c. 2003 Religion News Service

Bay State Clergy Voice Support for Gay Marriage

(RNS) A coalition of liberal Protestant and Jewish leaders in Massachusetts voiced support for gay marriage after the state’s four Catholic bishops said they oppose marriage rights for gay couples.

The Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry says more than 450 religious leaders from a dozen different faith traditions support gay couples who want the civil rights associated with marriage.

“The citizens and our legislators on Beacon Hill need to know that there are religious people who support the right to marry for same-sex couples,” said the Rev. William Sinkford, president of the Boston-based Unitarian Universalist Association.

The state supreme court is expected to rule this summer on whether marriage rights should apply to homosexual couples. Last weekend the state’s four Roman Catholic bishops directed their priests to read a pastoral letter that recalled church teaching against homosexuality.

“The Catholic Church and other private institutions with moral objections (to gay marriage) will be forced to change their employment and other policies to recognize other relationships as marriage, or face discrimination lawsuits,” the bishops warned.

But the Rev. Nancy Taylor, president of United Church of Christ congregations in the state, said the ruling would not affect religious rites. “The Catholic Church has every right to try to enforce its teaching among its own members, but we believe the question before the legislators must be argued and decided on the grounds of civil rights, not Catholic or any other religious doctrine.”

Rabbi Ronnie Friedman, spiritual leader at Temple Israel in Boston, said the question before the court is a legal, not a religious, one.

“It is no more in the interest of society to deny legal status to same-gender marriages that it would be to abolish heterosexual marriages,” said Friedman, a member of the Reform Jewish movement.

In a separate statement, the state’s three Episcopal bishops also voiced support for gay marriage rights. “We believe that God recognizes and blesses committed loving and life-giving relationships,” said Bishops Thomas Shaw, Bud Cederholm and Gayle Harris. “In our years of ministry we have not found that such committed relationships between gays and lesbians undermine marriage or the family.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Survey: Americans Want More Funding to Fight Hunger

WASHINGTON (RNS) A new nationwide survey commissioned by the Alliance to End Hunger finds that American voters want more government funding for anti-hunger programs.

The survey results arrive as school cafeterias around the country close for the summer, leaving 15 million children who depend on federally subsidized school lunches at risk of going hungry.

According to the poll, more than 74 percent of likely voters surveyed identified hunger as an important issue in deciding their votes in the 2004 presidential election.

“These poll results strengthen our resolve. We must draw a line in the sand to end child hunger,” said Robert Forney, the chairman of the Alliance to End Hunger, an organization made up of religious groups, universities, businesses and civil rights groups, in a press release.

The survey also showed that the majority of voters believe people affected by hunger suffer from circumstances beyond their control.

Most participants in the survey favored continued legislative support for anti-hunger programs despite the down economy.

In conducting the survey, McLaughlin & Associates administered questionnaires to 1,000 prospective voters under the direction of Jim McLaughlin, a leading Republican pollster. The randomly selected pool of voters consisted of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Democratic strategist Bill Knapp, who helped conduct the survey, said the results “offer a clear advantage for candidates who are prepared to lead on the hunger issue.”

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According to the survey:

_ 71 percent of those polled said they believed the hunger problem has gotten worse or remained the same over the last decade.

_ 74 percent of likely voters say hunger will be an important issue in deciding their votes for president in 2004.

_ 65 percent of voters said they would be more likely to vote for a congressional candidate who listed hunger as a priority.

_ 94 percent of those surveyed said government funding for programs like the National School Lunch Program and Meals-on-Wheels should be a priority.

_ 75 percent of respondents supported making the National School Lunch Program available to students during the summer.

Source: Findings of the Bipartisan Hunger Message Project prepared by Jim McLaughlin, Tom Freedman and Bill Knapp.

_ Alexandra Alter

`Green Patriarch’ Takes His Colleagues on Environmental Cruise

MOSCOW (RNS) In a novel bid to draw attention to the environmental plight of the Baltic Sea, leading Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant clerics cruised around it, holding ecumenical services in various ports, consulting with scientists and prodding local politicians to take action.

By Saturday’s end of the weeklong cruise, held under the auspices of Istanbul’s Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, there was a buzz in the nine-nation region and a common sense of purpose among the churchmen, scientists and environmental activists on board, participants said.

Missing, however, was any involvement from the region’s biggest polluter, Russia, and biggest denomination, the Russian Orthodox Church.

“It made a big difference because we never got in touch with the Russian Orthodox or the officials in St. Petersburg, which is the largest city in the region and the largest environmental threat,” commented cruise passenger Henrik Grape, a Lutheran theologian with the Church of Sweden who specializes in environmental issues.

St. Petersburg, a city of 5 million people at the mouth of the Neva River, had been on the list of ports to visit for the 200 cruise participants, who included three Roman Catholic cardinals as well as top Anglicans, Lutherans and non-Russian Orthodox Christians.

