c. 2004 Religion News Service
Christian Reformed, RCA Merge Publications Departments
(RNS) Two Reformed churches with shared roots in Dutch Calvinism have merged their publications divisions to streamline operations.
The Christian Reformed Church, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., and the Reformed Church in America, based in New York City, will make the CRC’s Faith Alive Christian Resources division the primary publishing arm for both churches.
As part of the deal announced April 27, all RCA resources for worship, education and evangelism will be handled through the Faith Alive office in Grand Rapids. Maintaining an RCA publications division was no longer financially “viable,” said the Rev. Ken Bradsell, the church’s director of operations and support.
Faith Alive will handle marketing, inventory, online sales, customer service, warehouse and distribution. The RCA will continue its TRAVARCA video lending library in Grand Rapids and have “significant representation” at the CRC’s publishing office.
“The RCA brings to the table a really good process for selecting resources from other publishers, and we will gain from that,” said Gary Mulder, director of CRC Publications.
Both churches were started by Dutch Calvinist immigrants, and are theological relatives of Presbyterians. The CRC split from the Reformed Church in America in 1857, but has maintained close ties.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Pope Will Visit Switzerland in June
VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II will pay an overnight visit to the Swiss city of Bern on June 5-6 on his first trip outside Italy this year, the Vatican announced Monday (May 3).
The announcement confirmed reports the Roman Catholic pontiff, who will be 84 on May 18, will travel to Bern to attend a meeting of young Swiss Catholics in the Allmend Stadium on Saturday, June 5, and to celebrate an open-air Mass on Sunday, June 6.
The Swiss bishops’ conference said a delegation of the Reformed Evangelical Church, whose members make up 75 percent of Bern’s population of 142,000, will be invited to the Mass.
The trip to Bern will be the pope’s fourth to Switzerland and his 103rd outside Italy in the 25 years of his pontificate. He visited United Nations agencies in Geneva on June 15, 1982, traveled around Switzerland June 12-17, 1984 and stopped in Kloten during a daylong visit to Lichtenstein on Sept. 8, 1985.
John Paul is also expected to visit the French shrine of Lourdes on Aug. 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, to mark the 100th anniversary of Pope Pius IX’s proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in 1854. He previously visited Lourdes on Aug. 14-15, 1983.
Because of his failing health, John Paul has not made a trip outside Europe since his visit to Canada, Guatemala and Mexico July 23-Aug. 2, 2002.
_ Peggy Polk
Chapel No Longer Required for University of Mobile Students
MOBILE, Ala. (RNS) For the first time in the University of Mobile’s 40-year history, undergraduates will no longer be required to attend chapel services.
Trustees at the Southern Baptist-affiliated university approved that move April 27 as part of a larger overhaul of how the school teaches and cultivates the Christian faith of its 2,000 students.
Among the other changes are the adoption of a statement affirming Christian beliefs, an effort to more thoroughly incorporate Christian principles into all academic areas, new requirements for students to complete community service, and renaming the university’s School of Religion as the School of Christian Studies.
University President Mark Foley, an ordained Baptist minister and former seminary administrator, said the changes are meant to make sure the school’s students are better equipped to live out Christian beliefs.
“It is more difficult in this culture for an individual to live out their faith with integrity than it ever has been,” he said.
He noted especially that it was the first time the school had issued a statement of its religious beliefs. Foley wrote the statement, drawing much of it from the Baptist Faith and Message, which documents the beliefs of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The changes come against a nationwide backdrop of religion-sponsored colleges grappling with how to hold on to their spiritual values. Several influential books have documented a trend toward secularism in colleges that had once been vital forces religiously.
Other UM student requirements are changing as well. Now, students must take a biblical ethics class, or Christian worldview, to graduate. Students also will be required to complete a semester of community or church service under the direction of the School of Christian Studies. Finally, they will be required to write a paper relating the Christian worldview to their chosen field of study.
The most recent UM standards required undergraduate students to complete five semesters of chapel, attending at least nine of 13 sessions.
Foley, though, said that forced worship is a flawed concept. He said he wants a system where students have to demonstrate they know and understand the spiritual values the university is trying to communicate rather than sitting passively through a service. “Chapel really had no accountability in it,” Foley said.
_ Jeff Amy
English Bishops Call for `Two-State’ Solution to Mideast Strife
LONDON (RNS) – A two-state solution is “the only clear way forward” for settling the conflict in the Holy Land, said the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales in a statement issued Friday (April 30).
Condemning “morally abhorrent suicide attacks,” the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, and the “unlawful assassination” of two successive leaders of Hamas, the bishops said: “A return to negotiations and the primacy of international law is vital if the current tragic impasse is to be resolved with justice.”
