c. 2005 Religion News Service
Peace Churches Concerned About `Back Door’ Draft Among Poor, Minorities
(RNS) A coalition of historic “peace churches” says they were told that the Pentagon does not plan to reinstate a military draft, but they remain concerned about a “back door draft” that targets the poor and minorities.
Leaders of a dozen Mennonite, Quaker and Brethren churches that shun military service held a two-day meeting (March 4-5) outside Chicago to plan for “alternative service” programs for conscientious objectors should a draft be reinstated.
The meeting was prompted by an unannounced visit last October by a draft official to a Church of the Brethren facility in Maryland. Several churches were concerned the impromptu visit signaled that a draft may be imminent.
After the meeting, the churches said they will draw up plans to allow conscientious objectors to serve in two-year domestic service projects in lieu of military service. They also promised to urge members to “reject violence in all its forms.”
“We are called to a clear allegiance to Christ above all allegiances, and a recognition that it is only through Christ that we can show love to our enemies,” said a joint statement by the Church of the Brethren, U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, the Mennonite Church USA and the Conservative Mennonite Conference.
During the meeting, Selective Service official Dick Flahavan said “the administration’s position on the draft is quite simple: there isn’t going to be any,” according to a news release.
Despite those assurances, church leaders said they are concerned about “intensified, high-pressure military recruitments … where poverty and racism exclude our brothers and sisters from the opportunities that give life meaning and hope.”
The churches said they hope to provide alternatives to military service, as well as ways to shelter “undocumented church members” who may not want to serve in the military.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Editors: Check the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for a photo to accompany this story.
Politicians, Pastors, Celebrate 40th Anniversary of Civil Rights March
SELMA, Ala. (RNS) Forty years after their historic voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, foot soldiers from that pivotal civil rights event returned to celebrate the anniversary and speak out on today’s voting issues for blacks.
On the steps of Brown Chapel AME Church on Sunday (March 6), nationally known politicians and civil rights leaders spoke to marchers before the re-enactment, as other leaders had done in 1965.
This time, they spoke of restoring voting rights for people convicted of felonies, voting problems blacks and others faced at the polls in recent presidential elections and renewal of the Voting Rights Act, which is not permanent and is up for renewal in 2007.
“All forms of devious tricks are being used to prevent us from voting,” said Coretta Scott King, wife of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Today blacks face long voting lines, misinformation over voters’ correct polling places, and inaccurate publicity of voting times, she said.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who marched on Bloody Sunday, blasted President Bush for proposing to cut money for federal programs that benefit many blacks, such as college Pell Grants, community project grants and low-income housing.
On Sunday, several thousand bystanders lined the streets and the bridge to welcome the re-enactors.
The commemoration was a far cry from the Bloody Sunday march. On March 7, 1965, about 600 peaceful protesters were met by state troopers and Dallas County deputies who used clubs and tear gas to drive them back from the Edmund Pettus Bridge. News footage shocked the nation and the world.
The march was successful two weeks later, when some 4,000 people crossed under the protection of the National Guard and made the 54-mile trek to Montgomery, spurring the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Shirley Floyd of Smithville, 52, helped carry the rope that stretched across the front line of the marchers. Having missed the chance to march in 1965, she wept as she made her way toward the bridge.
“I just can’t help it; it is emotional,” said Floyd, a leader in the Civil Rights Activist Committee to preserve civil rights history. “So many people died. It is like I can feel all of them.”
Floyd is among the marchers who will re-enact the successful Selma-to-Montgomery march, which began Monday (March 7) and concludes later this week at the capital.
_ Kelli Hewett Taylor
Despite Court Ruling, Louisiana School Board Says Prayer Will Continue
(RNS) The St. Charles (La.) Parish School Board does not plan to scrap its custom of praying before meetings, despite a federal judge’s ruling to stop the practice in another Louisiana locality.
In a ruling Friday (March 4), U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan said First Amendment prohibitions against government-established religion mean prayers at public school board meetings are unconstitutional, just as they are in the classroom.
Berrigan’s ruling, in response to a lawsuit filed by a parent against the Tangipahoa (La.) Parish School Board, said school boards are different from other government bodies, such as legislatures or Congress, that traditionally have been allowed to open meetings with prayer.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has urged the Tangipahoa Parish School Board to appeal Berrigan’s ruling and the issue is expected to be discussed at this week’s state School Boards Association’s annual convention in Alexandria.
