c. 1999 Religion News Service
Update: Gays, conservative Christians meet at Falwell’s church
(RNS) Gays and conservative Christians who attended an unprecedented gathering over the weekend at the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s church in Lynchburg, Va., found some common ground and declared the meeting productive.
Falwell and the Rev. Mel White, a gay minister who came out years after ghostwriting Falwell’s autobiography, organized the meeting. The two men apologized for statements they’d made in the past and pledged to work to avoid hateful speech in the future.
At a news conference following the meeting on Saturday (Oct. 23), disagreements remained about whether gays were sinful and in need of conversion to avoid eternal life in hell, USA Today reported.
Falwell compared the meeting”to building a bridge as we do to drug addicts, alcoholics and other sinners.” His last-minute invitation to Michael Johnston, the leader of a ministry that works to convert gays to heterosexuality, was criticized by White.”I’m sorry the forum is going in this direction,”he said.”Calling someone sinners over and over and over again approaches hate speech very quickly.” Johnston countered by saying,”Preaching God’s word is not hate speech.” Despite this disagreement, those attending the gathering came away with a new perspective of people whom they previously had considered stereotypically.
Donna Moore, an office manager at Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church, said she spoke with an openly gay person at length for the first time in her life.”I really dreaded this weekend,”she said.”But I saw that they were just people, nice people, not the extremists who send us HIV-infected urine.” During the Saturday gathering, 200 evangelical Christians shared tables with an equal number from Soulforce, an interdenominational gay rights group that White chairs. Participants drank bottled water after Falwell’s supporters chose not to eat with the gays because of what a spokesman said were concerns about the Bible prohibiting eating with sinners.
The weekend gathering culminated with a Sunday worship service at Falwell’s church. Outside, dozens of angry anti-homosexual protesters demonstrated and screamed at gay supporters entering the church, the Associated Press reported.
White, who had gathered gay participants from 30 states to take part in the weekend, considered the protest”a shame.””What we have here is a great moment for our country, gays and Falwell worshipping together,”said White.”It’s a small start, but it’s a start.”
Poet Pound rejected for St. John the Divine’s `Poets’ Corner’
(RNS) The dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York has overruled a panel of prominent writers and rejected a proposal to honor the poet Ezra Pound in the Poets’ Corner of the cathedral.
The Very Rev. Harry S. Pritchett Jr. said in a letter to the panel of writers that the cathedral could not commemorate Pound, considered by many to be one of the seminal early 20th century poets, because of his anti-Semitic writings and broadcasts from Fascist Italy during World War II.
The Poets’ Corner was founded in 1984 to celebrate American writers. Currently, carved flat stones measuring about two feet by three feet are laid side by side commemorating 33 writers.
The Poets’ Corner’s 13 electors, which included Daniel Hoffman, a former poetry consultant at the Library of Congress and the cathedral’s poet-in-residence, gave a majority vote to include Pound.
Poet Donald Hall nominated Pound for the honor.”I nominated Pound and I know the horrendous things that Pound did, and I also know that he was a great American poet not only in his own work, but a great facilitator of the work of other American poets, from Robert Frost to T.S. Eliot,”Hall told The New York Times.”I admire him and I suggested him for his poetry, but there were so many generous things in his career before he became a megalomaniac and paranoiac,”Hall added.”I think that the malice of his madness is not relevant to his stature as a poet.” Pritchett, in deciding to overrule the majority of the electors, said his decision presented him with”an incredible ethical dilemma that reaches beyond this incident.”Ultimately it has to do with the relationship between art and the artist’s own ethics and the broader community,”he said.”It is a question of developing an esthetic theology.” The electors and Pritchett did approve including the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Corner.
Christians, Hindus continue verbal jousting as pope visit nears
(RNS) As India prepares for the visit of Pope John Paul II next month, militant Hindu groups and Christian churches are continuing their sparring over the volatile issue of conversion.
