c. 2006 Religion News Service
Religious Leaders Push Documentary on Global Warming
WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious leaders are promoting a new documentary about global warming to raise awareness about environmental concerns among houses of worship.
“The scriptural teaching gives us direction to be responsible for God’s world,” said the Rev. Paul De Vries, president of the New York Divinity School, who joined other evangelical leaders on a conference call with reporters Thursday (Oct. 19). “He made it good, and whatever we’ve done with it to mess it up, we ought to be trying to clean up and protect.”
De Vries joined leaders such as evangelical author Tony Campolo and the Rev. Gerald Durley, an Atlanta civil rights leader, in drawing attention to “The Great Warming,” a documentary to be released in theaters nationwide on Nov. 3.
The leaders issued a “Call to Action” statement and endorsed an initiative that includes ads on Christian radio stations and in religious newsletters. The statement reads: “The world’s scientists are in agreement: Climate change is real, and we are largely responsible. America’s religious institutions, corporations, environmental and opinion leaders have reached a consensus that we must recognize our moral responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth today, and for all future generations.”
Other religious signatories on the statement include the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and Sayyid Syeed of the Islamic Society of North America.
The Canadian documentary is narrated by singer Alanis Morissette and actor Keanu Reeves.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Priest at Center of Foley Scandal Tells of Massages, Skinny-Dipping
(RNS) A Roman Catholic priest said he had an intimate relationship with former Rep. Mark Foley in the 1960s but couldn’t recall whether they had sex, according to a newspaper report.
The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 72, said he and Foley participated in a series of acts _ including naked massages and skinny-dipping _ that could be perceived as inappropriate, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Mercieca, who was a priest in Florida in 1966-2003, said there may have been an additional incident one night but he couldn’t recall because he had been taking tranquilizers, according to the newspaper.
“I have to confess, I was going through a nervous breakdown. I was taking pills _ tranquilizers. I used to take them all the time. They affected my mind a little bit,” Mercieca told the Herald-Tribune. The priest now lives on the island of Gozo, near Italy.
Mercieca later told the Associated Press that the Herald-Tribune’s account was “exaggerated.” The relationship between him and Foley was not sexual in nature and the two “were friends and trusted each other as brothers,” Mercieca told the AP on Thursday.
“I wonder why 40 years later he brings this up?” Mercieca said, according to the Associated Press.
Foley, 52, resigned his seat in Congress last month after it was revealed that he had sexually explicit online conversations with male teenage congressional pages.
Since then, his lawyers have said that the former Republican congressman was abused by a “clergyman” in Florida “36-38 years ago.” Mercieca worked at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lake Worth, Fla., where Foley was an altar boy, in 1966-1967, according to church records. However, Foley’s attorneys have not publicly named his alleged abuser.
Foley’s lawyers told the Palm Beach state attorney’s office the name of his alleged abuser late Wednesday. That office was not immediately available for comment.
The Archdiocese of Miami said it had been given the name of the accused priest and promised to “fully cooperate” with any investigation. Church officials said they would release the name once they receive permission from the state attorney’s office.
_ Daniel Burke
Southwestern Seminary Trustees Won’t Hire Charismatic Professors
(RNS) Trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary have voted not to hire professors or administrators who promote charismatic Christian practices, such as speaking in tongues.
The trustees overwhelmingly adopted a statement Tuesday (Oct. 17), two months after a fellow trustee noted his personal use of tongues during a sermon in the chapel of the Fort Worth, Texas, seminary.
The trustee board statement was proposed by Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson. The school is one of six seminaries associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Southern Baptists have traditionally opposed Pentecostal practices, but some pastors have embraced a more charismatic worship style.
“Southwestern will not knowingly endorse in any way, advertise or commend the conclusions of the contemporary charismatic movement including `private prayer language,”’ reads the statement. “Neither will Southwestern knowingly employ professors or administrators who promote such practices.”
The Rev. Dwight McKissic, the Arlington, Texas, pastor and trustee who preached in late August, issued a statement to the board prior to its vote.
“I do not understand the agenda of those who wish to drive into the shadows those of us who are open to this area of the Spirit’s work, as clearly attested in Scripture,” he wrote.
McKissic, who voted against the Patterson statement, has criticized a similar policy of the denomination’s International Mission Board that forbids considering missionary candidates who use a private prayer language.
