c. 2005 Religion News Service
Air Force Assigns Task Force to Assess Religious Climate at Academy
(RNS) The Air Force has asked a new task force to report to it by May 23 about the religious climate at the U.S. Air Force Academy after a church-state watchdog group released a detailed report of allegations of religious bias.
Acting Secretary of the Air Force Michael L. Dominguez called for the investigation, the Air Force announced Tuesday (May 3).
The military service has begun a new training program for all cadets, faculty and staff at the academy called “Respecting the Spiritual Values of All People.”
“However, lingering allegations from sources such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State are being taken very seriously by the Air Force,” the military service said in a statement. “This newly appointed task force will assess the religious climate and adequacy of Air Force efforts to address the issue at the (U.S. Air Force Academy).”
Americans United, a Washington-based group, sent a 14-page report to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other military officials April 28 and asked them to quickly address allegations. They included charges that academy instructors who described themselves as born-again Christians proselytized in classrooms and a chaplain at the school urged cadets to proselytize fellow cadets who did not attend a Protestant worship service.
“We have concluded that both the specific violations and the promotion of a culture of official religious intolerance are pervasive, systemic, and evident at the very highest levels of the academy’s command structure,” the report stated.
Air Force officials have asked the task force to assess how effectively the academy addresses complaints about religious intolerance and determine how academy practices “enhance or detract from a climate that respects both the `free exercise of religion’ and the `establishment’ clauses of the First Amendment.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
United Church of Christ Accuses ABC of Double Standard on Religious Ads
(RNS) The United Church of Christ accused the ABC television network of having a double standard for its advertisers after it accepted an ad from the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family but rejected one from the church.
The Rev. Robert Chase, head of the UCC’s communication office, accused ABC of bowing to the “narrow agenda of the religious right” by accepting an ad from Focus that ran during Monday’s showing of “Supernanny.”
The ad directed viewers to the group’s Web site, where they could access the group’s extensive list of conservative-minded parenting resources and publications.
“Here’s yet another illustration of how a particular narrow agenda makes up the rules as they go along, while another religious viewpoint cannot even purchase time on the people’s airwaves to proclaim an all-inclusive message,” Chase said.
Twice in the last five months, ABC, NBC and CBS refused to broadcast ads that are part of the UCC’s national campaign. NBC and CBS said the ads were “too controversial” because they featured a gay couple, and ABC said it had a policy against religious advertising.
Chase said “network elites” were accommodating the “narrow agenda of the religious right” while rejecting what he called the UCC’s message of inclusion.
Susan Sewell, an ABC spokeswoman, declined to discuss the specifics of the ad but said, “The network doesn’t take advertising from religious groups. It’s a long-standing policy.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Southern Baptists Pull Support From Houses of Worship Free Speech Bill
(RNS) The Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy commission has withdrawn support for a bill that would allow religious institutions to endorse candidates without threatening their tax-exempt status.
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, once a vocal supporter of the bill, decided it could not affirm the latest version of the Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act, the denomination announced.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., failed a full House vote in 2002 and nearly passed as part of a larger bill last year before the controversial provision was gutted.
The most recent version sponsored by Jones does not permit political views expressed by religious leaders or congregation members to be distributed beyond those attending the service in which they are made.
The agency thinks the changes leave churches open to the possibility of government intrusion, and its leader calls the latest version a “grotesquely bad idea,” reported Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“Under the new bill, the government would permit churches to endorse a candidate but then would allow government investigators to come in and determine when the church has exceeded the government’s narrow parameters of permission,” said commission president Richard Land.
“It gives the government foxes a hunting license to enter the churches’ hen houses, and we all know what happens when foxes get into hen houses _ hens get killed, and foxes get fat.”
The latest version of the bill would amend the Internal Revenue Code to prevent the tax-exempt status of religious organizations from being affected by the “content, preparation or presentation” of addresses, such as sermons, at religious meetings or services.
When they supported the bill, commission officials continued to call for Baptist churches to refrain from candidate endorsements, Land said.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Conservative Christians Flood Education Chief With Positive Feedback
(RNS) More than 150,000 conservative Christians have sent letters or e-mail messages to the office of U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, praising her for criticizing a PBS children’s television program that depicted same-sex parents in a positive light.
At issue was “Postcards From Buster,” a show that features a cartoon rabbit visiting real families across the U.S. In one episode, Buster meets Vermont children who had two lesbian mothers. The show received funds from a federal reading grant.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, more than 150,000 members of the American Family Association, a Tupelo, Miss., a conservative Christian organization, contacted Spellings to praise her action. The Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based gay and lesbian advocacy group, sent 36,233 responses against the action.
In a January letter to PBS President Pat Mitchell, Spellings voiced concern about the show’s content. PBS pulled the episode.
Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the American Family Association, said by his count 185,498 of the association’s nearly 2.2 million members sent e-mails to Spellings to thank her for “standing up for their values.”
Though PBS pulled the episode, WGBH, the Boston television station that creates the show, aired and distributed it.