On Saturday (Oct. 23), Christian leaders said they would bring thousands of Christian tribesmen to Calcutta next month to bear witness that they were not lured or coerced by missionaries to adopt the faith.”Tribals will come to Calcutta on Nov. 3 to say they became Christians because they were convinced,”said Herod Mullick, general secretary of Bangiya Christiya Pariseba, a Christian organization in West Bengal, Reuters reported.
The pope is expected to fly to India on Nov. 5.
The Christians said they will hold a rally coinciding with protests organized by Hindu activists who want John Paul to speak out against what the Hindus believe are economically coerced conversions.”We are against `Churchianity’ trying to proselytize ignorant, unsuspecting poor people through bribes, fraud and deceit,”said B.P. Singhal, adviser to the Samskriti Rajksha Manch (Front for Protection of Culture) organization.
Meanwhile, the Press Trust of India quoted Mohan Joshi, a central committee member of the hard-line Vishwa Hindu Parishad, as saying the missionary homes founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa were”nothing but conversion centers.””The pope … must tell: Where did all the children cared for at the Mother Teresa home vanish?”PTI quoted Joshi as saying.”We know that they were converted and sent to foreign countries as priests and nuns.” Singhal told Reuters that his group will welcome the pope but press for the end of conversions.”We are going to welcome him and we will avail of this opportunity to express the pain we are suffering at the hands of `Churchianity,'”he said.
India’s 22 million Christians make up about 2 percent of the population.
Representatives of more than 20 religions open Vatican meeting
(RNS) Representatives of more than 20 of the world’s religions gathered at the Vatican on Monday (Oct. 25) for four days of dialogue aimed at asserting the values they hold in common at the start of the new millennium.”The Second Vatican Council didn’t make a mistake when it published `Nostra Aetate’ in 1965 to ask for collaboration between religions,”Cardinal Francis Arinze, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, said at a Vatican briefing.
Arinze said the Vatican called the interreligious assembly in the spirit of Pope John Paul II’s 1986 meeting with religious leaders at Assisi, the hill town north of Rome where St. Francis was born, to mark the World Day of Prayer for Peace.
The 200 delegates who gathered at the Vatican included representatives of the Jewish, Muslim, Mandaean, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Sikh, Jain, Shinto, Confucian, Baha’i, Tenrikyo, Miochikai, Rissho Kosei-Kai and Ennokyo faiths and traditional religions of India, Africa and North America.
Christian churches represented include the Greek, Armenian, Romanian and Assyrian Orthodox, Waldensian, Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed and Mennonite. An official of the World Council of Churches also attended.
Arinze acknowledged there could be no joint prayer because of”theological difficulties.””Prayer depends on what we believe. If we don’t believe in the same thing, we cannot have the same prayer,”he said.
But, he said, members of different religions can work together to further social justice and family values and to fight corruption, bad government, a lack of solidarity in society, poverty and religious extremism.”Collaboration can take many forms,”the cardinal said.”At the world level it is all very general, but when you come to the city, the state, the country, it becomes concrete.” The theme of the meeting, called by the Vatican’s Central Committee for the Great Jubilee 2000, is”On the Eve of the Third Millennium: Collaboration between Different Religions.” The participants will take time out Wednesday from their deliberations on a joint declaration on the role of religion in the next millennium to make a pilgrimage to Assisi and hold separate prayers there.
In her keynote address Monday, Theresa Ee-Chooi of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the president of the International Catholic Press Union, reviewed the problems of the gap between wealth and poverty, globalization and the recourse to relativism in a world dominated by materialism and consumerism.”Let not future generations say we talk too much, act too little, we think too long, act too late. The task is urgent. We must work together against the evils which threaten the well-being of our peoples,”she said.”We want change. We can change the world. Together and only together we can do this to make our world a better place for every single man, woman and child.”
