History > 2006 > USA > Faith, Sects (I)

Lisa Arnold, who runs a postabortion recovery group at the center,

has a degree in pastoral counseling from Trinity Theological Seminary.

Photograph: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Some Abortion Foes Forgo Politics for Quiet Talk

NYT        16.1.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/national/16abortion.html

Alhambra Journal

Ministering to New Face

of Migrants From China

May 31, 2006
The New York Times
By CINDY CHANG

ALHAMBRA, Calif. — Juan Du and her husband had good jobs in China. But in a country increasingly engaged in a capitalist free-for-all, they worried about being laid off. They worried too about whether their teenage daughter, faced with a fiercely competitive exam system, would get into college.

So the family headed to the United States last year and settled in this predominantly Asian suburb east of Los Angeles, though they had no work lined up and spoke little English.

Ms. Du then did something she had never done in China: She went to church.

Ms. Du, who is not Christian, became a regular in the newcomers' group at the Mandarin Baptist Church, where fellow immigrants chauffeur her to appointments and, she said in Mandarin, make her feel as if she is part of a "big family."

"It's like living in a closed bottle," she said of finding her way in her adopted country. "If you don't know the language, you can't figure out how to do anything."

Alhambra, neighboring Monterey Park and the surrounding suburbs, home to the nation's oldest and largest suburban Chinatown, were once known as Little Taipei and Chinese Beverly Hills for the Taiwan and Hong Kong natives who streamed in with enough cash to buy a house and a Mercedes.

Now the typical newcomer arrives from an obscure corner of mainland China, well educated but with no English skills and just a few hundred dollars. Like Ms. Du, many do not even have a car.

But they do have local Chinese churches. If a newcomer needs a ride to the hospital and an English speaker to help translate, someone from Mandarin Baptist's congregation steps forward. Newcomers are eligible for emergency grants, known as "love gifts," and the church's 1,600 members are a ready source for job referrals.

"We welcome all sorts of people with any kind of motive," said the Rev. Joshua Ting, a pastor at Mandarin Baptist, a Southern Baptist congregation founded in 1963 by Chinese immigrants. "Of course, we always challenge them to really consider seriously about faith. But we will not turn anyone away because they come in and ask for certain resources."

Those resources are often basic necessities. Chinese churches are filling a void left by underfinanced social service agencies, a role that American religious institutions have played for other immigrant groups for centuries.

Mirroring the demographic shifts here, most longtime members of Mr. Ting's congregation are from Taiwan, while at the newcomers' group, business is conducted in the brogues of far-flung mainland provinces. (Ms. Du's family is from Shandong Province in eastern China, overlooking the Korean Peninsula.)

For those who were white-collar workers — Ms. Du was a public transit manager — the climb to an equivalent occupation here is arduous, often requiring years of waiting tables or sewing at a garment factory while studying English in precious spare time.

"I didn't know English, and everything is according to ability here, so I could only do menial work," said Rong Chen, who earned a master's degree in mathematics in China and was a high school principal there.

When she arrived here five years ago, Ms. Chen started on the immigrant ladder's lowest rungs, working as a live-in caretaker for the elderly. She married an American and now earns $8.50 an hour as a hospital security guard.

The emotional toll of adjusting to a new life can be enormous, and some immigrants who never gave a second thought to religion are attracted to the surrogate families the churches provide.

"The church is one of the most convenient sources to look to for socializing as well as mutual aid," said Peter Kwong, a professor of Asian-American studies at Hunter College who is an expert on Chinese immigrants. "A lot of people convert after they arrive."

An estimated 250,000 to 300,000 Chinese are in the United States illegally, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

That is a small fraction of the country's 11 million or so illegal immigrants, but their problems are ever-present at a church like Mandarin Baptist, where newcomers are asked no questions about their status but sometimes confide in fellow churchgoers about it. Those who choose to be baptized are now required to take a three-month Bible course first, a condition adopted after some new converts asked for signatures on religious asylum papers, then disappeared.

"A lot of them have immigration issues," said Frank Ho, the chairman of the newcomers' group. "We'll pray with them and tell them it's up to God."

Alhambra is often just the first stop on the way to somewhere else. In a year's time, church leaders say, few of the 50 or so people who show up for the regular newcomers' sessions will still be attending the church. Some will have no more patience for sermons. Others will have moved on in search of better jobs and a cheaper cost of living.

But the congregants persist with their good works, out of compassion and on the chance, leaders say, that they may save a soul.

Ms. Du says she is starting to explore Christianity, though another, perhaps more pressing concern is learning English, so she can work at an office job again.

She is unemployed, and her husband, who was a government clerk in China, is a handyman. But they look forward to something better. "It just takes time," she said.

    Ministering to New Face of Migrants From China, NYT, 31.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/31/us/31alhambra.html

Diocese to Sell Headquarters to Help Settle Abuse Claims

May 26, 2006
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane, Wash., is selling its headquarters and other property valued at about $11 million as part of its effort to settle claims by victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy.

The diocese is one of three in the country that have filed for bankruptcy; the others are those in Portland, Ore., and Tucson.

Although the Spokane diocese announced its intention to sell diocesan assets when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2004, the fact that those assets are now going on the market underscores the financial strain many dioceses face as they address hundreds of millions of dollars in claims by victims of sexual abuse.

"I think it is symbolically significant," said the Rev. John J. Coughlin, a Franciscan priest and a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, specializing in civil and canon law. "The diocese doesn't need the physical building to exist. But the sale shows that the effects of the sex abuse crisis are serious, for this and other dioceses as well."

In a report issued in March, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said that in 2005, dioceses in the United States paid $399 million in settlements with victims of sexual abuse and $68 million in legal fees and support programs for victims, a sharp increase from the year before.

The church's total payments resulting from the sexual abuse scandal have surpassed $1 billion, and many dioceses have yet to reach settlements with victims.

The number of victims has exceeded 12,000. Nearly 5,000 priests have been implicated in abuse dating from as long ago as 1950. Most of the abuse occurred from the mid-1960's to the mid-1980's.

Each diocese has tried to find a way to address the many claims against it, including filing for bankruptcy. Barbara Dorris, victims' outreach director for a group called Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said bankruptcy was a way to avoid answering charges in court that officials might have covered up sexual abuse by their clergy.

But the experience of the Spokane diocese exposes some of the perils of bankruptcy, Father Coughlin said. The diocese faces 185 claims totaling more than $200 million, said Shaun Cross, a lawyer for the diocese with the Paine Hamblin firm of Spokane.

Recently, a federal bankruptcy judge ruled that the parishes and schools in the diocese belonged to the bishop's office and could be sold to settle abuse claims, Mr. Cross said. The diocese, which argues that the bishop holds those properties in trust, is appealing the ruling to avoid selling the properties.

Those properties are valued at about $80 million, and the judge has yet to rule on seminaries, retreats and charities in the diocese.

The diocesan headquarters, called the chancery, has an asking price of $1.5 million, Mr. Cross said. Once it is sold, the diocesan staff could stay there until the end of 2007.

Spokane's bishop, William S. Skylstad, president of the bishops conference, himself faces an accusation of sexual abuse brought by a woman that dates to the early 1960's. Bishop Skylstad has denied wrongdoing.

By filing for bankruptcy, the Spokane diocese may have thought it would be limiting its financial liability, Father Coughlin said, though that has not been the case so far.

"One of the things that a bishop has to consider is once a diocese files for bankruptcy protection and goes under receivership, then the federal bankruptcy judge has control of all the assets," Father Coughlin said. "Many bishops rightly are reluctant to hand that kind of authority to a federal judge."

    Diocese to Sell Headquarters to Help Settle Abuse Claims, NYT, 26.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/26/us/26spokane.html


 

From Chinatown in Manhattan,
Pastor Paul Chen of the Church of Grace to the Fujianese leads a conference-call Bible study group.

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times        May 20, 2006

Immigrants Hear God's Word, in Chinese, via Conference Call        NYT        21.5.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/nyregion/21bible.html?hp&ex=
1148270400&en=ffc1720fbb2543ac&ei=5094&partner=homepage
 

Immigrants Hear God's Word,

in Chinese, via Conference Call

May 21, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

Just before midnight, the calls start coming in to the church on Allen Street in Chinatown. They come from Chinese restaurant workers across the United States.

Chen Yingjie, 25, is one of those on the other end, dialing the Manhattan church, the Church of Grace to Fujianese, on a recent night from his room above the China Garden in Dowagiac, Mich., a town of 6,000. "Every time I call in, I know that the Lord is alive and that there are brothers and sisters by my side," Mr. Chen said. "I don't feel as empty."

The callers — more than a hundred crowd the line on many nights — are for the most part like Mr. Chen, illegal immigrants from the Fuzhou region of Fujian province, coming off bone-wearying 12-hour shifts as stir-fry cooks, dishwashers, deliverymen and waiters at Chinese restaurants, buffets and takeout places.

For the next hour, led by a pastor sitting in front of a speakerphone in Chinatown, they will sing praises to God over the phone and study shengjing — the Bible — together.

With limited English and even less time, often isolated in small towns across the country, most Fujianese Chinese restaurant workers find it impossible to attend church on Sundays. But strung together by cellphones and free night-and-weekend minutes, these workers have come to form a virtual church on Monday through Thursday nights, deriving spiritual sustenance and companionship from an unusual conference-call Bible study organized by the Church of Grace.

"It's like there is a giant net, connecting people from all different places together," said Mr. Chen, speaking in Mandarin.

The Bible study is the brainchild of the Pastor Paul Chen, a minister at Church of Grace, and himself an emigrant from the Fuzhou region, which has become China's leading source of illegal immigrants smuggled into the United States. Three years ago, he said, he had been praying about how to tend to the thousands of Fujianese working in Chinese restaurants across the country.

"In the Bible, it states that you are never to stop gathering together," he said, speaking in Mandarin. "For those who are out of state, having fellowship and being together, it is not that easy."

The conference-call idea came to him, he said, when he saw someone at the church use the three-way calling feature on his cellphone one day. Early on, the gatherings over the telephone were organized haphazardly, with one restaurant worker calling into the church and then conferencing in a friend; the friend would in turn conference in another friend. The chain expanded, growing to 20 or 30 people on the line at once. Sometimes it would take 20 minutes just to get everyone together.

Different parts of the Bible are studied on different nights: Psalms on Tuesday; New Testament on Wednesday; Old Testament on Thursday. On Mondays, there is a short devotional and then a time of prayer.

Eventually, the church bought conference call lines able to handle 40 callers at a time. When that proved too few, they expanded to 100 lines.

Although reliable numbers are difficult to come by because most Fujianese are here illegally, it is estimated that 300,000 immigrants from the Fuzhou region are in the United States, with the largest concentration, about 60,000 to 70,000, in New York City, said Kenneth J. Guest, a Baruch College anthropology professor who wrote the book "God in Chinatown" (New York University Press, 2003).

By all indications, they are continuing to come. Church of Grace, the largest Protestant church in Chinatown catering to Fujianese, gets newcomers almost every week at its services. Last year, more than 500 visitors, most of them fresh from China, passed through the church, said Stanley Chan, a deacon. About 450 to 500 people attend services weekly.

New York City is the central node of a vast ethnic economy that provides labor to the country's Chinese restaurants, of which there are more than 36,000 — more than the number of McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's outlets combined — says the Chinese Restaurant News, an industry publication.

Fujianese workers line up at dozens of ramshackle employment agencies under the Manhattan Bridge. On the wall are postings advertising jobs available at restaurants across the country, generally paying $1,800 to $2,600 a month. After short telephone interviews, the workers are trundled off on van lines that drop them off at their new jobs.

"We've got this little diaspora in formation," Dr. Guest said. "The workers are not settling in these places. The restaurant owners are going and establishing these outposts. The workers are still moving back and forth. It's really a working-class internal migration between New York and other parts of the country."

But the migration has a high cost for many workers, who often find themselves stranded in places with few other people like them and little ability to interact with the English-speaking world.

"They're particularly vulnerable and lonely," Dr. Guest said. "The churches and temples serve as very important community centers for this very transient population. The conference calls are an extension of that."

Many Fujianese restaurant workers found yesu jidu, Jesus Christ, at churches back home in China, while others converted after coming to this country. Christianity is enjoying a renaissance in China. Among the areas where the greatest growth has occurred is in Fujian province and other parts of southeastern China. By early 2001, there were 1,500 registered churches and an additional 2,500 official meeting points in Fujian, Dr. Guest says in his book. Residents meet in underground churches, as well as open ones. There are also unregistered churches that simply function with the tacit approval of the local government.

Mr. Chen's parents raised him as a Christian, although he rarely went to church. He paid human smugglers to sneak him into the United States two years ago, first flying to Guatemala and then making his way to Mexico, where he swam a river to cross the border. He declined to say how much he paid them, but the price these days is generally more than $60,000. It will take him at least two more years, he said, to pay off his debt.

Soon after he arrived in New York City, he sought out the Church of Grace.

"Coming to America, I just felt that I was really alone," he said. "I saw something in the newspaper about the church, and I went."

Several months ago, seeking to move out of New York City, he found a job through an employment agency as a waiter at a Thai restaurant in Indiana. After a brief stint, he decided that being a waiter did not suit him, so he quit and went to Chicago. There, at another employment agency, he learned of an opportunity answering the telephone and working the cash register at China Garden, the lone Chinese restaurant in Dowagiac, in the southwestern part of the state.

Dowagiac, which sit in the heart of the largest hog-producing county in Michigan, might seem an unlikely place for a Chinese restaurant. But located on the town's main thoroughfare, a few doors down from Bill's Vac Shop and Marci's Variety Store, China Garden draws a steady line of customers. General Tso's chicken is the most popular dish. On the wall, a framed certificate from a local newspaper honors the restaurant as having the best buffet in town.

Upon his arrival in Dowagiac in late April, Mr. Chen was assigned a 9-by-12 room upstairs from the restaurant. The restaurant's owners lived in an adjoining room; other employees camped out in the living room.

But Mr. Chen quickly soured on life in Dowagiac. (He left last weekend to go back to Chicago.) The restaurant owners locked the doors every night, making it impossible to leave. Even on his days off, without a car, he had few options other than walking to the public library down the street.

"It's like I'm living in a cage," he said.

The Bible study offered him a lifeline, a rare chance to escape.

"For us brothers and sisters who are out of state," he said, "the Bible study over the phone is central to our lives."

His favorite Bible verse? Psalm 49:20. "A man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish."

Wu Jishu, 33, has worked in more than 10 states since he came to the United States five years ago and has been calling in to the Bible study since its early days. Now he works at a takeout restaurant outside of Pittsburgh.

He appreciates the opportunity to ask questions about parts of the Bible that confuse him, he said. Occasionally, the pastor will also open up the line for participants to share news about their lives and to pray for one another.

"We can't see each other," Mr. Wu said. "But we can hear each other."

On a recent night, Mr. Chen, of the Church of Grace, led the participants through a passage in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus heals the sick and demon-possessed in Galilee. He impressed upon them that their purpose in the United States was not simply to zhuanqian, earn money, but to spread the Gospel as well.

Like a preacher revving up his audience, he challenged his listeners to respond, hitting a button to open up the lines.

"We're here to what?"

"Spread the Gospel," they said in a cacophony of Mandarin.

"We're here to what?"

"Spread the Gospel."

Later in the passage, Jesus calls on his disciples to come with him as he preached to other villages. Mr. Chen drew an analogy to the restaurant workers. They could go from buffet house to buffet house, planting seeds of faith wherever they went.

    Immigrants Hear God's Word, in Chinese, via Conference Call, NYT, 21.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/nyregion/21bible.html?hp&ex=1148270400&en=ffc1720fbb2543ac&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Theologians debunk 'Da Vinci Code' dogma

Posted 5/18/2006 10:22 PM ET
USA Today
By Cathy Lynn Grossman

As The Da Vinci Code opens Friday, scholars and Christian clergy are rushing to rebut its fictional version of history and theology — in which Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child.

A main character voices traditional Christian arguments not in Dan Brown's book. Still, the film features several unorthodox views on Jesus and the church. Historians, theologians and religion experts respond to some of the movie's controversial statements.

Q: One character, a historian, says Jesus' divinity was not part of church doctrine until he was "voted" into godly status at a fourth-century council. Proof of Jesus' mortality, the historian claims, "will drive the church to its knees." Is any of this true?

A: Bishops settled numerous theological disputes at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325, but they always considered Jesus to be divine. "No human being can upgrade someone to God. Jesus claims his divinity in the earliest gospels, hymns and creeds of the church. He is described as 'the image of the invisible God and the very nature of God,' " says Southern Baptist theologian and author the Rev. Lee Strobel.

The critical theological accomplishment at Nicea, says Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary, was its the council's overwhelming vote to distinguish Christianity from the many gods of pagan belief. One way they did this was branding as heresy a teaching that Jesus was not the exact same substance as God.

"If the movie is correct, then Jesus is not God, then Christianity doesn't have a savior," says the Rev. Erwin Lutzer, pastor of the Moody Church in Chicago and author of The Da Vinci Deception.

Q: What about the claim that the council declared Jesus divine to consolidate the power of the Roman Empire and the church against pagan rivals?

A: Bishop Savas of Troas, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, calls this portrayal "cartoonish."

The Rev. Thomas Lynch, a Roman Catholic priest who teaches church history, says that only a handful of Roman church patriarchs were with the 220 or so Eastern bishops who attended the council. It would be another century before the Rome-based church developed real clout.

The critical theological accomplishment at Nicea, says Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Seminary, was the council's overwhelming vote to distinguish Christianity from the many gods of pagan belief. One way they did this was branding as heresy a teaching that Jesus was not the exact same substance as God.

Q: The film presents Mary Magdalene as Jesus' favorite apostle and claims the Holy Grail is her womb. It says she fled to France after the crucifixion to escape persecution by those who wanted to vanquish women's roles in the church. Is any of this true?

A: Mary Magdalene was once called the Apostle to the Apostles because she is the one who brought the news of Christ's resurrection to the others. Catholic commentator Amy Welborn, author of De-Coding Mary Magdalene: Truth, Legend and Lies, notes that the Catholic Church honors Mary Magdalene as a saint, (feast day July 22), "a truly odd way of 'demonizing' a person."

Still, "there is no historical evidence, archaeology or letters — and no evidence is sin No. 1 for historians — that Jesus married Mary Magdalene or had a child with her, or that she went to France," says Kate Jansen, associate professor of history at Catholic University and author of The Making of the Magdalene:: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages. Jansen says it's The Da Vinci Code, not the church, that demeans Mary Magdalene, treating her "only as a vessel to pass on a holy bloodline. Her ideas, thoughts and actions don't matter. She's merely a holy uterus, a container. The actual history is so much richer."

Q: A fanatical bishop and a monk who practices gory self-mortification drive the movie plot by conniving and killing on behalf of a secretive, ultra-observant Catholic group, Opus Dei. Does this group really exist?

A: Opus Dei (which means "Work of God") is a small but influential group of 85,000 primarily lay Catholics, 3,000 in the USA. But U.S. spokesman Brian Finnerty says there's nothing true about its portrayal in the movie.

The sect was founded in 1928 by St. Josemaría Escrivá, a Spanish priest who called people to use their everyday activities to grow closer to God. Members, most married, choose a disciplined life of prayer, study, worship and service. Some members of Opus Dei choose celibate life and a voluntary discomfort, such as wearing a cilice, a barbed belt worn on the thigh several hours a day as a way of joining in Christ's suffering.

