c. 2003 Religion News Service

Religious Groups Urge Peacekeepers for Liberia

(RNS) As fighting temporarily subsided around Monrovia, Liberia, the World Council of Churches urged the United Nations to send peacekeepers while in the United States a top relief agency urged the Bush administration to take a more active role in seeking an end to the 13-year-old civil war.

The Rev. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the Geneva-based WCC, citing the “gravity of the near-anarchy situation that has developed,” urged both factions in the bitter civil war to accept a “credible peacekeeping force.”

On Friday, there was a lull in the fighting around Monrovia, the Liberian capital, as peace talks in Ghana between representatives of President Charles Taylor and rebels seeking to oust him were to begin. Liberian government officials have estimated that between 300 and 400 people have been killed in the past week in the fight for Monrovia.

Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches, meanwhile, sent an urgent appeal to the State Department asking the U.S. government to play a stepped-up role in ending the fighting and to provide a generous amount of humanitarian aid in what it said was an increasingly desperate situation in which hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced because of the fighting.

In a letter to Walter Kansteiner, undersecretary of state for Africa, the Rev. John McCullough, CWS executive director, expressed his fear “that in the chaos of Monrovia … humanitarian conditions will deteriorate and delivery of humanitarian aid will be jeopardized, further deepening the misery of people who have suffered too long.”

McCullough urged the U.S. government to press for deployment of an “African stabilization force” to put an immediate end to the looting and killings, to participate in the International Contact Group seeking to find a comprehensive solution to the civil war, and “to set an excellent example to the international community by providing generous humanitarian aid both bilaterally and through the World Food Program.”

For its part, CWS said it had airlifted 1,500 blankets, nearly 4,000 cans of processed beef, 1,000 personal hygiene kits and 4,300 pounds of rice for distribution by two Liberian partner agencies _ Concerned Christian Community and the YMCA.

Separately, a group of African clerics meeting in Abjua, Nigeria, under the auspices of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, also issued a call for an end to the fighting and diplomatic efforts to find a solution to the conflict.

Like the World Council and Church World Service, the African religious leaders called for a cease-fire, resumption of humanitarian assistance and emergency relief, and the deployment of an international stabilization force “to monitor demobilization and re-integration of all military and security personnel” into civilian life.

_ David E. Anderson

FBI Official: Bureau to Reach Out to Muslims, Work Against Hate Crimes

(RNS) Addressing a gathering of imams from mosques across the country, an FBI official has pledged to initiate more outreach programs to American Arabs and Muslims.

FBI Civil Rights Division chief Tom Reynolds addressed a conference of roughly 300 imams, or Muslim religious leaders, who were gathered in Alexandria, Va., in early June for a four-day conference.

Investigating hate crimes against Muslims is the “No. 1 priority” of his office, Reynolds said.

Four hundred and eighty-four cases of hate crimes have been reported since Sept. 11, 2001, he said, with a rise in numbers after the Iraq war. The FBI has convicted 173 people, and 100 cases are pending, he said.

Reynolds stressed that it is terrorists who are targets of FBI investigation, not Muslims.

“The director (FBI Director Robert Mueller) has said from the beginning that Islam is good,” Reynolds said. “The problem is not the (Muslim) community; the problem is a handful of terrorists.”

Reynolds said his office views mosques as partners in the war on terror, not as targets of investigation. He discussed plans to disseminate materials to local Muslim communities on how to identify and report possible terrorist activities, and he expressed hope that more Muslims would become FBI agents.

Jamal Barzinji, a board member of the American Muslim Council, told Reynolds he hoped more officials like him would “come forward to us and build bridges” between investigators and the Muslim community.

The conference, which was sponsored by the AMC, also included panel discussions on working with local media and participating in the political process, as well as a visit to Capitol Hill, where the imams heard a presentation on lobbying and discussed civil rights with congressional leaders.

