c. 2000 Religion News Service

Seminaries to Encourage Black Clergy to Address Issues of Sexuality

(RNS) The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice has launched a new project designed to encourage seminaries to prepare African-American clergy to discuss sexuality issues in the black religious community.

Under the program, seminaries will offer courses addressing issues such as AIDS and teen pregnancy and fellows will be involved in related research.

United Theological Seminary, a United Methodist-related school in Dayton, Ohio, will be the first to offer the program, beginning in January. Six clergy in the seminary’s doctor of ministry program will be called “Reproductive Choice Fellows” and will work with the coalition for three years after receiving their degrees by giving lectures, taking part in workshops and promoting dialogue on sexuality issues in the black religious community.

“African-American and other seminaries often do not address sexuality issues such as teen pregnancy, sexuality education, HIV/AIDS prevention and education, and youth and sex,” said the Rev. Carlton W. Veazey, president of the Washington-based coalition, in a statement.

“African-American churches also are often silent on these subjects. The Religious Coalition’s Seminary Project will prepare clergy to deal with issues that are having a major impact in African-American communities.”

The project is part of the coalition’s Black Church Initiative, which was created in 1997 and has included national summits of African-American religious leaders addressing sexuality.

The Rev. Kendall McCabe, vice president for academic affairs at United Theological Seminary, welcomed his school’s participation in the project.

“Reproductive health is one area where people need to make responsible choices, and they need training and support to do so,” he said. “This is an issue not only for African-Americans, but for everyone in the 21st century.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Pope Assailant Denied Amnesty

(RNS) A Turkish court has refused an application for early release from prison for the man who shot Pope John Paul II.

Mehmet Ali Agca had sought to join thousands of prisoners set free under a limited amnesty law approved in Turkey last week, Reuters news agency reported. The law _ which does not extend to those involved in crimes such as rape, misuse of public funds and organized crime _ is part of the country’s efforts to reduce its 72,000-strong prison population.

Agca’s application was rejected because he had already benefited from an earlier amnesty which commuted his death sentence for the 1979 murder of a newspaper editor to 10 years in prison, one Turkish daily newspaper reported.

In June, Agca was extradited from Italy to Turkey to finish that 10-year sentence. The pope had convinced the Italian government to pardon Agca, who served 19 years in prison there for his 1981 attack on the pope.

In addition to the nine years he must complete for the editor’s death, Agca must also serve a seven-year prison sentence handed down in July for a 1979 robbery.

Christian Orthodox Leaders Urge New Steps Aimed at Unity

(RNS) Orthodox Christian leaders ended their Christmas celebrations with a call to end the millennium-old schism between Eastern Orthodox Christians and Western Christianity.

“We invite everyone to work in a dialogue of truth and love for the unity of those who believe in Christ,” the statement by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians and representatives of 14 Orthodox churches said.

“The Christian world was divided and fragmented, lamentably, to the great scandal of the whole world,” they said in the statement on the Great Schism of 1054, the Associated Press reported.

The statement was issued at the conclusion of a meeting at the Byzantine-era Church of Hagia Sophia in Iznik, Turkey, which in ancient times was known as Nicaea. Nicaea was the site where the church in 325 spelled out the basics of the Christian faith in what has become known as the Nicene Creed.

But while the Orthodox leaders urged overcoming the East-West divide as well as divisions among Orthodoxy itself, those divisions were apparent Tuesday (Dec. 26) when the statement was issued.

Patriarch Alexii II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church _ the world’s largest Orthodox denomination _ boycotted the meeting as he did a similar session in 1995.

Falun Gong Appeal Rejected

(RNS) Chinese court officials on Monday (Dec. 25) upheld the prison sentences of four followers of the Falun Gong spiritual movement who were imprisoned for spreading information about the outlawed group.

Authorities gave Pang You, Mu Chunyan, Chen Suping and Zhang Lixin prison sentences ranging from eight years to three years after they were convicted in November of “using an evil cult to undermine the law,” according to reports Wednesday (Dec. 27) from Beijing Television and the Beijing Daily newspaper.

The reports said the four Falun Gong followers had produced and disseminated thousands of pages of literature and some 200 video CDs about Falun Gong since opening in August a printing shop north of Beijing in a rural town, the Associated Press reported.

Chinese leaders banned Falun Gong _ a blend of traditional Chinese exercises and Buddhist and Taoist principles _ in July 1999 after deciding the group was a threat to the Communist Party.

Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested since then, and movement leaders have been sentenced to prison terms as long as 18 years.

