c. 2006 Religion News Service
Graham, Moody, Crosby All Found in Heaven in New `Left Behind’ Book
(RNS) The “Left Behind” apocalyptic thriller series is predicting some of the celebrities of the Christian faith who are _ or will be _ in heaven.
“The Rapture,” the latest novel in the series that will be released on June 6, depicts heavenly citizens ranging from the Apostle Paul to evangelist Billy Graham, its publisher has announced. Graham, 87, is still alive.
Those winning a place in heaven include the late Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ; Dwight L. Moody, founder of Moody Bible Institute; hymn writer Fanny Crosby; John and Betty Stam, martyred missionaries to China; and Ken Taylor, founder of Tyndale House Publishers.
“We are sometimes accused of painting a violent, negative picture of God,” said Tim LaHaye, who with co-author Jerry B. Jenkins has written the best-selling series.
“Jerry and I want to communicate that the real story of `Left Behind’ is about hope and our merciful God. We felt that it was important to the overall story to show the unseen and convey how God’s promises fulfilled may look.”
Tyndale House, the publisher of the series, said the new book incorporates “snapshot scenes from heaven” that show the well-known and the unrecognized “receiving their crowns in heaven.”
The third of three prequels to the popular series, “The Rapture” portrays the belief that Christians will be carried away to heaven before a period of tribulation.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Update: Anglican Panel Responds to Conn. Episcopal Priests
(RNS) An Anglican panel responsible for settling disputes between parishes and bishops on Tuesday (May 30) responded to charges from six conservative Connecticut pastors that it had shirked its duty.
The six pastors, known as the “Connecticut Six” have sued their bishop, the Rt. Rev. Andrew Smith, over church property, money and personnel. They complained when the Anglican panel refused to take up their case.
Retired Australian Archbishop Peter Carnley, who chairs the Anglican Panel of Reference, said the panel’s “published guidelines request a stay on civil proceedings” before it can hear a dispute.
Carnley also said the panel informed the six pastors of its decision through a representative on March 6. In a statement released to the media May 17, the “Connecticut Six” said that “we have had no contact with, or personal communication from, the Panel. …”
The turmoil between the parties began in 2003, when Smith supported the election of openly gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire. The six pastors said they could not remain under the bishop’s authority.
The Connecticut diocese is part of the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church in the United States, which is the American arm of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
_ Daniel Burke
Nuns, Following a Nearby Monastery, Open Doors to BBC Cameras
LONDON (RNS) A British convent has opened the previously unseen world of its tightly knit sisterhood to national television _ at the suggestion of an abbot who reported an “amazing response” when cameras went live in his own monastery a year ago.
At the nuns’ invitation, BBC-TV has gone behind the closed doors at the Poor Clares convent at Arundel, in southern England, to follow four lay women who gave up their everyday lifestyles to spend 40 days and nights with its community of sisters.
The program, entitled “The Convent,” is tentatively scheduled to be televised across Britain on June 14.
The broadcaster promises a candid view of convent life as the cameras follow the four outsiders as they seek to cope without material possessions on their intended “spiritual journey.”
From day one, the BBC says, there were “tears, high emotions and revelations” as the quartet left their modern lives and struggled with the convent’s rigorous routines, 5 a.m. starts and _ almost overwhelmingly at times _ the silence.
“The Convent” follows on the success of “The Monastery,” BBC-TV’s surprise hit last year, when five ordinary men similarly spent 40 days and nights with the Benedictine monks at Worth Abbey, near the Poor Clares.
Within a month, Abbot Christopher Jamison reported, the monastery’s Web site had recorded 40,000 hits, and its monks had received some 3,000 e-mails and letters. The response, the abbot said, was “to a degree that we really hadn’t anticipated.”
The Poor Clares nuns contacted Jamison, who urged them to open their convent _ described as even more secretive than the monastery _ to the cameras.
The nuns have a Web site, where they identify themselves as “sisters, who share prayer, work, laughter and struggles” as they live according to the “forms of life” drawn up in 1253 by St. Clare of Assisi.
_ Al Webb
Boundary-pushing Sister Jeannette Normandin Dies at 77
(RNS) Sister Jeannette Normandin, who broke new ground in Massachusetts by opening homes for women with AIDS and broke church rules by assuming roles traditionally held by priests, died Tuesday (May 30). She was 77.
Normandin received numerous awards that lauded her ministry among those marginalized by illness and poverty. But she also drew the ire of church leaders in Boston by advocating a greater role for women within the Catholic church.
In 2000, after the nun annointed a child with oil during baptism ceremony _ a part of the liturgy traditionally performed by priests and deacons _ Normandin was stripped of her duties at the Jesuit Urban Center in Boston, where she had lived and worked for 11 years, and forced to move out.
