c. 2007 Religion News Service

Faith Leaders Praised for Spreading the `Eco-Gospel’

(RNS) The Dalai Lama, Pope Benedict XVI and the spiritual leader of the world’s Eastern Orthodox Christians were among 15 “Green Religious Leaders” cited by a Seattle-based environmental group.

Grist, an environmental news and commentary Web site that also highlighted “green” actors, musicians and chefs, among others, said the 15 names on the list and five runners-up are dedicated to “spreading the eco-gospel.”

Names on the list, released on July 24, include:

_ Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians, who has been dubbed the “Green Patriarch” for his environmental activism, including a 2003 cruise to discuss overfishing.

_ The Dalai Lama, who says it is “our responsibility toward others to ensure that the world we pass on is healthy, if not healthier, than we found it.”

_ The Rev. Sally Bingham, environmental minister at Grace (Episcopal) Cathedral in San Francisco, who has been a leader in Interfaith Power & Light, which encourages houses of worship to purchase green power and conserve energy.

_ Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who has encouraged Anglican clergy to use organic bread and wine for Communion.

_ Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, who has been spreading the green gospel among historically skeptical evangelicals.

_ Pope Benedict XVI, who has installed solar panels at the Vatican and voiced concerns about effects of global warming on the world’s poor.

_ Fazlun Khalid, founder and director of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences in the United Kingdom.

_ Norman Habel, the editor and contributing author of the “Earth Bible.”

_ Rabbi Warren Stone of Kensington, Md., who chairs an environmental protection committee for America’s Reform rabbis.

_ Sister Miriam MacGillis, a Dominican nun who co-founded the Genesis Farm in New Jersey to teach people about the environment.

_ The Rev. Fred Small, a Unitarian minister from Littleton, Mass., who has engaged in peaceful civil disobedience as part of Religious Witness for the Earth.

_ The Rev. Joel Hunter, a megachurch pastor near Orlando, Fla., who was tapped to lead the Christian Coalition until his concern over the environment was deemed too controversial for the organization.

_ Karen Baker-Fletcher, a theologian at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, who interprets the Bible from an environmental, black and feminine perspective.

_ Paul Gorman, co-founder and executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.

_ The Rev. Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest considered “the most important eco-theologian of our time,” according to Grist.

Runners-up included retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu; environmental studies professor Calvin DeWitt; theologian Sally McFague; “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign creator Jim Ball; and Appalachian activist Allen Johnson.

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Lutherans Re-Elect Hanson as Presiding Bishop

(RNS) The nation’s largest Lutheran denomination re-elected Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson by a wide margin Tuesday. (Aug. 7)

Hanson, 60, will lead the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, with its 4.8 million members for another six-year term. He garnered 888 of 1,029 votes cast on the second ballot.

“I accept this reaffirmation of your call with deep gratitude and truly expected hopefulness for the next six years,” Hanson told delegates to the ELCA’s biennial Churchwide Assembly, which is meeting in Chicago through Saturday.

Hanson is the 20-year-old ELCA’s third presiding bishop and the second to be re-elected. He is also president of the 67 million-member Lutheran World Federation, which represents 78 countries.

As church membership has waned in recent years. Hanson has emphasized evangelism, especially to racial and ethnic minorities.

_ Daniel Burke

Study: Most Young Adults Drop Out of Protestant Churches

(RNS) More than two-thirds of young adults stopped attending Protestant churches regularly for at least a year when they were between the ages of 18 and 22, a new study by LifeWay Research shows.

Seventy percent of 23- to 30-year-olds dropped out of the church scene, researchers found, while only about 35 percent of them eventually returned to the fold and are attending church two times a month.

The Internet survey was conducted by researchers connected with the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Christian Resources. Conducted in April and May, it involved a national sample of 1,023 adults between the ages of 18 and 30 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The reasons for dropping out of church included changes in their life situations or concerns about their church or pastor:

_ 26 percent said church members seemed hypocritical or judgmental

_ 25 percent moved to college and stopped attending church

_ 22 percent moved too far away from the church to keep attending church

_ 20 percent didn’t feel connected to people in their church.

Researchers found that most of those who stopped attending church had no plans to do so. Twenty percent said they already planned to leave church during their high school years while 80 percent said they did not.