In its rejection of the appeal from the four Falun Gong followers, the Beijing Higher People’s Court concluded that “After the government outlawed the Falun Gong cult and forbid taking part in its activities, (they) still participated in the evil cult’s activities,” according to the Beijing Daily.

The court also described as “untenable” the group’s claims that their actions were not criminal.

Muslims End Ramadan Urging a Free Palestine

(RNS) Muslims worldwide celebrated the end of the holy month of Ramadan on Wednesday (Dec. 27), a day overshadowed by fears of religious violence in Indonesia and the Middle East.

A wave of Christian church bombings in Jakarta on Christmas Eve had triggered fears of retaliatory attacks on Eid al-Fitr and the remaining few days of Islam’s holiest month, but those fears went unrealized.

One Muslim official told Reuters news agency the church bombings, which killed at least 15 people and injured dozens, were an attempt to bring nearly 12 months of violence between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia’s eastern Maluku provinces to Jakarta and the rest of Java, Indonesia’s main island.

Christians once held a small majority in the provinces, known as the Spice Islands during the Dutch colonial era, but an influx of Muslims from other parts of Indonesia has changed the area’s religious makeup. More than 4,000 people on both sides have been killed in the clashes between the two groups.

“We see that there had been attempts to pit one religion against another _ they want to create a second Moluccas,” said Mohammad Fasich, head of the East Java chapter of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second largest Muslim group.

In Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the imam of Masjid Al Haram (Islam’s holiest site) followed Eid al-Fitr prayers with a live television broadcast in which he declared the nearly three months of Israeli-Palestinian violence in Palestinian territories and other parts of Israel a “source of sorrow to every Arab, Muslim and fair-minded person in the world.”

“The Jewish invaders have violated the forbidden, desecrated the sacred, and usurped our land in Palestine while the whole world has stood idle,” Sheik Mohammed Bin Abdellah Al-Sabeel said, according to the Associated Press.

Muslim leaders in Cairo and elsewhere encouraged worshippers to donate the traditional holiday alms to relatives of Palestinians who have died in the violence. Some activists followed Eid prayers with calls for worshippers to support Palestinians financially by purchasing pictures of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

Eid al-Fitr was a “decisive” holiday, Palestinian Yasser Arafat said.

“With God’s help, it will lead to a Palestinian boy or a Palestinian girl raising the flag of Palestine over the walls of Jerusalem,” said Arafat, who performed early-morning prayers at a mosque in Gaza.

Update: Orthodox Union Ends Probe of Abusive Rabbi

(RNS) An internal investigation by the Orthodox Union has concluded that a rabbi who resigned in July as leader of a national youth group for Orthodox Jews did sexually, physically and verbally abuse students for years.

Rabbi Baruch Lanner, 50, resigned in June as director of regions for the Orthodox Union’s National Conference of Synagogue Youth after more than 25 former students came forward to say they were abused as teen-agers by him. Lanner denied the students’ allegations, which were published in The Jewish Week of New York.

“We sincerely apologize for the pain and suffering these young people experienced as a result of Rabbi Lanner’s actions,” Orthodox Union President Mandell I. Ganchrow said, according to the Associated Press. “We also wish to apologize to the families of these young people who entrusted their children to us. We promise to use this sad event as an opportunity to assure that behavior such as this will never again occur within our organization.”

In a summary of the report released Tuesday (Dec. 26), investigators concluded that Lanner should have been fired for his “inappropriate and crude behavior.” The report found no evidence of a cover-up, but did note that staff at the Orthodox Union should have responded adequately to “red flags” raised by complaints against Lanner that spanned decades.

In a statement given to investigators in September, Lanner described his behavior with students as “on occasion inappropriate” and said some things “should not have occurred.”

Earlier Lanner had said he did break Orthodox Jewish law by becoming physically involved with former female students _ though not while they were teen-agers _ but insisted he had done nothing “perverted.”

“I did many things I shouldn’t have done, but none of them were illegal,” said Lanner, who is now separated from his wife. “None of them were perverted. None of them were threatening.”

The union also reported that Lanner had diverted some of the money donated to the youth organization to his home and personal accounts, claims which New Jersey prosecutors are investigating.

The report also recommended the union adopt programs (some of which have already been put in place) such as anti-harrassment education.

Quote of the Day: Rachel Suzuki, a senior at the University of California, Davis

(RNS) “I feel like I’m choosing between God and my family. It’s like, why on earth would you go and be an evangelical weirdo?”

_ Rachel Suzuki, a senior at the University of California, Davis, speaking about the challenges of explaining her new-found faith in God to her nonreligious family. She was quoted by Associated Press on Dec. 27.

DEA END RNS