But "The Da Vinci Code's masochist monk, who loves pain for its own sake, has nothing to do with real Christian mortification," says the group's website (opusdei.org).

Q: The Da Vinci Code mentions gospels by Mary Magdalene and Philip that aren't in Christian Bibles. Are there such gospels?

A: Yes, scholars say, there are numerous other ancient gospels, including the recently translated Gospel of Judas, which offer alternative versions of spirituality.

Most date to the early fourth century, much later than the four biblical gospels, says Michael Licona, director of Apologetics and Interfaith Evangelism for the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

"They give us insight to an early group, the Gnostics, regarded as heretics by mainstream Christians" he says. "Gnostics say they are saved by knowledge, by the light within themselves, rather than through Jesus."

Contributing: Gary Stern of The Journal News, Westchester, N.Y.

    Theologians debunk 'Da Vinci Code' dogma, NYT, 18.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-05-18-da-vinci-theology_x.htm

Study Sees Church Rebounding From Scandal

May 18, 2006
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

A new study has found that the scandal over sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church has not caused American Catholics to leave the church, or to stop attending Mass and donating to their parishes.

The study shows that Catholic participation in church life and satisfaction with church leadership dropped noticeably at the height of the scandal in 2002, but has now largely rebounded to prescandal levels.

The only significant decline is in the percentage of Catholics who contributed to diocesan financial appeals, annual campaigns that are usually run by bishops. While the percentage of Catholics who contributed to their local parishes remained steady, those who gave to diocesan appeals dropped to 29 percent in 2005 from 38 percent in April 2002.

"There's been an expectation that there would be more Catholics exiting the faith, and clearly the polls show that there wasn't any evidence of that," said Mark M. Gray, research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, which conducted the study.

"It's a reflection of how resilient religious faith can be — that Catholics were able to disconnect their own personal faith from what was occurring among a group of clergy at a specific time in history," Dr. Gray said. "Their faith was bigger than these events. Clearly there was a lot of dissatisfaction, but people remain Catholic."

The center based the study on 10 national telephone polls of adult Catholics conducted since January 2001. Most included 1,000 or more respondents, but since the number of people polled varied each time, the margin of sampling error varied from plus or minus 2.1 percentage points to plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

The sexual abuse crisis, which first erupted in the Archdiocese of Boston in early 2002, eventually spread to nearly every diocese in the nation as accusers stepped forward and said priests had molested them as children and young adults. American bishops sent a delegation to Rome to meet with Pope John Paul II and instituted new rules for removing accused priests from the ministry. A report commissioned by the church found that from 1950 to 2004, more than 9,000 young people were victimized.

But the new study found that many Catholics knew little about the scope of the scandal, and that the percentage who said that they had heard about the bishops' responses to the scandal dropped to 40 percent in 2005 from a peak of 53 percent in 2004.

"They are just not very well informed of what is really happening," said John Moynihan, communications director for Voice of the Faithful, a Catholic reform group born in the scandal's wake.

The percentage of adult Americans who identify themselves as Catholic has remained steady at 23 percent, the study found. The percentage of Catholics who say they attend Mass at least once a week also held steady from September 2000 to September 2005 at 33 percent, with a slight rise to 39 percent immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the center's polls.

Donations at the parish level also held steady. Seventy-six percent of Catholics said in April 2002 that they had contributed to their parish collection in the previous year, compared with 74 percent in October 2005.

"This really confirms what we've heard as well," said Dr. Francis J. Butler, president of Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities. "People are very strongly supportive of their own parish life, but contributions to national collections have dipped."

Some dioceses are now struggling financially, Dr. Butler said, including Boston; Cincinnati; Spokane, Wash.; Savannah, Ga.; Burlington, Vt.; San Francisco; Oakland, Calif.; Gary, Ind.; and Springfield, Mass.

Paul Baier, co-director of bishopaccountability.org, said he had learned that Catholics had "compartmentalized their faith."

"Their belief in their pastor is not shaken," Mr. Baier said, "but they find a lack of moral authority in the bishops."

The study found that three-fourths of Catholics say the sexual abuse issue has hurt the credibility of church leaders who speak out on social or political issues. However, it also found that 74 percent of Catholics are "somewhat" or "very" satisfied with the leadership of American bishops, an increase from 68 percent in April 2002, when the question was first asked, as the scandal was escalating.

Even more said they were satisfied with their own bishop's leadership (81 percent in April 2002, and 85 percent in October 2005).

Robert Wuthnow, the director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University, said he was surprised at the study's findings.

"At the popular level of casual conversations, there's always this assumption that the Catholic Church is not doing well because of the scandal, and people are wringing their hands," Dr. Wuthnow said. "So this evidence is really important."

    Study Sees Church Rebounding From Scandal, NYT, 18.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/us/18catholics.html

Conservative Christians Warn Republicans Against Inaction

May 15, 2006
The New York times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, May 13 — Some of President Bush's most influential conservative Christian allies are becoming openly critical of the White House and Republicans in Congress, warning that they will withhold their support in the midterm elections unless Congress does more to oppose same-sex marriage, obscenity and abortion.

"There is a growing feeling among conservatives that the only way to cure the problem is for Republicans to lose the Congressional elections this fall," said Richard Viguerie, a conservative direct-mail pioneer.

Mr. Viguerie also cited dissatisfaction with government spending, the war in Iraq and the immigration-policy debate, which Mr. Bush is scheduled to address in a televised speech on Monday night.

"I can't tell you how much anger there is at the Republican leadership," Mr. Viguerie said. "I have never seen anything like it."

In the last several weeks, Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and one of the most influential Christian conservatives, has publicly accused Republican leaders of betraying the social conservatives who helped elect them in 2004. He has also warned in private meetings with about a dozen of the top Republicans in Washington that he may turn critic this fall unless the party delivers on conservative goals.

And at a meeting in Northern Virginia this weekend of the Council for National Policy, an alliance of the most prominent Christian conservatives, several participants said sentiment toward the White House and Republicans in Congress had deteriorated sharply since the 2004 elections.

When the group met in the summer of 2004, it resembled a pep rally for Mr. Bush and his allies on Capitol Hill, and one session focused on how to use state initiatives seeking to ban same-sex marriage to help turn out the vote. This year, some participants are complaining that as soon as Mr. Bush was re-elected he stopped expressing his support for a constitutional amendment banning such unions.

Christian conservative leaders have often threatened in the months before an election to withhold their support for Republicans in an effort to press for their legislative goals. In the 1990's, Dr. Dobson in particular became known for his jeremiads against the Republican party, most notably in the months before the 1998 midterm elections.

But the complaints this year are especially significant because they underscore how the broad decline in public approval for Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans is beginning to cut into their core supporters. The threatened defections come just two years after many Christian conservatives — most notably Dr. Dobson — abandoned much of their previous reservations and poured energy into electing Republicans in 2004.

Dr. Dobson gave his first presidential endorsement to Mr. Bush and held get-out-the-vote rallies that attracted thousands of admirers in states with pivotal Senate races while Focus on the Family and many of its allies helped register voters in conservative churches.

Republican officials, who were granted anonymity to speak publicly because of the sensitivity of the situation, acknowledged the difficult political climate but said they planned to rally conservatives by underscoring the contrast with Democrats and emphasizing the recent confirmations of two conservatives to the Supreme Court.

Midterm Congressional elections tend to be won by whichever side can motivate more true believers to vote. Dr. Dobson and other conservatives are renewing their complaints about the Republicans at a time when several recent polls have shown sharp declines in approval among Republicans and conservatives. And compared with other constituencies, evangelical Protestants have historically been suspicious of the worldly business of politics and thus more prone to stay home unless they feel clear moral issues are at stake.

"When a president is in a reasonably strong position, these kind of leaders don't have a lot of leverage," said Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan political analyst. "But when the president is weak, they tend to have a lot of leverage."

Dr. Dobson, whose daily radio broadcast has millions of listeners, has already signaled his willingness to criticize Republican leaders. In a recent interview with Fox News on the eve of a visit to the White House, he accused Republicans of "just ignoring those that put them in office."

Dr. Dobson cited the House's actions on two measures that passed over the objections of social conservatives: a hate-crime bill that extended protections to gay people, and increased support for embryonic stem cell research.

"There's just very, very little to show for what has happened," Dr. Dobson said, "and I think there's going to be some trouble down the road if they don't get on the ball."

According to people who were at the meetings or were briefed on them, Dr. Dobson has made the same point more politely in a series of private conversations over the last two weeks in meetings with several top Republicans, including Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser; Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader; Representative J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the House speaker; and Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader.

"People are getting concerned that they have not seen some of these issues move forward that were central to the 2004 election," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, who attended the meetings.

Richard D. Land, a top official of the Southern Baptist Convention who has been one of Mr. Bush's most loyal allies, said in an interview last week that many conservatives were upset that Mr. Bush had not talked more about a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

"A lot of people are disappointed that he hasn't put as much effort into the marriage amendment as he did for the prescription drug benefit or Social Security reform," Dr. Land said.

Republicans say they are taking steps to revive their support among Christian conservatives. On Thursday night, Mr. Rove made the case for the party at a private meeting of the Council for National Policy, participants said.

In addition to reminding conservatives of the confirmations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, party strategists say the White House and Senate Republicans are escalating their fights against the Democrats over conservative nominees to lower federal courts, and the Senate is set to revive the same-sex marriage debate next month with a vote on the proposed amendment.

But it is unclear how much Congressional Republicans will be able to do for social conservatives before the next election.

No one expects the same-sex marriage amendment to pass this year. Republican leaders have not scheduled votes on a measure to outlaw transporting minors across state lines for abortions, and the proposal faces long odds in the Senate. A measure to increase obscenity fines for broadcasters is opposed by media industry trade groups, pitting Christian conservatives against the business wing of the party, and Congressional leaders have not committed to bring it to a vote.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and another frequent participant in the Council for National Policy, argued that Christian conservatives were hurting their own cause.

"If the Republicans do poorly in 2006," Mr. Norquist said, "the establishment will explain that it was because Bush was too conservative, specifically on social and cultural issues."

Dr. Dobson declined to comment. His spokesman, Paul Hetrick, said that Dr. Dobson was "on a fact-finding trip to see where Republicans are regarding the issues that concern values voters most, especially the Marriage Protection Act," and that it was too soon to tell the results.

    Conservative Christians Warn Republicans Against Inaction, NYT, 15.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/15/washington/15dobson.html?hp&ex=1147752000&en=e08dec9e1107338d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Da Vinci Code movie a target for US evangelicals

Sun May 14, 2006 6:50 AM ET
Reuters
By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - America's evangelical Christians who see "The Da Vinci Code" as Bible bashing at its worst are taking a cue from Hollywood to attack the story as well as capitalize on the hit novel's impending movie version.

Largely forgoing boycotts or protests, leaders of Christians who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible are turning out professional videos with titles such as "The Da Vinci Delusion" and "The Da Vinci Deception Experience."

They are designed to show the perils of blurring fact and fiction in Dan Brown's bestseller and take advantage of the reawakening of interest in the Bible it and the upcoming movie have caused among faith seekers.

"A boycott at this point would not do any good. When you have a tsunami coming it doesn't help to build a wall," said Dr. Erwin Lutzer, pastor of Moody Bible Church in Chicago.

"I have never in my 30 years of ministry had a time when so many people are interested ... We as evangelicals welcome the debate," added Lutzer, who wrote "The Da Vinci Deception" which has been turned into a video teaching kit on the subject.

He and other experts will appear in a closed-circuit broadcast this month that will be aired to around 700 churches, to inform congregations about the book's faults and take advantage of the debate to promote church attendance.

"This is the engagement option," says Darrell Bock, professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary.

It provides an opportunity for people "to become familiar with the content of the book and the claims it's making and then being prepared to respond, by pointing out the numerous factual errors it contains," he added.

This has become the favored approach among evangelicals, instead of boycotting the movie, said Bock, author of "Breaking the Da Vinci Code: Answers to the Questions Everyone is Asking."

By contrast cardinals at the Vatican, who consider the book blasphemous, have called for a boycott and unspecified legal action to be taken against the novel and film.

DA VINCI "DECEPTION"

Across the United States on Saturday and Sunday, television viewers were to be offered "The Da Vinci Deception," an hour-long program produced by Dr. D. James Kennedy and his Florida-based Coral Ridge Ministries.

The video, also being offered for sale, exposes "how a best-selling book threatens to undermine the faith of millions," its promotional trailer states.

Donald Wildmon, founder of the Mississippi-based American Family Association which has organized boycotts against TV shows and companies it considers morally offensive, says the video "should be viewed by every Christian and shown in every church."

The book, and the film opening May 19, contain the idea that Jesus sired a child by Mary Magdalene, leading to a clandestine society that has for centuries protected the identity of their descendants from agents of the Catholic Church.

Dr. Robert Hodgson, dean of the American Bible Society's Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship, says many Christians see the debate as a great time to promote the Bible.

But there are others who "see a more sinister hand at work in the movie and want to correct the record and get the voice of orthodox Christianity out there."

The New York-based society produced a show called "Debunking the Da Vinci Code" which aired earlier this year on about 300 cable TV channels.

"Not only do we have the voice of Dan Brown telling us his reconstruction, (but) we have an increasing Bible illiteracy here in North America," Hodgson said.

Adds Lutzer of Chicago's Moody Church: "There is a huge battle going on today on who has the best telling of the Christian story.

"People want to believe the Da Vinci Code so badly because they want a Christ who is manageable, a Jesus that is not going to challenge you or threaten your lifestyle."

    Da Vinci Code movie a target for US evangelicals, NYT, 14.5.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-05-14T104952Z_01_FOR438942_RTRUKOC_0_US-LEISURE-DAVINCI-EVANGELICALS.xml

Christian Foes of 'Da Vinci Code' Debate How to Fight It

May 11, 2006
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Many Christian leaders across the country are girding themselves for battle with "The Da Vinci Code," the movie based on the blockbuster novel by Dan Brown that opens on May 19. Whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, Orthodox or evangelical, they agree that the book attacks the pillars of Christianity by raising doubts about the divinity of Jesus and the origins of the Bible.

But they are not at all in agreement on how to best respond to a movie that one leader called "blasphemy on steroids." Some will boycott it. Others will use it as a "teaching moment." Still others will lodge a protest by seeing another movie.

Until recently, the prevailing strategy was to hitch on to the Da Vinci steamroller and use it as an opportunity for evangelism. For months, clergy have been giving their flocks books and DVD's debunking the novel, and some have even encouraged their congregants to see the movie with a nonbeliever.

"I think we really have to see it, at least some of us," said Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, a prominent evangelical school. "It's very important for some Christians at least to be able to engage in an intelligent discussion."

But in recent weeks, calls for boycotts and protests have grown louder, from the Vatican to conservative Christian groups in the United States. They acknowledge that a boycott is not likely to make a dent at the box office, but say the co-optation strategy promoted by others will not adequately convey how offensive "The Da Vinci Code" is to their faith.

"Christians are under no obligation to pay for what Hollywood dishes out, especially a movie that slanders Jesus Christ and the church," said Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian group based in Washington.

"I don't have to see 'The Devil in Miss Jones' to know it's pornography, and I don't have to see 'The Da Vinci Code' to know that it's blasphemous," said Mr. Knight, who plans to join religious leaders from groups like Human Life International and Movieguide in Washington on May 17 to announce boycott plans.

A third strategy now gaining currency is being called an "othercott" — urging people to see a different movie on the day "The Da Vinci Code" opens, like "Over the Hedge," an animated family feature. The idea was dreamed up by Barbara Nicolosi, a former nun who now directs Act One, a program in Los Angeles that coaches Christian screenwriters.

Talk of "the movie being an opportunity for evangelism is a line completely concocted by the Sony Pictures marketing machine," said Ms. Nicolosi. "All they care about is getting the box office, and if they don't get the red states to turn out, the movie tanks."

Christians have not been this worked up about a movie since Martin Scorsese's Jesus stepped down off the crucifix in "The Last Temptation of Christ" in 1988.

In "The Da Vinci Code," two sleuths uncover a conspiracy by the Catholic Church to conceal that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that the myth of his divinity was written into the Bible at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. by the Roman emperor Constantine. "The Da Vinci Code" was marketed as fiction, but Mr. Brown said in a preface page that his descriptions of artwork, documents and rituals "are accurate."

To be sure, there are many Christians who do not regard the book or the movie as a threat. But the outrage is widespread, and the divisions on strategy do not run along denominational lines. Some evangelicals are calling for a boycott, while others are telling their flocks to see the film. Roman Catholic officials are not on the same page either.

The debate has been colored by the Muslim riots over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Most American media outlets refrained from showing the cartoons, and now some Christian leaders are asking why Christians should be expected to sit by while the media promotes a movie that insults their savior.

In Rome recently, Archbishop Angelo Amato, the No. 2 official in the Vatican's doctrinal office, told Catholic communications officials: "If such slanders, offenses and errors had been directed at the Koran or the Holocaust, they would have justly provoked a world uprising. Instead, directed at the Church and Christians, they remain unpunished. I hope you will all boycott the movie."

Cardinal Francis Arinze, a prominent Vatican official from Nigeria, said in a recently released documentary made by a Catholic film agency that Christians should take "legal means" against "The Da Vinci Code," though he did not explain how.

But in the United States, Catholic bishops have opted to take an "educational" approach, said Msgr. Francis Maniscalco, a spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. They have produced a Web site, pamphlets and a documentary, "Jesus Decoded," that will air on NBC affiliates.

"We believe we can fight the Da Vinci Code's position from the point of view of scholarship, and we don't have to shut them down," Monsignor Maniscalco said.

Opus Dei, a Catholic group with a starring role in "The Da Vinci Code" as the evil guardian of the conspiracy, has consistently asked Sony Pictures to add a disclaimer to the movie. But the film's director, Ron Howard, told The Los Angeles Times last week, "Spy thrillers don't start off with disclaimers."

The prevailing evangelism strategy will affect thousands of churches. Focus on the Family, the conservative media ministry founded by Dr. James Dobson, has enlisted 3,000 churches to show a simulcast on the issue the weekend the movie opens.

The Rev. Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, has trained more than 200 pastors in how to encourage their congregations to use the movie to share their faith by throwing "Da Vinci Code parties" in their homes.

"It's the task of the missionary to learn the language of the indigenous people," he said, "and Dan Brown's book has become a universal language. It simply opens doors."

    Christian Foes of 'Da Vinci Code' Debate How to Fight It, NYT, 11.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/11/us/11davinci.html

Polygamy sect leader on FBI wanted list

Posted 5/7/2006 12:27 AM ET
USA Today

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The FBI announced Saturday it has placed polygamist church leader Warren Jeffs on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, hoping the additional exposure and reward money leads to an arrest in the long-running investigation.

Jeffs, 50, is the leader of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, based in the state line communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

The sect split from mainstream Mormonism after the broader church renounced polygamy in 1890. The mainstream LDS church excommunicates members found to be practicing polygamy.

Jeffs is wanted in Arizona on criminal charges of sexual conduct with a minor. He also was charged in Utah with rape as an accomplice. He is accused of arranging marriages between underage girls and older men.