Asked why they returned to church, many attributed their change in plans to family or friends:

_ 39 percent said parents or family members encouraged their attendance

_ 28 percent said they felt that God was calling them to return

_ 24 percent said they had children and felt it was time for them to begin attending

_ 21 percent said friends or acquaintances encouraged them to attend.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Vatican Clarifies Meeting With Controversial Polish Priest

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Responding to protests from Jewish groups in Europe and the United States, the Vatican on Thursday (August 9) issued a “clarification” regarding a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and a Polish priest accused of anti-Semitic remarks.

Benedict met with the Rev. Tadeusz Rydzyk last Sunday (August 5) at the papal summer home, Castel Gandolfo, following the pope’s weekly Angelus prayer. Two days later, Polish newspapers published photos of the two together.

Rydzyk is founder of Radio Maryja, a Polish radio network with a Catholic and nationalist orientation and millions of listeners. Last month, a Polish magazine reported that Rydzyk had been recorded denouncing Jews and their influence on Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski. Rydzyk has said that he “didn’t intend to offend anyone.”

The papal meeting provoked denunciations from Jewish leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.

“You have unfortunately lent him the priceless credibility of your office and integrity in the eyes of the world,” wrote Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, in a letter to the pope. Radio Maryja “regularly broadcasts” anti-Semitic programming, Foxman wrote.

The European Jewish Congress declared itself “astonished by the fact that Pope Benedict XVI has granted with (sic) a private audience and his blessing (to) a man and an institution that have tarnished the image of the Polish church.”

In a one-sentence statement, the Vatican insisted that the pope’s meeting with Rydzyk “does not imply any change in the well-known position of the Holy See on relations between Catholics and Jews.”

In May of 2006, Benedict visited the former concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland, where he denounced the “vicious criminals” who “wanted to crush the entire Jewish people.” On a trip to Austria next month, he is scheduled to visit a memorial to victims of the Nazi genocide in Vienna’s Jewish Square.

_ Francis X. Rocca

China Claims Control Over Reincarnated Buddhas

WASHINGTON (RNS) Against the backdrop of celebrations to mark the one-year countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government has angered religious freedom activists by attempting to assert greater influence over the successor to the Dalai Lama.

“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” Beijing said in a 14-part order purporting to regulate the reincarnation of Tibet’s Buddhist leaders.

Tibetan Buddhists believe their lamas are reincarnated from departed lamas dating back to the 12th Century.

The Aug. 3 order implements a provision that was put in place as part of the Chinese government’s 2005 regulations on religion, said Scott Flipse, a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

“The system of reincarnation is one of the core beliefs of the Tibetan religious tradition,” said Kate Saunders, spokeswoman for the International Campaign for Tibet. “These new measures are nothing less than a violation of one of the fundamental tenets of Tibetan religious life. It is a source of deep resentment among Tibetans that an atheist state has claimed the legitimacy to preside over a centuries-old religious practice.”

This is not the first time the Chinese government has involved itself in the theology of reincarnation.

In 1995, Beijing rejected the Panchen Lama, believed to be the second-highest spiritual leader, chosen by the exiled Dalai Lama; Beijing later admitted to taking him away to an undisclosed location. The Chinese government then ordained its own Panchen Lama.

“What happened last time with the Panchen Lama is the catalyst for all of this,” Flipse said. “That’s why they have their own Panchen Lama, who will play an important role in selecting the next Dalai Lama.”

Flipse said the rules represent an attempt by the Chinese government to assert control over the search for the next Dalai Lama.

“The process cannot be influenced by any group or individual from outside the country,” the rules state, in a likely reference to comments that the present Dalai Lama had made about the possibility of finding a successor in India or elsewhere.

_ Jennifer Koons

Second Episcopal Bishop Leaves for Catholic Church

(RNS) The former Episcopal bishop of Fort Worth, Texas, has rejoined the Roman Catholic Church, becoming the second bishop this year to switch from Episcopalian to Catholic.

Clarence Pope, 76, bishop of Fort Worth from 1986 to 1995, briefly became Catholic upon his retirement 12 years ago, but he returned to the Episcopal Church later that year because he was reluctant to give up his episcopacy, according to Episcopal News Service.