A week before the cruise started June 2 in Gdynia, Poland, the Russian Orthodox delegation refused to take part, citing an Estonian property dispute between their church and the Ecumenical Patriarch, according to a cruise spokesman and Russian media reports. Russian Orthodox leaders and the Ecumenical Patriarch have been feuding for a decade over which church has jurisdiction in predominantly Lutheran Estonia.

The Baltic Sea cruise is the fifth of its kind organized by Patriarch Bartholomew, dubbed the “green patriarch” for his dogged interest in environmental issues. According to one passenger, Roman Catholic Sister Marjorie Keenan, ideas bandied about for a next cruise destination include the Arctic Ocean and the Caspian Sea, both of which feature substantial Russian coastline.

_ Frank Brown

House of Lords, With Church Input, Debates Euthanasia

LONDON (RNS) A bill to allow euthanasia in strictly defined circumstances ran into stiff opposition when it was debated by the House of Lords on Friday (June 6).

Speakers were fairly evenly divided, with 20 supporting the bill, 24 opposing and four remaining more or less neutral, two of them calling for a select committee to investigate the whole issue. It remains unlikely the proposal will become law.

Two Church of England bishops who are members of the house spoke in the debate. Bishop Richard Harries argued that to ease the current law against euthanasia would make elderly, sick and other vulnerable people even more vulnerable and would totally change the relationship between doctor and patient.

“To change the law in the way that the bill suggests would have seriously deleterious consequences for all vulnerable people in our society,” he said. “However, even apart from that, I suggest that assisted death is wrong in itself, however compassionate the motive behind it might be.”

Bishop Christopher Herbert said that in the name of compassion the proposal could create a merciless society.

“I humbly suggest that the bill threatens all of us, believers and nonbelievers alike, because it could, by a terrible and frightening irony, destroy the very values it claims to uphold,” he said.

A few terminally ill Britains have traveled to Europe to seek euthanasia.

Many speakers in the debate remarked on the number of letters they had received on the subject. Among those writing to members of the House of Lords were the Roman Catholic archbishops of Glasgow, Mario Conti, and Cardiff, Peter Smith.

Urging peers to oppose the bill, Conti said that permitting assisted suicide was not only nefarious but also subversive of the implicit trust patients placed in doctors.

“To take this step would be to open a very dangerous breach in the protective shield currently provided to the most vulnerable citizens by British law,” he said.

Smith said the proposed law “would radically undermine the moral and legal basis of society” and would “radically undermine the relationship of trust between doctor and patient.”

_ Robert Nowell

Jan Crouch, Trinity Broadcasting Network Co-Founder, Battling Cancer

(RNS) Jan Crouch, the co-founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network with her husband, Paul, is recovering from colon cancer surgery.

She had the operation May 21, two days after being taken to an emergency room because she felt weak and out of breath, reported Charisma News Service, an affiliate of Charisma magazine. She returned home during the first week of June.

“While the surgery went great, the news on her lymphatic system was not as great,” said Paul Crouch Jr., vice president of program development on the network’s Web site.

“They were able to examine five of her lymph nodes and two showed signs of cancer.”

He told Charisma News Service that Crouch has appreciated letters of support from the viewers of the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based ministry, which is one of the largest Christian networks in the world.

“She wants to say thanks to everybody for the kind words,” Crouch said. “We know that God’s in control. … It’s been a little bit of a roller-coaster ride, but that’s what life’s all about.”

Christian-Muslim Violence Breaks Out in Nigeria

(RNS) Sectarian violence broke out in the Nigerian town of Numan on Sunday (June 8) after an evangelical Christian woman was stabbed to death by a Muslim water vender. The evangelist was killed after she disputed the price of a can of water, Reuters reported.

Angry residents of the predominantly Christian town, blocked by police from attacking the water seller, converged on Muslim neighborhoods, where they burned mosques, houses and cars, witnesses told Reuters. The central mosque as well as six others were burned during the riots, which culminated in one death and dozens of serious injuries.

Christians, who account for roughly half of Nigeria’s 120 million citizens, have periodically clashed with the country’s Muslim population over the introduction of an Islamic Shariah legal system. Shariah was introduced in 12 of Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim northern states in 1999 when the country emerged from 15 years of military rule. Since then, sectarian violence has plagued the north African nation and claimed more than 5,000 lives.

On June 5, Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo warned warring religious communities they would be held responsible for interreligious violence under the riot acts. The rioting in Numan over the past weekend stands out as the most serious sectarian clashing since Obasanjo was re-elected May 29.

Quote of the Day: Pennsylvania farmer Daniel King

(RNS) “We’re living in America here. I can’t believe you can’t have a horse for religious transportation. It makes no sense at all.”

_ Daniel King, an Amish farmer in Zion, Pa., after city officials ordered him and another farmer to remove horses from their property because they violated local zoning laws. The Amish use horses to pull their carriages because they shun modern conveniences like cars.

DEA END RNS