“I made a decision _ I could have filled my heart with hatred and anger, but instead I’m going to focus myself on prayer and ask the Holy Spirit to guide me not to be bitter,” Normandin told the Boston Globe a few months after she was ousted.
In an obituary submitted to the Boston Globe, members of her order, the Sisters of St. Anne, remembered Normandin as “no stranger to controversy and committed to the role of women in the Catholic Church.”
John Fuller, a medical doctor and Jesuit priest who worked with Normandin at the center for five years, said she “did wonderful work, especially in trying to promote the causes of women, women who were homeless or suffered with HIV.”
After serving years as a counselor to women in prison, in 1994 Normandin founded Ruah, a home for women living with AIDS.
“She was on the front lines during the darkest ages of when AIDS was relentlessly ravaging people in the Boston community,” Jonathan Scott, president a residential treatment agency for AIDS and addiction, told the Boston Globe.
Normandin’s work among AIDS patients brought her into contact with gays and lesbians, each of whom she tended with extraordinary compassion, said Sister Jeannine Gramick, who is active in church ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics.
“I would say she was a woman following the gospel and modeling Jesus’ inclusive approach to people. We’re suffering a great loss with her death,” Gramick said.
Fuller, Normandin’s former colleague, said that the nun, like many people “had a blind side,” when it came to understanding the implications of her actions, such as when she celebrated a marriage while wearing a priest’s stole.
“It was a mixture of agony and ecstasy,” Fuller said of Normandin’s life. “She did great work and she also made some mistakes.”
_ Daniel Burke
Priest Apologizes for Calling Kneeling in Church a `Mortal Sin’
(RNS) A California Catholic priest who implied that kneeling during Mass is a “mortal sin,” expressed regret for “misuse of the term” this week.
At least 55 elderly parishioners at the Orange County, Calif., church where the Rev. Martin Tran is pastor have insisted on kneeling in reverence during some parts of the Mass, a practice in contrast with church norms, according to a May 28 article in the Los Angeles Times.
In a church bulletin, Tran said the kneeling Catholics’ actions were “clearly rebellion, grave disobedience and mortal sin.”
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “mortal sin” is a most serious offense. It “results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace,” and, if not repented, “causes exclusion for Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell.”
A statement posted on the Diocese of Orange County’s Web site this week said “Fr. Tran regrets any concern or hurt caused by the misuse of the term `mortal sin’ in this context. The Diocese concurs with Fr. Tran’s clarification.”
For centuries, Catholics knelt during certain parts of the liturgy of the Eucharist. After the liturgical reforms in the 1960s, however, U.S. dioceses have debated whether standing or kneeling is more appropriate.
_ Daniel Burke
Prison Fellowship Program in Iowa Ruled Unconstitutional
(RNS) Prison Fellowship officials plan to appeal a district judge’s ruling that declared their faith-based program in an Iowa prison unconstitutional.
Chief Judge Robert W. Pratt ruled June 2 that the InnerChange Freedom Initiative “has the primary effect of impermissibly endorsing religion” through its contract with the state corrections department.
“For all practical purposes, the state has literally established an evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one (of) its penal institutions, giving the leaders of that congregation, i.e., InnerChange employees, authority to control the spiritual, emotional, and physical lives of hundreds of Iowa inmates,” Pratt wrote in a 140-page decision from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.
He said the program was “pervasively sectarian,” requiring participants to attend worship services, weekly revivals and religious community meetings. Participating inmates also were ordered to “engage in daily religious devotional practice,” he said.
Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, said in a statement that his organization would appeal the decision to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“This decision, if it is allowed to stand, will enshrine religious discrimination,” said the president of the Virginia-based ministry founded by former Nixon aide and Watergate felon Chuck Colson. “The courts took God out of America’s schools; now they are on the path to take God out of America’s prisons.”
The executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which filed suit against the program in 2003, hailed Pratt’s ruling.
“There is no way to interpret this decision as anything but a body blow to so-called faith-based initiatives,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, whose watchdog group has been critical of President Bush’s efforts to increase access to government funding for faith-based groups.
“Tax funds cannot underwrite conversion efforts.”
(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)
Pratt’s decision called for the program to end within 60 days and for InnerChange and Prison Fellowship to repay the corrections department more than $1.5 million the program has received since its relationship with the department began in 1999. But those orders were suspended pending an expected appeal.
Other than Iowa, the program is established in prisons in Texas, Kansas, Minnesota and Arkansas. Prison Fellowship began the program in 1997 and it is now a separate entity that contracts with Prison Fellowship for support and staffing services.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Religious Leaders Urge Attention on U.S. Hunger
WASHINGTON (RNS) As debate over banning gay marriage began in the Senate, one religious leader across town argued that another issue deserved more religious attention _ hunger.
