c. 2000 Religion News Service
Georgia Man Sues Library Over Bible Distribution Denial
(RNS) A Georgia man has sued a regional library system, claiming its refusal to allow him to distribute Bibles in its free literature area is unconstitutional.
The American Center for Law and Justice filed the suit Thursday (Feb. 24) on behalf of James Flournoy of Luthersville, Ga., who has sought to display and distribute small paperback New Testaments at the Manchester Public Library in Manchester, Ga. Flournoy is suing the Pine Mountain Regional Library System, along with its director and board of trustees.
“The action taken by this library system violates the Constitution and sends the wrong signal to the community _ that the Bible is a banned book,” said Stuart Roth, Southeast regional counsel for the ACLJ, a public interest law firm founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.
“The law is very clear about this issue: If a library permits the display and distribution of other materials, it cannot legally exclude the Bible because the material is religious in nature,” added Roth, who is based in Mobile, Ala.
Flournoy’s complaint alleges library officials have allowed a wide range of materials in the free literature area, including some newspapers and religious publications.
Lewis Routon, chairman of the board of trustees of the Manchester-based library system, told Religion News Service he has not received official notice of the suit.
“We do not allow any religious literature in the free area nor anything that people come in and drop off,” he said Friday.
He said religious materials can be checked out by library patrons.
“We have Bibles, we have religious literature that’s available to all patrons that they can check out,” he said.
The library system’s policy on distribution and posting of public information states: “The accepted materials must be educational, nonpartisan and nonsectarian.”
Routon says the policy forbids the distribution of some materials, including religious materials, but allows distribution of some information such as college brochures and publications from state and federal governmental agencies.
The lawsuit argues that the policy includes “vague and standardless guidelines” for library officials to follow when deciding whether material is “nonsectarian.”
Religious Freedom Commission Denounces Iran’s Treatment of Bahais
(RNS) The U.S. government’s Commission on International Religious Freedom called Thursday (Feb. 24) for the State Department and the United Nations to condemn Iran’s persecution of members of the Bahai faith.
According to the commission, a revolutionary court in Mashdad has sentenced three Bahais to death for unspecified anti-security acts three times. Iran’s Supreme Court overturned the convictions in the first two rounds but has not overturned the third convictions for the three men.
According to the commission and reports filed by the Associated Press, two of the men were arrested in 1997 for holding monthly Bahai “family life” meetings and have been imprisoned ever since. Another man arrested last year was also tried. The final 20-day window for appeals expired Wednesday (Feb. 23).
The religion, which claims about 6.4 million adherents around the world, was founded in 1844 in present-day Iran. Bahai teaches that the world’s religions all lead to the path of truth, and believers stress peace and the unity of all faiths.
The Iranian government does not recognize the religion as a minority faith but considers it an Islamic heresy. The commission claims believers are routinely persecuted and nearly 200 Bahais have been executed since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
“The Bahais on death row must be freed without delay and the systemic persecution of the Bahai community must stop,” said the commission’s chairman, Rabbi David Saperstein. “The Iranian government should understand that the world is watching.”
Saperstein appeared with Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who is co-sponsoring a congressional resolution condemning Iran for its persecution of religious minorities, which the government says comprise 10 percent of the country’s population.
Churches Getting Smaller Portion of Incomes
Eds: lowercase empty tomb is CQ)
(RNS) Individuals are donating a smaller percentage of their income to the church, according to a new study of 15 evangelical and mainline Protestant denominations by empty tomb inc., an Illinois-based Christian research organization.
In 1997, congregants donated just 2.56 percent of their income to the church, compared with 2.58 percent the previous year, said the report, “The State of Church Giving through 1997.” In 1968, congregants contributed about 3 percent of their income to the church.
“We see a similar trend in both groups that on a per-member basis their members are devoting a smaller portion of their total resources to their churches,” said Sylvia Ronsvalle, co-author of the study, which analyzed eight National Association of Evangelicals denominations and seven National Council of Churches member churches. “The portion of income they’re spending on the church is shrinking. It appears the church is becoming less important in their lives.”
Still, total contributions to the church increased between 1968 and 1997 for both evangelical and mainline Protestant denominations _ about 79 percent for the former, and about 15 percent for the latter, the study reported.
That’s partly because even though congregants are donating a smaller percentage of their income than in the past, that income is larger than it has been in previous years, said Ronsvalle.
“Evangelical denominations are also growing in membership, and that may account for an increase in total contributions,” she said. “They compensate for the shrinking per-member contribution through the presence of more members. In contrast, the mainline Protestant denominations have lost members, so members have not had to increase giving so much to maintain operations.”
The study also revealed that contributions to church outreach activity _ such as hunger relief efforts _ showed a measurable increase for the first time in 12 years, inching from .406 percent of income to .407 percent among 29 denominations in 1996 and 1997.
The study proposes that U.S. churches shift their focus in raising funds from congregants.
“We’re suggesting that the church in the U.S. is putting too much emphasis on institutional maintenance for the future and not enough emphasis on loving a hurting world today,” said Ronsvalle. “Early Christians met in caves, living rooms, but they got the job done. Today, we’re more interested in where we’re meeting than what we’re doing.”
Pope Attacks `Intellectual Relativism’
(RNS) Pope John Paul II attacked “intellectual relativism” Thursday (Feb. 24), warning a lack of absolute values can turn democracy into totalitarianism.
In a message to members of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences meeting to discuss “Democracy _ Reality and Responsibility,” John Paul said the church approves of the democratic system because it allows citizens to participate in political choices, hold elected officials accountable and replace them through peaceful means.
But, he said, “at the dawning of the Third Millennium, a serious question confronts democracy. There is a tendency to see intellectual relativism as the necessary corollary of democratic forms of political life.
“In such a view, truth is determined by the majority and varies in accordance with passing cultural and political trends,”the pope said.
“From this point of view, those who are convinced that certain truths are absolute and immutable are considered unreasonable and unreliable.”
John Paul said Christians cannot accept this interpretation of democracy.
“As Christians,” he said, “we firmly believe that if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power.
“As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism,” the Polish-born pontiff said.
Calling democracy “a means and not an end,” the pope said its value “stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes. These values cannot be based on changeable opinion but only on the acknowledgment of an objective moral law, which ever remains the necessary point of reference.”
At the same time, he said, the church rejects “extremism or fundamentalism which, in the name of an ideology purporting to be scientific or religious, claims the right to impose on others its own concept of what is right and good. Christian truth is not an ideology.”
Quote of the Day: The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance
(RNS) “For Bob Jones University to foment bigotry in the name of Christianity is the height of hypocrisy, if not heresy.”
_ The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance, supporting a proposed Senate resolution denouncing the South Carolina university for its ban on interracial dating and anti-Catholic beliefs.
DEA END RNS
