c. 2004 Religion News Service

Evangelicals Call for U.S. Action to Address Sudanese Crisis

WASHINGTON (RNS) Evangelical leaders have sent a letter to President Bush urging U.S. government action to address the crisis in Darfur, Sudan.

“Now is … the time for the United States government to take a more decisive role to prevent further slaughter and death,” said the Sunday (Aug. 1) letter signed by National Association of Evangelicals President Ted Haggard and 35 others.

“Since Khartoum cannot be counted on to provide security, others must lead the way.”

The evangelical representatives said they are urging churches and ministries to donate to relief agencies already working to address the crisis. Millions of people have fled from their homes in the midst of intensifying warfare in the region.

Their letter calls on Bush to authorize “massive humanitarian aid” to protect endangered civilians who have been displaced in Darfur, exploration of intervention options _ including military intervention _ and a multinational effort with the United Nations to end Sudan’s membership on the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

“Sudan’s genocidal policies make its continued participation on that body a travesty,” the endorsers of the letter stated.

In a statement, Haggard connected the joint letter to previous efforts by evangelicals to address matters related to Muslims, including a May 2003 consultation on Islam and participation in a delegation last March to Morocco.

“We view this as an opportunity to reach out to Muslims, in the name of Jesus, and to speak out with one voice,” he said.

Other signatories included World Evangelical Alliance General Secretary Gary Edmonds; Institute on Religion and Democracy President Diane Knippers; Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Mouw; Assemblies of God General Superintendent Thomas Trask;, and Paul McKaughan, president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies.

The National Association of Evangelicals, which includes 51 denominations and 45,000 churches, has previously issued statements urging governmental action to halt religious and other kinds of persecution.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Nationwide Tour of Controversial Ten Commandments Monument Begins

DAYTON, Tenn. (RNS) Against the backdrop of the red-brick courthouse where high-school instructor John Scopes was convicted in 1925 of violating Tennessee law by teaching evolution, supporters of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s campaign to publicly display a stone reproduction of the Ten Commandments launched a nationwide tour of the controversial monument over the weekend (July 31-Aug. 1).

A Houston-based organization, American Veterans in Domestic Defense, launched the tour in the rural town of Dayton after removing the memorial from storage in the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery.

Organizers said the site of the celebrated legal battle of the 1920s pitting biblical views of creation against evolution was a fitting place to begin the tour of a monument at the heart of a contemporary battle over the role of religion in public life.

After inviting visitors to view the monument on the flat-bed trailer that transported it to the courthouse, planners staged ceremonies at a local high school to officially inaugurate the national tour. The event’s organizers have scheduled 13 additional stops for the monument in Tennessee during the initial phase of a journey scheduled to culminate in October in Washington, D.C.

The monument weighs more than two tons and is inscribed with not only the Ten Commandments but also quotes about law and religion from various sources.

Moore had originally positioned the statue in the rotunda of the Montgomery judicial building. Igniting a bitter controversy over church-state separation, the monument was removed from view in August 2003 and Moore ousted from his judicial position in November of last year.

Jim Cabaniss, president of AVIDD, linked his organization’s interest in the Ten Commandments monument with the group’s mission of protecting the United States from what it views as the nation’s internal foes.

“Our failing judicial system has become one of our domestic enemies,” Cabaniss said. “The enemies of our Christian heritage are using our failed judicial system to run roughshod over our Christian heritage.”

Supporters of the tour believe that official opposition to displaying the Ten Commandments undermines the moral underpinnings of American law and ignores the will of average citizens who strongly stand behind traditional Judeo-Christian values.

“We are … not just a moral majority, we are a God-fearing majority,” said June Griffin, a Dayton resident and key figure behind the tour. “You get somebody out by themselves that’s just a common American _ they want those commandments up there.”

_ Ted Parks

Archbishop of York Resigns to Take Up a Parish

LONDON (RNS) Archbishop of York David Hope, the second-ranking prelate in the Church of England, announced Sunday (Aug. 1) he is resigning and returning to parish ministry.

Hope’s resignation comes nearly six years before the Church of England’s mandatory retirement age of 70.

Hope said he has been appointed vicar of St. Margaret’s Ilkley in the neighboring diocese of Bradford.

Two years ago, Hope told friends of his desire to return to the pastoral ministry as a parish priest. High office, and the meetings that go with it, seems not to have appealed to him.

Asked Sunday by a reporter, “You never really liked committee meetings, did you?” Hope replied: “No. I hate them, really. But clearly institutions need some, and I hope I have been reasonably attentive when required.”

