c. 2007 Religion News Service

Evangelicals Ponder Roots of Virginia Tech Violence

WASHINGTON (RNS) A number of prominent evangelicals conducted some public soul-searching Wednesday (April 28) as they groped for answers to Monday’s mass killing of 32 students and staff at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.

“The Bible says `mourn with those who mourn’ and thus we do,” said the Rev. Richard Cizik, the National Association of Evangelicals’ vice president for governmental affairs. “We don’t understand. Indeed, we ask why. But we know that evil is. And we understand free will, even if, on this April morning, we curse free will.”

Cizik organized Wednesday’s event in response to the fatal shooting at Virginia Tech by a 23-year-old student, Cho Seung-Hui, who then killed himself.

Several speakers said they were upset that a Virginia Tech convocation held Tuesday lacked religious messages. Others said Monday’s shooting marks the presence of the “evil one” written about in Scripture, who sometimes sways a fallen world.

“One of the tragedies in our culture is that people try to deny evil,” said Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America. “They think there’s a human solution to any problem. Scripture teaches us that there is an evil one and he does have power.”

Cizik said many Americans seeking to make sense of the shootings will look to psychology or sociology for answers. “We as Christians say that tragedies happen when sin reigns,” Cizik said.

Other speakers said Christians, and evangelicals in particular, are partially to blame for failing to reach young Americans.

Bishop Harry Jackson, a Maryland megachurch pastor, said “the evangelical Christian movement has been guilty in recent years of telling everybody what we’re against so that we’ve failed to present the hope of the gospel.”

“We’re expecting (young people) to adjust to us when often they have no context for that,” said Barrett Duke of the Southern Baptist Convention. “The church should stop telling teenagers” to come to them and start “to get to where the kids are,” Duke said.

The Rev. Young Hwan Kim, who leads a United Methodist Church in Fairfax, Va., with a large number of Koreans and Korean-Americans, was among the Christians who left Wednesday’s meeting with a pledge.

“Now it’s much more clear for me what I have to do in my ministry. I must bring attention and spend more time with the younger generation so they have a sense of responsibility and a sense of purpose in their lives,” he said.

_ Daniel Burke

Survey Says Clergy Have Highest Job Satisfaction

CHICAGO (RNS) If you want to be rich, get an MBA. If you want to be happy, go for an MDiv.

Members of the clergy rank highest in job satisfaction, according to a report released Tuesday (April 17) by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. More than 87 percent of clergy said they were satisfied with their jobs, followed by firefighters (80 percent) and physical therapists (78 percent).

Cynthia Lindner, directory of ministry studies at the university’s Divinity School, said the findings rang true to her. People come to the field with no expectation of getting rich and every expectation of being able to make some difference in the world, she said.

“People are not going into the profession out of some sense of `I want a lot of power and prestige,”’ she said. “Most of all my students would say, `We want to help heal the world.”’

Because work plays such an important role in people’s lives, workers who are more satisfied also tend to be happier. So clergy also topped the list as happiest, with 67 percent of them describing themselves as generally happy.

Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the university research center, said he was surprised clergy led the list. Many “helping” occupations, such as doctors and nurses, also experience stress, which can affect their overall happiness, he said.

“Apparently the rewards of spiritual guidance and leadership outweigh the burdens of being a religious leader,” he said.

At the bottom of the job satisfaction scale were workers normally on top of things. Roofers were least satisfied with their jobs, followed by waiters. Roofers were also the second unhappiest occupation; garage and service station attendants ranked as unhappiest.

Researchers noted that the jobs people were most satisfied by tend to involve helping others or expressing creativity. Education administrators and teachers, psychologists, authors, painters and sculptors all expressed high degrees of satisfaction. The least satisfying jobs were low-skill or customer service jobs. Waiters, cashiers, laborers, and clothing and furniture salespeople were among the least satisfied with their jobs.

