c. 2005 Religion News Service
Southern Baptists See Small Increase in Baptisms After Previous Decline
(RNS) The Southern Baptist Convention has seen a small increase in baptisms after a four-year decline.
The Annual Church Profile, compiled by the denomination’s LifeWay Christian Resources, shows an increase in baptism totals from 377,357 in 2003 to 387,947 a year later, the denomination announced.
The Rev. Bobby Welch, president of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, has drawn attention to the need for Southern Baptist churches to focus more on evangelism and baptisms. During a cross-country bus tour last summer, he urged his fellow Baptists to try to baptize 1 million people between June 2005 and June 2006.
“I think there is a lot we can take from these statistics that is positive and shows a turnaround from where we’ve been the past three years,” said LifeWay Christian Resources President James T. Draper Jr. in a statement about the numbers.
Prior to 2004, Southern Baptists had reported decreases in baptisms four years in a row.
New statistics show the denomination’s increased its membership by 62,444, giving it a total of 16,267,494.
A net increase of 441 new churches gave the denomination a total of 43,465 at the end of 2004.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Lutheran Church Body Proposes Allowing Gays and Lesbian Ministers
(RNS) The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Church Council has forwarded a proposal giving bishops power to let congregations ordain non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy.
Carlos Pena, ELCA vice president and chair of the council, said in a statement that the council wrestled with the contradiction of keeping a rule against ordaining gays and lesbians in relationships while at the same time permitting churches to break it.
“The council realized that it (gay relationships) is a reality and, for the sake of outreach and ministry, we need to create some opportunity for candidates who are living in a committed relationship to be ordained,” Pena said.
At its April 9-11 meetings in Chicago, the council, a legislativ body for the 5.2 million-member denomination, decided to advance three resolutions that followed the previous findings of a church task force on homosexuality. That task force had advised the church to seek church unity amid disagreements, keep a 1993 statement banning same-sex marriage and grant exceptions for gay and lesbian ministers.
The council also wrote bylaws outlining the process through which bishops can allow some congregations to ordain gays and lesbians in relationships.
If the resolution is passed by the Churchwide Assembly in August _ it would require a two-thirds vote _ congregations could choose gay and lesbian ministers, provided the individual has proven to a bishop that he or she is in a lifelong, committed and monogamous partnership.
A group of Lutheran theologians _ made up of professors at Lutheran seminaries, colleges and universities as well as other institutions _ have signed a statement urging the Churchwide Assembly to adopt the task force recommendations.
As of Tuesday (April 12), 85 theologians had endorsed the statement, co-authored by Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago Bible professors the Rev. Ralph Klein, also acting dean, and the Rev. Barbara Rossing.
Noting their diverse perspectives on sexuality, the theologians said in the statement that the task force’s recommendations “represent a much-needed and faithful compromise for this moment in the life of our church.”
That statement came in response to a previous statement by 17 theologians who said the recommendations on gay relationships would “destabilize” the Lutheran denomination.
_ Celeste Kennel-Shank
Canadian Court Orders Jehovah’s Witness to Undergo Blood Transfusions
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (RNS) A court has ruled that a 14-year-old Jehovah’s Witness being treated for cancer must undergo blood transfusions even though the procedure violates her religious beliefs.
The British Columbia Supreme Court on Monday (April 11) rejected an application by the girl and her parents to overturn a lower court’s ruling that allowed doctors to give the girl a transfusion if necessary to save her life.
The court declared that the state has an obligation to help preserve the girl’s life, a position that overrides her right to decide whether she should have the transfusion.
The teen’s religious beliefs, which she is free to hold, cannot supersede her rights to life as guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the court added.
According to The Globe and Mail newspaper, the teenager told the court she would refuse a transfusion, but that she also “passionately” expressed her desire to live.
The family was “extremely disappointed” with the decision, said the family’s lawyer, Shane Brady.
The girl, who cannot be named because she is a minor, takes a religious injunction to abstain from blood and blood products “very seriously,” the attorney said.
Since a cancerous tumor was discovered in the teen’s leg in December, she has undergone three rounds of chemotherapy. She hoped that the next cycle of treatment, scheduled to begin Tuesday (April 12), would not require a transfusion.
She told doctors she did not object to chemotherapy or even the amputation of her leg, if necessary, to save her life.
The family is considering an appeal.