The Human Rights Campaign said more than 35,000 of the organization’s 600,000 members responded to an “action alert” asking them to e-mail Spellings to express their disappointment.
Winnie Stachelberg, vice president of the campaign’s education arm, said the e-mails “wanted to communicate to the secretary that America’s families reflect the diversity of America and her actions did not respect that diversity.”
_ Celeste Kennel-Shank
Editors: Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America is CQ
Judge Tosses Sex-Ed Program That Dismissed Baptist Views Toward Gays
(RNS) A federal judge has ordered a Maryland school district to revise its sex education curriculum after he said it seemed to favor religions that take a positive view of homosexuality.
Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Jerry Weast said he will shelve the program after some parents convinced U.S. District Court Judge Alexander Williams that it unfairly singled out Baptists and fundamentalists.
The judge said the program, which was scheduled for eighth- and 10th-graders, “presents only one view of the subject _ that homosexuality is a natural and morally correct lifestyle _ to the exclusion of other perspectives.”
Williams objected to teachers’ materials that “offer up their own opinion on such controversial topics as whether AIDS is God’s judgment on homosexuals, and whether churches that condemn homosexuality are on theologically sound ground.”
The judge said the program “paints certain Christian sects, notably Baptists, which are opposed to homosexuality, as unenlightened and biblically misguided,” according to the Washington Post.
A group of parents calling themselves Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, joined by Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, filed suit to stop the curriculum. The program was unanimously adopted by the county school board last fall, according to the Washington Times.
The parents’ attorney, Erik Stanley, said the school system had “no business putting its stamp of approval on one religion.
Conservative opponents hailed the ruling, claiming victory is keeping the “the pansexual agenda” out of the school system.
“Liberals insist on the separation of church and state when that suits their agenda,” said Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America, “but they are only too happy to welcome into the schools a funhouse mirror version of religion that supports the latest methods for sexualizing children.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
PETA Belatedly Apologizes for Comparing Animal Slaughter to Holocaust
(RNS) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has apologized for a controversial exhibit and ad campaign in which it compared the slaughtering of animals for meat to the atrocities of the Holocaust.
The organization sparked a heated debate in February 2003 when it launched the “Holocaust on Your Plate” exhibit, which displayed images of concentration camps juxtaposed with photos of animals being led to the slaughter.
Ingrid Newkirk, PETA’s president, released a letter Thursday (May 5) apologizing for the exhibit, following a decision by the organization to omit another reference to a Holocaust-linked Yiddish song in a more recent ad campaign.
Newkirk’s letter was publicized on the observance of Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In the letter, Newkirk explained that the “Holocaust on Your Plate” campaign was “designed to sensitize people to different forms of systematic degradation and exploitation, and the logic and methods employed in factory farms and slaughterhouses are analogous to those used in concentration camps.”
“By showing how humans were treated `like animals,”’ she continued, “it was never our goal to humiliate the victims further _ instead, we hoped to shed light on the process through which any living being can be reduced to an interchangeable, disposable `thing.”’
Newkirk added that PETA is “deeply sorry” about the pain that the campaign caused, and she hopes to work with Jewish groups in the future to promote the vegetarian and vegan lifestyles.
_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Researchers: More Than 1,200 Megachurches in the United States
(RNS) Protestant megachurches _ those with weekly attendance exceeding 2,000 _ may be far more prevalent than originally thought.
Researchers at the Connecticut-based Hartford Institute for Religion Research and the Dallas-based Leadership Network say they have discovered that the number of Protestant megachurches may be at least 1,200 rather than the figure of about 850 they have previously cited.
“It’s hard to believe we missed so many,” said Scott Thumma, a professor at Hartford Seminary, where the institute is housed.
“At one point, there were small (enough) numbers of megachurches that one person could kind of know them all. Now there’s become so many that it really takes some kind of team effort or sharing of information in order to keep up with the accuracy.”
He is collaborating with experts at Leadership Network, an organization that works with pastors of large churches, to further refine the numbers of churches that claim more than 2,000 in weekly worship attendance.
“Our preliminary research for the major survey effort indicates there could very well be another 200 to 400 megachurches in addition to these,” said Warren Bird of Leadership Network in a statement about the conclusion that there are at least 1,200 megachurches. “We’ll have to see what information the questionnaires return to know for sure.”
Thumma said in an interview that megachurch critics who thought the large congregations were a baby-boom phenomenon that would wane quickly seem to be incorrect.
“In fact, they’re increasing almost exponentially over the last 20 years,” he said. “We’ve found megachurches now in just about every state.”
Although researchers must await results of surveys they will send to more than 1,700 large congregations in mid-May, they already have a sense of where the largest of some 1,200 megachurches are. Texas has the most with 174 megachurches, followed by California with 169, Florida with 83 and Georgia with 64.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Rome Judge Convicts Vatican Radio Officials in Pollution Case
ROME (RNS) A Rome judge on Monday (May 9) found two Vatican Radio officials guilty of allowing transmitters to emit dangerously high levels of electromagnetic pollution, and gave them suspended prison sentences.