The rankings are based on information collected in the research center’s General Social Survey over almost two decades from more than 27,000 people.

_ Marcia Z. Nelson

Employee Objects to Fingerprint Scanner, Citing `End Time’ Beliefs

RESERVE, La. (RNS) A public school employee has been suspended for refusing to use a biometric time clock that scans fingerprints, claiming the process violates his religious beliefs.

The St. John the Baptist Parish School Board has scheduled a hearing on a grievance filed by the employee, the Rev. Herman Clayton Jr., for its meeting Thursday (April 19).

Joe Cook, director of the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, has urged the board to allow Clayton, a school system electrician and Baptist minister, to continue signing in and out of work, as he did for several months before being suspended without pay in February.

Clayton’s objection to using the system rests on his belief in the “end time” doctrine; some end-time believers object to fingerprinting devices and other scanning technology as tools of the Antichrist, Cook said.

“I believe his belief is sincere,” Cook said. He said Clayton said he teaches the doctrine in his ministry.

St. John school system Superintendent Michael Coburn said he will recommend to the board that the district continue to use the scanner and not grant exceptions.

“The system is in place. It’s doing a great job of showing us accountability, not only people coming to work,” but those working overtime, he said.

“If they want to continue to work, they have to use the system,” Coburn said.

The St. John school district implemented the $75,000 fingerprint identification system last fall. Employees use it to clock in and out of work by placing a finger in front of a small scanner that recognizes key points on each employee’s finger.

Clayton and one other employee who has refused to use the clock filed grievances with the administration. They will be represented by an attorney provided to them by the St. John Association of Educators.

Clayton said he was advised by the attorney not to comment, but he added, “I have faith that the board will make the right decision in my favor.”

_ Sandra Barbier

Report Finds Global Anti-Semitism on the Rise

(RNS) Israel and Jewish communities observed Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday (April 16) in the wake of worrisome findings by Tel Aviv University that anti-Semitic activity skyrocketed in the past year.

The spike in verbal and physical attacks on Jews around the world is due to “the efforts invested by Iran to delegitimize Israel by denying the Holocaust, and the second Lebanon war,” according to the report released at the Stephen Roth Institute in Tel Aviv, which is funded by the World Jewish Congress.

Some 590 cases of violence and vandalism were reported in 2006, up from 406 the previous year. Physical attacks nearly doubled to 270. Perpetrators included primarily Muslims and right-wing groups.

Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and France saw the steepest rise in anti-Semitism.

Western Europe in general was a hotbed of activity. Germany experienced acts of anti-Semitism almost daily and the highest incidence of desecration of Holocaust memorials. In Rome, 20 Jewish shops were vandalized, their locks glued. Anti-Semitic activity in Norway, including the beating of a 14-year-old girl, prompted the Jewish community to suggest its members stop wearing skullcaps and speaking Hebrew in public. And in soccer stadiums throughout Europe, anti-Semitic chants were heard like “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas.”

The United States saw a 12 percent decrease in anti-Semitic activity, but increased incidents of violence.

Anti-Semitic cartoons permeated the Arab press. “Israeli soldiers were depicted as bloodthirsty, Nazi-like figures; Jews were drawn with hooked noses, long beards and black hats; Israeli leaders were portrayed as greedy and manipulative and drank the blood of Lebanese victims; and the swastika was superimposed over the Star of David,” the report said.

The trend appears to continue and “even escalate,” said Dina Porat, who heads the Stephen Roth Institute. This month, text messages throughout Saudi Arabia carried allegedly government-sponsored warnings against Israeli-imported melons infected with AIDS, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

_ Rachel Pomerance

Quote of the Day: Southern Baptist Convention Executive Richard Land

(RNS) “God may very well have more to do with America than liberals may think and less than conservatives often assume.”

_ Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, writing in his new book, “The Divided States of America? What Liberals and Conservatives Are Missing in the God-and-Country Shouting Match!”

KRE/PH END RNS