c. 2005 Religion News Service
Religion Writers Rank Biggest Stories of 2005
(RNS) Religion writers deemed Pope John Paul II’s death and the naming of his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, the top two religion stories of 2005.
An end-of-life dispute, faith-based disaster relief and the ordination of gay clergy also made the list, released by the Religion Newswriters Association on Tuesday (Dec. 13).
One hundred of its journalist members ranked 28 religious events in an online survey Dec. 7-12.
Terri Schiavo captured the No. 3 spot in the poll. Her death in a Florida hospice center after her feeding tube was removed under court order sparked heated debates in Congress and among religious groups.
Faith-based organizations’ massive mobilization to help victims of natural disasters was voted the No. 4 news story of the year. Hurricane Katrina’s devastating blow to the Gulf Coast and an earthquake in Pakistan also spurred discussions about God’s role in cataclysmic events and the morality of racial inequalities in America.
The ordination of gay clergy continued to roil mainline Protestant groups, making it the No. 5 story. The Episcopal Church and Canadian Anglicans remained firm in their decision to ordain gays and lesbians, despite objections from bishops and others in the worldwide Anglican Communion. United Methodist courts supported the banning of gay clergy and even parishioners, despite the protests of many congregants.
In addition to ranking religious news events, 68 percent of voting reporters said John Paul II was the biggest newsmaker of the year.
Other ranked stories were the debate over intelligent design as an alternative theory to evolution, faith-based groups’ response to Supreme Court nominees, megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s book sales and AIDS relief work, and the Rev. Billy Graham’s farewell evangelism tour in New York City.
A complete list of the top 20 stories can be found at http://www.rna.org.
_ Nicole LaRosa
$20 Million Donations Boost Islamic Studies at Harvard, Georgetown
(RNS) Harvard University plans to use a $20 million donation from a Saudi prince to increase its focus on contemporary Islamic thought and Islam in South and Southeast Asia.
“The majority of Muslims live east of Karachi. Not as much attention has been given to those areas,” said Roy Mottahedeh, a history professor at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. “There’s a great deal of intellectual fervency in the Islamic world.”
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, whom Forbes Magazine ranked last year as the fourth richest person in the world, also donated $20 million to Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. The Washington-based center plans to endow three faculty positions and rename the center for the prince, a nephew of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.
John Esposito, head of Georgetown’s center, said the donation allows it to meet the challenges of a post-Sept. 11 world.
The center’s “needs expanded exponentially after 9/11, but we haven’t had sufficient resources,” Esposito said. “This gift endows the center for perpetuity.”
He said the center plans to add one faculty position and “enhance the think-tank side” of its work, such as holding more workshops on Muslim-Western understanding, traveling to Muslim countries and publishing more white papers and translating them into Arabic.
The Harvard donation took six months to negotiate and is among the 25 biggest the university has ever received. The school said it plans to hire four new Islamic studies professors.
Harvard currently has 13 senior professors and 16 junior and visiting professors teaching Islamic studies classes. The money will also be used to digitize many of the more than 150,000 Islam-related texts Harvard has in its library and make them available online, as well as increase the number of Islamic studies graduate students through additional scholarships and financial aid.
The Saudi prince has also given to other causes. Earlier this year Bin Talal gave $20 million to the Louvre Museum in Paris to create an Islamic art wing. He has also donated money to help victims of the South Asian tsunami and Pakistan earthquake.
_ Omar Sacirbey
Post-Hurricane Donations Most Generous Outpouring in Nation’s History
(RNS) The outpouring of private charity to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina and two sister storms now ranks as the most generous in American history, surpassing donations after Sept. 11, according to researchers who track philanthropy.
Americans have donated about $2.97 billion to families affected by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, said Patrick Rooney, director of research with the University of Indiana’s Center on Philanthropy.
That surpasses the $2.8 billion donated after the terrorist attacks of 2001, he said.
Moreover, the center’s estimate of storm-giving is certainly low, Rooney said. The center based its estimate on a survey of more than 175 organizations that report storm-related collections and distributions. As a result, it missed the uncountable value of off-radar gifts. Examples include the value of thousands of volunteer laborers and truckloads of supplies sent into the storm zone by independent churches, the value of private convoys and other relief efforts organized by families with relatives in the storm zones, and the value of private homeowners opening homes to displaced families, the center said.