In September, Mckissic asked Southern Baptist President Frank Page to consider addressing the issue in the denomination’s statement of faith, noting there is a “lack of consensus and clarity” about speaking in tongues.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Advocates Urge Self-Governance for Iraqi Christians
WASHINGTON (RNS) Some observers say many of Iraq’s more than 1 million Assyrian Christians may be forced to flee the country because of growing sectarian violence.
The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says Assyrian Christians, who made up 5 percent of Iraq’s total population before the U.S. invasion in 2003, now comprise “upwards of 40 percent of (Iraqi) refugees,” most fleeing to Jordan and Syria.
Pascale Warda, former Iraqi minister of displacement and migration, said Wednesday (Oct. 18) that the country’s Assyrian Christians _ also known as Chaldeans _ are being targeted by hard-line Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
In addition, Kurds are seizing land owned by some Assyrian Christians, and denying them access to water, according to the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project, which focuses on issues affecting Iraq’s minorities.
“This is a dark phase for us,” said Warda, an Assyrian Christian. “The situation is turning more and more (violent).”
Advocates for Assyrian Christians are pushing for a multiethnic self-governing region in northern Iraq that would be a safe haven for them and for other Iraqi minorities.
The Assyrians can be traced back to 2400 B.C. They became Christians early in the Christian era.
Michael Youash, director of the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project, said that after the U.S. invasion, Assyrian Christians had hoped for a form of self-government similar to what the Kurds have had in northern Iraq. As the war continued, it was thought better to “wait for things to stabilize,” Youash said. “However, no one foresaw the severity of violence.”
Now, he said, “change must be pursued much more aggressively.”
The new plan is to push for self-government in the Nineveh Plains and western part of Dohuk _ the ancestral homeland of the Assyrians. Youash said other threatened Iraqi minorities _ Shabaks, Yezidis and Turkmen _ would be welcome in this protected province.
“There’s much America can do to make the process smoother,” Youash said, urging U.S. support for a local security force for the region.
_ Keith Roshangar
`Me and the Mosque’ Prompts Debate Over Women in Mosques
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (RNS) An acclaimed Canadian-made documentary, “Me and the Mosque,” is making a splash as it becomes the focus of Muslim debate over whether women should be physically separated from men in mosques.
The documentary’s Saskatchewan-based filmmaker, Zarqa Nawaz, has been invited to show her film and speak to Muslim communities and campus organizations in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto and other cities.
The film notes that in recent years two-thirds of North America’s 1,000-plus mosques have been physically separating men and women worshippers, compared with only half that did so in 1994. Nawaz says the trend was due to a sharp rise in Muslim immigration.
She says she believes that partly because of her film, which has been shown at several film festivals, the “tide is turning” and mosques, including her own in Regina, now are removing partitions between the genders.
The National Film Board documentary often uses humor in exploring the serious debate between North America’s Muslim conservatives and moderates.
The film opens with reactions in a Muslim audience to a male Muslim stand-up comic who lampoons leaders who segregate the sexes. The camera first focuses on how women in the audience, many wearing headscarves, giggle with liberating delight; then it turns to the males, who look amused but rattled and uncertain.
Nawaz’s Web site (http://www.fundamentalistfilms.com) jokes about putting “the fun back into fundamentalism.” Despite her self-deprecating humor, the devout, married, 39-year-old mother of four considers herself a “mainstream” Muslim on a mission of justice.
In an interview, Nawaz said North American Muslims have many things in common, including opposition to the war in Iraq.
But her film’s narrator pushes Muslims with this challenge: “Muslims always seem to be talking about the injustices done to them by the outside world. But they rarely talk about the injustices in their own community.”
The documentary includes a look at conflicts in several Muslim communities, including a suburban Vancouver mosque where women are confined to a largely enclosed balcony, unable to see the imam. “Men may think they know what women need, but they don’t,” said one worshipper, Raqiya Mohammad.
In January, Canada’s public broadcaster, CBC TV, is planning to launch a pilot of Nawaz’s new series, “Little Mosque on the Prairies.”
_ Douglas Todd
Quote of the Day: Former President Bill Clinton
(RNS) “I long for the day when we will return to a debate that is not about who’s a good person and who’s a slug, not about who represents the religious truth and who is basically running for office on his or her way to hell.”
_ Former President Bill Clinton,, speaking Wednesday (Oct. 18) at Georgetown University in Washington. He was quoted by The Washington Post.
KRE/RB END RNS
