c. 2003 Religion News Service

Presbyterian Activist Faced With Losing Credentials

(RNS) A leading Presbyterian activist could be stripped of his ordination after suggesting that conservative churches should withhold funds from the denomination.

Local church officials voted Tuesday (Dec. 9) to recommend that the Rev. Parker T. Williamson, a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), be placed on “inactive status” in the Western North Carolina Presbytery.

Williamson is executive director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and editor of its newspaper, The Layman. Both organizations are headquartered in Lenoir, N.C., where Williamson served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church.

On Oct. 18, the Lay Committee adopted a “Declaration of Conscience” that urged churches to “prayerfully consider” denying money to the national church because of its policies on homosexuality and theological divisions.

Presbytery officials said they were concerned about the “character and conduct” of the Lay Committee. “It isn’t Parker. It is the ministry in which he is engaged,” Mary Atkinson, who chaired a church task force, told Presbyterian News Service.

If the entire presbytery agrees with the decision when it meets on Jan. 31,Williamson will be barred from participating in presbytery meetings. If he is not returned to good standing within three years, he will be stripped of his ordination.

Atkinson said the process was not disciplinary but “more or less pro-forma.” More than 30 similar cases were considered by the task force, she said.

Williamson said the vote “constitutes a feckless attempt to impugn the integrity of a call that has been validated by this presbytery each year since 1989,” in a letter to the presbytery’s committee on ministry.

He told his newspaper that “Presbyterians who care more about institutional preservation than constitutional integrity have won a short-term skirmish in a battle that is wider than they can imagine.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Pope, Meeting Israeli Official, Urges `Concrete Acts of Reconciliation’

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II met privately Thursday (Dec. 11) with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and urged “concrete acts of reconciliation” to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a brief statement that Shalom’s talks with John Paul and later with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, and Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, Vatican foreign minister, centered on “the road to follow to obtain peace in the Holy Land.”

The pope, he said, “insisted on the necessity to get out of the present situation” and “the need for concrete acts of reconciliation by all sides.”

John Paul also brought up questions affecting “the life of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land in the light of commitments taken under the Fundamental Agreement of 1993” governing relations between Israel and the Vatican, the statement said.

The statement made no mention of the climate of the meeting, but Shalom told Israeli reporters it was “very cordial.” He said he assured the pope that Israel would take part in the meeting of a bilateral commission to discuss the status of church property in the Holy Land.

Vatican sources said the pope and his aides fear the wall that Israel is building between Israeli and Palestinian settlements will isolate monasteries in East Jerusalem. They are concerned about Israel’s reluctance to issue visas to priests and nuns.

Shalom visited the Vatican last July but did not see John Paul, who was vacationing in Castel Gandolfo outside Rome. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met in Rome with Italian officials last month but had no contact with the Vatican.

_ Peggy Polk

Court Affirms Constitutionality of Religious Rights Law

(RNS) The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled a provision of a federal law protecting the religious rights of inmates is constitutional.

A three-judge panel of the appellate court in Richmond, Va., found that a section of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 did not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

“To hold otherwise and find an Establishment Clause violation would severely undermine the ability of our society to accommodate the most basic rights of conscience and belief in neutral yet constructive ways,” wrote Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III in a unanimous decision issued Monday (Dec. 8).

The case involved Ira W. Madison, a convict in a prison of the Virginia Department of Corrections whose request for kosher meals was denied. He claims to be a member of the Church of God and Saints of Christ, whose members are known as Hebrew Israelites and are required to abide by the dietary laws in the Hebrew Scriptures.

A district court ruled that the section of RLUIPA that addressed the religious exercise of institutionalized persons advanced religion in an impermissible way by giving prisoners’ rights in this area a special protection. The appeals court overturned that decision.

“This alleviation of government burdens on prisoners’ religious exercise is precisely the legitimate secular purpose that RLUIPA seeks to advance,” the appeals judges found. “RLUIPA is not designed to advance a particular religious viewpoint or even religion in general, but rather to facilitate opportunities for inmates to engage in the free exercise of religion.”

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which closely follows cases involving the law said the decision marks the third time an appellate court has rejected a constitutional challenge to the law’s prisoner provisions. One appeals court has ruled that those provisions are unconstitutional.

Corrections officials had denied Madison’s requests, saying they doubted the sincerity of his beliefs and he had a history of disciplinary problems.

