Religion Today Summaries – August 7, 2003
Daily briefs of the top news stories impacting Christians around the world. In today's edition:
- Gay Bishop's Election Called 'a Cancer'
- Judge Gives Moore 15 Days to Remove Ten Commandments
- Believer Murdered, Pastor Clubbed in South India
- Judge Orders School Board to Permit After-Hours Religious Meetings
Gay Bishop's Election Called 'a Cancer'
Charisma News Service
Saying they were "filled with sorrow," conservative leaders of the Episcopal Church say they will split from the global Anglican denomination after U.S. Episcopalian bishops elected the church's first openly gay bishop. Church leaders voted 62-45 to install bishop-elect Gene Robinson, Reuters reported. Conservative Anglicans, representing more than one-quarter of the global 77-million-member denomination, issued a statement expressing regret at Robinson's installation and signed by church leaders from Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America and followers from England, India and elsewhere. "The [12] bishops who stand before you are filled with sorrow," Bishop Robert Duncan of the Pittsburgh Diocese said,," the New York Times" reported. "This body has divided itself for millions of Anglican Christians around the world, brothers and sisters who have pleaded with us to maintain the church's traditional teaching on marriage and sexuality. With grief too deep for words, the bishops who stand before you must reject this action. ... May God have mercy on this church." During a brief service at Minneapolis's Central Lutheran Church, Bishop John-David Schofield of San Joaquin, Calif., called Robinson's election "a cancer on the body of Christ," the Associated Press reported. (http://www.charismanews.com/)
Judge Gives Moore 15 Days to Remove Ten Commandments
Lawrence Morahan, CNS News
In the latest round of a two-year struggle over First Amendment rights in Alabama, a federal judge on Tuesday ordered Chief Justice Roy Moore to remove a monument containing the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the justice building in Montgomery. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson gave Moore 15 days to remove the 1.5-ton stone monument or face possible daily fines. Supporters of the monument said the decision could lead to a showdown between religious conservatives and law enforcement officials. Wendy Wright, senior policy director with Concerned Women for America, said people will be watching to see whether the judge will direct state or federal marshals to remove the monument. "If that were to happen, there are many people who are willing to literally place themselves in front of the doorways to keep the monument from being removed, so it's likely we're going to see a standoff in Alabama over whether the Ten Commandments can be publicly displayed," she said. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which sued Moore on behalf of people who objected to the monument, praised Thompson's order. "Roy Moore has defied the Constitution long enough," said Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, in a statement. Moore has said he plans to appeal the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Believer Murdered, Pastor Clubbed in South India
John Lindner, Christian Aid Mission
Hindu extremists clubbed a Christian believer to death in Karnataka state recently, beat another pastor till he was unconscious, and then hindered relatives from conducting Christian burials. Even though Karnataka itself does not yet have an anti-conversion law, the presence of an anti-conversion law adopted last fall in neighboring Tamil Nadu-and similar laws in four northern states of Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Gujarat and Arunachal Pradesh-is thought to have lent a permissive atmosphere for such violence. The leader of a ministry based in Tamil Nadu told Christian Aid that an 80-year-old man and former member of the local governing body of a village in Karnataka became a Christian, was baptized, and died about ten days later. One day as the wife in one family was hanging out laundry to dry, radicals barged into the house and clubbed her husband to death. Then they strung a rope around his neck and tied his body to the roof to feign a suicide. Hoodlums came to the village and without warning clubbed a pastor and his son with a log. After this the attackers forced the two men to go to the police station, where authorities warned them to stop converting people to Christianity. On hearing of the incident, other pastors in the area rushed to plead their case with the officials. In the end, local authorities said the pastor could preach inside his own house to his own family, but not to others.
Judge Orders School Board to Permit After-Hours Religious Meetings
Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service
A federal judge has ordered a Louisiana school board to drop its ban on religious groups meeting in school buildings during after-school hours, ruling in favor of that state's chapter of the Christian Coalition. U.S. District Judge Ginger Berrigan of New Orleans said the St. Tammany Parish School Board's denial of a coalition prayer meeting "constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination," the Associated Press reported. The American Center for Law and Justice, which argued the coalition's case, was pleased with the decision. "This ruling confirms what we have known from the very beginning: If a school district permits community organizations to use its facilities after hours, they cannot reject a request from an organization whose message is religious in nature," said Stuart Roth, senior counsel for the ACLJ, in a statement. Schools Superintendent Gayle Sloan said Friday that officials of the school system had not yet reviewed the opinion, and declined comment.
Originally published August 07, 2003.