Jeffs has not been seen by anyone outside of the FLDS community for nearly two years and also faces a charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

"We are doing everything we can to track him down," said Tim Fuhrman, special agent in charge of the FBI's Salt Lake City field office.

By putting him on the top-10 list, the FBI's reward increases from $50,000 to $100,000. The list is also distributed worldwide.

"We think that the inclusion of a $100,000 reward is going to mean that people are going to be much more aware of Warren Jeffs, they're going to be much more aware of what he looks like, and they're going to be much more willing to come forward to assist us in our efforts to locate him," U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton said at a press conference in Phoenix.

    Polygamy sect leader on FBI wanted list, UT, 7.5.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-05-06-polygamy-leader_x.htm

Pensions in Peril Over Church Exemptions

May 2, 2006
The New York Times
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Mary Petti worked for 35 years at a community hospital in Orange, N.J., earning a pension with a government guarantee. But now the hospital has closed, money is leaking out of the plan, and Ms. Petti fears the funds will be exhausted by the time she plans to retire in five years. The government guarantee has vanished as well.

Her plight illustrates a little-known aspect of pension law, which allows churches and organizations affiliated with them to escape the costly and complicated rules that apply to secular employers.

Tens of thousands of people work for organizations that have opted out of the law, as Ms. Petti's did. Most do not know that they are exposed to potential losses with little parallel in the corporate world.

For Ms. Petti and her fellow workers, their retirements were put at risk shortly before the hospital failed, when it exempted itself from federal pension law, citing an agreement it had made with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark.

"I felt that my pension was safe," said Ms. Petti, 60, who worked her way up from nurse to vice president for patient care services in her years at the Hospital Center at Orange. About 950 people participate in the pension plan; together they stand to lose about $10 million, according to one actuarial estimate.

Many of the employees now say they believe that the hospital used its ties to the archdiocese as a tool, Ms. Petti said, "to get out from under the pension obligations."

Both the archdiocese and representatives of the defunct Hospital Center deny that accusation.

As long as there has been a pension law — more than three decades —there has been a legal exemption for church plans. Congress, in general, is reluctant to do anything that regulates religious activities. Churches can elect to abide by the law if they want, and if they do, their employees' pensions are insured by the federal government, just as company pensions are.

But most churches opt out. So can employers that are not churches themselves, but that have some link to a religion, including hospitals, schools, nursing homes, charities and seminaries.

Every year, a few more such employers apply to have their pension plans designated "church plans" by the Internal Revenue Service. Public records do not make an exact count possible, but records at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation suggest that tens of thousands of people participate in plans that have achieved church status and withdrawn from the pension insurance program.

Most probably do not know it, either, because opting out of the pension law means opting out of the federal rules for disclosing pension information to employees.

"The lack of notice is typical," said James J. Keightley, former general counsel to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. "As a participant, you don't know what's happened to you, that the P.B.G.C. protection isn't there."

Former employees of the Hospital Center say they found out their plan had withdrawn from the pension system only after the fact. Executives called a staff meeting in 2003 to explain the gravity of the hospital's financial problems, they said, and a nurse raised her hand and asked whether their pensions were safe.

"That was the first time that any of us knew that our plan was no longer protected," said Mary Rich, the Hospital Center's former vice president for professional services. "I think the corporate people knew but were keeping it quiet."

James Freis, a lawyer for the Hospital Center at Orange, said the hospital had handled the pension plan in good faith. He said officials had taken the plan out of the insurance system without knowing that the hospital would soon have to close, leaving the plan without a sponsor. For the time being, he said, there is still money in the plan.

"We're going to do our best with what limited resources we have," he said.

For employers, being granted church plan status has major advantages. They no longer have to pay federal pension insurance premiums, and they can get as much as six years' worth of payments refunded. The amount recoverable can be significant for a struggling employer, particularly a nonprofit hospital in the age of managed care.

"It's a potential motivator," said Harold J. Ashner, a former assistant general counsel for legislation and regulations at the pension agency. "And Congress just increased the motive, by increasing the premiums" to help shore up the agency's finances.

Proponents of the church exclusion say the original pension rules were put into place to protect employees from being shortchanged by profit-making companies tempted to raid their pension plans to bolster profits or pay executive bonuses. When the church exclusion has come up in Congress, lawmakers have expressed confidence that religious employers will handle their pension plans fairly, because, they said, the religious employers answer to a higher authority.

But recent incidents suggest this confidence may be misplaced in some cases, especially in cases where a religious employer is in financial distress. Those incidents include these examples:

¶In 2002, the St. Francis Medical Center, a Catholic hospital in Lawrenceville, Pa., went bankrupt, stranding a pension fund for about 3,000 people. The hospital had dropped out of the insurance program several years earlier to save money.

¶In Boston, the Roman Catholic archdiocese told priests last year that a large shortfall had appeared in their pension fund, requiring their benefits to be cut. The archdiocese said its pension fund had had poor returns in recent years as it suffered from many of the same problems as corporate America's pension funds.

Previously, however, officials have cited general financial strains stemming from the sexual abuse scandal and a resulting decline in contributions from churchgoers. Short of bankruptcy, companies are not allowed to rescind benefits, but the priests had no legal recourse because their plan was not covered by the law.

¶The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis revealed in a rare public discussion of its accounts in 2003 that it had tapped into an 82-year-old pension fund for priests to help pay legal settlements and other costs involving sexual abuse claims, something the pension law would not allow a nonreligious organization to do. The archdiocese decided to use the money that way, it said, because it had set up another priests' pension fund in 1969, reducing the importance of the older fund.

Mr. Keightley, the former general counsel at the pension agency, said he thought more such problems would arise. "There have been a significant number of plans that have gotten their I.R.S. ruling letters and have opted out of P.B.G.C. coverage," he said. "Every plan that loses insurance protection is at risk." He and Mr. Ashner now practice at the Washington firm of Keightley & Ashner.

The Hospital Center at Orange became affiliated with the Newark archdiocese in 1998, but it did not apply for the church designation until 2002, when both the hospital and the plan were in deep trouble.

Records show the affiliation was part of a plan to coordinate the Hospital Center's operations with those of a nearby Catholic hospital, St. Mary's Life Center. St. Mary's, a specialized hospital offering outpatient services and long-term care, was part of the Cathedral Healthcare System, a family of hospitals run by the Archdiocese of Newark.

The Hospital Center, meanwhile, was a conventional community hospital providing acute care. It had a big caseload of Medicaid and uninsured patients and was constantly strapped for money, said Linda A. White, its former vice president for finance.

Officials at Cathedral wanted to turn St. Mary's into a "premier cancer center," according to the affiliation agreement. They proposed sending St. Mary's long-term care services to the Hospital Center, and bringing the Hospital Center's acute-care services to St. Mary's.

Cathedral also pledged $10 million for renovations. But the archdiocese now says that none of those arrangements obliged it to assume the Hospital Center's pension fund.

"In the beginning, the affiliation was looked at as a positive thing," Ms. White said. The Hospital Center was more than 100 years old and plagued with elevators that stuck frequently, broken pipes, inadequate computers and many other problems.

When the deal was struck, Ms. White said, the pension plan had 95 cents for every dollar it owed the work force — a respectable level of funding.

Then came the bear market. Many pension plans lost ground, including the one at the Hospital Center. By the end of 2001 it had just 76 cents for every dollar it had promised the work force.

In 2002, market conditions did not improve, and employers everywhere began running into special safeguards in the pension law, requiring them to start pumping in money quickly. The Hospital Center's plan slipped to just 58 cents for every dollar promised, and its actuary wrote to the I.R.S. requesting church plan status, retroactive to 1998.

The application said the Hospital Center was "controlled by" and "associated with" the Roman Catholic Church. "An employee of the hospital is deemed to be an employee of the Roman Catholic Church," the application letter concluded.

The employees were not told of this assertion. They say they considered themselves employees of a secular community hospital.

The I.R.S. approved the application in early 2003. Soon after, the employees learned what had happened. Horrified, they set about trying to get their pension insurance back.

But so far, they are caught in a legal Catch-22, struggling to prove violations of the law when the I.R.S. has determined that the law does not apply. The employees retained a lawyer, who brought suit in federal court in New Jersey, arguing that the provision exempting churches from the pension law is unconstitutional.

The judge, Joel A. Pisano, said he was reluctant to take on a constitutional challenge if the problem could be resolved in a simpler way. He gave the I.R.S. 90 days to review its decision. If the I.R.S. would rescind it, he said, then the pension law would once again apply and the employees could bring their case in the normal legal framework.

More than 90 days have passed, and the I.R.S. is continuing with its review. Judge Pisano dismissed the lawsuit, saying it was "not yet ripe for adjudication" because the I.R.S. was still deliberating.

Meanwhile, the Hospital Center has sold off all its equipment and real estate, and used the money to pay its other creditors. None of the proceeds went into the pension plan. The most recent documentation in the court files shows that at the end of 2003, the pension fund was down to just 51 cents for every dollar it had promised.

"There's no reason that this situation couldn't be repeated," Mr. Keightley said. "It may be that the plans with the greatest need for the insurance have the greatest tendency to opt out."

    Pensions in Peril Over Church Exemptions, NYT, 2.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/business/02church.html?hp&ex=1146628800&en=b4da12295de5f9b9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Hassidic leader Teitelbaum dies

Mon Apr 24, 2006 11:20 PM ET
Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum, the spiritual leader of the largest Hassidic Jewish sect in the United States, died at age 91 on Monday, setting off a battle for succession between his two sons.

Teitelbaum led tens of thousands of Satmar Jews, an orthodox sect largely concentrated in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where police began cordoning off streets in anticipation that a large crowd might gather, witnesses said.

His two sons, Zalmen and Aaron, each claim to be the legitimate successor, and observers said there could be a protracted power struggle.

"It's a princely fight for succession. There are some who suggest it is a cult of personality. Each one claims he was indicated to be the successor," said Elan Steinberg, former executive director of the World Jewish Congress.

Zalmen Teitelbaum's followers are largely from Williamsburg and Aaron Teitelbaum's followers are concentrated in the upstate New York community of Kiryas Joel.

    Hassidic leader Teitelbaum dies, 24.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-04-25T032012Z_01_N24280170_RTRUKOC_0_US-RELIGION-HASSIDIC.xml

Prosecutor ties nun's cuts, priest's blade

Updated 4/21/2006 9:52 PM ET
USA Today

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Stab wounds in the chest of a nun killed 26 years ago match exactly with the diamond-shaped blade of a letter opener found in the room of a priest accused in the slaying, a prosecutor said Friday.

The tip fits exactly with a small hole in the jaw of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, who was strangled and stabbed a day before Easter in 1980, prosecutor Dean Mandros said in opening statements of the priest's trial.

The Rev. Gerald Robinson, 68, is accused of strangling and stabbing Pahl, 71, on the day before Easter in 1980 in the chapel at the hospital where they worked together. The priest presided at her funeral Mass four days later.

Defense attorney Alan Konop said inconsistencies in statements made by witnesses over the past two decades will leave doubt in the minds of the jurors about who committed the crime.

"Pieces of the prosecutor's puzzle do not fit," he said.

Jurors on Friday walked through the hospital chapel and the sacristy, where the priest's robes are kept and where the nun's body was found. They also saw Robinson's old room.

Pahl was stabbed 31 times, including nine times in the shape of an upside down cross, Mandros said. Prosecutors said they will not try to prove a motive in the killing.

Investigators reopened the murder case in December 2003 after the prosecutor's office received a letter about a woman's claims that she was molested by priests for years as a child. Among the names she mentioned was Robinson. Police were unable to substantiate her allegations of sexual abuse.

Robinson was a suspect early on because he was near the chapel at the time of the killing. He was arrested in 2004 after investigators found that bloodstains on an altar cloth matched those from the letter opener.

Robinson, who is free on bail, could get life in prison if convicted of murder.

    Prosecutor ties nun's cuts, priest's blade, UT, 21.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-21-priest-nun-slaying_x.htm

Standoff Over Property Taxes Threatens Band of Polygamists

April 21, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

HILDALE, Utah, April 19 — Thousands of polygamists are engaged in a highly unusual standoff here over property taxes that could ultimately cost them their houses or thrust them into a mainstream America they fear and despise.

In one corner is a group of 8,000 or so adherents of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot of the Mormon Church that had long paid the property taxes of its members, sometimes even rolling a wheelbarrow through meetings to collect the needed cash.

At the other corner is a stocky accountant from Salt Lake City, Bruce R. Wisan, who says he is determined to help the church members even if they do not want it.

The church hierarchy is in chaos. Its former leader is on the run, facing criminal charges of arranging sex between a minor and an adult in a polygamous marriage, leaving the old tax-collection system in shambles. Now the property taxes for hundreds of houses — around $1.3 million — are overdue and mounting.

The church's remaining leaders have told people living in the houses not to pay. Mr. Wisan has promised to make them do so. A state judge appointed him last year to oversee the land on which most church members live. A trust the church established generations ago controls the land.

Mr. Wisan says he has been frustrated at every step, including efforts to communicate with residents. Mass mailings to residents seeking tax payment have gone unanswered, and some were found strewn across the floor of the post office, unopened, Mr. Wisan said. His representatives sent to knock on doors here in town and in the twin border community of Colorado City, Ariz., have invariably encountered people not home. Some holdouts have even started building walls around their houses.

On Wednesday night, Mr. Wisan took the extraordinary step of convening a town hall meeting to wheedle, threaten and beg residents to break with tradition and pay their individual tax bills — and thus, in a very real way, enter the American mainstream.

If they refuse, he said, they risk losing their houses when the courts settle the issues of law and faith. He also threatened to evict them personally.

"It's a basic obligation," Mr. Wisan told the meeting of more than 40 people. "My position is that people have to pay to live on trust property."

Mr. Wisan was appointed to oversee the trust after a judge concluded that church leaders, the objects of suits in recent years, including one by a group of young men who said they had been wrongly evicted from the community, were not adequately defending themselves in court and were risking the residents' welfare.

After Mr. Wisan's appointment, church leaders ordered people to stop contributing to the church fund that went to pay the taxes.

In some ways, Hildale and Colorado City, in a region that is home to the largest concentration of polygamists in the country, could be ordinary Southwestern farming towns. Plowed fields are interspersed by houses and dirt roads. Horses graze in pastures against the backdrop of red-rock hills. What is different are the houses themselves.

Some look more like dormitories, several stories high with rows of windows. Others are unfinished.

Residents say the community rarely borrows money, and so houses are built, or improved, with cash when it is available.

Walls line some main roads. Some are stone, others are wood. All are high enough to conceal the houses and their worlds from the street, and they are often marked with prominent trespassing warnings.

The entanglements of religion and real estate run deep in Hildale, which has had polygamist communities for the better part of a century. Most everyone who showed up on Wednesday night had been excommunicated by the F.L.D.S. church or had left voluntarily, some attendees said, because most active members were following the church instructions to keep away.

What that meant was that Mr. Wisan had to communicate through the people at the meeting to the invisible and much larger community beyond. About 8,000 to 10,000 people are believed be living on trust lands.

The numbers are uncertain, and their identities in the secretive community are also uncertain, said Jeffrey L. Shields, a lawyer who works with Mr. Wisan. The trust has an assessed value of $110 million and consists mainly of the towns plus a few lots, several thousand acres altogether, though a full survey is under way, Mr. Wisan said.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based in Salt Lake City, has no connection to the F.L.D.S., and disavowed polygamy as the price of statehood in 1890. Groups like the fundamentalist one split off over that decision, denouncing it as a political compromise and not the word of God.

Mr. Wisan told the meeting, which people videotaped, that one family close to the indicted leader, Warren Jeffs, compromised and quietly paid $14,000 in taxes last week. He also said he had identified 75 prominent families with the largest houses and tax bills and planned to pursue them, as well.

Mr. Wisan said it was too early to say what might occur next. Some residents predict that the community could disperse to other parts of the West or to Canada, taking a page from the Mormons of old who came to Utah in 1847 to avoid persecution. Others fear violence.

Mr. Wisan on Wednesday urged people to stay, saying abandoning houses here and starting over somewhere else would be financially disastrous. Even for those who want to stay, the road promises to be winding at best.

Ross Chatwin, who said he had been forced out of the church, sued and won the right to stay in his house. He said he wanted to continue to do so, though he does not own the house because it is on trust land.

Another man said he had built a house on the trust site and lost it when the church denounced him. He wants to return.

One man who refused to give his name for fear of reprisals by the church said he was a member and was trying to have his extended family of more than 40 siblings from the wives — "the mothers"— agree that the old days were over and that they had to deal with the likes of Mr. Wisan.

Lenore Holm, a former member who fought the church years ago over what she concluded was the forced marriage of her teenage daughter to an older man, asked Mr. Wisan why money from the trust, including the sale of some land, could not go to paying the tax bill for everyone.

Mr. Wisan said that it would simply not be fair, because that would let freeloaders who are avoiding their taxes off the hook at the expense of the trust and that the court had assigned him to protect the community as a whole.

    Standoff Over Property Taxes Threatens Band of Polygamists, NYT, 21.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/us/21taxes.html?hp&ex=1145678400&en=d58a5b7a839ce19b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Boston Archdiocese Opens Financial Records

April 20, 2006
The New York Times
By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, April 19 —The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston opened its books on Wednesday, releasing what experts and church officials say is the most detailed financial accounting any diocese has made available.

The reports show that the archdiocese has a $46 million deficit, the largest any diocese has ever had, according to two national experts on church finances.

The archdiocese has paid out more than $150 million in legal settlements related to accusations of sexual abuse by priests. Archdiocesan officials said they planned to address the deficit in part by cutting 50 administrative positions, consolidating departments, reducing the number of cabinet secretaries and most likely selling more property and cutting programs.

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley and other officials made it clear that they also hoped that the frankness of the report would inspire parishioners to increase donations, which have fallen off by several million dollars since the abuse crisis began in 2002.

"I think it's quite obvious that our situation is urgent, is dire," Cardinal O'Malley said at a news conference. "The bleeding that's been going on with deficit spending is something that needs to be dealt with urgently."

Cardinal O'Malley, who will distribute pamphlets about the finances in every parish, said he hoped that as a result of the report, released a few weeks before the archdiocese's annual fund-raising drive begins, "people will understand what our finances are and how we're using it, and hopefully will want to help us continue the mission of the church."

The cardinal said that a key to instilling confidence in parishioners was releasing information about the costs of the sexual abuse crisis and the sources of the money that paid for it.

Although archdiocesan officials have repeatedly said parish collections and other donations would not be used to pay for legal settlements to abuse victims, some parishioners have remained skeptical. They have also distrusted assurances that the money generated by the closing of 62 of the 357 parishes in the archdiocese would not finance the abuse settlements.

The new information sought to end those concerns. The reports showed that through June 30, 2005, $150.8 million was spent on the abuse crisis, including $127.4 million in legal settlements, $8.8 million in counseling and prevention programs and $8.3 million in legal and professional costs related to the settlements.

Of that money, $68.8 million came from selling the archbishop's residence and other administrative buildings, with the rest from insurance and selling other properties not related to the closed parishes.

"There's been so much talk about the finances of the archdiocese and so much mystery and questions raised," Cardinal O'Malley said. "We're not trying to keep secrets from people. We're not trying to deceive them. We are trying to use the limited resources that we have for the mission of the church, and we want people to be on board about that."

