c. 2003 Religion News Service
California Clergy Back Striking Grocery Workers
LOS ANGELES (RNS) With thousands of California grocery workers still on picket lines in a six-week-old labor dispute, Los Angeles area religious leaders launched a “Week of Walking Prayer” to encourage the beleaguered strikers and focus renewed attention on their fight to retain insurance and pension benefits.
Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), a Los Angeles interfaith coalition, scheduled meals with striking workers and will join them on picket lines to offer “prayers of encouragement,” according to Locals 770 and 1442 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW).
The ongoing dispute involves some 59,000 workers, said UFCW spokesperson Barbara Maynard. At present, 21,000 workers are on strike against Vons and Pavilions supermarkets, part of Safeway, a large national food and drug retailer. In response to the strike, two other large chains locked union workers out, with Albertsons markets idling 21,000 employees and Ralphs Grocery Company 17,000 employees.
Fueling the labor conflict are concerns over health care. While employers previously covered workers’ insurance premiums, the companies are now asking employees to pay weekly premiums of between $5 and $15, according to UFCW’s Maynard. While the requested premiums are modest, other changes proposed by the companies threaten to seriously reduce employee health benefits, Maynard said.
Grocery store owners say rapidly rising employee benefit costs lessen their ability to compete against nonunion stores like Wal-Mart.
Referring to the grocers involved in the dispute, Ralphs President John Burgon said in October as negotiations broke down, “All three of us want to continue offering comprehensive benefits to our employees and their families, but it must be within the context of the current marketplace.”
The Rev. Altagracia Perez, CLUE board member and rector of Holy Faith Episcopal Church, said hourly employees should not be forced to bear the brunt of the nation’s runaway medical costs just to maintain corporate bottom lines.
“The … Scriptures are full of admonitions against people who will not pay workers what they are due because of their own greed,” she said, adding it is “unjust to make those who have the least amount of resources to carry the heaviest burden.”
_ Ted Parks
Wiccan Wins Right to Led Opening Prayer at Supervisors’ Meetings
(RNS) A Wiccan who had been barred from saying an opening prayer at meetings of a county board of supervisors has the right to pray there, a federal judge ruled Nov. 13.
U.S. District Court Judge Dennis W. Dohnal decided the Chesterfield County, Va., board discriminated against Cyndi Simpson when it told her she could not be on a list of clergy who deliver the board’s invocations, the Associated Press reported.
Wiccans consider themselves witches, pagans or neo-pagans. They say their religion is based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons.
“Chesterfield’s nonsectarian invocations are traditionally made to a divinity that is consistent with the Judeo-Christian tradition,” County Attorney Steven L. Micas wrote in a letter to Simpson in September 2002.
The judge, based in Richmond, Va., said the board violated Simpson’s constitutional right of free and equal expression of her religious beliefs but permitted Christians to practice their faith by delivering the “legislative prayer.” Such prayers, used by a governing body, have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Micas did not return a call seeking comment after the ruling.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed suit in December 2002 with the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia on behalf of the 47-year-old woman.
“This is a tremendous victory for religious diversity,” the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, said in a statement. “The decision serves as an important reminder that government may not play favorites among religions. There are hundreds of different faith groups in America, and it’s vital that officials not prefer some faiths over others.”
Activists Protest `False’ Vatican Condom Claims
WASHINGTON (RNS) As U.S. Catholic bishops prepare to reinforce church prohibitions against birth control, liberal groups have asked church leaders to denounce statements by a Vatican official that condoms are ineffective in stopping the AIDS virus.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted Nov. 12 to issue a new statement against contraceptives. “It’s the constant teaching of the Catholic Church that contraception is wrong, sinful and contrary to the meaning of married life,” Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput said.
Activists, meanwhile, have petitioned the bishops to work to “lift the ban on condoms as a moral and humanitarian matter.”
The coalition led by the independent Catholics for a Free Choice said the church must reject claims made last month by Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Vatican’s Council for the Family, that the HIV virus that causes AIDS can “easily pass through the `net’ that is formed by the condom.”
The World Health Organization quickly denounced Trujillo’s claims as “incorrect” and “dangerous” and said condoms are 90 percent effective in stopping the spread of HIV.
“It is one thing for church officials to state clearly their moral objections; it is quite another for them to make false claims about the effectiveness of condoms, endangering at-risk communities,” said a joint letter to the bishops’ president, Wilton Gregory.
In a Nov. 11 ad in The Washington Post, the groups said: “It isn’t the condoms that are failing us. Cardinals fail more often than condoms. It’s time for the Catholic bishops to tell the truth.”
The letter said Trujillo’s claims “simply cannot be tolerated.” The letter was signed by representatives of Call to Action, DignityUSA, the National Coalition of American Nuns and the Women’s Ordination Conference.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Businessman, Others Charged With Fraud in Alleged Religious Scheme
(RNS) A California businessman was charged Tuesday (Nov. 18) with defrauding religious organizations and their leaders out of more than $160 million by exploiting his connections to evangelical Christians, federal officials said.