“There are some in the ministry concerned about homosexuality,” said the Rev. Lennox Yearwood of Washington’s youth-oriented Hip Hop Caucus. “I don’t care what is going on in the bedroom. I don’t care if there’s whips or chains or whatever. … Those days are over. It is time for us to be concerned with what is going on in the kitchen.”
Yearwood and six representatives of religious organizations made impassioned pleas Monday (June 5) for an end to hunger. The panel discussion was sponsored by the national food bank network, America’s Second Harvest, on the eve of the fifth annual National Hunger Awareness Day (June 6).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said 38.2 million Americans lived in households unable to purchase enough food in 2004, an increase of 2 million from the previous year. America’s Second Harvest claims that one out of every four people in a soup kitchen line is a child.
“This is embarrassing …,” Yearwood said. “In the richest country in the world, in the most powerful, beautiful nation in the world … how do we bring hunger into the 21st century?”
The panelists called for the strengthening of anti-hunger programs, such as emergency food assistance and food stamps in the Farm Bill, expected to be debated and rewritten by Congress next year.
“This kind of farm bill is good for U.S. farmers, it is good for hungry people, and it is also a piece that we need to move to the Shalom of God,” said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of the Christian anti-hunger lobbying group, Bread for the World.
Other panelists included Judith Podja, of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference; the Rev. Rudy Rasmus, co-founder of Houston’s Bread for Life food drive; and Sister Christine Vladimiroff, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group of Catholic nuns
Imam Misbahudeen Rufai, member of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, criticized the country for wasting so much food, saying that the Quran teaches that “God does not love those who waste.”
And Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit, director of outreach and external affairs for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, expressed his outcry, in English and Hebrew, through song.
“And you shall eat and be satisfied and then you’ll have the right to give thanks,” Zevit sang. “We share in a vision of wholeness and realize where every child is nourished we all live in peace.”
_ Piet Levy
Membership Drops 2 Percent in Presbyterian Church (USA)
(RNS) Membership in the Presbyterian Church (USA) decreased by more than 2 percent in 2005, the largest decline since 1975, according to the denomination’s research office.
Membership in the largest Presbyterian body in the country fell by 48,474 to 2,313,662 in 2005, according to the research office. The numbers only include Presbyterians who have been baptized in the church and retain active membership.
The church has been losing members since 1966, and the membership has declined by at least 1 percent since 1969, Jack Marcum, the church’s associate for survey research, told the Presbyterian News Service.
Between 1970 and 1975, there was an “acceleration” in the loss of members, but since 1975, the decline has “been somewhere between 1 (percent) and 2 percent,” Marcum said.
The decline in membership occurred in virtually every statistical category,according to the Presbyterian News Service.
Though almost 125,000 people joined the denomination last year, 28,680 transferred to other churches, 36,191 members died and more than 108,000 dropped out or moved to churches “not in correspondence” with the PC(USA).
Despite the drop in membership, total giving at the church increased by more than 5 percent, to $3.07 billion.
The denomination is holding its 217th General Assembly in Birmingham, Ala. June 15-22.
_ Daniel Burke
British Muslims Elect New Leader Amid Terrorism Probe
LONDON (RNS) Britain’s largest Islamic group has elected a new leader _ and he has immediately found himself catapulted into a new furor over arrests by police of two Muslim men as suspected terrorists.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, a 52-year-old Bangladeshi, was chosen Sunday (June 4) to take over from Iqbal Sacranie as general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, the largest lobbying body for the nation’s estimated 1.6 million Muslims.
In his acceptance address at the organization’s annual general meeting, Bari said the council’s duty is “to reassure British Muslims they can live lives in Britain as good British citizens and as devout Muslims.”
But he conceded that “many Muslims may feel unsettled and perhaps fearful” after a June 2 police raid at a house in London that nabbed two Muslim brothers suspected of making a chemical bomb and that “some younger people may even be feeling angry about what happened.”
The man whom Bari succeeded, Iqbal Sacranie, had held the Muslim Council’s top job since 2002, with the tricky task of guiding Britain’s Muslims in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States and the July 7, 2005, terror bombings that claimed 56 lives, including four Muslim bombers, on London subway and bus networks.
Heightened concern over terrorism means the task will be no easier for Bari, who had served as Sacranie’s deputy secretary general for the past four years.
“British Muslims are under the spotlight after recent events,” said Bari, who also is chairman of the largest mosque in east London. “We know that many British Muslims are feeling unsettled and fearful in the light of recent anti-terrorism raids.”
He also said that among the tasks facing him are those of “the elements of extremism and radicalism in a tiny section of the community, and of course the wider society _ Islamophobia, racism, xenophobia.”
_ Al Webb
Quote of the Week: Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick
(RNS) “I’m going to learn Arabic. You have to do something to keep your mind from turning more to jelly than it already has.”
_ Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, whose retirement was accepted by Pope Benedict XVI on May 16, on his post-retirement plans. He was quoted by The Record newspaper in Bergen County, N.J.
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