c. 2000 Religion News Service
Baptist Head Renews Call for Chicago Evangelism
(RNS) Southern Baptist Convention President Paige Patterson has renewed his call for members of his denomination to participate in a Chicago-area evangelistic outreach this summer that has drawn criticism from some Chicago religious leaders.
“Let’s go to Chicago and love and be gentle to all,” Patterson said during the opening session of the SBC Executive Committee meeting on Monday (Feb. 21) in Nashville, Tenn. “Let’s go to Chicago and witness to every single person who will listen to us. Let’s go to Chicago and explain to them that we have no choice except to obey the commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Patterson added that SBC members need to be aware of “contemporary attempts to suppress religious liberty” and said they should continue to spread the gospel to everyone.
“(The Chicago religious leaders) said, `Don’t come. You are purveyors of hate crimes with your evangelism,”’ Patterson said. “I cannot begin to tell you how dangerous that statement is. It therefore behooves us … to go and assist the poor and the disenfranchised.”
The Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago has criticized the evangelistic campaign and asked Patterson to reconsider the plans, saying they could be the catalyst for hate crimes.
Patterson also spoke to the committee about expectations Southern Baptists can have of convention entities, including avoidance of charismatic practices and “ecumenical entanglements,” reported Baptist Press, the denomination’s news service.
“Your agencies and institutions are going to be Southern Baptist to the core, and we are not going to follow the invitation of the neo-charismatic movement,” he said.
He added that he did not aim “to put down anybody who believes that way or to instruct any churches in it one way or the other.”
Patterson said SBC agencies also will not be involved in “ecumenical entanglements.”
Speaking of his personal theology, Patterson said, “I am frightened to death of the coming one-world church, and, consequently, ecumenical movements of any kind scare me to death … because it is the deceit of Satan in the last day.”
But he said SBC officials will join cooperative efforts with other groups opposing abortion and supporting heterosexual marriage.
“And we’re going to be committed to those who will work with us, no matter what their theological understanding will be, on matters of religious liberty,” he added.
Cardinal Urges Death Penalty Moratorium
(RNS) Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua said Tuesday (Feb. 22) he supports a proposed Pennsylvania bill that would impose a two-year moratorium on executions in the state, adding his name to a growing national movement to halt executions while state and federal officials examine the use of capital punishment.
The 76-year-old cardinal joined several death penalty opponents in testifying before the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee in support of a proposed bill that would halt executions for two years.
The bill was defeated last year, but organizers hoped the hearing would help fuel support for the legislation in a state where Gov. Tom Ridge has signed nearly 200 death warrants. There are 226 people on death row in Pennsylvania.
“The sacredness of human life and the dignity of the human person are not privileges we earn by any good deeds, nor can they be forfeited, whatever crimes one commits,” Bevilacqua said.
Tuesday’s hearing was the latest chapter in an ongoing national debate over the use of capital punishment. Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a supporter of the death penalty, last month suspended executions in his state while officials investigate why more death sentences have been overturned than carried out.
In a separate but related development, a Texas parole board denied the appeal of Betty Lou Beets, a 62-year-old woman scheduled to die Thursday for the 1983 death of her fifth husband. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, on the campaign trail, has refused to impose a moratorium on executions in his state.
President Clinton recently rejected calls for a halt to federal executions but encouraged states to “look very closely” at their own death penalty laws.
Bevilacqua, joined by officials from the Philadelphia Board of Rabbis and the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, said more states will follow Illinois’ lead in suspending executions.
“The law of averages says it’s going to happen in every state,” he said in a press conference following the hearing, according to the Associated Press.
Basketball Ad Offending Muslims Pulled
(RNS) An Internet sports news and information service has agreed to discontinue an advertisement after some Muslims said its portrayal of Islamic religious practices was offensive.
“It is to Total Sports’ credit that it responded immediately and positively to American Muslim concerns,” said Omar Ahmad, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group that asked Total Sports Inc., a North Carolina firm, to pull the ad.