The cardinal and lay leaders of committees he appointed to examine the finances and propose improvements characterized the situation as serious, but not irrevocable. They said the cause of the problems was not the abuse settlements per se, but declining donations as a result of the abuse crisis, pension funds hurt by declining stock prices, skyrocketing health care costs for priests and the expensive maintenance for old parish buildings.

"We're in a difficult financial position," said John H. McCarthy, an accountant who led the committee that prepared the reports, which covered from July 1, 2003, to June 30, 2005. The biggest liability was $135 million in unfunded pensions for clergymen, Mr. McCarthy said.

An investment banker who led the organization and management review committee, James F. O'Connor, said that the management of the archdiocese required a "substantial overhaul," and that he hoped that the church could achieve a balanced budget in 18 months.

Charles Zech, an economics professor at Villanova University, said that might be optimistic.

"Eighteen months seems to me like a relatively short time," Dr. Zech said. "An operating deficit of $46 million, even for a diocese as large as Boston, that is high."

Francis J. Butler, president of Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities, said he believed that the deficit was the largest of any diocese.

"If they restore the trust of the rank-and-file donor in their policies," Mr. Butler said, "I would be optimistic that they would be able to address this."

Mr. Butler and Dr. Zech said they were impressed by the extent of the disclosure, which included not just the central operations, but also 43 affiliated entities like schools and Catholic Charities.

"They've gone way beyond the standards," Mr. Butler said.

Dorothy Kennedy, president of the Boston chapter of Voice of the Faithful, a lay reform group, said, "It's a step in the right direction."

Ms. Kennedy added that the release would probably inspire her to resume donations to the annual appeal.

"I think we will have full fiscal recovery if we have full financial transparency on all levels," she said. "I think it will encourage people to come back. There are many people not donating because they don't feel secure where money is going."

Jon Rogers of St. Francis Cabrini in Scituate, which closed in October 2004 but has been occupied by parishioners hoping to persuade the archdiocese to reopen the church, said he was very pleased with the disclosure.

"Americans are funny," Mr. Rogers said. "You ask them to help, and they will basically crawl over each other to make sure the situation is rectified."

Katie Zezima contributed reporting for this article.

    Boston Archdiocese Opens Financial Records, NYT, 20.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/us/20church.html?hp&ex=1145592000&en=5111d0e5623cc5ea&ei=5094&partner=homepage

AP: 6 Branch Davidians soon leave prison

Updated 4/19/2006 8:44 PM ET
USA Today

WACO, Texas (AP) — Thirteen years after the Branch Davidians' armed standoff with federal agents ended in an inferno that killed nearly 80 people, six sect members who were sent to prison are about to be released from custody.

Most of those who will be freed over the next two months escaped from the compound near Waco as it burned to the ground on April 19, 1993 — 51 days after a shootout that erupted when federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to arrest religious leader David Koresh for stockpiling guns and explosives.

The six men went to federal prison for manslaughter, weapons offenses or both in connection with the shootout, which left four federal agents and six Davidians dead.

Once the men are out, they will be on supervised release for three to five years. Among other things, they will be barred from associating with one another.

A seventh Davidian is also still behind bars but is not scheduled for release until next year.

One of the six, Paul Gordon Fatta, said he remains angry about the government's actions.

"They needed their pound of flesh, so they took the survivors and put them on trial. Somebody had to pay," Fatta, 48, told The Associated Press by telephone.

Koresh and nearly 80 followers, including two dozen children, died in a blaze that survivors say was ignited by tear gas sprayed into the compound buildings from military tanks. Authorities claim the Davidians committed suicide by setting the fire and shooting themselves.

Fatta is to be released next month in San Diego, where he was moved to a halfway house last year and now works at a restaurant. He was not at the compound during the standoff and was at a gun show in Austin during the shootout with the ATF. He said will live with his family after his release.

"I'm proud of my friends, and it was a privilege for me to have gone there to study the Bible, regardless of what the world thinks," Fatta said. "If I had it to do all over again, I would do the same thing."

Jaime Castillo, who is to be released next month from a Los Angeles halfway house, said he plans to remain there and try to rebuild his life by forming another band — which is how he met Koresh in 1988 — or by working as a personal trainer. The 37-year-old Castillo said he might visit the compound site, where a few survivors still meet for Bible study each weekend.

In 1994 in San Antonio, 11 Davidians went on trial; all were acquitted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. However, five were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and weapons charges and three were convicted on weapons charges. A 12th Davidian pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and testified against the others; she was sentenced to three years and was released in 1996.

The federal judge sentenced most to 40 years but in 2000 reduced most terms to 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his decision. One of the eight was sentenced to five years on a weapons charge and got out in 1997.

Jane McKeehan of Johnson City, Tenn., whose 28-year-old son Todd McKeehan was one of the ATF agents killed, said she and her family have tried to focus on their son and not think too much about the Davidians.

"It is in our minds every day; it completely changes your life," McKeehan said. "We're Christians, and we know we're going to see Todd again, so we try to focus on the good. He was doing what he wanted to do and was adamant about making it a better world."

    AP: 6 Branch Davidians soon leave prison, UT, 19.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-19-branch-davidians_x.htm

Angel for Ex-Convicts Is Killed at Halfway House She Ran

April 19, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID STABA

BUFFALO, April 18 — Sister Karen Klimczak devoted her life to peace.

A Roman Catholic nun, Sister Klimczak, 62, led prayer vigils at murder scenes. She conducted anti-violence programs at schools. And for the last 16 years she lived in a rectory that she had turned into a halfway house for recently released convicts.

One of them was Craig Lynch, a convicted car thief who moved in on April 5 after being paroled in January from the medium security Wyoming Correctional Facility in Attica, N.Y. He was one of hundreds of ex-convicts who had come to live over the years at Bissonette House, named in memory of a priest who was murdered there in 1987.

On Saturday, after she failed to show up for a lunch date, Sister Klimczak was reported missing. By Monday, more than 100 volunteers were searching for her in the poor neighborhood where she lived and worked. Hundreds more prayed at a vigil, unaware that Mr. Lynch, according to the police, had admitted that he had killed her in her bedroom on Friday night.

"He had been smoking crack, and apparently he needed to purchase more crack," said Detective Sgt. James Lonergan, the lead investigator on the case. "He was stealing her cellphone, he heard Sister coming. He hid behind the door, she entered the room and he grabbed her from behind and took her to the floor."

It was the 18th murder this year in this city of about 282,000 on Lake Erie.

The police said Mr. Lynch, 36, borrowed a car from a relative to take Sister Klimczak's body about four miles to a shed behind a vacant house near his mother's home. There, he buried the body in a shallow grave. He led the police there Monday evening, Sergeant Lonergan said.

"We've lost a tireless champion of the people," the mayor, Byron Brown, said at a news conference on Monday night after the police announced that her body had been found.

An autopsy conducted on Tuesday revealed that she had died from strangulation and blunt-force trauma to the head, Sergeant Lonergan said.

On Tuesday afternoon, a single bouquet of yellow daffodils marked the alley leading to the shed.

"I'm heartbroken," said the Rev. Jeff Carter, standing on the debris-covered driveway behind the vacant house. "It's just so unbelievable. I would never have thought, with all the prayer vigils I had gone to with her, I would never have thought that one day Karen would be a victim."

Mr. Carter, the pastor of Ephesus Ministries, an independent Protestant congregation that meets in the former Catholic Church adjacent to the halfway house, described her as a tireless worker in her neighborhood. "Because she was such a people person and such a person of warmth and personality, she had the unique ability to say, 'This is what we've got to do, and let's do it,' " he said. "And she would make things happen because of that passion and that vision."

The Rev. Roy Herberger, who co-founded Bissonette House with Sister Klimczak, said her energy and faith turned the site of the notorious murder of the Rev. A. Joseph Bissonette into a place where parolees received a fresh start.

After spending a summer in the early 1980's working with prisoners at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, Sister Klimczak returned to Buffalo eager to help ex-convicts rejoin society, Father Herberger said.

"I said, 'Well, we really don't have any funds. I'm sure we can get some money together, but to buy a house? To start a program?' " Father Herberger recalled. "And she said, 'The Lord will provide. The Lord will take care of it.' She said, 'We'll do it. It will work.' And it did."

She soon founded HOPE House — Home of Positive Experience — in an old convent. But the convent was bigger than she needed, and within several years, she approached St. Bartholomew's Church on the city's east side about using the rectory.

The old brick house had been the scene of the 1987 murder of Father Bissonette, the church's pastor. Two young men had knocked on the rectory door and asked for food and a place to stay. As the priest started to make them sandwiches, the men attacked. They beat, bound and then stabbed him to death.

Father Bissonette's sister supported the plan to turn the rectory into a halfway house, which the Diocese of Buffalo also favored. "This, of all the houses, where you would think the parishioners or the diocese would say, 'No, no, no, you can't do that,' this is where we got the blessing," Father Herberger said.

Sister Klimczak renamed the facility Bissonette House and converted the room where the priest was murdered into a chapel.

"The residents of Bissonette House live in community, supporting each other as they work toward change in their lives," she wrote on her ministry's Web site, hopeofbuffalo.org. "Together they live, pray, struggle, and enjoy each other as change slowly becomes a part of their lives."

She also visited Father Bissonette's killers — who were also convicted of murdering another priest, Monsignor David Herlihy, two weeks later — in prison.

A memorial to the slain priest in the "Peace Park" that Sister Klimczak built behind the house includes the inscription, "Teach us how to live, God of Love, Forgive, Forgive."

"I think Karen had a tremendous sense that the people who she was working with here over the years were people who needed to start again and that she was willing to help them do that," said Sister Elizabeth Savage, who belongs to the same order as Sister Klimczak, the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Parole officers refer parolees to Bissonette House after their release. They stay until they find work and save enough money for a place of their own. Nine lived there at the time of the murder.

Willie White, who lived at Bissonette House for six months after his parole from a burglary sentence more than three years ago, returned regularly to help with work around the facility. He stopped by on Tuesday after hearing of the murder.

"She helped me in every way, any way she could," Mr. White said. "She was like a mother to us. I wondered how she could take care of all of us. But she had a big heart."

Mr. White, who now works as a counselor for other men who have recently left prison, credited her for his rehabilitation.

"I was a drug user — stupid," he said, his eyes brimming with tears. "She gave me the chance I needed to keep me out of there, and I haven't been back since. There are a lot of us who did make it who see the impact she had on us. Now we can't come by and thank her."

    Angel for Ex-Convicts Is Killed at Halfway House She Ran, NYT, 19.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/19/nyregion/19nun.html

L.A. Catholic Church loses battle over priest files

Mon Apr 17, 2006 9:11 PM ET
Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the nation, lost a four-year legal fight on Monday to keep private the files of two priests accused of molesting children.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case, meaning that Cardinal Roger Mahony will have to hand over to Los Angeles prosecutors the records of all communications regarding the two priests.

The Los Angeles archdiocese has fought one of the most vigorous battle in the United States to prevent the files of priests accused of abuse from being made public.

The Survivor's Network of those Abused by Priests criticized Mahony's tactics, saying on Monday he had "spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, donated by generous Catholics, on far-fetched and increasingly unsuccessful legal maneuvers to keep hidden the secrets about abusive priests and complicit bishops."

The abuse scandal erupted in Boston in 2002 and spread to almost every Catholic diocese in the nation. Scores of dioceses have already released personal files of implicated priests and many have reached multimillion dollar settlements with victims.

Monday's ruling effectively upheld a lower court order that 14 documents in the files of two priests should be made available to a Los Angeles grand jury.

It also paved the way for the release of confidential records sought by more than 500 people who have brought civil lawsuits against the archdiocese. By some estimates, the Los Angeles archdiocese could face a possible total settlement of $1 billion.

The archdiocese said in a statement that Monday's decision was "disappointing," noting that it was working on efforts to settle civil cases through mediation.

In a statement, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley said the ruling was "a decisive victory" for local victims of clerical abuse.

"The U.S. Supreme Court's denial to review this matter establishes an important principle that evidence of criminality be made available to appropriate authorities," Cooley said.

    L.A. Catholic Church loses battle over priest files, R, 17.4.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-18T011115Z_01_N17301965_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRIME-CHURCH.xml

People Stand, the Spirit Walks: Easter at the Georgia Dome

April 17, 2006
The New York Times
By BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA, April 16 — Shortly before 10 a.m., Dorothy Nash of Decatur, Ga., finally took her seat on Sunday morning in front of the stage at the Georgia Dome.

Dressed in a feathered, wide-brimmed white chiffon hat and an ankle-length red dress, Ms. Nash, 71, a longtime member of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, had risen early to help bless each seat in the stadium, which was expected to welcome some 40,000 people for the church's Resurrection Sunday, an event billed as the world's largest Easter service.

"We walk up and down every aisle, touch the seat and pray," said Ms. Nash, who labored alongside the 100 or so other members of the church's Levite Ministry to anoint the seats beginning at 6 a.m. She pointed to Levites who were still hard at work, pacing the stage in pairs murmuring prayers over the area where dignitaries — like Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta, Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia, and the singer Patti LaBelle — in several hours would wait their turn at the podium.

"We mean business," Ms. Nash said. "We kick the Devil."

She pumped her fist, and added, "We give him a bloody nose."

Since 1993, members of New Birth, based in Lithonia, Ga., and one of the biggest churches in the United States, have gone all out to give the Devil his due in their Resurrection Sunday service.

Since its humbler beginnings, the service has evolved into a big-budget production, and the audiences it attracts have not escaped the notice of corporate sponsors, politicians and entertainers looking for a way get their own good word out. It has made for a blend of hallelujahs and huckerstering apropos and inoffensive to a church known to embrace the idea that it is not a sin to make money.

This year, the four-hour spectacle included a 500-member choir, a marching band, several dance troupes, a Christian rock group and a flag corps.

During the many musical numbers, the crowd — many of its members dressed in sherbet-colored suits and dresses — became a sea of bobbing pastels. People danced into the aisles, arms waving. Some women kicked off their high heels so they could find the rhythm unfettered.

"It's dynamic. It really is," said Felecia Ligon, 40, of Dallas, Ga., looking out over the packed stadium. "I've always said this is what worship in heaven is going to be like."

The music wove in and around a modern take on the passion play. The 12 disciples wore leather biker vests that said "New Birth Knights," and rode into the stadium on motorcycles; Jesus wore a red do-rag; the Pharisees, much to the audience's delight, were reporters.

United States Representative Cynthia A. McKinney and former Mayor Bill Campbell of Atlanta watched from the front row.

The event also attracted the two candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor and Secretary of State Cathy Cox.

"Today in Georgia it's not entertainers that are making news," Mr. Taylor said, smiling broadly into the camera. "Today in Georgia it's not the athletes that are making news. What's making news all across the world is New Birth, the largest Easter service in the world."

Ms. Cox followed Mr. Taylor's remarks by saying she was looking forward to hearing the New Birth choir and to celebrating "as Christians together in a big-wig way." She may have stumbled as she was speaking, meaning to say "big, big way."

Mayor Franklin said she had flown 8,000 miles in 24 hours, from Africa, to attend the New Birth Easter service. "I missed last year, and the bishop called me and said, 'Now do you have this on your calendar?' " she said. "Well, bishop, I'm here."

New Birth began holding its Easter service in the 70,000-seat Georgia Dome so its enormous congregation could gather under the same roof at the same time.

Bishop Eddie L. Long, New Birth's presiding pastor, said even he was unsure of how many members were on the church's rolls.

"After 25,000, I stopped counting," he said.

Easter is their largest service.

"People come from all over for this," said Ronald Harris, of Atlanta, who attended with his wife, Felicia. "People come from the Midwest, from Alabama, from Tennessee, from North Carolina, from all over. It gets bigger and bigger each year."

Mr. Harris said he had attended the service since 1995, and was most looking forward to hearing Bishop Long's sermon.

"His word will be on time," Mr. Harris said. "You'll be sitting there and you'll think he's talking directly to you. We have 40,000 people here and they're all going to feel that way."

Even after the service started, people were filing into the upper two tiers of the stadium, filling it nearly to capacity. Renata Jones, 26, of New Orleans said she drove five hours to attend. She said she usually watched a Webcast of the service, but this year, after losing everything to Hurricane Katrina, she felt she needed to be here in person.

"It's wonderful," Ms. Jones said. "It's awesome. There're no words for it. I asked my boss two months in advance to get off so I could come."

Bishop Long said he had worked on this year's sermon for more than two weeks.

He called on people to come forward and be saved. He called on people to come forward and give up their addictions. Worshipers, some with tears streaming down their faces, stepped forward. People who pledged to quit smoking tossed packs of cigarettes onto the stage.

"Awesome, awesome service," said Theresa McNeal, 51, a Boston educator who brought a youth group with her. "We have students who went to the altar and accepted Jesus for the first time. It changed their lives."

Ms. LaBelle, who was brought on with an announcement that she would soon release an album of gospel songs, closed the show.

After a quick closing prayer, the audience was urged to stay to watch a trailer for Ms. Labelle's new movie, "Preaching to the Choir."

    People Stand, the Spirit Walks: Easter at the Georgia Dome, NYT, 17.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/us/17easter.html

Bittersweet Easter as Parish Fights for Survival

April 17, 2006
The New York Times
By FERNANDA SANTOS

Lynn Tighe's parents, Michael and Mary, joined St. Paul's Roman Catholic parish 62 years ago, right after they married and moved to Staten Island. The parish had its own church then — a modest house of worship in New Brighton that proved too feeble to withstand the wear of time.

There was no money for a new church building, but it did not matter. In 1963, after a demolition crew turned the old church into a pile of rubble, a new place of worship rose in a squat brick building three blocks away, in a vast room that doubles as the gym and auditorium of St. Paul's Catholic School on Clinton Avenue, in the same neighborhood on the island's north shore.

St. Paul's parish has weathered its share of troubles, starting with its lack of a real church building for the past four decades. But none has proved to be as big a threat to its survival as the impending realignment of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, led by Cardinal Edward M. Egan.

"To me, it's like a piece of my family's history is being wiped out," Ms. Tighe, 40, said yesterday, after she, her mother and five of her 11 siblings attended one of two packed Easter services that may have been the parish's last.

Three weeks ago, the archdiocese announced plans to close 31 parishes and 14 schools throughout the metropolitan region as part of its most ambitious reorganization scheme so far. St. Paul's is set to lose both its parish and school, which means that a diverse flock of 400-plus families, as well as 190 pupils, may have to find new places to worship and learn.

Like many parishioners, Ms. Tighe and her brothers and sisters all attended St. Paul's school and received their sacraments at the worship center, where Msgr. Vincent Bartley has celebrated weekend Mass for the past 13 years. The event requires preparation: Sturdy iron hooks hoist two basketball hoops to the ceiling, then a sheet of blue carpet covers the section of the parquet floor where the provisional altar stands. Worshipers sit on metal chairs.

Yesterday, there were 300 such chairs, but they were not enough to accommodate all the people who showed up to celebrate Christianity's holiest day and pray together for the future of their parish and school.

"Look at this. There are people of all colors," said Michael T. McVey, president of the parish council, pointing at the winding Eucharist line with its black, white, Hispanic and Asian congregants. "There are people of all colors. Isn't that what the church is supposed to be, a place that welcomes all? We are this kind of church, and that's why it's so hard to understand why they want to get rid of us."