Pope was restored to the Episcopal House of Bishops in August 1995, ENS reported.

Last March, Daniel W. Herzog, the Episcopal bishop of Albany from 1998 to January 2007, also announced his intentions to join the Catholic church. Herzog was an outspoken critic of the Episcopal Church’s liberal drift, especially its 2003 election of an openly gay bishop.

At the time, Herzog was just the third bishop since the Episcopal Church was founded in 1789 to convert to Roman Catholicism, according to ENS. Since January, five bishops, including Pope and Herzog, have resigned from the Episcopal Church. The other three left to join different Anglican churches.

_ Daniel Burke

Assemblies of God Elect New Leader

(RNS) The Assemblies of God have elected a veteran church executive as the new leader of the Pentecostal denomination.

The Rev. George O. Wood, general secretary of the Assemblies of God since 1993, was elected general superintendent Friday (Aug. 10) during the denomination’s biennial General Council in Indianapolis.

Wood, 65, succeeds the Rev. Thomas Trask, who announced in July that he would leave the position two years into what was to be a four-year term. Trask had served as general superintendent since 1993.

The son of missionaries, Wood served as a pastor and assistant superintendent of the denomination’s Southern California District before moving to the national headquarters in Springfield, Mo. Wood also is an attorney and the author of seven books.

The denomination, which has 2.8 million members in the United States, has seen its worldwide membership grow from 25 million in 1993 _ the year both Trask and Wood became executives _ to a current total of about 57 million.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Progressive Baptists Call For Protests of Demeaning Lyrics

WASHINGTON (RNS) Delegates to the annual meeting of the Progressive National Baptist Convention have called for protests of music lyrics demeaning to women and minorities.

“We are speaking out publicly against the denigration of women, minorities and the kind of self-hatred that is often perpetuated by bad language and bad music,” said the Rev. T. DeWitt Smith Jr., president of the historically black denomination. “Our youth department, in particular, has asked us not to patronize the rappers that use language that denigrate our people and others.”

The Rev. Otis Moss Jr., a Cleveland pastor and outgoing chair of the denomination’s Civil Rights Commission, said the concern about “inhumane communication” is not new for the denomination, but “it has reached a special kind of crescendo in recent times with Don Imus.”

Imus lost his job as a radio talk show host in the spring after using slurs about the women’s basketball team at Rutgers University.

The 2.5 million-member denomination also added its voice to other religious groups calling for a commitment to address climate change.

“The issue of global warming is a very serious one and we know that we are to be good stewards of all of the Earth’s resources,” said Smith, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church of Metro Atlanta. “We were placed here by God to be caretakers and therefore we are concerned about global warming and will do all that we can to help in the situation rather than to hurt.”

Delegates also passed resolutions addressing issues such as support of gun control, fighting poverty and the denomination’s continued opposition to the Iraq war.

“We still believe … that our troops really do need to come home from Iraq and we’re asking our president and Congress to move with all deliberate haste to bring them home,” Smith said.

About 6,000 delegates attended the denomination’s Annual Session, which ends Saturday (Aug. 11).

_ Adelle M. Banks

S.C. Bishop Elected Again After First Ballot Thrown Out

(RNS) The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina has again elected the Rev. Mark Lawrence as its bishop, less than five months after Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori nullified his previous election.

Lawrence, 56, was re-elected at a special convention on St. James Island, S.C., and was the only candidate on the Aug. 4 ballot. Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bakersfield, Calif., Lawrence is a member of conservative diocese of San Joaquin.

Lawrence was first elected bishop by South Carolina last September. But Jefferts Schori nullified that election in March, ruling that Lawrence had not received the required “consents,” or approval, from a majority of the Episcopal Church’s 110 dioceses.

Several Episcopal dioceses argued publicly against Lawrence’s election. In interviews with church personnel he refused to state clearly that he would not allow conservative South Carolina to secede from the majority liberal Episcopal Church, they said.

Lawrence will again need to gain a second round of consents from Episcopal dioceses.

