August, 2001 (Vol. 16, No. 10)

As Europe’s Christian Democratic parties are removed from the corridors of power today, there are signs that these once religious-based parties are reviving moral, if not faith, concerns in Europe.

The Public Justice Report (Vol. 23, No. 3), the newsletter of the Association for Public Justice, an evangelical political action caucus, notes that Christian Democratic parties’ new outsider role in European governments  has served as an impetus for these groups to re-orient themselves toward their original principles and ideals.

The climate change is evident among the parties in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium as well as in a new document called “A Union of Values.” Adopted at the congress of the European People’s Party (a coalition of Christian-Democrat, Centrist and Conservative parties) in Berlin, the document calls for the “right to life and the uniqueness of each human being from the moment of conception to death.”

The statement is meant to set a common legal standard for the protection of the human person throughout Europe rather than leaving these questions for national governments, especially as European unity becomes a reality. The document also states that experiments on human embryos should only be conducted if they seek to protect the life and health of the specific embryo that is the subject of the experiment.

(Public Justice Report, P.O. Box 48368, Washington, DC 20002-0368)

China is looking to France as a model for dealing with “cults,” such as Falun Gong, the persecuted Chinese meditation movement.

The Washington Post (July 10) reports that Chinese officials hold up the recent French law passed that made “mental manipulation” a crime as a way to control such groups as Falun Gong. The French law, passed in late May, has ignited a hailstorm of criticism in Europe and the U.S. for violating religious freedom.

The June issue of RW reported that Chinese officials have courted American academics seeking their support in the anti-Fulan Gong drive, and now the same officials are “touting the French law as partial vindication for China’s much-criticized human rights posture. They delight in noting that France’s National Assembly passed the measure unanimously and with widespread popular support,” writes Joseph A. Bosco.

Hong Kong’s leader Tung Cheehwa indicates that he is studying the French law for possible use against Falun Gong because it has “more or less the characteristics of an evil cult.” Meanwhile, CESNUR, an Italy-based study center on new religions, notes that Chile is also citing the French case in its attempts to ban and regulate “dangerous sects and/or cults.”

(http://www.cesnur.org/2001/chile_july_01_01.htm)

The close involvement of black clergy in Unification Church-sponsored activities is prompting a backlash of opposition in black churches, reports the Washington Post (July 25).

As increasing numbers of black clergy have participated in activities sponsored by the Unification Church, there have been a rash of firings and threats of dismissal of ministers involved in these events, particularly in the South, writes Hanna Rosin. Some clergy have been called to denounce Moon and his claims of being the messiah. As many as 35 black ministers have been voted out of office by church boards that object to any affiliation with Sun Myung Moon and the U.C.

Much of the furor is over black clergy’s involvement in a clergy association involved with Moon’s recent tour of the U.S. The association, called the American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC), is independent of the UC, but its formation appears to have aroused suspicion of Moon’s influence in the ranks of the clergy.

Apologia Report (July 9) an evangelical newsletter on cults and apologetics, notes that the late psychic Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) has lost nearly 80,000 members in the past 10 years and $4.5 million in the past two.”

Citing a report in the Virginia Pilot newspaper, the newsletter adds that the organization also faces a multimillion-dollar lawsuit by former leaders who were accused of trying to transform the ecumenical organization into a bastion of conservative Christianity.  Most of the controversy started when Gerald L. Martin and Michael L. Dempsey were named the executive directors in 1999. Former staff and leaders say they were wrongfully terminated during the transition in part, “because of their religious beliefs.”

Martin and Dempsey are being charged by critics and former leaders of trying to turn A.R.E. into a fundamentalist Christian organization. What turned many members against Dempsey and Martin began with their proposal for a new mission statement, calling for the group to be Christ-centered” and including frequent references to God, Jesus and Christ.”

(apologia-report@apologia.org)

Americans are increasingly meshing their vacations with their faith, reports Beliefnet, the religion web site.

While visits to shrines, retreat centers and other spiritual sites have been growing in recent years, more recently the travel industry — from religious tour books to Christian travel agents — is propelling the trend even further. Irving Hexham, the editor of Christian travelers’ guides to Great Britain, Italy, Germany and France, says that the number of Christians traveling abroad has grown from one million to 2.5 million in 20 years time.

Soluna Tours Sacred Journeys, which runs tours to both New Age and classical religious locations accompanied by scholars, organized three tours in 1995 and in 2001, it will send 30 tours. Christian camping has benefited strongly from the trend: In 1996, about 5.5 million people attended Christian camps and conference centers.

In 2000, nearly 7.5 million attended. The popular evangelical Mount Hermon family camps in California has seen its revenue jump from 1.5 million in 1996 to 1.9 million in 2000. Writer Gerald Zelizer ventures that these vacations’ combination of physical and spiritual enrichment appeals to materialistic Americans.

