have turned into showdowns between moderates and conservatives, with moderates generally prevailing.
In addition, late last year a moderate Sikh publisher in Surrey, Tara Singh Hayer, was assassinated, police say, for his highly critical commentaries about conservative Sikhs.
Most Sikhs say the symbolic battle over whether to eat at tables and chairs masks a power struggle over who will control British Columbia’s 15 Sikh temples, thereby gaining access to the millions of dollars Sikhs annually donate to their religion.
Conservative Sikhs, particularly members of the Sikh Youth Federation, support the sometimes violent struggle for a separate Sikh state called Khalistan in the Punjab region of India, which is home to 15 million Sikhs.
Moderate Sikhs, on the other hand, are prepared to adapt to modern Indian and North American society.
Court: Pastor doesn’t have to testify about murder confession
(RNS) A Tacoma, Wash., pastor cannot be forced to testify about a murder confession because doing so would violate the sanctity of the confessional, the Washington state Supreme Court has ruled.
The high court unanimously dismissed a lower court’s contempt charge against the Rev. Rich Hamlin, minister of the 75-member Evangelical Reformed Church in South Tacoma. The ruling on Thursday (May 6) declared Hamlin was protected by a state law guaranteeing confidentiality of religious confessions, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.
Before the ruling, state law only protected confessions between a penitent and clergy in a religion with a recognized confession rite, such as the Roman Catholic or Episcopal churches, said John Ladenburg, prosecutor for Pierce County.
Prosecutors believe the ruling will significantly broaden legal protections to any religion, whether or not a particular religion has a recognized rite of confession.”This ruling will be the latest authority on the subject in the country,”said Steve McFarland, director of the Virginia-based Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom.”It will be hopefully a beacon light to warn other prosecutors away from this unconstitutional sandbar.” Hamlin said he was pleased with the decision.”I’m just thrilled that the state Supreme Court has ruled and ruled decisively,”he said.
The high court’s decision affirms a decision last summer by the state Court of Appeals, which sided with Hamlin in a 3-0 vote. The appellate court had ruled the law protects clergy if they believe they are hearing a confession out of a religious obligation.
But the state Supreme Court ruling has a caveat: The pastor’s privilege to hear a confession could be nullified if there is a third party present _ an issue that could affect the case involving Hamlin.
Pierce County prosecutors have charged Scott Anthony Martin in the shaking death of his 3-month-old son Devyn Martin two years ago. They sought Hamlin as a witness, believing Martin confessed the slaying to the pastor.
Ladenburg said Martin’s mother was present during part of his conversations with Hamlin. But the mother has told authorities she doesn’t remember what she heard the two men discuss.
Broadman & Holman Publishers announce new Bible translation
(RNS) Broadman & Holman Publishers has announced it is producing a new Bible translation that will be released in 2004.
The Holman Christian Standard Bible (CSB) will be a translation combining”commitment to accuracy in communicating the original text and modern-day readability,”reported Baptist Press, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Broadman & Holman is a division of LifeWay Christian Resources, an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention.
LifeWay president James T. Draper Jr. said the volume will meet a”serious need for a 21st-century Bible translation in American English that combines accuracy and readability.””The Holman Christian Standard Bible is an accurate, literal rendering with a smoothness and readability that invites memorization, reading aloud and dedicated study,”he said.
The New Testament is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2000 and the entire Bible is expected to be released by 2004.
British government official urges sale of IMF gold for debt relief
(RNS) British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown called Monday (May 10) for the sale of up to $2 billion of the world’s gold reserves held by the International Monetary Fund to ease the debt burden of the world’s poorest countries.
Brown made his call in a speech to the General Assembly _ highest deliberative body _ of the Church of Scotland, meeting in Edinburgh.
Brown said the sale of the gold reserves is one of the necessary steps to removing the burden of unsustainable debt _ a burden imposed by the past on the present that deprives millions of people of their chance to break out of the vicious circle of poverty, illiteracy and disease.
The son of a Church of Scotland minister, Brown said the faith he was brought up in was”that when some are poor, our whole society is impoverished, and that when there is an injustice anywhere it is a threat to justice everywhere”.
Churches have been leading an international campaign to cancel, or at least reduce, the debts of the world’s poorest countries during the Christian millennial year 2000, being marked by the Roman Catholic Church and a number of Protestant bodies as a biblical”jubilee year”in which debts are forgiven.”It is precisely because we believe that we have obligations beyond our front doors and garden gates, responsibilities beyond the city wall, duties beyond our national borders, that we are called on to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and help the sick, whoever they are and wherever they are,”Brown told the Church of Scotland delegates.
Debt relief, thus, is not only an economic issue but also a moral issue.”I would suggest that our first task is to cut the burden of unpayable debt, and to do so by at least $50 billion in the year 2000,”he said.”Our second task, to help pay for this, is for all of us to persuade world governments to sell IMF gold. Our third task is to convert debt relief into poverty relief by increasing aid for health, education, and economic development. And our fourth task, the task for the millennium, is to demand responsibility not just of governments but of citizens that in the year 2000 we dramatically increase our own giving to the neediest of the world.” Brown cited what he called the tragedy of Guyana where”$101 million is being spent this year on their debt repayments, while they are able to spend only $43 million on education and $20 million on health. “So as the millennium approaches, now is the time for us to persuade all rich countries to write off their aid loans,”he said.”Now it is time for us to ensure that countries with reform programs receive the benefit of debt relief immediately and not to have to endure, as now, three more years of misery. Now is the time, too, for countries like Honduras and Nicaragua, so recently ravaged by natural disasters, to be guaranteed the debt relief that they need … and now is the time for Albania and Macedonia, weighed down by the burden of debt and war, to be given assistance to move from crisis to development.
Quote of the day: Baptist pastor Alan Cox
(RNS)”God has never been nearer to you than he is right now. There’s nothing so radiant as when the sun breaks through the clouds after a storm. We will never, ever be the same again, but we will rise from this rubble.” _ Alan Cox, pastor of First Baptist Church of Moore, Okla., speaking to hundreds of churchgoers at a communitywide service attended by tornado victims.
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