Monsignor Bartley said he had not been told why the archdiocese wanted to close St. Paul's parish. On broad terms, archdiocesan officials have said that the realignment addresses two main issues: the growing shortage of priests and the changing demographics of the archdiocese, which stretches from Staten Island to the Catskills.

The realignment plan recommended the creation of five new parishes, including one on Staten Island's south shore. It also calls for several new church buildings, mostly in Dutchess, Rockland and northern Westchester Counties, where many Catholics who have left the city now live.

The archdiocese has not yet decided when to release its final list of parish closings. A final decision regarding the schools is scheduled by next Monday.

"I'm praying for a miracle," said Elizabeth López, 33, whose three children go to St. Paul's school. "I'm from Mexico; I have no one here. This parish is the only family I have."

On May 10, Monsignor Bartley will have one last chance to convince the archdiocese that St. Paul's parish is worth saving. He plans to present some arguments, he said, including these: The parish does not have and does not need a church building because the worship center serves it just fine; it has had more baptisms than funerals in the past five years, which is a sign of growth. It has, however, held only 15 weddings in the same period because few brides are willing to get married in a church with no aisle.

St. Paul's has many elderly parishioners, a number of whom walk to Mass from a public housing complex across the street. That might be harder to do if the parish is closed; according to Mr. McVey, the nearest parish, Assumption, at Webster and Brighton Avenues, is too far away to be reached on foot.

Yesterday, Monsignor Bartley asked worshipers who were not already registered with the parish to sign up. "I know what I want in this life for myself and I know what I want for you, but what does God want for us?" he said in his sermon.

"We know that others are going to make a very important decision for us," he added. "We can only hope and pray that they know — that Cardinal Egan knows and all the others at the archdiocese know — what God would want for St. Paul's."

    Bittersweet Easter as Parish Fights for Survival, NYT, 17.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/nyregion/17church.html

Outrage at Funeral Protests Pushes Lawmakers to Act

April 17, 2006
The New York Times
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

NASHVILLE, April 11 — As dozens of mourners streamed solemnly into church to bury Cpl. David A. Bass, a fresh-faced 20-year-old marine who was killed in Iraq on April 2, a small clutch of protesters stood across the street on Tuesday, celebrating his violent death.

"Thank God for Dead Soldiers," read one of their placards. "Thank God for I.E.D.'s," read another, a reference to the bombs used to kill service members in the war. To drive home their point — that God is killing soldiers to punish America for condoning homosexuality — members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., a tiny fundamentalist splinter group, kicked around an American flag and shouted, if someone approached, that the dead soldiers were rotting in hell.

Since last summer, a Westboro contingent, numbering 6 to 20 people, has been showing up at the funerals of soldiers with their telltale placards, chants and tattered American flags. The protests, viewed by many as cruel and unpatriotic, have set off a wave of grass-roots outrage and a flurry of laws seeking to restrict demonstrations at funerals and burials.

"Repugnant, outrageous, despicable, do not adequately describe what I feel they do to these families," said Representative Steve Buyer, an Indiana Republican who is a co-sponsor of a Congressional bill to regulate demonstrations at federal cemeteries. "They have a right to freedom of speech. But someone also has a right to bury a loved one in peace."

In the past few months, nine states, including Oklahoma, Wisconsin and Indiana, have approved laws that restrict demonstrations at a funeral or burial. In addition, 23 state legislatures are getting ready to vote on similar bills, and Congress, which has received thousands of e-mail messages on the issue, expects to take up legislation in May dealing with demonstrations at federal cemeteries.

"I haven't seen something like this," said David L. Hudson Jr., research attorney for the First Amendment Center, referring to the number of state legislatures reacting to the protests. "It's just amazing. It's an emotional issue and not something that is going to get a lot of political opposition."

Most of the state bills and laws have been worded carefully to try to avoid concerns over the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech. The laws typically seek to keep demonstrators at a funeral or cemetery 100 to 500 feet from the entrance, depending on the state, and to limit the protests to one hour before and one hour after the funeral.

A few states, including Wisconsin, also seek to bar people from displaying "any visual image that conveys fighting words" within several hundred feet or during the hours of the funeral. The laws or bills do not try to prevent protesters from speaking out.

Constitutional experts say there is some precedent for these kinds of laws. One case in particular, which sought to keep anti-abortion picketers away from a private home, was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1988.

"A funeral home seems high on the list of places where people legitimately could be or should be protected from unwanted messages," said Michael C. Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Columbia University Law School.

The Westboro Baptist Church, led by the Rev. Fred Phelps, is not affiliated with the mainstream Baptist church. It first gained publicity when it picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was beaten to death in 1998 in Wyoming.

Over the past decade, the church, which consists almost entirely of 75 of Mr. Phelps's relatives, made its name by demonstrating outside businesses, disaster zones and the funerals of gay people. Late last year, though, it changed tactics and members began showing up at the funerals of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, has put it on its watch list.

Embracing a literal translation of the Bible, the church members believe that God strikes down the wicked, chief among them gay men and lesbians and people who fail to strongly condemn homosexuality. God is killing soldiers, they say, because of America's unwillingness to condemn gay people and their lifestyles.

Standing on the roadside outside Corporal Bass's funeral here under a strikingly blue sky, the six protesters, who had flown from Topeka, shook their placards as cars drove past or pulled into the funeral. The 80-year-old wife of Mr. Phelps, slightly stooped but spry and wearing her running shoes, carried a sign that read "Tennessee Taliban." She is often given the task of driving the pickup trucks that ferry church members, a stack of pillows propping her view over the dashboard.

Next to her stood a cluster of Mr. Phelps's great-grandnephews and great-grandnieces, smiling teenagers with sunglasses, digital cameras and cellphones dangling from their pockets and wrists. They carried their own signs, among them, "You're Going to Hell."

Careful not to trespass on private property, the group stood a distance down the hill from the Woodmont Hills Church of Christ. Police cars parked nearby, keeping watch, but mostly making sure no one attacked the protesters.

"God is punishing this nation with a grievous, smiting blow, killing our children, sending them home dead, to help you connect the dots," said Shirley Roper-Phelps, the spokeswoman for the group and one of Mr. Phelps's daughters. "This is a nation that has forgotten God and leads a filthy manner of life."

At the entrance of the church, Jonathan Anstey, 21, one of Corporal Bass's best friends, frowned as he watched the protesters from a distance. Corporal Bass, who joined the Marine Corps after high school, died with six other service members when his 7-ton truck rolled over in a flash flood in Iraq. His family was reeling from grief, Mr. Anstey said.

"It's hurtful and it's taking a lot of willpower not to go down there and stomp their heads in," Mr. Anstey said. "But I know that David is looking down and seeing me, and he would not want to see that."

Disturbed by the protests, a small group of motorcycle riders, some of them Vietnam War veterans, banded together in October to form the Patriot Guard Riders. They now have 22,000 members. Their aim is to form a human shield in front of the protesters so that mourners cannot see them, and when necessary, rev their engines to drown out the shouts of the Westboro group.

The Bass family, desiring a low-key funeral, asked the motorcycle group not to attend.

"It's kind of like, we didn't do it right in the '70s," said Kurt Mayer, the group's spokesman, referring to the treatment of Vietnam veterans. "This is something that America needs to do, step up and do the right thing."

Hundreds of well-wishers have written e-mail messages to members of the motorcycle group, thanking them for their presence at the funerals. State legislatures, too, are reacting swiftly to the protests, and the Westboro group has mostly steered clear of states that have already enacted laws. While Corporal Bass's family was getting ready to bury him, the Tennessee House was preparing to debate a bill making it illegal for protesters to stand within 500 feet of a funeral, burial or memorial service.

The House joined the Senate in approving it unanimously on Thursday, and the bill now awaits the signature of the governor.

"When you have someone who has given the ultimate sacrifice for their country, with a community and the family grieving, I just don't feel it's the appropriate time to be protesting," said State Representative Curtis Johnson, a Republican who was a co-sponsor of the bill.

Ms. Roper-Phelps said the group was now contemplating how best to challenge the newly passed laws. "This hypocritical nation runs around the world touting our freedoms and is now prepared to dismantle the First Amendment," she said. "A piece of me wants to say that is exactly what you deserve."

    Outrage at Funeral Protests Pushes Lawmakers to Act, NYT, 17.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/us/17picket.html

Hollywood turns to divine inspiration

Updated 4/14/2006 9:55 AM ET
USA TODAY
By Scott Bowles

LOS ANGELES — In God, Hollywood is trusting it will find big profits.

Inspired by box-office smashes such as The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, studios are not only casting an eye to more religious-themed stories, but they're also marketing movies more aggressively than ever to churchgoers.

Producers now find themselves making sales pitches to ministers. Executives are screening films in church community rooms. One studio has created a "faith division" to market to the devout.

The strategy has two aims: to use faith-based hits to help staunch a three-year box-office slide and to convert those with little faith in Hollywood fare into permanent moviegoers.

No fewer than a dozen films with religious themes are on tap through 2007. Not all of the movies are overtly spiritual: Next month's The Da Vinci Code, for instance, is based on a novel that has infuriated Catholics for questioning the origins and motives of Christianity. But all are hoping to cash in on a demographic that has been largely overlooked since Charlton Heston grabbed some tablets and a chariot a half-century ago.

Among the high-profile films in the works:

•The Da Vinci Code (opening May 19). Based on Dan Brown's best seller, the Tom Hanks thriller tells of a murder at the Louvre and possible Vatican involvement.

•Nativity (Dec. 1). Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider) plays the Virgin Mary in this story of her trek with Joseph to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus.

•The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Dec. 14, 2007). The Christian parable and sequel to last year's hit continues the story of siblings who are caught in a battle of good vs. evil in a fantasy kingdom.

"Hollywood is finally waking up to the fact that people who go to church also go to the movies," says Tyler Perry, the director who turned his church plays into the surprise hits Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea's Family Reunion. "I'm not sure what took them so long to see that — or how long they'll keep it up.

"But at least we're getting the chance to prove that there's an audience for movies with the right message."

A collection plate for studios?

There's also money. The literary world has been reaping profits for decades with religious fare. The biblical Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, for example, have racked up sales of more than $650 million and spawned four movies.

But it wasn't until Passion arrived in theaters in February 2004 that major studios saw their own stairway to financial heaven.

Before Mel Gibson's telling of the Crucifixion, "we all knew we had a lot to learn about this market, which was obviously underserved," says Steve Feldstein of 20th Century Fox's new division, Fox Faith.

The department markets DVDs and feature films to hundreds of pastors nationwide. The studio offers churches trailers, posters and even Bible study guides for its Christian-based home videos with titles such as Beyond the Splendor Gates and Hangman's Curse.

As The Passion of the Christ marched to more than $370 million in North America, "it gave us all our MBA's pretty quickly," Feldstein says. Executives discovered that a thumbs-up from a pastor could go further than from a film critic and that word of mouth spreads pretty quickly in a church, he says. "For many families, church isn't just somewhere you go to pray," he says. "It's a social venue. There's more opportunity for discussion of things beyond just faith."

Like movies.

Reuben Cannon discovered the power of the divine at the box office in Houston in 2003. Cannon, a producer, was attending the annual Woman, Thou Art Loosed conference, a religious convention based on Bishop T.D. Jakes' self-help novel of the same name.

Cannon was astounded to see the conference draw 60,000 people, primarily women, each day of the three-day convention. "Rock stars don't draw 60,000 women a day," he says. "I thought if we could bring in that kind of audience into a theater, we'd have a hit."

He was right. Cannon produced the film adaptation of Loosed in 2004 for less than $1 million. It brought in nearly $7 million and paved the way for Cannon to produce two No. 1 films, last year's Diary of a Mad Black Woman, which raked in $50.6 million, and this year's Reunion, which earned $63.1 million, more than 10 times its budget.

He built momentum for the films much the way Gibson did for Passion and Disney executives did for Narnia: with private screenings for church members and private sales pitches to ministers.

"With so much competition, you can't just put your movie out there with a few ads," says Chuck Viane, head of distribution for Disney. "You have to build word of mouth. And it can build quickly" in the religious community.

When the church is united behind a film, "it has a pretty profound effect," Cannon says. "That's why people are paying a lot more attention to the mega-pastors. When you've got thousands of people who listen to you every week, when you can rent out entire theaters, you've got a powerful voice."

Indeed, studios are finding that ministers who preach to flocks of 5,000 or more a week can be as powerful a marketing tool as a slick advertising campaign.

The clergy, says Steve Rothenberg, distribution chief for Lionsgate Films, are one of the few links "to a group that's been largely ignored when it comes to movies."

"I'm not sure why, but Hollywood didn't consider (churchgoers) a very viable audience," says Rothenberg, whose studio distributed Diary and Reunion. "But I think that's changing, especially with the success of the movies recently."

'The fifth quadrant'

Industry executives are revising advertising campaigns to recognize audiences of faith. Traditionally, studios market movies to the "four quadrants": men, women, moviegoers younger than 25, and those 25 and older. The churchgoing community has become the "fifth quadrant."

Just how big that demographic is, however, is anyone's guess. According to a Gallup survey in December, about 57% of Americans consider religion "very important" in their everyday lives.

Hollywood has found religion before. Through the 1950s, studios churned out hits (1953's The Robe, 1956's The Ten Commandments, 1959's Ben-Hur). But by the mid-'60s, religious epics gave way to musicals, leaving religious fare largely to niche producers.

The industry is just now rediscovering the scope of the faith-based audience, says Joel Silver, who is producing The Reaping, starring Hilary Swank as a Christian missionary who loses her faith after a tragedy. It's due Aug. 11.

"We really haven't marketed to that group," Silver says. "I'm not sure why. We market to urban audiences."

Joe Bubar, a minister at the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Bible Church, welcomes being Hollywood's hot new demographic. His church rented five theaters during the opening week of Narnia and urged its 5,500 members to turn out in force.

He says churches welcome faith-based films as much as Hollywood welcomes faith-based money.

"We're looking for things that help us deliver our message," he says. "And, particularly with younger people, movies do that. We welcome movies with a positive message."

Don't call it pandering

Some filmmakers, in turn, are responding with biblically based stories such as Passion or Nativity and other films that take an earnest look at religion.

"There's another way to look at faith in movies," says James Marsh, director of The King, a William Hurt drama about a minister father who reunites with his troubled son that's due May 19. "Instead of mocking religious people or portraying them as hypocrites, you're seeing a more straight-up examination of how hard it is to be righteous. And I don't think we're losing anything in terms of dramatic storylines."

J.J. Abrams, who routinely examines faith in his television series Lost, doesn't see the move toward religious-based entertainment as pandering. "We're seeing more religion in mass entertainment because it has become so topical," says Abrams, whose Mission: Impossible III is due May 5. "Given all the conflict in the world based on religion, I think there's a real hunger for that kind of dialogue."

Perhaps, but selling movies to faith-based audiences also means hearing from them when they're not happy with your film. Already, Sony Pictures is bracing for possible protests over Da Vinci.

The studio has set up a website, www.thedavincidialogue.com, that essentially distances Sony from the film's message by presenting counterarguments to the drama. The site features essays by religious scholars about the historical beginnings of Christianity and invites readers to chime in.

"We view The Da Vinci Code as a work of speculative fiction, and at its heart, it's a thriller, not a religious tract," says Jim Kennedy, a senior vice president at Sony. "We encourage everyone to visit sites like ours and join in a dialogue that can shed light on topics explored in The Da Vinci Code."

For Da Vinci director Ron Howard, the approach has been a little simpler in dealing with letters from protesters. He doesn't open them.

"I'm not a caterer," he says. "I just have to stay with my creative convictions. At some point, you have to just get past the special-interest groups and do what you're there to do, which is make a movie."

    Hollywood turns to divine inspiration, UT, 14.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-04-13-religion-based-movies_x.htm

    Related > http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-04-13-faith-movies-chart_x.htm

First Muslim sorority hopes to form chapters across USA

Updated 4/9/2006 11:43 PM
USA TODAY
By Donna Leinwand

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Christine Ortiz slips quietly from the Muslim prayer room on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and into a group of squealing young women. Some of them are Ortiz's Muslim sisters, the undergraduate pals who embraced her when she converted to Islam from her family's Roman Catholicism.

Less than a year after she graduated from MIT, Ortiz, 23, has returned to campus on a chilly night to help introduce them to a new concept in Muslim sisterhood: the first Muslim-oriented sorority, Gamma Gamma Chi.

The sorority, which was formed last year, has no campus chapters but is trying to drum up interest with informational meetings across the nation. It aims to be a sorority unlike almost all others by adhering to principles of Islam: no alcohol and no casual mixing between men and women.

Ortiz is a member of Alpha Phi, one of five traditional sororities at MIT. She says she wants her Muslim girlfriends to have the sorority experience without having to compromise their religious values. In theory, the existing sororities' policies are in line with Muslim beliefs, but in reality, she says, the sorority culture at MIT and other campuses "unfortunately is based on men and alcohol."

Muslim women at MIT, the University of Kentucky, Rutgers, the University of Maryland-Baltimore and the University of Southern California have expressed interest in Gamma Gamma Chi, says founder and President Althia Collins, who owns an educational consulting business in Alexandria, Va.

Collins and her daughter Imani Abdul-Haqq, both Muslim converts, created the sorority in 2005.

The MIT gathering attracted 13 women — five in traditional Muslim head scarves and loose-fitting clothes but most with uncovered hair and typical campus attire of jeans and sweaters.

"I never felt attracted to sorority life," says Tania Ullah, 20, a junior from New York City. "Aside from the drinking and partying, which I don't do, I didn't feel comfortable with pledging loyalty to the principles."

'We're already a close-knit group'

Collins and Abdul-Haqq's idea for a Muslim sorority reflects both the increasing presence of the religion on U.S. campuses and the growth of multiculturalism, says Denise Pipersburgh, a lawyer in Newark, N.J., and president of the National Multicultural Greek Council.

The National Panhellenic Conference represents 26 historically Caucasian sororities and women's fraternities with 3.8 million members. The National Panhellenic Council, which represents four historically black sororities and five men's fraternities, has 1.5 million members. The first Latina sorority was formed in 1975, and Asian-American Greek organizations have existed since the 1920s.

At the MIT session, the Muslim women, whose majors include brain and cognitive sciences and chemical engineering, seem intrigued by the idea of their own sorority. But they also are skeptical.

"An Islamic sorority is almost an oxymoron, isn't it?" asks Tasneem Hussam, 20, a junior from Centreville, Va.

Muslims are active at MIT, where the Muslim Student Association on the 10,200-student campus regularly attracts 200 people to its dinners. All of the women at the presentation belong to the association.

"We're already a close-knit group," Hussam says. "I'm a little unsure about how necessary it is to have a sorority."

Tayyba Anwar, 18, a freshman from New York City, wonders how she'll explain the sorority concept to her parents and persuade them to let her join Gamma Gamma Chi.

"They'll say, 'What is this? Is it good or bad?' " Anwar says. "To me, it sounds like a respectable thing."

Ortiz notes that Greek life is a big part of MIT. "Once they are organized, it'll give Muslim women a face and voice on campus," she says.

Ultimately, none of the MIT students submitted applications to Gamma Gamma Chi.

