c. 2000 Religion News Service
Billy Graham Released From Mayo Clinic
(RNS) The Rev. Billy Graham has been released from Mayo Clinic in Minnesota after undergoing several weeks of therapy for Parkinson’s disease.
Graham, 81, was admitted to the clinic in June for surgery to relieve a buildup of fluid on the brain. He has been hospitalized at the clinic several times since being diagnosed with Parkinson’s six years ago.
“He is regaining his strength and his medical condition has greatly improved,” read a statement issued by the clinic.
Suspended Pastor Returns to Congregation
(RNS) A United Methodist pastor suspended last year for officiating at a same-sex union service returned Sunday (July 2) to his pulpit at Broadway United Methodist Church in Chicago.
The Rev. Gregory Dell attracted some 200 people to hear his return sermon, delivered just two days after his suspension ended. Dell was convicted in March 1999 of disobeying church law and was given an indefinite suspension until he signed a statement agreeing not to perform same-sex union services. Dell refused to sign the statement. An appeals committee later decided the suspension would end June 30.
No restrictions were placed on Dell’s return to the pulpit, but Bishop Joseph C. Sprague told United Methodist News Service that “I’ve made it very clear in the letter that I wrote and in conversation with Greg that the expectation is that if he is going to remain at Broadway, then he must practice ministry within the confines of the discipline.”
Dell, who was arrested for protesting the church’s policies against same-sex unions during a May meeting of the denomination’s top legislative body, said he “intends to be a full pastor to all the people.”
“My plan is that I will not restrict ministry to anyone in the congregation because of their identity,” said Dell, whose 220-member congregation has about 75 gay and lesbian members. “… As long as I’m doing weddings for heterosexual couples, as long as I’m celebrating those relationships, I intend to do those for gay and lesbian couples.”
He said he had no desire to participate “in a kind of in-your-face challenge” to the church.
“My intent is to be a pastor,” said Dell. “I think the point has been made. The real place for changing the policy of the church is on the floor of the General Conference.”
Supreme Court Rulings Prompt Re-evaluation of State Laws
(RNS) In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rulings striking down a state ban on a late-term abortion procedure and declaring student-led prayer before football games unconstitutional, two states have taken a second look at their own abortion laws while a third state has axed a student-led prayer policy.
On Thursday (July 6), the state of Florida decided a state law banning the late-term abortion procedure should not be enforced. The law, signed in May by Gov. Jeb Bush, prohibited the intentional killing of a “partially born living fetus” and penalized doctors who performed the procedure known as dilation and extraction or D&X in the medical community, with a possible $10,000 fine and a maximum prison term of 15 years.
The law was the state’s second attempt to ban the procedure, called by its opponents “partial-birth abortion,” according to the Associated Press. The state’s first ban on the procedure was declared unconstitutional two years ago by a Miami federal judge. Critics challenged the law’s legality because it contained no exception to save the life or health of women, and used such broad language that doctors could have been barred from using the abortion procedure early in a pregnancy.
In Idaho, a federal judge has postponed enactment of a new state law mandating females under the age of 18 receive consent from their parents before undergoing an abortion.
The law is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause,contend the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood of Idaho. The groups have asked the court to strike down the law, which was scheduled to be implemented July 1 but has been delayed by appeals.
U.S. Magistrate Mikel Williams said he ordered the injunction to give the court time to examine potential legal repercussions for doctors who perform abortions for minors, and assess issues concerning minors who need the procedure during a medical emergency.
The court also needs time to look into whether women seeking an abortion should be required to show government identification, said Williams, and whether minors can have access to abortion services outside the judicial district of their home.
Idaho’s state attorney general protested the injunction, claiming the law safeguards the interests of both physicians and girls under the age of 18.
Also on Thursday (July 6), school trustees in Santa Fe, Texas, voted to end a policy that gave students permission to deliver “a brief invocation and/or message” over a loudspeaker before football games.
