c. 2004 Religion News Service
Religious Groups Chide Congress for Not Passing Welfare Reform
WASHINGTON (RNS) A coalition of Christian and Jewish groups urged Congress to stop keeping welfare alive with temporary extensions and instead move to a long-term overhaul of the program.
Ten mainline Protestant churches were joined by anti-hunger groups, Jewish organizations and a Catholic social justice group to urge a five-year reauthorization of the 1996 welfare law.
“Congress is denying the states the certainty of funding and clarity of program direction that they need to operate their programs most effectively,” said a July 13 letter to senators from the Interreligious Working Group on Domestic Human Needs.
The welfare program, known as Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), was originally set to expire in September 2002. Unable to reach agreement, Congress has passed seven temporary extensions. The most recent, passed in late June, funds the program at current levels through Sept. 30.
The House has passed one version that increases weekly work requirements for welfare recipients from 30 to 40 hours per week and provides incentives for recipients to marry.
The Senate version proposes a 34-hour work week but adds increased money for child care. That measure has not reached the Senate floor because of disputes on whether to include an increase in the minimum wage from $5.15 to $7 per hour.
Most religious groups in Washington support the Senate version because of its increased levels of child-care money. Many also want to reopen welfare to illegal immigrants.
“We are extremely disappointed that Congress has not yet passed a long-term reauthorization to strengthen the program so families can move out of poverty,” said the letter.
The letter was signed by the Washington offices of American Baptist Churches USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Friends Committee on National Legislation, the National Council of Churches and NETWORK, a National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, among others.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Dutch Reformed Church Readmitted to South African Church Council
(RNS) South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church, once ostracized for its theological justification of apartheid and white-majority rule, has rejoined the South African Council of Churches.
The move, announced July 13 during the ecumenical organization’s triennial meeting in Johannesburg, ended more than 40 years of antagonism between the denomination and South Africa’s most prominent ecumenical agency and was hailed by South African media and church leaders as something of a milestone in the country’s ongoing process of reconciliation.
“Significant and a historical breakthrough,” the South African Broadcasting Corp. said in reporting the news, noting the white-dominated church had once argued that the Bible supplied the basis for racial segregation.
In announcing the move, Russel Botman, the SACC’s president, said it was time for the Dutch Reformed Church to rejoin the council as part of national reconciliation efforts. Joseph Mdhlela, a SACC spokesman, said it was time to readmit the church after it had “openly distanced itself from apartheid and categorically confessed that all apartheid policies were heresy,” Ecumenical News International reported.
Willie Botha, a spokesman for the Dutch Reformed Church, told the SABC that the 3 million-member denomination _ having apologized for its past _ had been “humbled” by its reception in re-entering the council. The church had applied for full membership in 2001 and has been granted “observer” status since then.
The homecoming was long in coming. The church was perhaps best known for its alliance with a long succession of white-minority, National Party governments.
During a 1960 World Council of Churches meeting held in Johannesburg, the world ecumenical body questioned the theological arguments for apartheid, a position that enraged Hendrik Verwoerd, South Africa’s prime minister and an architect of the official policy of racial segregation.
That controversy prompted the church _ long the predominant denomination of Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans _ to subsequently sever ties with the WCC and what was then known as the South African Christian Council, later the South African Council of Churches. The Dutch Reformed Church had been a founding member of the council.
As international support for the anti-apartheid movement grew in the 1970s and 1980s, the Dutch Reformed Church found itself increasingly isolated both within and outside South Africa; the World Alliance of Reformed Churches suspended the church in 1982 for what it called its “heretical” position supporting apartheid.
But with the emergence of black-majority rule in 1994, the church eventually renounced apartheid as “wrong and sinful, not simply in its effects and operations, but also in its fundamental nature.” The World Alliance of Reformed Churches lifted its suspension in 1998; the Dutch Reformed Church has yet to rejoin the WCC.
_ Chris Herlinger
Pornography Scandal Grows at Austrian Seminary
(RNS) A Polish seminary student has been charged with possessing and distributing child pornography at an Austrian seminary, and a new poll shows that 72 percent of Austrians want the bishop in charge to resign.
