Religion News in Brief
By AP from the NYTimes on the Web, September 23, 2004
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- The controversy over the role of gays in the church has taken a new twist in two Protestant denominations where officials are scrutinizing the actions of ministers.
The United Methodist Church has ordered a second investigation into whether the Rev. Elizabeth Stroud of Philadelphia should be put on trial because she acknowledged a lesbian relationship in a sermon last year.
Earlier, Stroud had been ordered to face a church trial. But the case's overseer, retired Bishop Joseph Yeakel, invalidated that action because lay members were part of a panel that issued the ruling.
Church law restricts the board to clergy members.
Also, some panel members had declared their unwillingness to uphold Methodist law, which bars ordination of "self-avowed, practicing homosexuals."
In the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Rev. Jim Rigby of Austin, Texas, faces charges over conducting ceremonies for same-sex couples and ordaining an openly lesbian elder.
Presbyterian law and court rulings forbid same-sex blessings that are akin to marriages, and require officeholders to observe either fidelity within heterosexual marriage "or chastity in singleness."
Charges against Rigby were filed by Paul Rolf Jensen, a Virginia lawyer who has pursued accusations against other U.S. Presbyterian clergy in similar cases.
A regional investigating committee will decide whether the case proceeds.
Rigby told the Austin American-Statesman, "Either they have to strip me of my ordination or the church has to change."
http://www.umc.org
http://www.pcusa.org
Episcopal Church's leader urges patience upon bishops on eve of meeting
NEW YORK (AP) -- The leader of the Episcopal Church is asking U.S. bishops to ignore "speculation and rumors" and await with "ready patience" a key international report on Anglican churches' ongoing dispute over homosexuality.
Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold wrote the letter in advance of a bishops' meeting that runs through Tuesday in Spokane, Wash.
A special commission of the international Anglican Communion is due to report Oct. 18 in response to such events as the Episcopal Church's consecration of an openly gay bishop.
One commission member quoted by Griswold, Archbishop Barry Morgan of Wales, said the panel faced these questions:
"How do we make decisions as a communion? How do we govern our common life?
What means do we have for either consultation or restraint?"
Griswold said Episcopalians and other Anglicans must learn how to live together "in all our singularity and difference" and "enter into one another's realities in all their unfamiliarity and complexity, which involves a very real cost on all sides."
Arkansas church again enters political pulpit controversy
SPRINGDALE, Ark. (AP) -- A Baptist church already accused of using its tax-exempt pulpit to endorse President Bush gave its backing to a ban of gay marriage in a nationally televised service Sunday.
Evangelical leaders, led by Focus on the Family's James Dobson, used Springdale's First Baptist Church to summon support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
About 3,000 churchgoers in Springdale, and an estimated 1 million television viewers around the country, heard U.S. Rep. Tom Delay, R-Texas, promise that the amendment battle would be won.
"If Christian people are awake and involved, we can change this country," Dobson said.
The speakers also supported the Rev. Ronnie Floyd, the church's pastor, whose July 4 sermon provoked a complaint to the Federal Elections Commission from Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The group said Floyd's talk amounted to a Bush endorsement.
Floyd mentioned no candidates, but used pictures of Bush and opponent John Kerry to illustrate his points.
IRS rules on tax exemption forbid pulpit endorsements.
Jewish survey shows half claim affiliations, 14 percent stress observance
NEW YORK (AP) -- A poll of American Jews shows 51 percent report membership in a synagogue but only 14 percent consider "religious observance" the most important factor in their Jewish identity, less than those who stressed social justice or simply being "part of the Jewish people."
The latest American Jewish Committee survey showed 31 percent of respondents identified with Judaism's Conservative branch, 29 percent with Reform, 7 percent with Orthodoxy, 2 percent with Reconstructionism and 30 percent as "just Jewish."
Asked which is the greater threat to American Jewish life, two-thirds picked anti-Semitism over the one-third for intermarriage.
Almost all said anti-Semitism in America is "very serious" or "somewhat of a problem."
On politics, 69 percent favored John Kerry for president, 66 percent disapproved of the Iraq war, 63 percent supported Israel's handling of Palestinian relations and 49 percent favored legalized gay marriage.
The phone poll of 1,000 Jews, conducted Aug. 18 to Sept. 1, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage
points.
http://www.ajc.org
Hudson to step down as Crisis publisher
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Deal Hudson is stepping down as publisher of the conservative Roman Catholic magazine Crisis one month after a news report of sexual misconduct led him to resign as a White House adviser on Catholic voters.
"There's no doubt that the recent adverse publicity about me, and the criticism that followed, influenced my decision," Hudson said in an e-mail to readers Tuesday.
"The plain fact is, I'm tired of being a lightening rod."
In August, the National Catholic Reporter revealed that Hudson left a teaching post at Fordham University in the mid-1990s after a female student accused him of inappropriate sexual contact with her.
As of Jan. 1, Hudson said he will become director of the newly established Morley Institute, which will provide funding for Crisis and support other projects.
Hudson said he planned to write a book about how Catholics can get involved in politics.
Baptist seminary hires controversial "intelligent design" theorist
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has hired a leader among scholars who say scientific evidence shows the universe was caused by "intelligent design" to direct a new Center for Science and Theology.
William Dembski is currently a professor at Baptist-related Baylor University, where his advocacy of design is opposed by faculty advocates of Darwinian evolution.
Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. said design theory falls short of "the doctrine of creation as revealed in the Bible," but is "a useful and important intellectual tool" that "undermines the materialistic and naturalistic world view central to the theory of evolution."
Dembski holds doctorates in mathematics from the University of Chicago and philosophy from the University of Illinois and a divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary.
His latest work is the co-edited Cambridge University Press anthology "Debating Design."
http://www.sbts.edu
Serbia's education minister resigns over Darwinism flap
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) -- Serbia's education minister has resigned after causing public outrage for directing teachers to ignore a chapter in eighth-grade biology textbooks that says life on Earth evolved through natural selection.
Ljiljana Colic called Darwin's theory "dogmatic" and said it should not be taught pending general curriculum revisions.
After protests from scientists, opposition parties and liberal groups, the Education Ministry reinstated Darwinism.
Critics said Colic's action reflected conservative trends under the governmentnthat took power last January, and the growing influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
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