'An American phenomenon'

The Muslim women at MIT say they rarely suffer from discrimination or isolation on campus. Panhellenic President Shannon Nees, 20, a junior from Hatfield, Penn., says they would be welcome in any of MIT's five sororities.

"MIT is a very diverse group of people," Nees says. "None of the sororities discriminate."

Abdul-Haqq says Gamma Gamma Chi, unlike traditional sororities, will allow Muslim women to feel more comfortable without compromising their Islamic beliefs.

Abdul-Haqq recalls trying to join a sorority at Bennett College in Greensboro and fearing she might be required to dress immodestly while pledging. "I don't wear short sleeves," she says. "I wear my hair covered. I felt put off from the beginning."

Collins and her daughter have sent e-mails to Muslim student groups and received enthusiastic responses, but no campus has signed up the 10 to 15 members needed for a chapter.

"We have to keep in mind that sororities are really an American phenomenon," Collins says. "A lot of Muslims come from Middle Eastern and South Asian backgrounds. This is not a part of their experience."

The sorority has collected the names of 200 women who have expressed interest in joining. The sorority, Collins says, would also welcome non-Muslim women who support its mission.

Xenia Tariq, 19, a freshman at Kentucky whose family moved to the USA from Pakistan, attended the sorority's recent seminar in Lexington and applied to join. She has been spreading the word among her Muslim girlfriends and hopes the university will have a chapter by fall. "I guess the appeal was that it is the first ever Muslim sorority," Tariq says. "I was thinking this is going to be really cool and groundbreaking, and I wanted to be a part of it."

    First Muslim sorority hopes to form chapters across USA, UT, 9.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-09-muslim-sorority_x.htm

Ruidosa Journal

Town Ties Its Rejuvenation to That of Crumbling Church

April 8, 2006
The New York Times
By SIMON ROMERO

RUIDOSA, Tex. — Bathed in the blue-green hue of the Chinati Mountains, this isolated hamlet of 19 people hugging the Mexican border is a part of West Texas ravaged by time.

Gone are the boisterous river currents that gave Ruidosa ("noisy" in Spanish) its name, the Rio Grande's flow having been depleted decades ago by dam and irrigation projects farther north. Salt cedars, brought from Asia in the early 20th century and planted here as ornamental soil stabilizers, still suck precious water out of the river.

The weather-beaten adobe walls of a neglected Roman Catholic church with its three sun-dried arches are the only reminder that Ruidosa once flourished as a cotton-growing center with more than 300 residents, its own cotton gin and a half dozen cantinas. The Misión del Sagrado Corazon, or Sacred Heart Mission, served hundreds of parishioners from Ruidosa and the Mexican town across the river, Barrancos de Guadalupe.

"This place has a past, what you could call a great past," Jim Blumberg, 63, a land broker and owner of Ruidosa's sole cantina, said at his establishment under a photograph of Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary who is said to have spent time here evading the forces of John J. Pershing, the American general known as Black Jack.

"Ruidosa could thrive again someday if we could just get more people to stop by and stay awhile," Mr. Blumberg said as old honky-tonk and norteño favorites blared from his jukebox.

The ambitions to bring visitors here and revive Ruidosa hinge on saving its church, which was built around 1914, when cotton was still king in parts of Texas. A Dutch-born priest, Nicholas Brocardus Eekin, oversaw construction of the church with its rare arches. About 200 worshipers could fit inside for services held in Spanish, Latin and English.

The Texas Historical Commission has raised more than $35,000 for stabilizing the structure, and the Presidio County Historical Commission has collected about $6,000 in grants and donations for work on the church, which began in March.

"It's like a part of our history is just melting away before us," said Marion Hughes, a retired teacher and secretary of the Presidio County Historical Commission. "It's now or never for this project."

Much of the church's roof is already gone, eaten away by termites or blown away by wind. One arch has crumbled, its adobe forming a big pile of dirt and sand. Graffiti on some of the walls tell of adolescent crushes and frontier bravado.

Lyman Labry, an architect with the Texas Historical Commission, said money was available for only 90 days of work, ruling out a new roof and panels to explain the church's role as a religious and architectural landmark in an area where the border with Mexico was long more a suggestion than an effective demarcation.

"If we allow this building to be lost to the elements due to neglect, the most significant structure in this area that is able to provoke present-day visitors to inquire about the history and story of the inhabitants of this community will be gone," Mr. Labry said. "What does this say about ourselves and our present-day values?"

Although Ruidosa is a five-hour drive from the nearest airports in El Paso and Midland, residents say its location could be an asset. In Lajitas, a town 75 miles to the southeast that gained notoriety for electing a beer-swilling goat as its mayor, tourists pay as much as $800 a night to stay at a golf course resort with an optional 19th hole that plays into Mexico across the Rio Grande.

And a land- and property-acquisition boom is already under way in other parts of Presidio County, anchored by a growing arts community in Marfa, 45 miles northeast of Ruidosa. Small adobe homes that might have cost $11,000 five years ago are fetching $100,000 or more from buyers in search of a connection to the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas, Ms. Hughes said.

Ruidosa and its church, however, have been left largely untouched by this influx. A highlight of life here each week is the arrival of the Schwan's truck out of Fort Stockton with deliveries of frozen meat, vegetables and ice cream.

The Catholic Diocese of El Paso, which owns the church, long ago shifted the weekly Mass upriver to Candelaria.

"I'm surprised the church is still standing and we're standing along with it," said Celia Hill, 77, owner of La Junta General Store adjacent to the church. "I can look at it sometimes when the wind blows hard and see the adobe's getting worn down."

Residents sometimes joke about the restoration of the church lifting the town's fortunes, say, by transforming it into another Ruidoso, the resort community in New Mexico spelled with an "o" that attracts Texas skiers and hikers. Some people shrug, as if a restored church could do little for a place long on the margins of life.

"Adobe is just dried mud, really," said Jorge Vergen, director of the properties office of the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, which owns about 100 parishes throughout West Texas. "It's not going to last forever. There's almost nothing to do."

A historical marker on the winding road connecting Ruidosa to a border crossing at Presidio offers a lesson in the survival of religious outposts on this frontier. As far back as the 17th century, Franciscans established nine missions in the area, including one called San Francisco de Los Julimes, in an effort to bring Christianity to the Jumano, Julimes and other tribes.

Neither the tribes nor the older mission survived.

Ruidosa itself started out as a penal colony for the Mexican government, offering convicts a chance to defend an empty plain against Comanche raids, before farming took root. Scattered throughout Texas and other states, the descendants of settlers drive through Ruidosa occasionally and stop at the church.

"My grandfather lived here when this was a little boomtown," said Albert Nichols, 54, who rolled into Ruidosa in a white Buick on a recent Tuesday afternoon on a memory trip with his father, Max, 84. The two men now farm cotton in southern Arizona. "I never knew this church existed until now," Mr. Nichols said.

    Town Ties Its Rejuvenation to That of Crumbling Church, NYT, 8.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/08/us/08religion.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

It's Passover, Lighten Up

April 5, 2006
The New York Times
By JOAN NATHAN

WHEN Emily Moore, a Seattle-based chef and instructor, was invited to consult on recipes for Streit's Matzo, she assumed that the baked goods would have their traditional heft, because no leavening can be used during Passover.

Not so, said Rabbi Moshe Soloveichik, a member of a prominent rabbinic dynasty, who oversees the company's ritual observances. Let the cookies and cakes rise, he told her. Let there be baking soda and baking powder.

"He acted like I was crazy," Ms. Moore said.

The biblical prohibition against leavened bread at Passover — which begins on Wednesday night — has kept observant Jews from using any leavening at all. Cakes and cookies of matzo meal (ground matzo), matzo cake meal (which is more finely ground) and nuts can be tasty, but dense.

So it will surprise many Jews — it certainly surprised me — that among the profusion of products that most Orthodox certification agencies have approved for Passover are not just baking soda, but also baking powder.

Some rabbis are lifting other dietary prohibitions that they say were based on misunderstandings or overly cautious interpretations of biblical sanctions, and because they want to simplify the observance.

"The holiday has become overly complicated, and people are turning away from the rigorous practice of it," said Rabbi Jeffrey A. Wohlberg, the senior rabbi at conservative Adas Israel Congregation in Washington.

Last year, Rabbi Wohlberg said it was permissible for his congregants to eat legumes, called kitniyot in Hebrew. They are usually beyond the pale at Passover for the most rigorous observers, but are increasingly accepted by many Conservative and Orthodox rabbis, particularly in Israel.

"I have also talked to a lot of young mothers over the years whose children, for example, are lactose intolerant and want to use soy milk," Rabbi Wohlberg said. "But soy is a bean and hasn't been permissible."

The restrictions have their roots in the Book of Exodus, which tells of how the Israelites fled Egypt in such haste that they could not let their bread rise and become "chometz" in Hebrew. Only unleavened bread, matzo, is eaten during the eight days of Passover, in memory of the Israelites' hardships and in celebration of their escape from slavery.

"No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory" during Passover, it was written. But, as Ms. Moore said, "There is a lot of misunderstanding about what leavening means for Passover."

Jews avoid flour or grains, for fear that they might become leavened even without the addition of yeast. (Matzo meal, since it's already been baked, is less likely to rise and become leavened.)

Matzo, a simple mixture of flour and water, must be made in less than 18 minutes to avoid the possibility that the dough could ferment and then rise before being baked. "The Talmud says that it should take no longer to make matzo than the time to walk a Roman mile, which later generations understood to be 18 minutes," said Dr. David Kraemer, professor of Talmud and rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

At Passover, some ultra-Orthodox Jews will not eat matzo that has become wet, including matzo balls. Instead of matzo meal, or the fine matzo cake meal, they use potato starch in cakes and other dishes.

But rabbis in even some of the most Orthodox associations say chometz does not refer to all leavening.

"There is nothing wrong about a raised product at Passover per se," said Rabbi Moshe Elefant, executive rabbinic coordinator and chief operating officer of the Orthodox Union's kosher division, the oldest and most widely accepted certifier of kosher foods.

Lise Stern, author of "How to Keep Kosher" (Morrow, 2004), said: "Chometz, which means sharp or sour, denotes bread that has a sourness to it caused by fermentation, occurring when liquid is added to any of the five grains mentioned in the Torah. This refers to yeast, not baking powder or baking soda."

Rabbi Soloveichik said: "They're just minerals. What do we care about minerals?"

While kosher for Passover baking soda and baking powder can be hard to find in supermarkets, they have been available in Orthodox neighborhoods for years. Erba Food Products, of Brooklyn, made kosher for Passover baking powder in the late 1960's.

Ms. Moore, who creates kosher recipes for the Elliott Bay Baking Company in Seattle, adjusted recipes for matzo meal, which is heavier than flour, to make vanilla sesame, lemon ginger and double chocolate mocha cookies with baking soda or baking powder (made with potato starch, not corn starch, which is made from a grain that is avoided).

The ban on legumes is connected to the ban on leavening. Jews in medieval Europe began to keep beans and lentils, as well as grains, from the Passover table because until modern times they were often ground into flour. The use of rice and corn were later restricted, too, by some Jews. But Sephardic Jews of the Middle East continued to eat them at Passover.

Over the past few years legumes have become accepted for Passover by the Israeli Army and the Masorti movement (as Conservative Judaism is known in Israel) partly because of increased intermarriage between Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews, as those of European descent are called.

A delicious Moroccan Passover dish of shad and fava beans takes advantage of the freer interpretation of the Passover pantry and the bounty of spring.

The Passover table has changed in many ways. More than 21,000 kosher for Passover items are available in the United States, with 500 new ones this year, said Menachem Lubinsky, president of Lubicom, a marketing firm specializing in kosher food.

With such items as Passover pasta (made from potato starch), quinoa salads, tricolored matzo balls, and ingredients like grape seed oil, kosher organic chickens and matzo breadsticks, a lot of the suffering is being taken out of Passover.

In the weeks before Passover, many homes are rigorously cleaned, and every bit of chometz or leavening removed. Some people avoid cooking in their newly cleaned homes by going to a resort that is kosher for Passover, a practice that in the past few years has been boosting business in the Caribbean and around the country during a traditionally slow period.

At the Hyatt Dorado Beach Resort and Country Club in Puerto Rico, Robin Mortkowitz, a therapist in Fairlawn, N.J., who became Orthodox when she married, was swept away by new foods like sushi made from quinoa, the sesame-seed-sized kernel cultivated in the Andes that many certifying agencies have ruled is not a forbidden grain.

"With people becoming more sophisticated, we have to step up the food program," said Sol Kirschenbaum, an owner of Levana restaurant in New York, which arranged the food at the Hyatt. "It's wild mushrooms and grilled rack of lamb, but I still need to have chicken soup and gefilte fish for the 60- to 90-year-olds."

Kosher companies are also sprucing up their food. Susie Fishbein, author of the popular "Kosher by Design" series of cookbooks, said she is creating recipes for the Manischewitz Web site and food boxes, like tricolored matzo balls with green spinach, yellow turmeric and red tomato paste, using olive oil instead of schmaltz.

"Companies like Manischewitz can't survive on kosher gefilte fish anymore," Ms. Fishbein said. "A whole new generation of cooks is looking for fresh ideas."

But some still find beauty in tradition. When the cookbook author Tamasin Day-Lewis made a flourless almond cake with a fresh orange and mandarin syrup for a party recently, some of her guests who were Jewish said, "This is perfect for Passover."

    It's Passover, Lighten Up, NYT, 5.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/dining/05leav.html?ex=1144468800&en=c1fd4d9155b2e099&ei=5087

With Yoga, Comedy and Parties, Synagogues Entice Newcomers

April 4, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

A hipster synagogue grows in SoHo, drawing large crowds with its "Torah cocktail parties" in fancy loft apartments and user-friendly prayer services designed especially for the uninitiated.

A group of New York-area congregations, along with others across the country, refashion their synagogues into religious multiplexes on the Sabbath, featuring programs like "Shabbat yoga" and comedy alongside traditional worship.

Several synagogues on Long Island — as well as in Seattle, Tucson and elsewhere — station volunteers in supermarket aisles as part of a national program that started several years ago to reach out to Jews who are buying matzos for Passover but do not belong to a house of worship.

These are just some of the ways that Jewish religious leaders, driven by fears about shrinking numbers, are becoming increasingly sophisticated and aggressive about marketing Judaism, turning to the same kinds of outreach techniques that evangelical Christians rode to mega-church success.

In some cases, Jewish groups are explicitly borrowing from the evangelical playbook to reach those who do not attend synagogue; in others, the parallels have been largely coincidental. Although the efforts to market Judaism have drawn criticism from some corners, Jewish leaders across the theological spectrum are realizing what evangelicals have long concluded, that the faithful are easily distracted in America's spiritual marketplace and religious institutions have to adjust if they hope to survive.

"I think what's going on is a product of the consumer-driven nature of this culture and the need to compete for people's time and attention," said Jack Wertheimer, provost and professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. "Christians do it from the imperative of evangelizing. Jews are doing it far more because they see their community shrinking."

The evangelical pastors who built the mega-churches that rose to prominence in the 1980's and 90's absorbed lessons from the secular marketplace to repackage church services to appeal to people who found traditional church boring or intimidating. In a similar fashion — although their goal is not necessarily to produce "mega-synagogues" — Jewish leaders are revamping worship in their synagogues to make the experience more lively and participatory; they are reconfiguring their sanctuaries to make them less intimidating; they are rethinking how to welcome newcomers; and they are getting increasingly creative about getting people in the door.

"There's a feeling that all the old structures aren't working," said Rabbi Richard Jacobs of Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, N.Y., who was part of a group of synagogue leaders that gathered recently in Los Angeles at the University of Judaism to get advice from the Rev. Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life" and the evangelical pastor of Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., which draws more than 20,000 on weekends.

The event was organized by leaders of Synagogue 3000 — formerly Synagogue 2000 — a national effort to revitalize Jewish congregations. The program, which has attracted about 100 synagogues across the country, has sought to learn from both the evangelical and corporate worlds.

"The world is a different world," said Rabbi Jacobs. "There's a greater marketplace of spiritual options for people. If synagogues are not compelling places, who's going to bother to join and be involved?"

Jewish leaders are grappling with the vast numbers of Jews who do not belong to a synagogue, along with shrinking numbers over all. According to the 2000-1 National Jewish Population Survey, 5.2 million Jews live in the United States, a drop of 300,000 from 1990 despite a wave of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The survey also found that a majority of Jews do not belong to a synagogue. Those who fail to affiliate with synagogues or other Jewish organizations are much more likely to intermarry, according to researchers, and much more likely to have children who do not identify themselves as Jewish.

As a result, with Passover, one of the most significant holidays on the Jewish calendar, coming next week, subtle and not so subtle efforts to lure Jews, especially members of the younger generation, back to services are in full swing.

The Town and Village Synagogue on East 14th Street in Manhattan, affiliated with the Conservative movement, is organizing a coffeehouse for Friday night, with people sharing poetry on the Passover theme of freedom. Attendance on Friday nights has increased to 150 from 50. The National Jewish Outreach Program, an Orthodox organization best known for its heavily advertised Shabbat Across America project, which has become a national phenomenon with its radio jingles, toll-free numbers and billboards, is helping synagogues across the country advertise and put on seders geared to those unfamiliar with the holiday's rituals.

Volunteers from Congregation Beth David in Saratoga, Calif., are setting up tables at two nearby supermarkets before Passover.

"The idea is, 'Listen, everybody goes shopping,' " said Rabbi Aaron Schonbrun of Congregation Beth David. "Even your average Jewish person that may be vaguely aware that it's Passover, or may not be aware it's Passover, or is just in the supermarket."

The pioneers of outreach to secular Jews are the Chabad-Lubavitchers, members of an Orthodox Hasidic sect that is based in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Although their tactics have sometimes drawn controversy, their work has become a model for many Jews.

Dovi and Esty Scheiner, a young Lubavitch couple who moved from Crown Heights to TriBeCa several years ago, are trying to bring Judaism to the cool and hip in Lower Manhattan.

In order to reach the downtown audience, it was necessary to rethink the traditional synagogue approach, said Rabbi Scheiner. "This is a very anti-establishment, anti-organized-religion type of community."

Instead of holding religious services, they gave fancy cocktail parties in art galleries and lofts. In the middle of the events, Rabbi Scheiner would offer a few words of Jewish teaching.

The parties have now given way to the SoHo Synagogue, which they believe is the first Jewish house of worship in the neighborhood. About 250 people attended a dedication party last month for the synagogue's first home, on Varick Street near Canal Street. It is a stylishly decorated 5,000-square-foot space, complete with chic couches, a lacy flora-and-fauna-patterned curtain that functions as the mechitza separating the sexes and an avant-garde sheet-metal ark to store the Torah.

"We wanted it to be a place where somebody who had never been to synagogue before, or someone who went to synagogue as a child and had a bad experience, would come," Mrs. Scheiner said.

The Manhattan Jewish Experience, an Orthodox outreach organization for young Jewish professionals on the Upper West Side, offers slickly advertised social events, including a regular "Monday Night Lounge" that features music and a lecture on topics ranging from dating to kabbalah.