Gregory Earl Setser, 47, and four associates of IPIC International Inc. and related companies were charged with being involved in a massive Ponzi scheme, the Associated Press reported. Such schemes involve creating the illusion of financial success by using contributions from new investors to pay previous ones.
They were charged with two counts each of money laundering and one count of securities fraud.
“IPIC’s CEO, Gregory Setser, a self-styled former minister and apostle of the Christian faith, is robbing Peter to pay Paul _ but only after taking a massive cut for himself, his family and his affiliates,” said Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer Toby M. Galloway in a complaint.
It alleges that Setser and his colleagues, on behalf of IPIC and the Home Recovery Network Inc., raised more than $160 million since July 2000 by fraudulently offering and selling unregistered securities to members of evangelical Christian churches.
Calls to Setser’s home in Alta Loma, Calif., were not returned and calls to IPIC’s headquarters in Ontario, Calif., were met with a recording that said all circuits were busy.
Federal documents did not specifically identify the alleged victims.
Those arrested along with Setser were his wife, Cynthia Faye Setser, 46, who was IPIC vice president and treasurer; their daughter-in-law, Charnelle Setser, 21, an office manager; Gregory Setser’s sister, Deborah S. Setser, 38, an officer of IPIC; and Torsten Thomas Henschke, 48, an international director of IPIC Atlantic and a member of the board of directors of Christ for All Nations, the ministry of televangelist Reinhard Bonnke.
Appeal Planned After Court Rules Ten Commandments Monument Can Stay
(RNS) An Austin, Texas, man intends to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn an appellate ruling that permits a Ten Commandments monument to remain on the grounds of the state Capitol.
Thomas Van Orden said he began preparing an appeal as soon as the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made its decision Nov. 12, The Houston Chronicle reported.
Van Orden, a former lawyer who became homeless and has fought his case on limited funds, argued that the placement of the 7-foot-high monument represents a state endorsement of Judeo-Christian beliefs above other faiths.
The appeals court rejected his argument and agreed with the state that it does not violate the First Amendment because of its context, purpose and historical significance.
“We are not persuaded that a reasonable viewer touring the Capitol and its grounds, informed of its history and its placement, would conclude that the state is endorsing the religious rather than secular message,” the court wrote.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and state Solicitor General Ted Cruz applauded the unanimous decision by the three-judge panel.
Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based legal group that filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Texas, also hailed the decision.
“The Ten Commandments have both a secular and religious aspect,” said Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel’s president and general counsel, in a statement. “To ignore the influence of the Ten Commandments in the founding and shaping of American law and government would require significant historical revisionism.”
Chicago Pastor Named NCC’s Interfaith Affairs Director
(RNS) An interfaith veteran from Chicago has been named the new director of interfaith affairs for the National Council of Churches.
The Rev. Shanta Premawardhana, former pastor of Ellis Avenue Church and vice president of the Alliance of Baptists, was named in September to oversee the NCC’s relations with non-Christian faith groups.
Premawardhana, a native of Sri Lanka, succeeds the Rev. Jay Rock, who left the NCC to take a similar position with the Presbyterian Church (USA). The New York-based NCC is a network of 36 mainline Protestant and Orthodox churches.
Premawardhana has extensive experience in interfaith relations in Chicago, where he served as president of the Kenwood Interfaith Council and vice president of the Metropolitan Alliance of Congregations.
His independent Baptist congregation was located on the same block as headquarters for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
He has also been a leader in the Gamaliel Foundation, which works for social justice and immigrant rights. He was a founding pastor of the Chicago Ashram of Jesus Christ in Skokie, Ill., a Christian community with an outreach to South Asian immigrants.
Premawardhana attended seminary in Sri Lanka and India and did graduate work at Northwestern University, where he earned a master’s degree and a doctoral degree.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Scottish Catholics Choose Baptist to Oversee Anti-Abuse Efforts
LONDON (RNS) The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has appointed a Baptist solicitor as its first national director of child protection.
She is May Dunsmuir, who has worked in the Scottish system of children’s courts and from 1997 to 2000 was legal and parliamentary officer for the Scottish Association for Mental Health.
She also developed the Scottish Baptist Church’s child protection policy.
In England and Wales, the Roman Catholic Church also appointed a non-Catholic, Eileen Shearer, a single mother with an 18-year-old daughter, to head its child protection program. She was brought up as an “active Anglican,” but at the time of her appointment was described by church officials as no longer a practicing Christian.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Guatemalan AIDS Specialist Eduardo Arathoon
(RNS) “We feel like we are playing God. But without universal access to medicine, you always discriminate.”
_ Guatemalan AIDS specialist Eduardo Arathoon, speaking about how some clinics in his country have to hold lotteries to determine which AIDS patients would get medicine. He was quoted by The Washington Post.
DEA END RNS