“Although we, along with most of the people across the nation, are disappointed with the ruling, in keeping with the district’s pattern we will comply with the ruling,” said school board president Denise Cowart, according to the Galveston County Daily News.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Boy Scouts of America may legally exclude a gay man from holding a leadership position in the organization has prompted an outcry from the American Atheists.
The group has sent a letter to President Clinton asking that he “step down as honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America and end the practice of giving presidential approval to discrimination against young children on the basis of sexual orientation and atheism.”
Collins Cancels Appearance Because of Episcopalians’ `Indecision’
(RNS) Folk singer Judy Collins has canceled a scheduled appearance at a benefit for an Episcopal Church relief agency Monday (July 10) because the denomination has not adopted a churchwide policy to bless same-sex unions and ordain gays and lesbians as pastors.
Collins, who is an Episcopalian, said she could not appear at the benefit for the Presiding Bishop’s Fund for World Relief because of the church’s “indecision” on the issue of homosexuality.
The 2.5 million-member church leaves decisions on gay ordination and same-sex unions to local dioceses and bishops. A church report on the policy expected to be released this week largely recommends maintaining the status quo.
“Allowing each diocese to determine whether or not to ordain gays and lesbians or bless same-gender couples on a local level, rather than making a churchwide decision, I feel, is tantamount to accepting and supporting discrimination,” Collins said in a statement. “Based on the indecision of the Episcopal Church to fully accept all persons into the Christian faith, I must in good conscience cancel my performance.”
The benefit was to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Bishop’s Relief Fund, which last year raised $10 million for global disaster relief and development projects. Sandra Swan, the group’s executive director, said she was disappointed but said Collins “certainly has the right to make any decision she’s confident with.”
Collins’ decision left the church’s gay and lesbian factions stunned. While admitting the church still has work to do, Episcopal gays and lesbians said their church has made long strides toward inclusion.
“The Episcopal Church, we believe, is on a journey to the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people, a journey we, as Episcopalians, are proud of, despite the fact that it remains incomplete,” said the Rev. Michael Hopkins, president of Integrity, a group of gay and lesbian Episcopalians.
At an Integrity Mass on Thursday night (July 6) during the church’s General Convention meeting in Denver, a church bishop delivered a fiery sermon and said the church’s hierarchy needs to rebut statements that Episcopalians are not welcoming toward gays and lesbians.
“When is the time for the church to stand up and say enough is enough?” asked Bishop Steven Charleston, dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. “I will answer that: The time is now.”
Pope Tells Doctors to be Conscientious Objectors on Abortion, Euthanasia
(RNS) Pope John Paul II told Roman Catholic doctors Friday (July 7) that it is their right and their duty to be “conscientious objectors” toward “immoral” laws permitting abortion and euthanasia.
“Today, unfortunately, we live in a society dominated both by an abortionist culture, which leads to the violation of the fundamental right to life from conception, and by a view of human autonomy, expressed in the claim that euthanasia is self-liberation from a situation that for some reason has become painful,” the pope said.
John Paul addressed doctors ending a five-day international conference in Rome on medicine and human rights. He spoke at an audience in St. Peter’s Basilica where the doctors attended a Holy Year Mass.
“You know that a Catholic is never permitted to become an accomplice in the presumed right to abortion or euthanasia,” the pontiff said.
“Legislation favorable to such crimes, being intrinsically immoral, cannot constitute a moral imperative for a doctor, who must avail himself of the good right to the recourse to conscientious objection,” he said.
Turning to moral and ethical questions raised by advances in biomedicine, John Paul made “a pressing appeal” to Catholic researchers to ensure that in their efforts to improve the health of humanity they always respect “the dignity and the sacredness of life.”
“All that is scientifically achievable is not, in fact, always morally acceptable,” he said.
The pope said it was “more important than ever” that medical faculties, especially those in developing countries, include courses on bioethics in their curricula.
Churches Complicit in Rwandan Genocide, Report Says
(RNS) The Roman Catholic Church _ along with the United States, France and the U.N. Security Council _ bears partial responsibility for the death of 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994 during Rwanda’s genocide, a report by a seven-member international panel formed by the Organization for African Unity has concluded.