Once inside the organization's orbit, people are encouraged to attend a beginners' worship service. There are also classes for the more advanced. Amy Gitlitz, 33, started attending the organization's events two years ago. At the time, she was working 90 hours a week at a law firm. Today, however, she does not work from Friday evening to Saturday evening. She does not turn on the lights. She does not answer her cellphone. And she keeps kosher. She attributes her transformation to the Manhattan group'scontemporary approach.

"Everything in the world nowadays is about marketing," she said. "If Judaism is really slow and boring and doesn't try to do anything to compete with the parties and the music and the movies, it's going to lose."

Some 50 synagogues across the country have been experimenting with "Synaplex Shabbat," a national program that began in 2003 that encourages congregations to enhance their Sabbath services by offering an array of nontraditional extras.

The Society for the Advancement of Judaism, a Reconstructionist and Conservative synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, for instance, has organized Sabbath programs around tai chi and nature walks. Others have tried yoga classes and stand-up comedy as a means of Sabbath observance.

The program borrows in some ways from the mega-church concept because it offers people "multiple entry points" into synagogue life, said Rabbi Hayim Herring, the program's executive director.

But just as critics have charged the purveyors of the mega-church movement with peddling a watered-down, consumer-oriented brand of faith, Jewish religious leaders experimenting with new ways to reach the nonobservant have been accused of promoting Judaism-lite.

"A lot of times these marketing approaches fool themselves," said Rafael Guber, a Jewish researcher who wrote a recent column in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles entitled, "Selling Judaism: Let's Make It Harder." "They say, first, we'll make it easy and get them in, and then after they get in, we'll get the discipline and structure. The problem is nobody ever gets to Step 2."

But Synaplex's impact has been remarkable, doubling and tripling Friday night or Saturday morning attendance in many places. Although it is unclear whether people have gone deeper in their religious observance, for many rabbis it is enough for now that they are there at all.

"Truthfully, I'd rather have people in shul on Friday night, hanging out at the synagogue, than out at a bar," said Rabbi Laurence Sebert of the Town and Village Synagogue and a Synaplex participant. "It's all small steps."

    With Yoga, Comedy and Parties, Synagogues Entice Newcomers, NYT, 4.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/nyregion/04synagogue.html

Political Memo

The Abortion-Rights Side Invokes God, Too

April 3, 2006
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

In any given week, if you walked into one of Washington's big corporate hotels early in the morning, you would find a community of the faithful, quite often conservative Christians, rallying the troops, offering solace and denouncing the opposition at a prayer breakfast.

So you might be forgiven for thinking that such a group was in attendance on Friday in a ballroom of the Washington Hilton. People wearing clerical collars and small crucifixes were wedged at tables laden with muffins, bowing their heads in prayer. Seminarians were welcomed. Scripture was cited. But the name of the sponsor cast everything in a new light: the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

To its critics, Planned Parenthood is the godless super-merchant of abortion. To its supporters, it is the dependably secular defender of abortion rights. But at this breakfast, God was everywhere, easily invoked by believers of various stripes.

"We are here this morning because, through our collective efforts, we are agents in bringing our fragile world ever closer to the promise of redemption," Rabbi Dennis S. Ross, director of Concerned Clergy for Choice, told the audience. "As clergy from an array of denominations, we say yes to the call before us. Please join me in prayer: We praise you, God, ruler of time and space, for challenging us to bring healing and comfort to your world."

"Amen," the audience responded.

The Interfaith Prayer Breakfast has been part of Planned Parenthood's annual convention for four years. Most ministers and rabbis at the breakfast have known the group far longer.

Margaret Sanger, founder of the organization that became Planned Parenthood, drew clergy members in the early 20th century by relating the suffering of women who endured successive pregnancies that ravaged their health and sought illegal abortions in their desperation, said the Rev. Thomas R. Davis of the United Church of Christ, in his book "Sacred Work, Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances."

In the 1930's, Jewish and mainline Protestant groups began to voice their support for birth control. In 1962, a Maryland clergy coalition successfully pressed the state to permit the disbursal of contraception. In the late 1960's, some 2,000 ministers and rabbis across the country banded together to give women information about abortion providers and to lobby for the repeal of anti-abortion laws.

"The clergy could open that door because the clergy had a certain moral authority," said Mr. Davis, who is chairman of Planned Parenthood's clergy advisory board but whose book is not sponsored by the group. "They balanced the moral authority of the critics."

As the scrape of silverware quieted at the breakfast, the Rev. W. Stewart MacColl told the audience how a Presbyterian church in Houston that he had led and several others had worked with Planned Parenthood to start a family planning center. Protesters visited his church. Yet his 900 parishioners drove through picket lines every week to attend services. One Sunday, he and his wife, Jane, took refreshments to the protesters out of respect for their understanding of faith, he said.

Mr. MacColl said a parishioner called him the next day to comment: "That's all very well for you to say, but you don't drive to church with a 4-year-old in the back seat of your car and have to try to explain to him when a woman holds up a picture of a dead baby and screams through the window, 'Your church believes in killing babies.' "

Mr. MacColl said of the abortion protester: "She would, I suspect, count herself a lover of life, a lover of the unborn, a lover of God. And yet she spoke in harshness, hatred and frightened a little child."

Mr. MacColl quoted the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: " 'Sometimes the worst evil is done by good people who do not know that they are not good.' "

The crowd murmured its assent.

Then Mr. MacColl challenged them. "The trouble is, I find myself reflected in that woman," he said. "Because I can get trapped in self-righteousness and paint those who oppose me in dark colors they do not deserve. Is that, at times, true of you, as well?"

This time, people were silent.

It is not lost on Mr. Davis how the passion of the Christian right in its effort to abolish abortion and curtail access to birth control now mirrors the efforts of clergy members 40 years ago to do the opposite.

"They're a religious tradition, too, and they are moved by Scripture," he said, although the Bible says nothing explicit about abortion. "When we understood the suffering in these kinds of situations that women were in, we understood that for reasons of justice, we had to act. We're doing it for theological and Biblical reasons."

A perception may exist that the denominations supporting abortion rights are outnumbered and out-shouted by their more conservative brethren. But that worried Mr. Davis little, he said, for he and other like-minded clergy members were in the minority in the 1960's, too.

Still, some clergy members could barely contain their outrage. "The more we are able to cultivate the capacity in every person — women and men — to make informed ethical judgments both in ourselves and our society, the more we are coming into relationship with the transcendent, with God," said the Rev. Susan Thistlethwaite, president of Chicago Theological Seminary.

"Human existence as a materialistic quest for power and dominance, a crass manipulation of fear and intolerance for political gain, drives us apart both from one another and from God," she said. "For what does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your soul?"

    The Abortion-Rights Side Invokes God, Too, NYT, 3.4.3006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/us/03breakfast.html

Hinckley skips Mormon conference opener

Posted 4/2/2006 12:00 AM Updated 4/2/2006 12:03 AM
USA Today

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mormon church President Gordon B. Hinckley expressed regret over lives lost in wars, and carped criticism and the racial denigration of others on Saturday night to close the first day of the faith's twice-yearly conference.

"I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ," the church president said, noting that in recent years he has dedicated two church temples in Africa, where membership is growing.

The 95-year-old was scheduled to give the opening address in the morning, but James E. Faust, one of two other men in the church's top leadership, led the proceedings instead.

No official reason was given for the change, although church spokesmen said Hinckley was conserving his energy.

Hinckley, in his 11th year as leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has had recent health problems.

Hinckley suffers from a mild form of diabetes. In late January, he was hospitalized for six days for surgery to remove a cancerous growth from his intestine. He spent an additional 10 days or so recovering and then went back to work, including making a trip last month to Santiago, Chile, for the rededication of a church temple.

"He was strong and vibrant and it was vintage President Hinckley," said Dale Bills, a church spokesman, after Saturday evening's remarks.

Mormons gather in April and October to hear from church leaders on a variety of topics meant to strengthen faith and provide spiritual direction to the more than 12 million church members worldwide. More than 100,000 attend the conference's five sessions.

The two-day conference is broadcast via satellite, television, radio and the Internet to 83 countries in 86 languages.

    Hinckley skips Mormon conference opener, UT, 2.4.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-04-01-mormonconference_x.htm

Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer

March 31, 2006
The New York Times
By BENEDICT CAREY

Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.

And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation.

The question has been a contentious one among researchers. Proponents have argued that prayer is perhaps the most deeply human response to disease, and that it may relieve suffering by some mechanism that is not yet understood. Skeptics have contended that studying prayer is a waste of money and that it presupposes supernatural intervention, putting it by definition beyond the reach of science.

At least 10 studies of the effects of prayer have been carried out in the last six years, with mixed results. The new study was intended to overcome flaws in the earlier investigations. The report was scheduled to appear in The American Heart Journal next week, but the journal's publisher released it online yesterday.

In a hurriedly convened news conference, the study's authors, led by Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston, said that the findings were not the last word on the effects of so-called intercessory prayer. But the results, they said, raised questions about how and whether patients should be told that prayers were being offered for them.

"One conclusion from this is that the role of awareness of prayer should be studied further," said Dr. Charles Bethea, a cardiologist at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City and a co-author of the study.

Other experts said the study underscored the question of whether prayer was an appropriate subject for scientific study.

"The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion," said Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, "Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine."

The study cost $2.4 million, and most of the money came from the John Templeton Foundation, which supports research into spirituality. The government has spent more than $2.3 million on prayer research since 2000.

Dean Marek, a chaplain at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a co-author of the report, said the study said nothing about the power of personal prayer or about prayers for family members and friends.

Working in a large medical center like Mayo, Mr. Marek said, "You hear tons of stories about the power of prayer, and I don't doubt them."

In the study, the researchers monitored 1,802 patients at six hospitals who received coronary bypass surgery, in which doctors reroute circulation around a clogged vein or artery.

The patients were broken into three groups. Two were prayed for; the third was not. Half the patients who received the prayers were told that they were being prayed for; half were told that they might or might not receive prayers.

The researchers asked the members of three congregations — St. Paul's Monastery in St. Paul; the Community of Teresian Carmelites in Worcester, Mass.; and Silent Unity, a Missouri prayer ministry near Kansas City — to deliver the prayers, using the patients' first names and the first initials of their last names.

The congregations were told that they could pray in their own ways, but they were instructed to include the phrase, "for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications."

Analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, the researchers found no differences between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not.

In another of the study's findings, a significantly higher number of the patients who knew that they were being prayed for — 59 percent — suffered complications, compared with 51 percent of those who were uncertain. The authors left open the possibility that this was a chance finding. But they said that being aware of the strangers' prayers also may have caused some of the patients a kind of performance anxiety.

"It may have made them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?" Dr. Bethea said.

The study also found that more patients in the uninformed prayer group — 18 percent — suffered major complications, like heart attack or stroke, compared with 13 percent in the group that did not receive prayers. In their report, the researchers suggested that this finding might also be a result of chance.

One reason the study was so widely anticipated was that it was led by Dr. Benson, who in his work has emphasized the soothing power of personal prayer and meditation.

At least one earlier study found lower complication rates in patients who received intercessory prayers; others found no difference. A 1997 study at the University of New Mexico, involving 40 alcoholics in rehabilitation, found that the men and women who knew they were being prayed for actually fared worse.

The new study was rigorously designed to avoid problems like the ones that came up in the earlier studies. But experts said the study could not overcome perhaps the largest obstacle to prayer study: the unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends, families, and congregations around the world who pray daily for the sick and dying.

Bob Barth, the spiritual director of Silent Unity, the Missouri prayer ministry, said the findings would not affect the ministry's mission.

"A person of faith would say that this study is interesting," Mr. Barth said, "but we've been praying a long time and we've seen prayer work, we know it works, and the research on prayer and spirituality is just getting started."

    Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer, NYT, 31.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?hp&ex=1143781200&en=7b5406becfadbd88&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Church: 783 new abuse claims in 2005

Posted 3/30/2006 12:36 PM Updated 3/30/2006 1:50 PM
Reuters

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's Roman Catholic leaders received 783 new claims of sex abuse by clergy in 2005, with most of the allegations involving cases that are decades old.

The new claims, reported Thursday, bring the total number of accusations against Catholic clergy to more than 12,000 since 1950. (On Deadline: Read the full report)

The latest figures were released as part of the third audit U.S. bishops have ordered conducted to restore trust in their leadership after abuse allegations soared in 2002. Church leaders, however, drew criticism for changing how this latest review was conducted.

In the first two annual audits, nearly all 195 dioceses received an onsite visit. During the most recent review, 104 dioceses were allowed to fill out a questionnaire instead while auditors visited others.

All three audits were conducted by the Gavin Group, a private firm that employed teams comprised mainly of former FBI agents.

Prior to the new audit, the abuse problem was known to have cost dioceses more than $1 billion since 1950. But new figures released by the church show that number continuing to climb: The bishops said the total cost of abuse in 2005 alone was nearly $467 million, including settlements, therapy for victims, support for offenders and attorneys' fees, among other things.

Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., president of the U.S. bishop's conference, has been accused of sexually abusing a woman, and is leading a diocese that filed for bankruptcy because of costs.

Skylstad, who denies the claim against him, said Thursday the experiences have made him neither "naive or in denial about the power of this crisis to affect the ongoing life of the church and the lives of victims." He said the church is committed to ridding itself of the abuse problem.

A separate report also found a slight decline in compliance with all of the provisions of the toughened sex abuse policy that the bishops adopted four years ago. It found 88.5% of dioceses were fully compliant compared with more than 95% last year.

It said that several dioceses don't have full safe environment training where children learn to keep themselves safe from abusers, and four dioceses have not fully complied with the call for background checks on employees.

The 2002 abuse prevention policy the bishops adopted at the height of the scandal requires dioceses to hire victim assistance coordinators, form review boards to help evaluate abuse claims, conduct background checks on staff and volunteers and teach children to protect themselves from predators. The disciplinary provisions in the plan require prelates to bar guilty priests from all church work.

In 2004, dioceses received more than 1,092 new abuse claims, in addition to the 10,667 claims the American church received from 1950-2002.

Separately Thursday, the New Hampshire attorney general released an independent audit his office conducted of sex abuse prevention in the New Hampshire Diocese, finding that the church failed to make sure that criminal background checks have been done on all employees and volunteers who work with children.

The state audit was part of a 2002 agreement the diocese struck with prosecutors to avoid criminal prosecution over failure to rein in abusers.

    Church: 783 new abuse claims in 2005, UT, 30.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-30-church-abuse_x.htm

With Changes on the Horizon, Churches Are Bracing

March 30, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

From the outside, the Church of the Nativity hardly evokes feelings of the divine. Its boxy, cinder-block-and-brick aesthetic give it a drab institutional feel. Inside, the church is similarly lacking in flourish: bare white walls, oak pews and little else.

"Humble, we can claim that," said the Rev. Donald C. Gannon, a Jesuit priest who is the church's pastor.

Yet the plain church on Second Avenue near Second Street inspired hope for many in the East Village during the neighborhood's worst of times — the crime-ridden, drug-infested decades of the 1960's, 70's and 80's. Today, the neighborhood has rebounded. Paradoxically, however, that has helped pave the way for a once-thriving church's demise.

Nativity is on the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York's list of recommendations for closing. The list, released on Tuesday, included 31 parishes and 14 schools, making it the most vast reorganization in the archdiocese's history of more than 150 years.

The recommendations, according to Catholic officials, are spurred by a shortage of priests, along with changing demographics that have emptied parts of New York City of the Catholic faithful, many of whom have left for the suburbs.

Manhattan, the archdiocese's historic heart, is among the hardest hit in the recommendations. It has a quarter of all the churches in the archdiocese, which stretches to the Catskills in the north from Staten Island in the south, but only 17 percent of the average head count at weekend Masses.

Parishes that were created a century ago to serve booming immigrant neighborhoods now sit largely empty, while many, especially in the northern suburbs of the archdiocese, are overflowing.

Nativity is a clear example of what has happened. According to the archdiocese's numbers, the church attracts fewer than 350 people for weekend Mass. The average crowd at a weekday Mass is five people, who worship in a tiny room that doubles as a chapel so the church does not have to heat the sanctuary. A staff of four has dwindled to one.

"Every year, I have more work and less help," Father Gannon said.

Nativity's demise has long been on the horizon, with rising rents and gentrification inexorably leaving its imprint.

"It used to be full, basically," said Roberto Rodriguez, 31, whose family moved to the neighborhood from the Dominican Republic nearly two decades ago and started attending the church. "Little by little the neighborhood kept changing and changing and the people kept disappearing."

Church officials said that their success has been limited in attracting the newer residents of the East Village.

The parish was created in 1842 by the archdiocese to accommodate Irish immigrants pouring into the area. When the Jesuits took it over 90 years ago, they served a wave of Italian immigrants.

The 1950's brought another shift, with an influx of Puerto Ricans. Then came the Dominicans, and later a small but significant number of Mexicans. Today, the church is 70 percent Hispanic.

The first parishioners worshiped an ornate Greek Revival structure, built in 1832, that the archdiocese bought from a Presbyterian church.

In the 1960's, however, that building was condemned. After some uncertainty, members of the parish rallied to build a new church, mostly with their own money.

"We are not shopping for a Cadillac, but a building that is functional, economical and simple," the parish council wrote, according to a parish history that was published in 1971. "It is being built solely for the religious and social needs of the people."

Parishioners eventually collected enough money to commission a bare-bones building that has served the church for 37 years.

The parish's main claim to fame today is that Dorothy Day, the writer and social worker who founded the Catholic Worker movement, worshiped there for decades.

"I can remember coming to our Masses and being struck, there she was, an icon, just a few rows away from me," said the Rev. George M. Anderson, a Jesuit priest who lives in the church's rectory and is an associate editor for America magazine.

Over the last decade, it has become increasingly clear, he said, that the area was changing and that did not necessarily bode well for the church.

"Young people were moving in with good salaries," he said. "Landlords began raising rents. We lost a lot of parishioners who were low income."

Father Gannon, who has been at the church for 14 years, said he began to get hints as early as 2001 from the archdiocese that the parish might be in danger. Over time, the hints grew more obvious.

"I have begun every year for four years convinced this was the last year," he said.

Last year, a group of parishioners began meeting to discuss what they might do about the church's fate. They wanted to avoid members being taken by surprise.

Some parishioners vowed to fight any decision to close their church. Others said they should simply pray and hope for the best. Still others wanted to be proactive and sought out developers who might buy the church but give the parishioners a small place to continue to meet. They were told by the archdiocese that they did not have the authority to negotiate with developers.

All the talk and venting has helped, Mr. Rodriguez said. "We got ourselves ready."

Father Gannon began meeting with the pastor of Holy Redeemer, a nearby church where many of Nativity's members could wind up going if the church closes, to make a possible transition go smoothly.

Even so, yesterday's news came as a shock to many. At the church's evening Mass, Father Gannon broke the news to six parishioners in the chapel. He said they should remember that God "always accompanies us" through hard times.

Later, the parishioners prayed out loud. "I pray that we can find signs of hope at this time," one said.

Everyone in the room repeated the refrain: "Lord, hear our prayer."

Ann Farmer contributed reporting for this article.

    With Changes on the Horizon, Churches Are Bracing, NYT, 30.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/nyregion/30church.html

In Suburbia, Time for a Bigger Church

March 30, 2006
The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ

PEARL RIVER, N.Y., March 29 — Msgr. John O'Keefe considers himself an effective, engaging priest. But since becoming the pastor of St. Margaret of Antioch Church nearly three years ago, he has heard one persistent complaint from parishioners after weekend Mass.

