c. 2000 Religion News Service
WCC Demands End to Sanctions Against Iraq
(RNS) Applauding the recent resignations of two senior United Nations officials who quit in protest of sanctions against Iraq, the World Council of Churches has told United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan “the time is overdue” for the sanctions to end.
“The resignations of Mr. Hans von Sponeck, United Nations Aid Coordinator, and of Ms. Jutta Burghardt, World Food Program Chief in Iraq, have again drawn attention to the disastrous effects of the Security Council’s sanctions on the people of this nation,” the WCC said in a letter written by the Rev. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the council. “These international servants have now rightly suggested that such sanctions are tantamount to violation by the United Nations itself of the fundamental rights inscribed in international law through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the covenants established to implement its provisions.”
The WCC also decried the sanctions’ impact on Iraqi civilians.
“For over a decade the people of Iraq have suffered under a sanctions regime that is unrelentingly punitive of the people of Iraq who are hardly to blame for the actions of their government,” the council letter said. “The comprehensive application of an economic embargo in a manner that ignores the fundamental humanitarian needs and rights of 22 million people to basic health care, food and shelter is unacceptable.”
The letter acknowledged that sanctions _ imposed in 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait _ “can provide a nonviolent alternative to war when applied under strict conditions and carefully monitored,” but contended existing sanctions “have not always been consistent, impartial or effective.
“This, and the ambiguity of international law has allowed individual governments to use the term sanctions to provide a cloak of moral and legal justification for some of their own foreign policy initiatives,” the letter said. “This practice requires careful scrutiny by the churches and by the international community.”
Update: Baptist Foundation of Arizona Files Liquidation Plan
Eds: Jock in 4th graf is CQ.)
(RNS) Investors in the financially troubled Baptist Foundation of Arizona could receive about 40 cents on the dollar under a liquidation plan filed in bankruptcy court. The plan was announced on the same day a lawsuit was filed against former executives of the foundation.
A spokesman for the Phoenix-based foundation estimated the group’s assets will bring between $215 million and $220 million when sold. Those figures are far less than the $590 million the foundation owes to about 11,000 investors.
Foundation officials said they hope the amount returned to investors will increase considerably if the $400 million lawsuit against former foundation officials and their lawyers and accountants proves successful, reported Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“Obviously, our hope is that everybody will get everything back, but I can’t speculate on how the lawsuit will turn out,” said Jock Patton, chairman of the restructuring committee of the BFA.
The liquidation plan, filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Phoenix, includes the “immediate sale” of three properties in Phoenix, Alabama and Hawaii. Those sales would generate a payout to investors whose money has been frozen since August in BFA accounts.
The plan requires bankruptcy court approval and will also be voted on by investors, said BFA spokesman Lew Phelps.
Phelps declined to disclose the estimated worth of the three properties,which include a 7,000-acre master-planned community near Phoenix called Pleasant Point.
Some investors praised the new proposal as an improvement over the first redistribution plan, which would have allowed them to recover 20 cents on the dollar immediately or choose stock in a new company. The first plan was withdrawn in December after investors voted it down and agreed to the selling off of the assets of the foundation.
Presbyterians Earmark $500,000 for NCC Bailout
(RNS) Leaders of the nation’s largest Presbyterian body have earmarked half a million dollars to help resolve a lingering financial crisis at the National Council of Churches.
The contribution by the Presbyterian Church (USA) comes with the stipulation that the church’s General Assembly Council will review the denomination’s involvement with the 50-year-old NCC every three years.
Denominational leaders were upset with the financial problems that have plagued the ecumenical organization, which includes 35 Protestant and Orthodox church bodies and has an annual budget of about $60 million.
A $4 million budget shortfall surfaced last fall as the NCC prepared for its annual meeting to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The financial woes prompted the United Methodist Church to withhold member contributions until the fiscal crisis was resolved.
Under the plan approved by the 2.5 million-member PCUSA, the $500,000 contribution will go toward eliminating the remaining $2 million debt, pending an approved balanced budget for the NCC and steps to help rebuild the organization’s reserve funds.