Update: Hindus react to Southern Baptist prayer plans
(RNS) Hindus in India and Nepal denounced Southern Baptists’ call for prayers that Hindus might be converted to Christianity as”illiterate and offensive.” The prominent evangelical denomination timed its announcement of a new prayer guide to Divali, an upcoming Hindu festival often celebrated on Nov. 7.”I have read the (newspaper) report of U.S. Baptists’ bid to convert Hindus to Christianity during Divali,”said K.R. Malkani, spokesman for the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, in a statement.”I must say I am not surprised. The missionary approach to Hindus and Hinduism has always been illiterate and offensive.” Randy Sprinkle, director of the prayer strategy office of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, said Southern Baptists were being invited to pray”that the world’s Hindus might be convicted of sin and see Jesus is the light of the world.” Malkani reacted to the distribution of the prayer booklet to Southern Baptists, members of the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, Reuters reported.”Firstly, India is more religious than any other country in the world,”he said.”Morally, it is more Christian than any other Christian country. Secondly, is it not an insult to India to tell Hindus that they are all sinners and that only Jesus can save them?” The World Hindu Federation, based in Katmandu, Nepal, called the Southern Baptist Convention’s actions a”farce.” Update: Archbishop Tutu’s cancer confined to prostate
(RNS) Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has had a recurrence of prostate cancer, has learned that the cancer is confined to his prostate.
Dr. Harry Clarke of Emory University Hospital, the archbishop’s urologist, informed Tutu”that tests on tissue taken from his lymph nodes on Thursday showed no signs of cancer,”said a statement from Tutu’s office released Saturday (Oct. 23).”This is a great relief for his family _ they were obviously very worried at the possibility that the cancer may have spread,”the statement said.
Tutu, who was diagnosed and treated for cancer in 1997, learned earlier in October about the recurrence.
Within the next few weeks, he expects to undergo cryosurgery, a procedure in which doctors use liquid nitrogen to kill the cancer in his prostate by freezing it.
Tutu, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to rid South Africa of apartheid, is a visiting professor of theology at Emory University’s theology school in Atlanta.
Israeli museum nixes nude woman on cross exhibit
(RNS) An Israeli museum exhibit in which a 23-year-old nude woman was to have been tied to a cross has been scratched after a group of protesting Israeli Christian young people snatched the wooden cross and set it on fire.
The piece of performance art, by Israeli artist Honi Hama’agel, had been set to open the International Installation Triennial at the Haifa Museum of Art.
A woman was to have been tied to the cross while three uniformed men shot paint bullets at her, and another group garbed as rabbis read Bible passages by her side.
The exhibit was meant to show women as this millennium’s victim, according to museum director-general Nissim Tal.
Israeli Arab Christian youths belonging to the Galilee-based”Sons of the Church”movement removed the cross from the grounds of the museum just before the exhibition was to be unveiled, and set the wooden frame on fire. The youths said the exhibition was an insult to Christianity and could have triggered massive unrest among Israel’s Christian Arab population.
Museum officials did not try to oppose the group’s ad hoc act, saying the exhibit was apparently offensive to many Christians, and also possibly to Orthodox Jews.”We decided to cancel or postpone the performance out of respect for the Christian community,”Tal said.”The museum is located in a Christian area and we’ve so far had very good relations with our neighbors.”
Quote of the day: Texas writer Alcestis”Cooky”Oberg
(RNS)”You don’t have to be a religious zealot to think that it wouldn’t hurt these kids to be exposed to a diversity of religious views in the public schools, as they are to a diversity of races, cultures and even sexual preferences. And you don’t have to be a member of the `religious right’ to think there’s something really wrong in America when to say a prayer is to commit a crime.” _ Alcestis”Cooky”Oberg, a free-lance writer from Santa Fe, Texas, writing about the controversy over prayer at school events in her community. Her comments appeared in an op-ed article in the Oct. 25 edition of USA Today.
DEA END RNS
