c. 2004 Religion News Service

Baptist Seminary Approves Charter Change But Will Still Fight It

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) Bowing to the wishes of the Southern Baptist Convention, trustees of its New Orleans seminary have agreed to amend the terms of the convention’s ownership of the school but not without misgivings they want to share with other Baptists before the whole convention makes a final decision at its annual meeting next summer.

Trustees of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary on Oct. 13 agreed to charter changes that would give the convention “sole membership,” in the language of corporate law, in its ownership of the 3,700-student seminary.

The seminary will file the changes with Louisiana authorities if they are approved by delegates, or messengers, from the nation’s largest Protestant denomination when they meet in Nashville, Tenn., next summer.

Before then, however, the seminary’s leadership will mount a public campaign against the change in state Baptist newspapers throughout the country, seminary President Chuck Kelley said.

“Before the typical messenger gets to the convention, they will have seen both sides,” he said.

The trustees’ decision came after more than a year of increasingly strained discussions between the seminary and the convention’s powerful executive committee, which has pushed for the change.

The debate is about how best to describe the seminary’s legal relationship to the convention.

The executive committee believes “sole membership” best insulates the whole convention from lawsuits against the school, while also tying it securely to the convention so its trustees cannot liberalize it against the convention’s wishes.

The convention has asked, and secured, similar changes from all its agencies and other seminaries, leaving the New Orleans seminary the only holdout.

But the seminary maintains that peculiarities in Louisiana law do not provide the wished-for financial insulation, Kelley said. Perhaps more important, the trustees say that granting the convention sole membership would give the convention’s powerful executive committee a measure of influence over the seminary that violates the way that famously democratic Southern Baptists like to distribute power, Kelley said.

“We Southern Baptists take human nature seriously,” Kelley said. “We really believe in the reality of sin. Not that we don’t trust each other, but we do assume that people can occasionally do things that disappoint us.”

In any event, Kelley pledged that the seminary will abide by whatever decision the messengers make next year in Nashville.

Bruce Nolan

Survey: Most Americans Think Children Not Spiritually Prepared

(RNS) Less than 10 percent of Americans surveyed think children are being given good spiritual or moral preparation for life.

The Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif., marketing research firm, polled 1,011 adults nationwide about how well they think children under the age of 13 are being prepared for life, and asked about physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and moral aspects of that preparation.

The lowest ratings were given in the areas of spiritual and moral preparation, with 8 percent of adults saying kids are “superbly” or “pretty well” prepared spiritually and an equal percentage applying the same terms to morality.

Seventy-five percent of adults said children are not well prepared morally and 71 percent said they are not prepared spiritually.

In comparison, 18 percent of adults said children are well prepared intellectually, while 50 percent said children have insufficient intellectual preparation. Sixteen percent said children are physically well prepared, while 54 percent said children have inadequate physical preparation. Twelve percent said children are well prepared emotionally, while 62 percent said children have insufficient emotional preparation.

The research has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.

Adelle M. Banks

Nazi Camp Survivor Highlights Suffering of Jehovah’s Witnesses

LOS ANGELES (RNS) A 99-year-old Jehovah’s Witness who survived Nazi persecution is touring the United States, giving younger generations a face to put on the often obscured story of the estimated 2,000 Jehovah’s Witnessess killed in the Holocaust.

“When you actually meet a person, you connect more; you can see that he’s not a superman,” said Claybourne Roberts, 43, one of about 200 Jehovah’s Witnesses who visited the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles last month to meet Leopold Enleitner, an Austrian farmhand persecuted in World War II after being arrested at a Bible study group.

Despite Nazi offers of freedom if he renounced his faith, Engleitner refused and remained imprisoned with other Jehovah’s Witnessess at three concentration camps, including Buchenwald. His saga is the subject of a book and DVD documentary by fellow Austrian Bernhard Rammerstorfer, both titled “Unbroken Will: The Extraordinary Courage of an Ordinary Man.”

Unlike Europe’s Jews who had virtually no options to leave concentration camps, “he had choices,” said David Goldfarb, who grew up Jewish and became a Jehovah’s Witness at age 15. “He had choices to stand up to the entire Hitler regime by choice.”

At an Oct. 12 gathering in Los Angeles, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Museum of Tolerance and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, praised Engleitner and other devoutly religious people for “the tremendous spirit that people of faith bring to the table. No, he is not a survivor of the Holocaust, but he is a survivor of Nazi tyranny, targeted because he made a decision about how he was going to pray to God.”

Though he almost was executed twice, Engleitner clung to his faith. After the war, he returned to a farming life in Austria, married and raised a family.