They described as “deeply damaging” the recent endorsement by President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon of the continued existence of Israeli settlements on the West Bank in defiance of international law.
The statement was drafted and issued before Sharon’s plan, which centered on withdrawal from Gaza, was soundly defeated Sunday in voting by members of his own Likud party.
“A two-state solution agreed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with internationally agreed borders that allow the Palestinian state to be viable, remains the only clear way forward,” said the bishops. “We urge our own government to use every means to revive the `road map’ accepted by both parties to the conflict and approved by the `Quartet’ (the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations) of international mediators.”
The bishops also added their voices to those warning Catholics not to vote for candidates of the far-right British National Party in the forthcoming elections for local councils and the European parliament to be held on June 10 _ but without actually mentioning the BNP by name.
Welcoming and endorsing recent ecumenical statements condemning the policies of “racist political parties” as incompatible with the gospel, the bishops asked Catholics to consider three principles in deciding how to vote:
“We live in a time when ethnic and religious tensions threaten local communities and whole regions of the wider world. Candidates and political parties which seek to foster these divisions should not be supported.”
_ Robert Nowell
French Politician Says His Country Working on Minority Rights
WASHINGTON (RNS) A French politician who could become the next French president said his country is working to create more rights for French Muslims, Jews and blacks.
Speaking at an American Jewish Committee luncheon on April 23, French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy commended the American melting pot and said the French share American values.
“In America, everybody has a chance,” said Sarkozy, who is the son of a Hungarian immigrant. “Nobody is judged by his name or his face.”
The French government is determined to fight against the anti-Semitism directed against French Jews, Sarkozy said. French Jews make up nearly 1 percent of the country’s population.
“I consider any insult against Jews as an insult against France,” he said. “France is not anti-Semitic, but there are anti-Semites in France.”
Though the number of anti-Semitic acts decreased by a third last year, Sarkozy said the French government would provide protection for Jewish schools and other institutions.
“Mr. Sarkozy is a stellar example of political leadership and political will in the struggle against the (oldest) hatred,” said David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee.
While receiving a warm reception from American Jews, French Muslims both applauded and booed Sarkozy in another appearance.
At the end of 2002, Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister at the time, created a French Muslim council. “I wanted to give the Muslims a representative body,” he said. “Everybody agreed I should establish a Muslim council on the condition it was the Muslims we liked. They should look like Muslims, speak like Muslims, but think like us. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted it to represent the Muslim community as it was.”
Critics view the council as a way for the French government to manipulate the Islamic leadership of the country’s 6 million Muslims.
Many Muslims have denounced Sarkozy’s defense of the requirement for Muslim women and girls to remove their headscarves while taking their driver’s license photo or attending public school.
“Every person in France should be able to live their faith,” he said. “There is a limit to that. This legislation is a law to support freedom. The outstanding question is how to bring into the fold the second largest religion in France.
“We don’t want to just have Islam in France; we want to have French Islam. There is a big difference.”
_ Mandy Morgan
Vatican Delegation Meets with Vietnamese Officials in `Positive Climate’
VATICAN CITY (RNS) A Vatican delegation met with Vietnamese officials in a “positive climate” during a five-day visit to the Southeast Asian country where the government tightly controls the operations of the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican said Monday (May 3).
The April 27-May 2 visit was led by Archbishop Petro Parolin, undersecretary for relations with states.
Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement that talks with the Vietnamese Office for Religious Affairs, presided over by Ngo Yen Thi, “dealt, in a positive climate, with the life and the activities of the Catholic Church in the country.”
The prelates also met with Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Le Cong Phung and the vice president of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Nguyen Huy Quang.
“On various occasions there also was touched the theme of relations between Vietnam and the Holy See, noting the steps taken so far toward normalization,” the statement said.
The statement gave no indication of whether the Vietnamese officials had approved Pope John Paul II’s choice of a new bishop for Than Hua or whether the delegation had protested the religious persecution of Vietnam’s Christian Montagnards.
The Vatican estimates that Catholics make up almost 7 percent of Vietnam’s population of 77.7 million.
_ Peggy Polk
Quote of the Day: The Rev. J.C. Bradley, North Carolina Missionary
(RNS) “Violence cannot, must not, deter a Christian commitment. We want to respond with good rather than with evil. It’s a matter of saying God’s always in charge, regardless of what happens.”
_ The Rev. J.C. Bradley, associational missionary for the Central Triad Baptist Association of High Point, N.C., discussing the Elliott Project that aims to send health kits to Iraqi families in memory of Southern Baptist missionaries Larry and Jean Elliott of Cary, N.C., who were killed in Iraq. He was quoted by the Associated Press.
DEA/JL END RNS