The center included aid for hurricanes Rita and Wilma in its research because that’s how most agencies solicited help, Rooney said.
Americans’ response after the hurricanes was remarkable in another way, Rooney said: It poured in at a furious rate.
Americans contributed $1 billion in just three weeks after Katrina. By contrast, it took eight weeks to reach that level after the terrorist attacks four years ago, he said.
“The rapidity of the growth in donations to hurricane relief is really quite astonishing,” he said. “We think it was a combination of so many people affected, the incredible media coverage … the permanence of the damage, and also the clear evidence of the disproportionate impact on the poor.”
In addition, Americans are growing ever more comfortable going to their computers and giving money over the Internet, he said.
The slow and relatively ineffective governmental response probably also had an effect, he said.
“I think a lot of people must have said, `We’d better give some money because they’re screwing this thing up,”’ Rooney said. “Just about everybody I know felt the need or desire to do something.”
The American Red Cross was far and away the greatest resource, according to the center’s figures. By mid-November it had already given away or committed almost $1.6 billion.
The next-largest donors were the Salvation Army, giving $270 million by late October; Catholic Charities USA, which committed $105 million; and the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, which reported $100 million in mid-November, Rooney said.
_ Bruce Nolan
Ford, Under Pressure, to Advertise Entire Line in Gay Publications
(RNS) The Ford Motor Co. said it will advertise its entire line of cars in gay magazines after social conservatives pressured Ford’s Jaguar and Land Rover divisions to pull their gay-targeted ad campaigns.
The 3 million-member American Family Association ended its boycott against Ford on Nov. 30 after the automaker, citing economic constraints, said Jaguar and Land Rover would not advertise in gay publications in 2006.
Gay groups accused Ford of yielding to pressure from “extremists.” After a meeting with gay activists Monday (Dec. 12), corporate officials said they would advertise all eight Ford divisions in gay-themed publications.
The Ford lineup includes Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mazda, Volvo and Aston Martin.
However, Ford Vice President Joe Laymon told gay groups in a letter Wednesday that it would be “inconsistent with the way we manage our business to direct” the individual ad campaigns by either Jaguar or Land Rover.
Laymon also said “the business situation” will prevent Ford from supporting some gay causes, and defended the carmaker’s decision to meet with representatives of the American Family Association.
“We expect to be measured not only by the meetings we conduct but by our conduct itself,” Laymon said. “Our record on tolerance and inclusion speaks for itself, and I am proud to be judged on that record at any time.”
Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said, “It’s important … to understand that these anti-gay groups with the deceptive names do not speak for America’s families.”
AFA officials declined to comment Thursday, but gay groups praised the decision. A coalition of 26 gay groups called Ford’s decision an “unequivocal reaffirmation of Ford’s historic commitment to our community and the core American values of fairness and equality.”
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Egypt Changes Restrictions on Repairing Christian Churches
(RNS) Christian churches in Egypt, an overwhelmingly Muslim country, will be able to carry out long-delayed repairs thanks to a decree by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
The decree was made in response to appeals from Egypt’s community of 7 million to 10 million Christians, who say they are systematically discriminated against due to their status as a religious minority. International human rights group have also pressured the Egyptian government to deal with all religions in an equal manner.
Mubarak decided to reform the Hamayouni Decree, an Ottoman law dating back to 1856, which required the president’s personal approval for the simplest of repairs. The Egyptian media announced the reform, known as Decree No. 291, on Dec. 8.
In accordance with the decree, the government now has 30 days during which to approve church requests for renovations. Governors _ the officials entrusted with making church-related decisions _ must justify a rejection.
The government has approved only 12 requests for church-related construction, the U.S. State Department said in its 2005 International Religious Freedom Report.
Jubilee Campaign, an interdominational Christian human rights pressure group based in England, said in a 2004 report that Egypt’s Copts, who comprise about 90 percent of the country’s Christians, have faced an uphill battle with regard to repairs and building rights.
As an example, the organization noted that “permission has been denied for the last four years to build a toilet for St. Mary’s Church in El Kosai in Assiut Province.”
Jubilee Campaign asserted that militant Muslims have been known to set up makeshift mosques near the site of planned churches or beside churches in need of repair, thereby giving the government a legal pretext for preventing construction or repair.
Safwat El Baiady, president of the Protest Churches of Egypt, told Compass Direct, a Christian news agency, that the decree “will solve almost 80 percent of our problems, rebuilding old churches, but we have to be very frank: It doesn’t solve all our problems.”