Engleitner spoke very little at the Museum of Tolerance but shook many hands as he signed copies of “Unbroken Will.” The first question from the audience was which Bible scripture he drew strength from while imprisoned.

Sitting in a wheelchair, Engleitner immediately said in German: “Psalms, 35:1.” Several Jehovah’s Witnesses in the museum theater pulled out Bibles and found the passage, which reads, “Strive thou, O Jehovah, with them that strive with me: Fight thou against them that fight against me.”

David Finnigan

British Muslims Fare Poorly in Economic and Health Survey

LONDON (RNS) A new survey by the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics has found that Muslims in Britain are more likely to be unemployed, suffer from ill health or have a disability than other religious groups in the country.

The survey is based on data from the 2001 census, which for the first time included an optional question about religious allegiance. Christians make up 72 per cent of Great Britain’s 57 million inhabitants, with the next largest categories being those with no religion (15 per cent) and those who preferred not to state their religion (8 per cent).

But the second largest religious group was made up of Muslims, just over 1.5 million or very nearly 3 per cent of the population.

The census found that they were much more likely to be unemployed than other religious groups.

Specifically, 14 per cent of Muslim men were unemployed, compared to 8 percent of Sikh men, 6 per cent of Buddhist men, 6 percent of Hindu men and 4 percent of Christian men.

Among Muslim women, 15 per cent of women were unemployed, compared to 11 per cent of Hindu women and 10 per cent of Buddhist women, whereas Christian women recorded only 4 per cent unemployed.

Muslims also had the highest rates of reported ill health. Age-standardized rates of “not good” health were 13 per cent for Muslim males, compared to 10 percent for Sikhs and 8 percent for Hindus. Among women, the poor rates were 16 per cent for Muslims, 14 per cent for Sikhs and 11 per cent for Hindus.

Age-standardized rates of disability were similarly high among Muslims, with 21 per cent of males and 24 per cent of Muslim females suffering from long-term illness or disability, with Sikhs the next highest grouping (17 per cent among men and 21 per cent among women).

The findings have been criticized by one of Britain’s leading Muslim scholars, Dr Zaki Badawi of the Muslim College of Britain. He pointed out that the survey covered the whole of Britain and was not broken down region by region.

He suggested differences between Muslims and other groups may be more a matter of geography than any other factor.

“The Muslim population is concentrated in areas of high unemployment and poor educational resources,” he told RNS, citing areas such as Bradford in Yorkshire, Blackburn in Lancashire, as well as the East End of London. “If the Muslims of Bradford, say, were compared with other religious groups in that city, the disparity would not be so great.”

Robert Nowell

Church Youth Group Apologizes for Stealing, Burning Campaign Signs

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (RNS) The senior pastor and the youth minister of an Alabama church have formally apologized for a youth scavenger hunt that targeted Kerry-Edwards signs, which were burned in the church parking lot.

Doug Dermody, chairman of the Madison County Democratic Executive Committee, said Monday that the pastor, the Rev. Jeff Ponder-Twardy, and youth minister B.J. Storey of Owens Crossroads United Methodist Church apologized to their congregation Sunday and submitted a written apology to the county’s Democratic headquarters.

Ponder-Twardy personally delivered the regrets Monday, according to Dermody.

“As far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it,” Dermody said.

Theft of campaign signs from private property is a misdemeanor. The two ministers were unavailable for comment.

Dermody said the incident occurred during a recent youth lock-in in which youngsters were sent on a scavenger hunt. Kerry-Edwards signs were on the list of items to retrieve from area yards. About eight signs were taken and burned that evening at the church, Dermody said he was told.

Dermody said the pastor and youth minister emphasized in their written apology that the incident was not an attempt to make a political statement, nor did it necessarily reflect the views of the church, its congregation or its denomination.

“It was meant to be harmless fun, but it went too far,” Ponder-Twardy wrote, adding that he had no prior knowledge of the plan.

The Huntsville district superintendent of the United Methodist Church did not officially comment. The district released an apology from the pastor noting the amends that were made to the congregation and Democratic Party.

“I truly regret the actions of my staff and myself regarding the taking and destroying of these signs,” Ponder-Twardy said in the letter to the district. “It was a gross error in judgment. We believe lessons have been learned, and we believe similar actions will never happen again.”

John Peck

Quote of the Day: Phil Burress, chairman of the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage

(RNS) “We’ve been trying to say this all along. The church is going to show up today.”

Phil Burress, chairman of the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, speaking to The New York Times about Election Day turnout.

MO END