_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Spanish Celiacs Call on Church to Allow Gluten-Free Communion Wafers

MADRID (RNS) Spaniards who become ill when they eat bread have called on their bishops to reconsider a recent liturgical instruction and allow suffers of celiac disease to take communion with gluten-free wafers.

“We want the church to reconsider and study the problem according to the scientific norms of the 21st century,” said Manuela Marquez of the Federation of Spanish Associations of Celiacs.

Celiac disease is a disorder in which eating gluten causes inflammation of the intestines. The only treatment is a diet completely devoid of gluten. According to the federation, about 1 in 100 people in Spain are sufferers.

The Spanish bishops conference recently published a liturgical note that tells priests that celiacs should be allowed to take communion only from the cup. It said Vatican doctrine forbids alternative wafers because gluten “is an essential ingredient in bread.”

However, it said priests should resolve the issue in a “natural and normal” way, especially with regard to young celiac sufferers, “so that they feel respected and appreciated by the rest of the children.”

Marquez said the bishops’ note was published after three years of consultations between the federation and the bishops conference. She praised the bishops’ intention of raising celiac disease awareness among Spanish clergy.

Nevertheless, she said she met earlier this week with Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela, the president of the Spanish bishops conference, to urge him to continue discussions with her group and urge the Vatican to reconsider its position.

Marquez said many priests in Spain already give communion using gluten-free wafers made with corn flour, but declined to give estimates. The celiac sufferers bring the wafers with them to church, she said.

However, the Spanish newspaper El Pais this week published a report about a 9-year-old Madrid girl, Lidia Garcia, whose parish priest refused to give her the corn wafer in Mass after reading the bishops’ instruction.

The newspaper quoted the priest as saying that using gluten-free wafers would be tantamount to “idolatry.” It also quoted her father as saying Lidia now refuses to go to church.

_ Jerome Socolovsky

In Reverse, Africa Sends Missionaries to Fill Scottish Pulpits

LONDON (RNS) In the 19th and 20th centuries European churches sent missionaries to Africa to bring the gospel to the natives.

Now it looks as if the trend is about to be reversed.

At its general assembly in Perth last week (June 4-7) the United Free Church, one of Scotland’s smaller Presbyterian churches with barely 5,000 members and only 67 congregations, endorsed a plan to invite ministers from a sister church in South Africa, the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa, to come to Scotland to fill a growing number of vacancies.

At present the United Free Church has seven vacancies, with the prospect of a further two before the year ends, while some congregations have ministers who are serving only part-time.

Meanwhile the UCCSA, which covers Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique as well as South Africa, has in the latter country a surplus of ministers.

The idea is that ministers from South Africa would be invited to serve in Scotland for a three-year term, which could be extended.

Under the plan, a congregation in need of a minister would draw up a profile indicating the kind of congregation it is and the kind of minister it thought most suitable to serve it. This would enable a preliminary sifting to take place in South Africa before suitable ministers flew to Scotland so that they could size up congregations in need of a minister and vice versa.

Then the minister could decide if he wanted to be considered for the vacancy and the congregation would decide if it wanted him.

Deep-rooted within Scottish Presbyterianism, especially since the 1843 Disruption which split the Church of Scotland on this issue, is the right of the congregation to call its own minister. Equally a minister might well decide that the elders forming the kirk session (church council) were people he just could not work with.

Given that black faces are comparatively rare in Scotland, which has a significant Asian community but in comparison with English cities like London and Birmingham fewer with Caribbean or African backgrounds, one thing the United Free Church will be concerned about is not to bring a minister from South Africa into a situation where he could find himself facing racial abuse or harassment.

_ Robert Nowell

Quote of the Day: World Vision President Richard Stearns

(RNS) “Prayer without action is hypocrisy. Isaiah 58 talks about how God doesn’t even listen to our prayers if we are not with integrity caring for the poor.”

_ Richard Stearns, president of the evangelical relief agency World Vision. He was quoted by the Washington Times prior to the Faces of Children Prayer Summit held in Washington June 11-12.

DEA END RNS