_ Michele Chabin
Catholics Decry `South Park’ Episode on Virgin Mary
(RNS) The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has joined mounting criticism of an episode of Comedy Central’s “South Park” that he said “gratuitously” ridiculed the Virgin Mary.
Bishop William Skylstad wrote to Tom Freston, co-president of Comedy Central’s parent company, Viacom, to condemn the program for depicting a statue of the mother of Jesus in a “tasteless and ugly fashion.”
“I hope you will appreciate the gravity of the hurt this program has caused and that you will not permit your networks to be used to give similar offense in the future,” wrote Skylstad, the bishop of Spokane, Wash.
The cartoon depicted a statue of Mary spurting blood in areas of the body generally considered private. The episode goes on to portray an investigation by Pope Benedict XVI, who is sprayed by the statue and makes a crude statement about the bleeding.
The Catholic League, a conservative watchdog group, posted a graphic description of the episode on its Web site and called for public outcry aimed at top Viacom officials.
Catholic League President Bill Donohue demanded an apology, saying the offense was multiplied because the episode was broadcast on the eve and day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Dec. 8), a Catholic holy day celebrating the belief that Mary was conceived without original sin.
Donohue insisted the network apologize to Roman Catholics and pledge that the episode be permanently retired and not be distributed on DVD. Tony Fox, a Comedy Central spokesman, defended the show and declined to apologize.
“We stand behind the creators of `South Park’ and their right to satirize anything and anybody they choose to satirize,” Fox said Friday (Dec. 16), adding that the series often pokes fun at religion, including around the holidays.
_ Jason Kane
Jewish Groups Push for Sanctions Over Iranian Holocaust Comments
(RNS) U.S. Jewish groups, irate over comments by Iran’s president that the Nazi Holocaust was a “myth,” are stepping up pressure on the international community to punish Iran for the controversial remarks.
Several Jewish groups have launched a public relations campaign to censure Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who on Wednesday (Dec. 14) called the Holocaust a myth and said Palestinians were suffering because of European guilt over the Holocaust.
“If you committed the crime, then give a part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them so that the Jews can establish their country,” Ahmadinejad said, according to The New York Times.
Ahmadinejad was echoing comments he made at an Islamic summit in Mecca earlier this month; in October, he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” at an Iranian conference titled “The World Without Zionism.”
In response, Jewish groups are mounting public pressure, including a rare move by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that criticized the Bush administration for not referring Iran’s noncompliance on nuclear activities to the U.N. Security Council.
“As the United States and its allies ponder their next move, a radical Iranian regime is steadily marching toward an atomic bomb,” wrote AIPAC President Howard Kohr in the group’s newsletter. AIPAC is also supporting a bill in Congress that condemns Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric.
Both the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee are calling for sanctions against Iran after the U.N. Security Council condemned the remarks.
“The council has not, however, made the leap from such criticism to any actionable measures to address and stymie the threats posed by Iran,” stated Felice Gaer, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Blaustein Institute for Human Rights. “It is essential for the international community to be more active, and soon.”
In a telephone interview from Rome, ADL national director Abraham Foxman said politicians took the initiative to blast Ahmadinejad’s remarks. When Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed claimed two years ago that Jews control the world, Foxman said, “We had to plead, beg and cajole world leaders” to condemn him. Now, “there is a uniform, clear denunciation and repulsion.”
_ Rachel Pomerance
U.S. Muslim Groups Endorse New Guidelines Preventing Aid to Terrorists
(RNS) Muslim-American organizations are welcoming the U.S. Treasury Department’s revised guidelines on how to ensure that funds raised by nonprofit groups do not inadvertently go to terrorist organizations.
“We’ve been involved with the Treasury Department since the beginning,” said Dr. Sayyid Sayeed, secretary-general of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest umbrella group for Muslim organizations in North America. “We want to make sure not a single cent of Muslim and American charity should go to anyone involved in terrorist activity or anyone with a terrorist philosophy.”
After 9/11, some Muslim-American charities were shut down by the federal government on allegations of funds being diverted to terrorist organizations abroad. The shutdowns prompted concern from the 9/11 Commission, worried about restricting civil liberties. More recently, the Senate Finance Committee recently ended a probe into 25 Muslim-American organizations after failing to find any links to terrorism.
The Treasury Department released its revised guidelines Wednesday (Dec. 14).