Leaders within the Catholic and Anglican church and the French government did not use “their unique moral position among the overwhelmingly Christian population to denounce ethnic hatred and human rights abuses,” the panel said in its 318-page report.
The panel wrote that Rwanda’s genocide began with Roman Catholic missionaries and Belgium and German colonial rulers who helped promote the idea that the nation’s majority Hutu population was inferior to its Tutsi population, the Associated Press reported.
Acknowledging that the Anglican church, President Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the prime minister of Belgium have all apologized for not ending the genocide, the report pointed out that “no apology has yet come from the French government or the Catholic Church.”
Both those who have apologized and those who have not should support Annan’s appeal for the creation of a commission to determine reparations owed by the international community to Rwanda, said the report.
Because the U.N. Security Council chose not to deploy an international military force, it bears the brunt of the blame, the report declared.
“Weeks into the genocide, the Security Council, led by the U.S., actually voted to reduce the inadequate military mission that had earlier been authorized for Rwanda,” the panel wrote. “Later, once a new mission was finally authorized, American stalling tactics ensured that not one single additional soldier or piece of equipment reached Rwanda before the genocide ended.”
Evangelists Among Hostages Held by Muslim Rebels
(RNS) A group of evangelists who visited 20 hostages kidnapped in April by Muslim separatists in the southern Philippines are now suspected to also be captives, a Philippine official said.
Thirteen evangelists with the group Jesus Miracle Crusade have been missing for about seven days since traveling to Jolo island to pray with hostages held by Abu Sayyaf rebels _ forces fighting for a separate Muslim nation within the Philippines, the French press reported.
The evangelists gave the separatist group 35 bags of rice and $3,000 in exchange for permission to visit the mostly foreign hostages, who were kidnapped from a Malaysian diving resort April 23. Miracle Crusade said the evangelists never returned from the rebels’ camp.
“Apparently they are going to be held for some time,” Ricardo Puno, the Philippine president’s press secretary, told the Associated Press.
A German journalist who had been reporting on the hostage situation is also being held captive with the evangelists, Philippine officials said, as are two Filipino teachers and a high school student.
No ransom has been demanded for the evangelists or the journalist, officials said, but Abu Sayyaf forces say they want $1 million for each of the 20 resort hostages. Last month rebels released one hostage in what government negotiators termed a gesture of goodwill.
None of the hostages appears to be in any immediate danger, said Puno, but a dispute among the separatists about how to divide the ransom money could postpone their release.
Reports that one evangelist had been beheaded are false, said Puno and Libyan government negotiator Ashad Abdul Rajab Azzarouq. Azzarouq said he intends to visit the camp where the hostages are being held to attempt to restart negotiations that fell apart last month.
In late June leaders of the Organization of the Islamic Conference issued an appeal to the Abu Sayyaf asking for the unconditional release of all hostages.
The Rev. B. Clayton Bell Dies
(RNS) The Rev. B. Clayton Bell died Tuesday (July 4) at Montreat Conference Center in Asheville, N.C., of a massive heart attack. He was 67.
The brother-in-law of the Rev. Billy Graham and son of famed Presbyterian medical missionary L. Nelson Bell, Bell retired last year from Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, one of the Presbyterian Church USA’s five largest congregations, where he had served as pastor for more than two decades. Before arriving at Highland Park, he served pastorates in Georgia and Alabama.
Bell, born in Jiangsu Province in China on Dec. 11, 1932, graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois in 1954 and from Columbia Theological Seminary four years later. He later served as president of the Presbyterian Coalition.
Bell is survived by his wife, Peggy, and four children.
Quote of the Day: Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church
(RNS) “When we talk about sexuality, we are not dealing with an abstraction. Sexuality is not a disembodied `it’ removed from human experience. My friends, we are all sexual beings, and if you haven’t acknowledged that, take a minute to do so.”
_ The Rt. Rev. Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, speaking to more than 1,200 church bishops, pastors and lay members in the opening session of the church’s General Convention meeting in Denver on July 4.
DEA END RNS