In a similar case in Alberta in 2002, a court ruled that a teenage Jehovah’s Witness with leukemia must continue receiving blood transfusions. The girl, then 16, was forced to undergo the procedure some 30 times, often by being restrained and sedated.
_ Ron Csillag
Survey: Most 18- to 25-year-Olds Religiously `Undecided’ or `Godless’
(RNS) Forty-six percent of 18- to 25-year-olds classified themselves as “undecided” about their faith, while 27 percent said they were “godly” or highly religious, according to a study released Monday (April 11) by Reboot, a national network of Jewish adults.
The remaining 27 percent in the national study defined themselves as “godless” or secular, said the survey of 1,385 young people, completed in November 2004.
The study called “Generation Y,” those born between 1980 and 2000, a “generation of individuals” who choose between faiths just as easily as they click to play their own songs on an iPod, a digital music player.
But unlike the music industry, most churches do not hold focus groups or poll young members to find out what might get them into the pews more often, said Reboot co-founder Roger Bennett.
Bennett said the motivations of young people are changing “and the question is whether major denominations will be able to tap into that.”
Pollster Anna Greenberg, the report’s author, decried a lack of “understanding the role religion plays in young people’s lives.” She said that because Generation Y is the most ethnically diverse group to date, religion is no longer the defining characteristic it once was.
According to the report, “Gen Y” is expressing religion in more casual ways than its parents’ generation did. Praying before meals (55 percent), chatting with friends (38 percent), and reading religious literature (33 percent) were seen as alternatives to attending a synagogue or going to Sunday morning services.
_ Helena Andrews
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Appoints Emir Caner New Dean
(RNS) Emir Caner, a convert to Christianity from Islam who has written controversially about his former religion, has been named dean of the College at Southwestern, the new undergraduate school at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Caner, 34, will leave his post as associate dean of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., for his new deanship at the Fort Worth, Texas-based school. The announcment came on April 5. Southeastern and Southwestern are two of the six Southern Baptist graduate schools in the United States.
In February, Caner’s brother Ergun, also a convert to Christianity, was named dean of the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.
The brothers co-authored a controversial 2002 book called “Unveiling Islam: An Insider’s Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs.” The Rev. Jerry Vines, a Southern Baptist minister from Jacksonville, Fla., said he was referring to that book when he called the prophet Muhammad a “demon-possessed pedophile” in an address to the Southern Baptist Convention that deeply offended Muslim groups.
Southwestern Seminary officials said that Caner will also serve as a professor of history at the school. Baptist Press reported that seminary president Paige Patterson called Caner a “colorful figure” who would make the new undergraduate school “a large college.”
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Poll: U.S. Jews Support Israeli Disengagement from Gaza and West Bank
(RNS) Nearly two-thirds of American Jews support Israel’s plan to leave Gaza and some settlements in the West Bank, a new poll reported Monday (April 11).
Hebrew University sociologist Steven M. Cohen completed the telephone survey of 501 American Jews last week for Ameinu, an American Zionist organization. The survey had a margin of error of plus-or-minus five percent.
The poll found that in addition to 62 percent of those surveyed supporting the current disengagement plan put forth by Israel, a plurality of Jews (41 percent) believe both that Israel should be willing to withdraw from most Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and that Israel should allow a token number of Palestinian refugees to return to parts of Israel that they had left.
The survey was released as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited President Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch. Bush and Sharon disagree on some specifics of a disengagement plan, but Sharon has pledged to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza.
Seventy percent of U.S. Jews said that Israel should be willing to accept a Palestinian state, the poll found. But only 24 percent said that even with a signed peace agreement, “the great majority of Palestinians are prepared to live in peace with Israelis.”
Cohen said in a statement that the poll showed congruous views between Israelis and American Jews.
“As they have in the past, American Jews’ attitudes toward the conflict remarkably resemble those of the Israeli public, with, in fact, the same Orthodox/non-Orthodox split as in Israel,” he said, citing opinion polls taken of Israelis.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Quote of the Day: Episcopal Bishop William E. Swing of California
(RNS) “The governors of California are big on executions. The governors of California are 90-pound moral weaklings when it comes to restoration of human beings and championing lives that are remade with fresh possibilities.”
_ The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California, in a sermon in which he criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for overturning the parole of a prisoner Swing ordained as a deacon in July.
MO/JL END RNS
