c. 2004 Religion News Service

Pope Prays for Victims of Russian School Terrorism

(RNS) Pope John Paul II prayed for the victims of the “vile and ruthless” siege of Middle School No. 1 in Beslan, Russia, and religious groups around the world expressed condolences and mobilized relief efforts.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Saturday (Sept. 4) that John Paul had followed the three-day siege by pro-Chechen guerrillas “with great sadness for the loss of innocent human lives and the suffering inflicted on so many families involved in an act of terrorism.” More than 330 people died in the siege and the battle that ended it.

A telegram sent by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, to the Russian Federation in the pope’s name on Saturday said the pontiff “deplores every form of terrorism and hopes that the spiral of hate and of violence will not prevail.”

Sodano said that learning of the “vile and ruthless aggression against defenseless children and families,” the pope joined the Russian people with affection “in this hour of dismay and anguish” and was praying for the victims and their families.

In Moscow, Patriarch Alexei II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said his church was “grieving profoundly” for victims and said terrorism had shown its “satanic face” in the attacks against children.

The governing council of the Lutheran World Federation, meeting near Geneva, also denounced the attacks. “The atrocity in Beslan evokes a particularly strong sense of revulsion because the armed insurgents who planned it and carried it out deliberately attacked children. No cause can justify such inhumanity,” the LWF said in a statement.

Relief efforts are already under way. At the St. Nicholas Cathedral in Washington, parishioners donated $3,000 in a special offering for Beslan, and the Orthodox Church in America was planning a major fund-raising appeal. The Christian humanitarian agency World Vision said it would send $75,000 in aid, mostly medical supplies and replacements for blood-soaked mattresses.

“This was Russia’s Sept. 11,” said David Womble, the Russia program manager for World Vision. “Attacking a school is beyond the pale of understanding.”

_ Peggy Polk and Kevin Eckstrom

Southern Baptist President Urges Church to Prepare for Terrorist Attack

(RNS) Southern Baptist Convention President Bobby Welch has urged leaders in his denomination to help their congregations prepare for the next possible terrorist attack.

“When 9/11 came, the evangelical church of North America got caught not knowing what to do,” Welch said on a DVD sent to pastors and state and national leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

“We can do better next time.”

In a five-minute segment on the DVD _ which also highlighted his plans for a bus tour around the country to foster evangelism _ Welch congratulated local New York churches and the denomination’s North American Mission Board for their efforts after the twin towers were struck in September 2001.

“But what about all those other places and states where people across the United States were scared to death and didn’t know what to do?” he said.

He said his congregation, First Baptist Church of Daytona Beach, Fla., filled baggies with Scriptures and information about his church, knocked on doors and offered to pray with people.

“We cannot sit by when this country is being assaulted by hell and by Satan,” Welch said into the camera. “We must get out there and be faithful to our biblical distinctive, which is sharing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. If something else happens, mobilize your people.”

In an interview Sunday (Sept. 5) along the bus tour, Welch told Religion News Service that he wants Southern Baptists to overcome their own fears and reach out to help others in the event of another crisis.

“I felt like that we did not capitalize enough on helping more people when 9/11 occurred,” he said. “I felt like we Southern Baptists could have touched so many more lives and helped so many more people.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

Orthodox Movement Prepared Jews for Hurricane’s Impact on Sabbath

(RNS) As Hurricane Frances prepared to make landfall in Florida on Friday (Sept. 3), Orthodox Jews didn’t need to wonder how the strong storm might impact their ability to observe the Sabbath.

The Orthodox Union (OU), which is the umbrella organization of the movement, posted a document on its home page detailing the implications of a natural disaster on the Jewish law, also called halacha, of the Sabbath.

Rabbi Kenneth Brander of the Boca Raton Synagogue wrote the document in 1992, after Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida, where a large number of Jews live.

The laws of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, require observant Jews to attend Saturday services in a synagogue, refrain from carrying anything outside a domain, like a home, and refrain from lighting or extinguishing a fire or anything electrical.

“Shabbat Protocols in Case of a Hurricane” details ways to address these issues while remaining physically safe during the storm.

For example, Brander recommends turning on a television or radio and leaving it on in a side room for emergency information. He also suggests placing lit flashlights with fresh batteries at key points throughout the home. If a flashlight goes out, a non-Jew may be asked to change its batteries.

The document emphasizes that in life-threatening danger or cases of illness, Jewish law must be set aside in order to preserve life.

“In halacha, human life is paramount,” said Rabbi Mayer Waxman, who is the OU’s director of community affairs. “Therefore, whenever there is a risk to personal well-being, the usually strict laws must be set aside to the extent that is necessary,” said Waxman in a statement.

Brander, who wrote the protocol, told Religion News Service that while physical safety is of utmost importance, religious Jews are also concerned with upholding their faith commitments.

“Especially in a time of crisis like this, they’re worried about their spirituality,” said Brander, who consulted with a number of rabbis to ensure that the document complied with Jewish law.

The purpose of the protocol, Brander said, was to reiterate a fundamental point.

“They shouldn’t do anything spiritually that could compromise themselves physically,” he said.

_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi

Lutheran World Federation Urges Caution on Sexuality Differences

(RNS) Leaders of the Lutheran World Federation said differences on human sexuality must not become a dividing issue between the group’s conservative churches in the Third World and progressive churches in Europe and North America.

The LWF’s governing council, meeting outside Geneva Sept. 1-7, was expected to appoint a task force on how the divisive issue should be handled in the global network of 138 member churches in 77 countries.

“It would be tragic if that which we all share by virtue of our humanity _ that we are sexual beings _ becomes the cause for division rather than the source of respectful and admittedly difficult dialogue,” said the Rev. Mark Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and president of the LWF.

Hanson told the LWF that “we will grow together rather than apart as we are defined by our faith, not our fears.”

During the council’s meeting, the LWF admitted three new member churches _ the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ghana.

The new member churches bring the LWF’s membership to 64.9 million of the world’s estimated 66 million Lutherans. In the United States, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod are not members of the LWF.

In other business, the 49-member council re-elected the Rev. Ishmael Noko to a second seven-year term as general secretary. Noko, a native of Zimbabwe and the first African to hold the post, urged member churches not to focus on differences over sexuality.

“If we are not careful enough to listen to one another, this issue might easily become church-dividing, but at the moment it is not a church-dividing issue,” he said.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Quote of the Day: Greg Sanford of the Missions Institute of New Tribes Mission

(RNS) “We’re way out there. We’re like the Marines of the church.”

_ Greg Sanford, director of the Missions Institute of New Tribes Mission, a yearlong boot camp that prepares new missionaries for remote foreign locations where they learn tribal cultures in order to translate the Bible into tribal languages. He was quoted by the Associated Press.

MO/PH END RNS