Judge Luisa Martoni gave Cardinal Roberto Tucci, president of Vatican Radio, and the Rev. Pasquale Borgomeo, general director, suspended 10-day sentences. A third defendant, assistant technical director Costantino Pacifici, was cleared for lack of proof.
The Jesuit-run Vatican Radio said in a statement that it considered the conviction “unjustified” and would appeal.
The verdict was the latest development in a case that has strained relations between the Vatican and Italian officials for more than four years.
Residents in the suburban towns of Cesano and Santa Maria di Galeria north of Rome contended that the “electrosmog” emitted by the transmitters was seven times the level permitted by Italian law. The regional health authority said it found that children in the area were six times more likely than others to develop leukemia.
Vatican Radio first argued that Italian authorities had no jurisdiction because the transmitter site was extraterritorial, but it later agreed to cut back the emissions to levels permitted by Italian law, which is the toughest in the world.
In April 2001 then-Prime Minister Giuliano Amato intervened personally to block an order by the Ministry of the Environment that would have closed down Vatican Radio’s worldwide Easter season broadcasts.
Following Monday’s verdict, Vatican Radio expressed “regret that its position was not recognized as valid and accepted by the tribunal.” It called the verdict “unjustified both for legal considerations and for reasons of fact.”
“There is no justified reason for concern by the population,” it said.
In addition to heading Vatican Radio, Tucci, 84, served for some 20 years as the chief organizer of trips that Pope John Paul II took outside Italy.
_ Peggy Polk
Gay and Lesbian Festival Still on in Israel in August
JERUSALEM (RNS) Contrary to some media reports, an international 10-day gay and lesbian festival is still scheduled to open in Jerusalem on Aug. 18, organizers say.
The Jerusalem Post and other media outlets reported last week that the WorldPride 2005 festival had been postponed so as not to overburden police needed to oversee the mid-August withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.
“Reports that we have made a decision are outrageously premature,” Hagai El-Ad, director of the Jerusalem Open House, the center for gays and lesbians that is spearheading the festival, told RNS on Tuesday (May 10).
El-Ad said Israel’s gay and lesbian community “is absolutely committed to holding WorldPride in Jerusalem. However, if the government moves the date of the disengagement, we feel it would be inappropriate to hold the festival at the same time.”
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced Monday that he intends to postpone the “disengagement” from Gaza and parts of the West Bank from June 20 until mid-August.
Sharon said the withdrawal should not take place during the three-week mourning period leading up to Tisha B’av, the day Jews around the world mourn the destruction of the biblical Temples. This three-week period is considered so inauspicious and solemn that religious Jews refrain from purchasing new clothes or furniture, and from relocating to a new home.
El-Ad said his organization would make its decision only if the government officially decides to delay the disengagement. It is expected to vote on the matter next week.
If the delay is approved, El-Ad said, “we will reschedule the festival. It is a matter of public sensitivity. Regardless of individual people’s support or opposition to the disengagement, this will likely be a very traumatic period for Israeli society.
“The gay community in this country is not disengaged” from larger issues in Israel, El-Ad said.
_ Michele Chabin
Scholar: Southern Baptist Evangelism Has `Discernible Deterioration’
(RNS) A scholar of the Southern Baptist Convention says the nation’s largest Protestant denomination is “on the path of slow but discernible deterioration” in its efforts to evangelize, a Florida Baptist paper reports.
The Florida Baptist Witness reported Thursday (May 5) about a study to be released later this month by The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. Its author is Thom S. Rainer, dean of the seminary’s Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth in Louisville, Ky., who says the denomination is in an “evangelistic crisis” despite the conservative resurgence that began in the denomination in 1979.
“An honest evaluation of the data leads us to but one conclusion,” Rainer writes in “A Resurgence Not Yet Realized: Evangelistic Effectiveness in the Southern Baptist Convention since 1979.”
“The conservative resurgence has not resulted in a more evangelistic denomination. Indeed, the Southern Baptist Convention is less evangelistic today than it was in the years preceding the conservative resurgence.”
By his count, one person was baptized for every 19 members of SBC churches in 1950. In 1978, that ratio increased to 36 to 1 and by 2003 _ the number reached 43 to 1, despite the desire for a lower ratio.
Rainer says the denomination is “evangelistically anemic” because most baptisms take place in relatively few of its congregations. He recommended that pastors repent “for their lack of evangelistic zeal” and suggested increased research and training to improve evangelism efforts.
The scholar believes the baptism statistics would have dropped even further if there had not been a reformation in the 16.2 million-member denomination.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Week: Lawyer A.P. Pishevar
(RNS) “Christ is not speaking to the press at this time.”
_ Attorney A.P. Pishevar, speaking to the Associated Press about his client, a man born as Peter Robert Phillips Jr., who has had trouble getting a driver’s license in West Virginia with his new name, Jesus Christ.
MO/PH END RNS