The Associated Press reported that the state attorney general’s office will not appeal the ruling.

Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way, hailed the decision as a triumph for religious freedom.

“The 4th Circuit has recognized that this law is a permissible way to prevent substantial burdens from being imposed on free exercise of religion,” said Mincberg, whose organization supported Madison’s appeal.

_ Adelle M. Banks

French Panel Recommends Headscarf, Skullcap Ban

PARIS (RNS) A special presidential commission delivered a long-awaited report on secularity Thursday (Dec. 11), recommending France pass a law banning the wearing of veils, skullcaps and other “ostentatious” religious accessories in public schools.

At the same time, the commission condoned the wearing of less obvious religious symbols, such as small crosses or the Muslim Hands of Fatma.

The group also recommended making the Jewish atonement day of Yom Kippur, along with the holy Muslim day of Aid el Kebir school holidays, alongside Christmas. French employees would be allowed to select their religious holiday.

The commission’s recommendations cap months of raging debate over whether to bar Muslim girls from wearing veils or headscarfs while attending public schools.

After initial reluctance, the center-right government of President Jacques Chirac gradually shifted in favor of a headscarf ban, as the issue morphed into larger cultural clashes pitting devout French Muslims against France’s deeply secular mores.

Chirac is scheduled to announce Wednesday whether he endorses legislation. But Chirac appeared to reveal his hand during a recent state visit to Tunisia, declaring that “in our public education, the presence of a veil carries something aggressive.”

A recent report by a separate parliamentary commission also backed a law banning veils and other religious accessories in public schools. And a poll published this week by France Info radio found 57 percent of French backed such legislation.

Headscarf battles resurged with a vengeance this year. But today, the religious clashes extend well beyond the headscarf, government officials and experts say.

In some cases Muslim girls boycott school gym classes, and Muslim boys refuse to be taught by female teachers. In immigrant-heavy suburbs, Muslim leaders have demanded separate swimming hours for men and women in public pools. Female patients in public hospitals have refused to be treated by male doctors.

In published remarks Wednesday, Grand Rabbi Joseph Sitruk expressed concern that secularity might “muzzle religions.”

France’s Roman Catholic church has also expressed concern about a secularity law.

_ Elizabeth Bryant

Moore Appeals Removal From Alabama Supreme Court Justice Post

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (RNS) Lawyers for Roy Moore asked the Alabama Supreme Court on Wednesday (Dec. 10) to restore him to office as chief justice and called on Acting Chief Justice Gorman Houston not to participate in the case.

Moore was removed from office on Nov. 13 by the state Court of the Judiciary, which convicted him of violating the canons of judicial ethics by refusing to obey a federal court order to remove a 5,280-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building’s rotunda.

“I think it would have been a violation of my oath of office to obey an unlawful order,” Moore said after filing his notice of appeal. “To do what I’m sworn to do cost me my job. It’s that simple.”

Moore’s lawyers said Houston, who has said publicly he won’t step down from hearing Moore’s appeal, has shown bias or the appearance of bias against Moore by his public statements and actions.

Houston fired Rich Hobson, administrative director of courts, and Tom Parker, the deputy director, the day after Moore’s removal from office. He also fired or reassigned several others who had been hired by Moore.

Moore’s lawyers said Houston has a direct interest in the outcome of Moore’s appeal since Houston would cease to be the acting chief justice if Moore were restored to office.

Houston also should step down from hearing Moore’s appeal, Moore’s lawyers argued, because he made a political contribution to Moore and has written in the past that a judge who has contributed to one of the parties in a case shouldn’t hear the case if either party objects. Moore objects.

Houston and the other seven justices ordered the Ten Commandments monument removed from the judicial building rotunda after Moore refused to remove it. Neither Houston nor Attorney General Bill Pryor, who prosecuted Moore on behalf of the state Judicial Inquiry Commission, had any comment on Moore’s motion or remarks.

_ Stan Bailey

Quote of the Day: Nobel Peace Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi

(RNS) “If the 2st century wishes to free itself from the cycle of violence, acts of terror and war … there is no other way except by understanding and putting into practice every human right for all mankind regardless of race, gender, faith, nationality or social status.”

_ Iranian human rights advocate and Noel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi in her acceptance speech in Oslo on Dec. 10.

DEA END RNS