Austrian police charged a 27-year-old unnamed seminary student with distributing and possessing child pornography at the seminary in St. Poelton on Monday (July 19), the Associated Press reported.
Authorities say some 40,000 pornographic images were found on seminary computers, along with photos of young seminarians and their professors fondling and kissing.
Police say the child pornography images were downloaded from a Web site in Poland. The seminary’s director, the Rev. Ulrich Kuechl, and his deputy, Wolfgang Rothe, have resigned.
But the bishop of St. Poelton, Kurt Krenn, has dismissed the photos as a “schoolboy prank” and has rebuffed calls for his resignation. A poll released Saturday showed 72 percent of Austrians want Krenn to resign.
“Although these things naturally fall into my competence, I had nothing to do with them,” he told Austrian state television.
The Rev. Ehrich Leitenberger, a spokesman for Austria’s highest-ranking cardinal, Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, said church officials are monitoring the investigation carefully.
“It is very clear _ and the Austrian bishops said this very clearly _ that in a Roman Catholic seminary there is no room for pornography or for a homosexual network,” he told The New York Times. The Vatican is also watching the scandal carefully, reports said.
The scandal is the worst to hit the overwhelmingly Catholic nation since Schonborn’s predecessor, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, resigned in 1995 after former students said he molested them decades ago. Krenn was one of Groer’s staunchest defenders, and is the only bishop in Austria not to have a diocesan ombudsman to handle sexual misconduct accusations.
Baptist Peace Fellowship Names New Director
(RNS) The Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America has chosen a new coordinating director.
The Rev. Gary Percesepe, a longtime peace activist, started the post Friday (July 16), the Charlotte, N.C.-based organization announced.
Percesepe has worked as a pastor, professor and director of nonprofit organizations. The American Baptist minister founded the Springfield (Ohio) Call to Renewal and Justice-Action-Mercy, a congregation-based interfaith organization in Springfield, Ohio.
He has taught philosophy at several schools, including the University of Dayton, Wittenburg University in Springfield and Saint Louis University, and is the author of four books.
The association will hold its annual meeting July 19-24 in Towson, Md.
_ Adelle M. Banks
AAR Recognizes Excellence in Religion Reporting
(RNS) Laurie Goodstein, religion reporter at The New York Times, and John Dart, news editor at the Christian Century, took home top newswriting prizes from the American Academy of Religion.
The AAR also awarded Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun top honors for opinion writing. Todd, an occasional correspondent for Religion News Service, is the first Canadian to win first place in an AAR contest.
Goodstein won in the category for news outlets with a circulation of more than 100,000. Her five articles covered evangelicals hoping to convert Muslims in Ohio, the pervasiveness of the Catholic sex abuse scandal, the election of an openly gay Episcopal bishop and coverage of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”
Taking second place for the second year in a row was G. Jeffrey MacDonald, a correspondent for Religion News Service based outside Boston. Third place went to Ron Grossman of the Chicago Tribune.
Dart won 1st place in the category for media outlets with circulation of less than 100,000. His articles for the Christian Century included a look at faith in the movies, interfaith relief efforts in Iraq, the question of who belonged to Jesus’ family, stress on pastors and progressive Muslims.
Second place went to Julie Marshall of the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo., and third place went to Jane Lampman of the Christian Science Monitor.
Todd won the opinion writing prize for a series of articles on “God in the Marketplace: Religion in the Public Square,” and a column about his experience of visiting religious communes across Canada.
Second-place honors went to Steven Waldman, CEO and editor-in-chief of Beliefnet, and third place went to Bill Tammeus of the Kansas City Star.
The AAR is the world’s largest association of scholars in religion, and awards prizes for articles that exhibit “well-researched newswriting that enhances the public understanding of religion.” Each first-place winner receives $500.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Quote of the Day: ELCA Communications Director Eric C. Shafer
(RNS) “I’ve always called advertising fertilizer _ it only can fertilize a larger effort to evangelize. Now I think it’s Miracle-Gro.”
_ The Rev. Eric C. Shafer, director of communications for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which started a $7 million advertising campaign in 1999. He was quoted by The Washington Post.
DEA END RNS