Hope, a Yorkshireman by birth and upbringing, is a leading figure of the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England. He was principal of St. Stephen’s House, Oxford, probably the best known “high church” theological college, from 1974 to 1982, and after a spell as vicar of London’s best-known Anglo-Catholic church _ All Saints, Margaret Street _ he returned to Yorkshire in 1985 as bishop of his native diocese of Wakefield. In 1991 he was appointed Bishop of London and in 1995 Archbishop of York.

In 1995 the militant gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell tried to “out” Hope as gay, but the bishop called an early-morning press conference at which he famously remarked that his sexuality was “a gray area” without divulging any more details other than that he led a celibate life.

Attention will now turn to who is likely to succeed him as England’s second archbishop. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams also belongs to the church’s Anglo-Catholic wing, though he is not as “high” as Hope, and whoever is appointed is expected to come from among the milder evangelicals in a church where the more extreme evangelicals have begun a war of attrition over the issue of homosexuality.

Among names already being mentioned are Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester, Bishop James Jones of Liverpool and Bishop Tom Wright of Durham.

Early next year, Hope will exchange his palace at Bishopthorpe for the vicarage at Ilkley and his archiepiscopal stipend of $98,586, about $21,600 of which he regularly hands back to the Church Commissioners, for a parish priest’s stipend of $32,400.

Hope said he intends to cease all formal duties as archbishop in mid-January and to take up his new post in early March.

_ Robert Nowell

Baptist World Alliance Re-elects Lotz as General Secretary

(RNS) The Baptist World Alliance has re-elected its general secretary, the Rev. Denton Lotz, to another five-year term.

Lotz, whose new term will begin in 2005, recently addressed members attending the alliance’s first General Council since the Southern Baptist Convention voted to withdraw its funding and membership from the global body based in Falls Church, Va.

“We wish to affirm again, for all to know, our adherence to the historic doctrines of our faith,” he said, affirming their belief in salvation solely through Jesus Christ.

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which officially ends its relationship with the alliance Oct. 1, thought the alliance was no longer presenting such a “crystal clear gospel message.”

At the meeting, held July 26-31 in Seoul, Korea, Lotz referred to the alliance’s plans to move ahead.

“This has been a tremendous year of encouragement and support but also deep waters and a break in our fellowship which has caused great distress, especially in our minority conventions around the world, but we have to go forward,” he said in a news release issued by his organization.

Baptists attending the meeting passed a resolution acknowledging the contributions of the U.S. denomination to the formation of the alliance in 1905 and expressing their regret for the Southern Baptist withdrawal, calling it “a compromise of the worldwide testimony of all Baptists.”

They also voiced their support for efforts to reduce poverty worldwide and concern for the division of families between North and South Korea.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Pope Pays Warm Tribute to Fellow Poles Who Rose Against Nazi Occupation

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II, paying warm tribute to his fellow Poles who rose against the Nazi occupation during World War II, said Monday (Aug. 2) he bowed his head in homage to the rebels who fought for their country.

The pope sent a message to Lech Kaczynski, mayor of the Polish capital, regretting that he could not attend Sunday’s ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the abortive Warsaw uprising. Among those taking part were Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

“I bow before the rebels who in the unequal struggle did not spare their blood and their lives for the cause of the country,” John Paul said.

The eight-week insurrection, which began Aug. 1, 1944, with an attack by the underground Home Army on German forces occupying Warsaw, failed because Soviet leader Joseph Stalin refused to order his forces camped on the other side of the Vistula River to go to the rebels’ aid.

The 60th anniversary celebration is the first major commemoration of the uprising, which was virtually ignored during the decades when Poland was part of the Soviet bloc.

Addressing his fellow countrymen in Polish after leading the Angelus prayer on Sunday at his country residence in Castelgandolfo, Italy, John Paul said that he had “lived through the Warsaw insurrection in Krakow with a strong spiritual tension and with prayer.” At the time he was studying for the priesthood in an underground seminary.

“With all my heart I unite with the inhabitants of the capital and all my fellow countrymen in the solemn commemoration of the dramatic days that in a certain way constituted the apogee of the resistance,” the pope told Kaczynski.

“As a son of that nation, I want to render homage to the heroes of that August struggle, to the fallen and to those still living,” John Paul said.

The pope singled out for special praise children, who manned the barricades; priests, who acted as chaplains to the insurgents; and women doctors and nurses killed as they cared for the wounded. He said he hoped that their heroism would live on as an example of selfless patriotism.

_ Peggy Polk

Quote of the Day: Author John Eldredge

(RNS) “You might even need to give up going to church for a while or reading your Bible. I stopped going to church for a year; it was one of the most refreshing years of my life. I hadn’t abandoned God, and I very much sought out the company of my spiritual companions. What I gave up was the performance of having to show up every Sunday morning with my happy face on.”

Author John Eldredge, quoted from his book “The Journey of Desire,” in a Christianity Today cover story about his revolutionary approach to Christian spirituality.

DEA/PH END RNS