(http://www.beliefnet.com/story/83/story_8369.html)

Metropolitan and urban areas are becoming so diverse in the U.S. that the old models of urban and even suburban ministry don’t have much relevance.

That is the major lesson that the recent Census figures suggest to religious organizations, according to the current issue of  Visions (March/April), a newsletter on demography and religion. The data on changes in the number of people living in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas and their ethnic backgrounds suggest that “there is no single course of change occurring in metropolitan areas on which to plan comprehensive urban ministries, new church developments, or the revitalization of existing churches,” writes editor Anthony Healy.

The manner in which ethnic ministry is conducted is changing, as ethnic enclaves are as likely to be located in the suburbs as they are in the center of cities. Many ethnic groups also no longer form enclaves but are rather dispersed throughout the city and suburbs. Those enclaves in the city are usually more marginalized and may be in need of more ministry than those in the suburbs, but Healy finds that  suburban churches also need to reach out to poor residents from the new ethnic groups.

Of the major metropolitan regions, Healy adds that “less than half a dozen have the growth rates, and the apparent kinds of population influx, to support the model of establishing large new, primarily white suburban churches that are common among some mainline denominations. Unfortunately, anecdotal evidence of major flops is surfacing among these kind of churches.”

More than three-fifths of whites live outside these large metropolises. Healy concludes that congregations may have to learn to switch courses and adapt. Some central city congregations “are finding themselves with affluent, professional neighbors; and some plateaued suburban bodies are finding themselves with ethnic neighbors.”

(Visions, P.O. Box 94144, Atlanta, GA 30377)

The denominational conventions held so far this summer have signaled both revived conflicts and new directions among U.S. church bodies.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) continues on a course of conflict after its recent General Assembly. In the last few years, liberals claimed they were being shut out of the church through legislation that prohibited same-sex unions and the ordination of homosexuals. After the June assembly, it was the conservatives who were claiming a “liberal takeover,” according to an article in the conservative Presbyterian Layman (July).

The assembly voted to lift the ban on ordaining gays and lesbians. The legislation will not go into effect until local presbyteries vote on the proposal next year. The newspaper notes that equally or even more disconcerting to evangelicals and other conservatives is the assembly’s adoption of a statement that says Jesus is “uniquely Savior,” while stopping short of affirming that he is alone “Lord of all.” One delegate who voted for the new statement said an alternate statement affirming the singular saving work of Christ was “exclusionary . . .”

The end of the 61st regular convention of  the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, held in St. Louis from July 14-20, found partisans on all sides in the highly politicized church body declaring partial victory. In the words of one delegate, “it was a decidedly mixed bag.” Due to the death of its highly conservative president, A. L. Barry, in March, the most contested part of the convention was the election of a new leader.

Delegates elected Rev. Gerald B. Kieschnick, president of the synod’s Texas District, chair of its Commission on Theology and Church Relations, and a moderate, to a three-year term as president. Kieschnick defeated the more conservative Dr. Dean Wenthe, president of Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, on the fourth ballot.

By far the most contentious action of the convention came with passage by a vote of 706-343 to affirm the judgment of the late president Barry that the 5.2 million member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America [ELCA] “cannot be considered an orthodox Lutheran church body” due to its acceptance of altar and pulpit fellowship with Reformed churches, Episcopalians, and Moravians.

Additional controversy was provoked by the comments of outgoing president Robert T. Kuhn, who complained of “noisy minorities, both to the right and the left,” in a synod that he believed was “far more united than it is divided.” Post-convention reality questions Kuhn’s analysis, as the various political camps in Missouri each claim cautionary victory and begin to lay plans regarding the future direction of the synod.

Meanwhile, one segment of Eastern Orthodoxy has moved one step further to creating a unified and independent Eastern Orthodox church. The Los Angeles Times (July 28) reports that at its conventionin late July, the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America petitioned the Patriarch of the Holy Synod of Antioch to become an autonomous church body. It is not clear if the patriarch will accept the petition; it took the Russian Orthodox Church 140 years to win autonomy from the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Although the Antiochian church would not become fully independent under the declaration (the Patriarch of Antioch would still have final word on electing its top bishop), observers say the action is likely to move  other North American Orthodox bodies that are still considered diaspora branches of the mother church in the new direction, such as the Greek Orthodox Church.

(Presbyterian Layman, P.O. Box 2210, Lenoir, NC 28645-2210)

— Mary Todd, assistant professor of History at Concordia University,  wrote the section on the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Todd is  author of “Authority Vested: A Story of Identity and Change in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod” (Eerdmans)