“We welcome any federal standards for nonprofit organizations,” said Arif Shaikh, public relations manager for Islamic Relief, a Muslim relief organization that has projects both domestically and abroad. “We have self-imposed guidelines to make sure all of our activities are transparent, but we feel that guidelines from the federal government will protect us all.”
The guidelines from the Treasury Department are voluntary, however, and do not supersede any laws of the federal government.
“Even if you follow all of the guidelines, it does not guarantee you are in a safe harbor against investigation,” said Sayeed.
Originally released in November 2002, the guidelines were revised after extensive review and comment by various nonprofit groups. The department will accept comments and feedback from groups before the finalized version of the guidelines are released in February.
“The guidelines are a work in progress,” said Mohamed El-sanousi, director of communications at ISNA and a member of the Council for American Muslim Nonprofits. “They provide us with transparency, accountability and credibility, but if we see impediments to the work of our organizations, we have to come forward with our concerns.”
_ Mariam Jukaku
Guidelines Presented to Retailers of Video Games
(RNS) Religious advocates of corporate responsibility have developed guidelines to help major retailers steer children away from video games containing violence, racist content and sexual themes.
Working with companies such as Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and Circuit City, the New York-based Christian Brothers Investment Services, which promotes socially responsible and ethical investing, condensed the most effective practices of each corporation into a set of guidelines.
The group released its guidelines Dec. 13 in conjunction with other members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. In an effort to keep minors away from video games rated “Mature” (M), the coalition is, among other things:
_ Urging retailers to post video game sales policies prominently in stores and online.
_ Training employees on the video games sales policy.
_ Asking retailers to separate M-rated from youth-oriented games.
“While we’ve seen improvement among retailers on this issue, much more work needs to be done,” said Cathy Rowan, co-chair of the ICCR Violence and Militarization of Society Working Group, in a statement.
The groups say that while parents play a key role in the process, retailers must recognize their unique responsibility to prevent minors from accessing violent products.
Julie Tanner, Christian Brothers Investment Services corporate advocacy coordinator, said the guidelines help retailers help themselves and “be better neighbors in the communities they serve.” The guidelines promote the retailers’ credibility; diminish legislative, legal and reputational risks; and in turn, boost shareholder value, Tanner said.
_ Jason Kane
Hanukkah Gifts Sent to Jewish Soldiers in Iraq
(RNS) With Jewish American soldiers facing an isolated Hanukkah in Iraq, a family has launched an effort to send them packages filled with dreidels, yarmulkes and menorahs.
“You have young Jewish soldiers serving in Iraq who are kind of separated, and there’s not a lot there and they don’t feel connected to their Judaism,” said Adeena Bleich, a Jewish community activist in Los Angeles.
Bleich created Operation Far From Home last Passover with her parents, Linda and Phil Bleich. The family lives in New Haven, Conn., but the Hanukkah campaign has spread nationwide with Operation Far From Home receiving 500 Jewish music CDs from the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and donations from around the country.
The Hanukkah packages sent to military bases have enough holiday items for 10 to 15 Jewish service members. Along with traditional religious items, volunteers send cheese puffs, cookies, kosher food, pens, writing paper and Hanukkah cards. The Bleich family got friends in California and Connecticut to wrap the items for Jews serving in Iraq as well as soldiers in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar.
“Jewish solders need to know that we’re here and we’re thinking of them,” said Linda Bleich, 58, an Orthodox Jewish mother of three whose husband is a retired wholesaler.
A Jewish soldier in Iraq, Army Staff Sgt. David T. Silcox, wrote in an e-mail that he appreciated the Hanukkah items. “We have a hard time getting things here,” he wrote.
In Los Angeles, fliers about Operation Far From Home were placed in the city’s major Orthodox synagogues such as Young Israel of Century City. “It’s our responsibility to support our soldiers overseas who are defending democracy for us,” said Young Israel Rabbi Elazar Mushkin.
Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, begins Sunday (Dec. 25).
_ David Finnigan
Quote of the Week: “Charlie Brown Christmas” Producer Lee Mendelson
(RNS) “We told Schulz, `Look, you can’t read from the Bible on network television.”’
_ Lee Mendelson, executive producer of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” about initial fretting over “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz’s insistence that the program include the reading of the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. The program remains a hit 40 years later, with the gospel reading intact. He was quoted by USA Today.
MO/PH END RNS