_ Daniel Burke

Methodist Group Files Lawsuit Over Civil Union Flap

(RNS) Luisa Paster and Harriet Bernstein of Ocean Grove, N.J., say they were not trying to start a federal case when they complained last month to the state’s civil rights agency.

“All that we were trying to accomplish was to have our civil union in the boardwalk pavilion” in Ocean Grove, a popular seaside setting for weddings in years past, Paster said.

But a federal lawsuit is just what Paster and Bernstein provoked. It was filed as a pre-emptive strike by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, the Methodist group that owns the boardwalk pavilion.

The Camp Meeting Association claims its constitutional rights would be violated if it were required to allow civil unions _ which conflict with Methodist doctrine _ to be performed at the pavilion, an open-sided structure it sometimes uses for religious worship.

“What’s at stake is really the autonomy of a religious organization,” said Brian Raum, senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, one of two conservative legal advocacy groups aiding the Camp Meeting Association. “The government can’t force a private Christian organization to use its property in a way that would violate its own religious beliefs.”

The Camp Meeting Association owns all the land in Ocean Grove, a nearly one-square-mile section of Neptune Township originally founded as a seaside religious retreat. Its homeowners lease their land from the group.

The lawsuit seeks a federal court order blocking J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, the state director of civil rights, from enforcing state anti-discrimination law against the Camp Meeting Association. That law’s protections were extended to couples who enter civil unions last February.

Lee Moore, a spokesman for Vespa-Papaleo, called the lawsuit “premature.”

“To date, the Division on Civil Rights has asserted nothing beyond its right to initiate an investigation to determine whether there has been a violation of the Law Against Discrimination,” Moore said. He added that the agency investigates about 1,300 complaints each year.

The lawsuit claims Vespa-Papaleo has violated the Camp Meeting Association’s constitutional rights “by subjecting this patently religious entity to an illegal investigation and threat of prosecution under the law.”

“This case is not about whether civil unions should be allowed,” Raum said. “It’s about whether the government should force a private organization to endorse the message of civil unions.”

_ Robert Schwaneberg

Arsonist’s Family Joins Church in Rebuilt Sanctuary

PANOLA, Ala. (RNS) Hundreds of people filled the seats inside the new sanctuary of Galilee Baptist Church on Sunday (Aug. 12) to celebrate the church’s rebirth more than one year after arsonists burned it to the ground.

Among those who came to celebrate the church’s rise from ruins was the family of one of the arsonists.

Kim, Mike and Meredith Cloyd sat in the church sanctuary, singing hymns, praying and shaking many hands. Afterwards, they thanked parishioners for opening their church home and their hearts to them after the fires.

“We are very humble to be here,” said Kim Cloyd, mother of Matthew Cloyd, one of three students who admitted to setting fire to nine churches across Alabama in February 2006.

“We have met so many new friends through this who have prayed for us and who have forgiven us.”

Cloyd and Benjamin Moseley each were sentenced to 10 years _ eight in federal prison and two in the state system _ for the fires. Another student, Russell DeBusk, was sentenced to nine years _ seven in federal prison and two in state prison _ for setting fire to five churches.

Kim Cloyd said her family last year decided to reach out to the congregations of all of the burned churches.

“We felt like they deserved to hear from us,” she said following a four-hour dedication service. “We felt like they needed to know that this was not about racism or hatred.”

The Rev. Bob Little, pastor of Galilee, said he welcomed the family to his church. “They have come and made atonement,” he said.

The new sanctuary boasts large projection screens and more than enough room for the 50-member congregation. There is also a fellowship hall and classrooms that will be available for public use.

Church members did not point fingers Sunday, instead focusing on the opportunity to build a bigger, better church home.

“I thought that when the church burned that was one of the worst things that could have happened,” church deacon Cleotis Speight said. “But if that had not happened then I would have never met some of the people that I’ve met.”

_ Anita Debro

Quote of the Week: Republican Presidential Candidate Rudy Giuliani

(RNS) “My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not so good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests. … They have a much better sense of how good a Catholic I am or how bad a Catholic I am.”

_ Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, addressing an Aug. 7 town-hall meeting in Iowa where he was asked if he considered himself a “traditional, practicing Roman Catholic.” He was quoted by The Associated Press.

KRE END RNS