In St. Charles Parish, School Board President Mary Bergeron said she has never heard any objections to the board’s organized prayers before meetings since the practice began a few years ago.
“In our opinion it is an appropriate thing to ask for _ guidance, before our meetings,” Bergeron said. “This is an adult function so we, in my opinion, are not trying to impose our opinion on anyone else’s children. We have had no complaints here.”
She added, “I do not believe that the framers of the Constitution meant for freedom of religion to be freedom from religion.”
_ John-John Williams IV
Some Christian Bankruptcy Lawyers Say Reform Bill Unbiblical
WASHINGTON (RNS) A group of Christian bankruptcy lawyers is urging religious leaders to join them in opposing Congress’s bankruptcy reform bill, which they say violates the Bible’s themes of forgiveness and charity.
About 70 attorneys wrote a letter to religious leaders pointing out Old Testament restrictions on borrowing and lending, and the command that loans be discharged once every seven years. In contrast, they wrote, today’s creditors “pile on sky high interest rates, penalties and fees, making it impossible for some families to ever pay off their debt.”
The Senate is debating the bill _ the fourth attempt in eight years to reform the bankruptcy system.
“Americans have had enough,” said bill sponsor Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, in his opening statement before the Senate Judiciary committee. They are tired of paying for high rollers who game the current system.”
The Christian attorneys disagree, saying the bill will make it more difficult for families to rebuild their lives after filing for bankruptcy.
“The notion that the current system is being `abused by deadbeats to get out of paying their debts’ is false, deceitful and demiurgic,” the letter says. “As Christian attorneys who represent families forced to file for bankruptcy we can tell you that the so-called abuses of the system are few and far between.”
The letter is signed by lawyers from Alabama, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Missouri, Ohio, California, Arkansas, Iowa and Michigan.
_ Andrea James and Lauren Etter
Israeli History Museum to Open March 15
JERUSALEM (RNS) Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust center, will unveil its new history museum on March 15.
The towering triangular-shaped museum is one of several additions Yad Vashem has added to its sprawling complex, which has undergone major renovations during the past four years. These include an art museum; an exhibition pavilion; a new Hall of Names; a Visual Center, a Learning Center; and a synagogue.
The International Institute for Holocaust Research has been expanded, and an International School for Holocaust Studies has been launched. As part of its upgrade, Yad Vashem has stepped up its efforts to videotape survivors’ testimonies before the elderly survivors die.
Unlike the original Yad Vashem, which focused on the huge scale of the Holocaust, the new complex aims to personalize the systematic murder of the Jewish people by relating the era through the eyes of the victims. This is done through the use of authentic artifacts, such as a child’s doll or family photograph once owned by Holocaust victims, as well as items used by the Nazis and their collaborators.
Paintings and drawings created by victims depict life under the Nazi regime from the victims’ perspective.
Among the more unsettling artifacts _ all of them authentic _ are the inner sole of a shoe made from the parchment of a Torah scroll, a typewriter with special keys for the Nazi swastika and SS insignia, and an anti-Semitic children’s board game called “Out With the Jews.”
One exhibit contains actual canisters of poisonous gas, a door from the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and victims’ shoes, shrunken with age, from the Madjanek death camp. A cattle car that transported Jews to the death camps stands along one wall while the wooden barracks where Jewish prisoners slept stands in another.
Individual stories of Holocaust victims appear throughout the museum, because “it’s easy to get lost in the numbers and facts. We wanted to find a way to make the Shoah personal,” said Yehudit Shendar, the Museum Division’s senior art curator.
Although the museum includes several references to other victims, including homosexuals and Gypsies, Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem’s directorate and the new museum’s chief curator, stressed that its goal is to relate the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective.
There is a trend, Shalev said, to “universalize” the Holocaust. Unless this trend is combated, he said, “it might come to the point where the story will be told without Jews, or the Jews will be very marginal.”
_ Michele Chabin
Quote of the Day: Teresa Heinz Kerry
(RNS) “You cannot have bishops in the pulpit _ long before or the Sunday before an election _ as they did in Catholic churches, saying it was a mortal sin to vote for John Kerry. … The church has a right and obligation to teach values. They don’t have the right to restrict freedom of expression, which they did.”
_ Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of former presidential candidate John Kerry, speaking about some bishops’ opposition to her husband’s campaign, during a Seattle fund-raiser. She was quoted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
MO/JL RNS