The Rev. Robert Edgar, the new NCC general secretary, told the General Assembly Council he has “stopped the hemorrhaging” in the organization and has installed safeguards to ensure “that the money is used responsibly,” according to a church news release.
Update: AJC Denounces Kentucky Proposal
(RNS) Labeling the bill “an offense against history” and an attempt to “aggrandize Christianity at the expense of other faiths,” the American Jewish Congress denounced a bill passed by the Kentucky state Senate that would delete all religions except Christianity from history lessons about America’s colonial era.
“It would not do to conjure up Jews or Muslims on the Mayflower so that history would promote current notions of diversity,” read the statement. “No more can a legislator by fiat excise from American colonial history the contributions of other faiths.”
The bill, approved by a 37-1 vote on Feb. 15, is sponsored by Republican Sen. Albert Robinson, and urges the Kentucky board of education stop the “suppression and censorship” of “Christianity’s influence on colonial America.”
“When the boat came to these great shores, it did not have an Atheist, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew,” Robinson said. “Ninety-eight-plus percent of these people were Christians.”
Though several senators criticized the proposal, which now must receive approval from the state House, only one voted against it. Ernesto Scorsone, a Democrat from Lexington, contended that approving the bill would diminish “the notion of the separation of church and state.”
The statement from the Jewish Congress also declared that “Sen. Robinson’s effort to recreate history in this fashion does not emerge from a vacuum,” noting the Kentucky Senate is considering legislation that would prohibit extracurricular activities on Sunday.
“It is apparently of no moment that such activities on Saturday affect Jews and Sabbath-observing Christians,” the letter read. “And in open defiance of the Supreme Court, many Kentucky school districts are again posting the Ten Commandments in public schools so that schools convey to their students that only certain religions have a place in shaping their life.”
Ohio School District Ends Closures on Jewish Holidays
(RNS) An Ohio school district has ended its two-year trial period in which it closed schools on major Jewish holidays.
The Sycamore school district, in the Cincinnati suburb of Blue Ash, said the absentee rate was not high enough to continue canceling classes on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
“This is a public school, so we are going to attempt to run our district with nonreligious days off,” said Don Hirsch, president of the school board.
The American Civil Liberties Union had sued the district in an effort to block closing the schools on the religious holidays but Superintendent Bruce Armstrong said the lawsuit was not the reason the district decided to once again hold classes on the holidays.
Armstrong said the school board, which voted 4-1 Feb. 16 to adopt next year’s academic calendar, decided the average 15 percent absenteeism rate on the holidays wasn’t significant enough to halt classes.
“The normal absentee rate is 4 percent,” he said.
The ACLU lawsuit alleged that closing public schools on Jewish holidays violated the Constitution because it appeared to have been done to benefit religion, the Associated Press reported.
The ACLU argued that public schools may close on religious holidays only if there is a religiously neutral reason to do so.
Stephen R. Felson, an ACLU lawyer who filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, said Feb. 17 the lawsuit still exists but the board’s decision makes a settlement possible.
Armstrong said when he became superintendent in 1994, the district’s policy called for not introducing new material or giving tests on Jewish holidays because of the notably lower attendance.
Church Wants Satellite Dish for Soccer Matches
(RNS) A rural English vicar is applying for planning permission to install a satellite dish on a church tower so that the teen-agers in his parish youth club can watch soccer matches on television.
The matches are not available on local television. Churches must receive governmental permission to mount satellite dishes or other electronic instruments on their steeples.
The Rev. Michael Paddison, rector of four rural parishes 12 miles northwest of Norwich, started the youth club last October when he found groups of young people gathering on Friday nights on the church porch.
Quote of the day: Columnist E.J. Dionne
(RNS) “The worst thing that could happen out of this interest in faith-based organizations would be to turn the churches, synagogues and mosques into interest groups at the public trough. At the end of a big budget fight you discover that some senator or member of Congress has written in a half-million dollars in grants to a particular church in his or her state.”
_ Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, in an interview in the current issue of Sojourners magazine, on providing federal money to religious organizations for antipoverty and other social welfare programs.
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