In the advertisement, which appeared on the Internet and in a variety of publications, several Muslims were shown “praying” to a basketball.
Some Muslims offended by the ad complained to the council, which then contacted Total Sports. In addition to requesting that the company stop using the ad, the group asked Total Sports to formally apologize to the American Muslim community and suggested its marketing department undergo religious sensitivity training.
“Total Sports did not intend to offend anyone with its depiction and certainly apologizes if the advertisement did so,” Total Sports Chairman and CEO Frank Daniels III wrote in his response to the group. “We do not intend for the image to appear again.”
Seminarian Killed in Nigeria Clashes
(RNS) A seminarian at the Baptist seminary in Kaduna, Nigeria, was among at least 20 people killed in two days of fighting between Christians and Muslims following a Christian demonstration protesting a proposal to bring Islamic law, or sharia, to the Nigerian state of Kaduna.
Wire services reported hundreds of residents were fleeing the smoldering city Wednesday (Feb. 23) and Reuters said new violence had broken out after a lull Tuesday.
The rioting began Monday after thousands of Christians marched in protest against Muslim calls for a religiously divided state to introduce sharia law. The state government has been studying the proposal.
“We are in absolute control now with the help of the soldiers, but complete normalcy cannot be restored until we have mopped up the situation,” the regional police commander told Reuters in an interview.
In addition to the deaths, a number of churches _ at least 11, according to Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention’s news agency _ and mosques have been destroyed in the rioting.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is sharply divided on a number of issues between the arid, conservative north, where Muslims are in the majority, and the lush, more permissive south, where Christians and animists dominate. The country is headed by President Olusegun Obasanjo, a southern Christian.
Southern Baptist missionaries Ray Davidson and Don Coepland, who reported the death of the seminarian to Baptist Press, said the Kaduna seminary was attacked Tuesday morning and within an hour all classrooms, the administration building and the chapel were burning. Some 500 men, women and children who made up the seminary community fled the campus, according to the missionaries.
Archbishop Urges End to British Anti-Catholic Law
(RNS) The archbishop-elect of Westminster, Bishop Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Arundel and Brighton, has joined the chorus of those calling for the repeal of the law barring Roman Catholics from the British throne.
Interviewed by David Frost on BBC television on Sunday (Feb. 20), the bishop said, “I think that, inasmuch as the Catholic community is part of this country, there is a strong part of me that would say that an heir to the crown should be free to marry whoever he wishes, whatever denomination, and there must be freedom here. I think that this is a question that needs to be looked at.”
The 1701 Act of Settlement bars from the throne “all and every person and persons who … is, are or shall be reconciled to or shall hold communion with the see or church of Rome or shall profess the popish religion or shall marry a papist.” It was passed to ensure the exclusion of James II and his Roman Catholic heirs, and led to the introduction of the Hanoverian dynasty in 1714.
Among those supporting the repeal of the 1701 Act have been Archbishop of York David Hope; Cardinal Thomas Winning, archbishop of Glasgow; and the Scottish Parliament.
But officials have indicated it is unlikely the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair will raise the time-consuming issue in Parliament. Not only would reversing the ban require a constitutional amendment but it would also require changing the 1707 Act of Union between England and Scotland.
Murphy-O’Connor, who has emerged as a highly popular choice to succeed the late Cardinal Basil Hume as leader of Britain’s Roman Catholic community, will be installed as archbishop of Westminster on March 22.
The following Saturday, March 25, he has been invited to attend Evensong at the Anglican Westminster Abbey. This follows the precedent set by Hume. The day he was ordained bishop in Westminster Cathedral, he led a group of both Roman Catholic and Anglican Benedictines to join the dean and chapter in celebrating vespers in Westminster Abbey.
Quote of the Day: Darva Conger, the woman who married a multimillionaire on television
(RNS) “I committed an error in judgment.”
_ Darva Conger, speaking Wednesday (Feb. 23) on “Good Morning America,”about her marriage to Rick Rockwell on the notorious television program “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire.”
DEA END RNS