The Roman Catholic church — a pleasant enough tan-brick building erected in 1930 — is too small, the parishioners say. Only about 250 faithful can fit into St. Margaret's 36 wooden, green-cushioned pews. In the Rockland County hamlet of Pearl River, where the church makes its home, 250 is just a start.

About 2,000 men, women and children attend Mass there on weekends. The church has to celebrate Mass nine times — twice on Saturday, seven times on Sunday — to squeeze everyone in reasonably comfortably. A couple of weeks ago, Monsignor O'Keefe baptized six babies in the same ceremony, and the assorted family members filled the pews.

"It's always been crowded," he said, "since the day I came in."

Not for long.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York's plans for a sweeping reorganization, announced on Tuesday, offered good news for St. Margaret and a handful of other parishes that will get new and larger churches. Most of the expanding churches, in addition to the creation of five new parishes, are in Rockland, Dutchess and northern Westchester Counties.

Catholic parishes often grow over the years as Hispanic immigrants settle in new neighborhoods and towns. The popularity of St. Margaret is tied not to immigration but to that other New York saga: the move to the suburbs. Pearl River, population 15,553, according to the 2000 census, has long been popular with Irish-American families seeking a reasonably short trip to the city and the wooded feel of the suburbs.

A number of New York City police officers and firefighters live in Pearl River, as do many retirees. Many of the white-clapboard homes with big yards have giant flagpoles that would not look out of place surrounding the Washington Monument. The pace of life on Main Street is slow and meandering; the only pressing activity at one point Wednesday afternoon was a gray-haired man headed to a mailbox, envelope in hand. It is a corner of the state that feels not 30 miles from Times Square, but 3,000.

The population of Rockland County has slowly climbed over the decades, to 286,753 in 2000 from 229,903 in 1970. Since the early 1990's, attendance at weekend Masses at St. Margaret has numbered between 2,500 and 2,900, according to church records. One parishioner, James Brady, recalled a time when it was easy to get a seat on Sundays. Mr. Brady, 62, a semiretired lawyer, said that was back in 1975, when he started attending the church.

"It felt smaller," said Mr. Brady, the former president of the church's parish council. "You could come in and sit down and get a seat on Sunday without a problem."

Mr. Brady sent his four children to St. Margaret's School, a Catholic elementary and middle school with 315 students. Two of his children were baptized at the church. He said that despite the congestion on Sunday, it still feels intimate and old-fashioned.

"The church is like a small country church, and that's why everybody loves the place," Mr. Brady said, adding that some parishioners are concerned that a big new church could change the character of St. Margaret.

With a large congregation of firefighters and police officers, the church has done its share of grieving. In January 2005, it was the scene of the funeral for John G. Bellew, one of two New York City firefighters killed when they jumped from a burning building in the Bronx. Firefighter Bellew lived in Pearl River.

Parishioners have been asking Monsignor O'Keefe, who first heard about the expansion list on Tuesday from a local reporter, for details about the new church. He said the specifics still needed to be worked out. But he did say that the old church would remain, and would be used for baptisms, funerals and weddings after a new one is built.

After Mass Wednesday morning, Monsignor O'Keefe said, he told curious parishioners: "Don't ask me where it's going to be. And for God's sake, don't ask me how we're going to pay for it."

    In Suburbia, Time for a Bigger Church, NYT, 30.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/nyregion/30thrive.html

Joel Osteen, preacher of Lakewood Church in Houston, greeting Varunee Rinehart, right, and her daughter.

NYT        29 March 2006

  A Preacher's Credo: Eliminate the Negative, Accentuate Prosperity        NYT        30.3.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/books/30oste.html?hp&ex=1143694800&en=1219df5c1442b516&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A Preacher's Credo: Eliminate the Negative, Accentuate Prosperity

March 30, 2006
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, March 29 — Last Sunday morning, as usual, the ever-smiling preacher, best-selling author and religious broadcaster Joel Osteen took the stage at Lakewood Church, formerly known as the Compaq Center, the 16,000-seat home of the Houston Rockets basketball team.

After a warm-up of rousing original rock and gospel hymns with lyrics and videos flashing on jumbo screens around the arena, Mr. Osteen began to speak. "We come with good news each week," he told the packed crowd at his gigachurch in his native Texan twang.

The news for Mr. Osteen has lately been very good indeed: two weeks ago he signed a contract with Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, that could bring him as much as $13 million for a follow-up book to his debut spiritual guide, "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential," which, since it was published by Warner Faith in 2004, has sold more than three million copies. "I believe God wants us to prosper" is the gospel according to Mr. Osteen, 43, who offers no apologies for his wealth.

"You know what, I've never done it for the money," he said in an interview after Sunday's service, which he led with his glamorous wife and co-pastor, Victoria. "I've never asked for money on television." But opening oneself to God's favors was a blessing, he said. "I believe it's God rewarding you."

Mr. Osteen (pronounced OH-steen) said he would write the second book, like the first, on his computer, without a ghostwriter, based largely on his sermons. "A lot of my book comes from my messages," he said. "So I'll take what I did today and maybe massage that into some chapters." "Your Best Life," Mr. Osteen said, went through 10 versions with his editors at Warner Faith "until I felt it was right."

"I've got some material I haven't used, stuff on relationships, believing in people," he said. "That's what I want to get into my next book."

But he may have written himself into a corner with the earlier title, he agreed with a laugh, leaving him next time around with something like "A Little Bit Better Than Your Best Life Now."

Mr. Osteen said the terms of the new contract were confidential, "so I don't think I ought to comment one way or the other." But people involved in the negotiations have said that the contract is a co-publishing deal that gives Mr. Osteen a smaller advance, but a 50-50 split on profits from the book. (The author's usual royalty is 15 percent of sales.) The new deal is potentially richer than the $10 million or more that former President Bill Clinton was advanced for his autobiography, "My Life."

Not bad for a college dropout who seven years ago was manning the television cameras at his father's church and was too nervous to ascend the pulpit until succeeding him in 1999. "I feel God has put big things in me," he said.

Again and again in the first book, Mr. Osteen exhorts readers to shun negativity and develop "a prosperous mindset" as a way of drawing God's favor. He tells the story of a passenger on a cruise ship who fed himself on cheese and crackers before realizing that sumptuous meals were included. "Friend, I don't know about you, but I'm tired of those cheese and crackers!," Mr. Osteen writes. "It's time to step up to God's dining table."

Or, as he also puts it: "God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner."

He is not shy about calling on the Lord. He writes of praying for a winning basket in a basketball game, and then sinking it; and even of circling a parking lot, praying for a space, and then finding it. "Better yet," he writes, "it was the premier spot in that parking lot."

To millions of Americans, Mr. Osteen is already ubiquitous. Lakewood's weekend services — one on Saturday night and three on Sunday, including one in Spanish — draw up to 40,000 attendees and are taped for broadcast in all 210 American markets, with an estimated seven million viewers a week.

The church, which was founded by Mr. Osteen's father, John Osteen, in a former feed store in the Lakewood district of Houston in 1959, is still run as a family affair. But unlike some scandal-tainted TV ministries, Lakewood issues financial statements notable for their accountability.

Collections at the church's service bring in close to $1 million a week, with $20 million or so a year more sent in by mail, said Don Iloff, Lakewood's spokesman and Mr. Osteen's brother-in-law. The money goes to pay the staff of 300, service the debt on the $95 million it cost to turn the Compaq Center into a church (now about half paid off), support ministries in India and elsewhere and buy television time around the country. Mr. Osteen stopped taking his $200,000 annual salary from the church after he sold his first book.

In "Your Best Life," Mr. Osteen counsels patience, compassion, kindness, generosity and an overall positive attitude familiar to any reader of self-help books. But he skirts the darker themes of sin, suffering and self-denial, leading some critics to deride the Osteen message as "Christianity lite."

"He's not in the soul business, he's in the self business," said James B. Twitchell, professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida and author of a forthcoming Simon & Schuster book on megachurches: "Shopping for God: How Christianity Went From in Your Heart to in Your Face."

"There's breadth but not too much depth, but the breadth is quite spangly, exciting to look at — that's his power," said Dr. Twitchell who called Lakewood "the steroid extreme" of megachurches. He said church critics fault Mr. Osteen for "diluting and dumbing down" the Christian message, "but in truth," he said, "what he's producing is a wild and alluring community."

Laceye Warner, assistant professor of the practice of evangelism and Methodist studies at Duke Divinity School, praised Lakewood's reach, but she said that "Christian faith is about relationship with God and neighbor and such form of worship has become entertainment."

Mr. Osteen acknowledged an ecumenism that may alienate some purists — there's a globe, not a cross at what would be the apse — but he said, "I'm just trying to plant a seed of hope in people's hearts."

"I don't believe I ever preached a message on money," he said. "But I do believe, you know what, God can want you to have a better house. God wants you to be able to send your kids to college."

He has distanced himself from much of the Christian right, avoiding the issues of gay marriage and abortion and generally shuns partisan political functions. He said he knew he was under a moral microscope and was uncomfortable discussing the widely publicized episode last Christmas when the Osteen family was taken off a Continental flight to Vail, Colo., after Mrs. Osteen got into an argument with a flight attendant over cleaning up spilled liquid on her first-class seat. "It was blown out of proportion," said Mr. Osteen.

But his admirers remain adoring. The crush on Sunday included William and Varunee Rinehart and their 17-year-old daughter, Whitny, who drove 15 hours from Brunswick, Ga., to tell Mr. Osteen they were faithful watchers of his show and to share a miracle. "There was a tumor in my head," Whitny said. She said that after prayer she was cancer free.

Marin and Zori Marinov, now of Dallas, had driven down to tell him that in their native Bulgaria they had hooked up a satellite dish to receive his broadcasts. To their amazement they found another Bulgarian a few steps away, Dyana Dafova, a singer who invited Mr. Osteen to preach in Sofia.

He signed autographs on church programs, copies of his book — even family Bibles. "I don't know if I should be signing these," Mr. Osteen confessed, but he did anyway. In the day's sermon he told worshipers they were constantly being tested by adversity. "Every test is an opportunity to come up higher," he said. "That's God trying to promote us." Even a traffic jam like the ones that confound churchgoers around Lakewood every Sunday, he said, was God's test of patience.

"The question is not, Do you have a problem?" he said. "The question is, Does the problem have you?"

Before the collection was taken, Victoria Osteen urged generosity as a way of drawing God's favor. "He not only wants to enrich you but do things for you you know nothing about," she said. "Let him breathe the breath of life into your finances and he'll give it back to you bigger than you could ever give it to him," she said. To which the congregation, said, "Amen," and the buckets went around.

    A Preacher's Credo: Eliminate the Negative, Accentuate Prosperity, NYT, 30.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/books/30oste.html?hp&ex=1143694800&en=1219df5c1442b516&ei=5094&partner=homepage

American Muslims gaining a foothold in politics

Posted 3/23/2006 11:08 PM Updated 3/23/2006 11:19 PM
USA TODAY
By Jill Lawrence

TEANECK, N.J. — The mayor of nearby Prospect Park is a 30-year-old high school business teacher with a young son. He was a volunteer firefighter at 18 and has been active in his community ever since. But when he sought the mayor's office last fall, voters received anonymous fliers calling him a "betrayer" tied to the 9/11 terrorists.

Why? Because he is a Syrian-born Muslim named Mohamed Khairullah.

"I was worried for my family," Khairullah says. "Any crazy person could have just driven by and done something. But we just had faith and went on doing what we had to do." The result: he got the job, open because the previous mayor had moved away, and now is running to keep it.

The 9/11 attacks have had a curious double-edged impact on the political emergence of American Muslims. They are up against more stereotyping and backlash, which they perceived recently in the furor over a Dubai company's thwarted plan to take over port operations in several U.S. cities.

At the same time, the 9/11 attacks jolted Muslims into realizing that they needed to make themselves known to their neighbors and heard by their government. They are voting, running for office and getting more involved in civic and political life at every level, from PTAs and school boards to town councils and state legislatures. At least two — Texas Republicans Amir Omar and Ahmad Hassan — are running for U.S. Congress.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which promotes Muslim political activity, has opened 23 of its 31 U.S. chapters since 9/11. In the 2004 election, two studies found, one in five Muslim voters were first-time voters.

"There was a silver lining. We became more public," says Aref Assaf, president of the New Jersey-based American Arab Forum.

This large-scale entry of Muslims into public life is not only testing the courage of Muslim candidates and the tolerance of voters. It's also prompting politicians to take notice of a community that has growing clout and is open to appeals from both parties.

Could decide close races

American Muslims are hard to count. Many immigrants have Muslim names, but African-American Muslims often don't. For example, one of the highest-ranking Muslim officials in the country is North Carolina state senator Larry Shaw.

Based on tallies of mosque membership and Muslim names, several national organizations estimate there are 4.5 million to 6 million American Muslims. Most live in a dozen big states, giving them the potential to make a difference in tight races. Aslam Abdullah, editor of the weekly Muslim Observer newspaper, says there are about 15 close races for Congress in districts where Muslims are concentrated and could cast decisive votes.

Mosques, numbering more than 1,200 across the country, are "the grassroots center of our political empowerment," Assaf says. They hold voter-registration drives and policy discussions. They invite candidates to speak, offering access to large crowds at Friday prayers.

Up to a third of American Muslims are African-Americans who vote mostly for Democrats. The rest come from Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. Many lived in dictatorships or theocracies and did not participate in politics in their homelands. "It is definitely a new idea," says Mohamed El Filali, outreach director of the Islamic Center of Passaic County in Paterson.

The immigrants are in tune with Republican conservatism on issues such as abortion, gay rights and religion, say analysts such as Georgetown University professor Zahid Bukhari. But they agree with Democrats on civil liberties and government social programs.

At this point, Muslims aren't firmly allied with either party. Bush won backing from Muslim leaders in 2000, before 9/11, and outperformed Democrat Al Gore among Muslim voters, polls and studies found. Four years later, dismayed by the Iraq invasion and what they saw as civil liberties abuses under the USA Patriot Act, the leaders endorsed Democrat John Kerry, and he won a majority of Muslim voters.

Sherine El-Abd, 60, an Egyptian immigrant and prominent Republican who lives in Clifton, personally tried to convince a number of Muslims to switch back to Bush. It was, she admits, an uphill battle: "There were more that didn't go."

Analysts say the shift is likely to be temporary. "I wouldn't call it a realignment," CAIR research director Mohamed Nimer says. "What we've seen is just a one-time deal."

Muslims are comparable to Hispanics, a much larger swing voter group, in their diversity and their compatibility with positions of both parties. Analysts say they're also similar to Hispanics in that they are young and likely to wield increasing influence.

Mohamed Elibiary, president of the Freedom and Justice Foundation in Dallas, a statewide Muslim advocacy group, cites a 2002 Cornell University finding that 60% of the U.S. Muslim population is 30 or younger: "You have this huge bulge that over the next 10 years is going to mature politically" and be far more active.

His foundation gave that process a jump-start after 9/11. In June 2002, the group held a candidate forum at Texas Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys play. It drew 7,000 Muslims and registered 2,000 new voters. "It was a reaction to ... feeling like their loyalty to their country was being questioned," Elibiary says. "What could they do? Get politically engaged to prove how mainstream they are."

The ultimate form of involvement is running for office, and by that measure, Muslims are still recovering from 9/11. According to Hazem Kira of the California Civil Rights Alliance, in 2000 there was an "all-time high" of 700 candidates across the country. That plummeted to 70 in 2002 and rose to about 100 in 2004.

There are no statistics yet for 2006. Bukhari, co-director of a project called Muslims in the American Public Square, says grassroots activity is pushing the trend upward. "Muslims are becoming more involved at the county and state level," he says. He says there are three Democrats running for county council and the state legislature in Montgomery County, Md., in suburban Washington, and "that never happened before."

Muslim immigrants who become candidates tend to be observant but not orthodox, and many have U.S. educations. "They are more Americanized," Assaf says.

Of this year's candidates, at least one — Khairullah — is divorced. At least one is a woman: Democrat Ferial Masry, a teacher making her second run for the California State Assembly from suburban Los Angeles. In Saudi Arabia, where she was born, women cannot vote.

Like Masry, whose district leans Republican, Muslims often run as underdogs. The Dallas Morning News endorsed Omar, son of Iranian and Palestinian immigrants, over two rivals in his GOP congressional primary. If he wins a runoff April 11, he'll face a popular Democratic incumbent in a Democratic district.

Khairullah, a Democrat, was in his second term on the Prospect Park Borough Council when the mayor moved away. The flier that said Khairullah should not be living in "our clean town," that contended he would "poison our thoughts" about America, did not stop his four fellow council members from picking him for the mayoral slot.

"They were disgusted by the letter," Khairullah says. "I've been living in the community the longest out of all the council members. The entire community knows me."

About-face on Bush

In the months before the 2000 election, Muslim leaders were worried about a law allowing the government to use secret evidence in immigration hearings. Leaders were ignored when they approached Gore, says Boston activist Tahir Ali, but Bush was accessible.

In the second presidential debate, Bush criticized the Secret Evidence Act as a form of racial profiling and said he supported repealing it "to make sure that Arab-Americans are treated with respect."

El-Abd, watching at home, says she cried with happiness when she heard Bush acknowledge her community. Ali, author of a book on the Muslim vote, says "we had to go with him" because he seemed responsive to Muslim concerns.

The euphoria of having helped elect a winner quickly dissipated as Bush invaded Iraq and expanded the government's investigative powers under the Patriot Act. Some Muslims refused to get a library card or register to vote, scared of "anything that will put them on a list (that) is retrievable" by the FBI, says Abdul Waheed, 59, a Pakistani immigrant running for Teaneck City Council.

Others were more angry than fearful. Assaf says he was "a lifelong Republican" who voted for Bush in 2000. Now he accuses Bush of a "post-9/11 frenzied attack on Islam" and "purely anti-Arab, anti-Islam" policies.

Ali is also having buyer's remorse, mostly over a war many Muslims tried to avert with calls to contain or oust Saddam Hussein in ways that wouldn't be so hard on ordinary Iraqis. "I go to a lot of communities, (and) people say, 'You are the reason we voted for Bush, and look at what happened,' " Ali says. "I'm feeling ashamed."

Elibiary stuck with Bush in 2004, mostly because he was lukewarm on Kerry. But he says Bush "is about as popular in the Muslim community as he is in the African-American community. Single digits."

That remains true even as Muslims say Bush was right to defend a Dubai-controlled company's plan to take over some U.S. port operations. "The Arabs are coming, the Arabs are coming," says Paterson councilman Aslon Goow, 47, a Syrian-American, mocking the uproar that killed the deal.

A self-described independent, Goow voted for Bush in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. When he ran for re-election to City Council in 2004, he said rumors spread that "because I was a Muslim, I was a terrorist." He says that may be why he won with fewer votes than the first time.

Waheed, the Teaneck council hopeful, was doing business in a building across from the World Trade Center on 9/11. He saw bodies falling from the towers and escaped in a cab driven by a Sikh.

He'd had the same clients for decades; they knew he was Pakistani. A lot were friendly after 9/11, he says, but "there were a few customers who were not. You can sense certain things. Discomfort." He sighs. "Islam is the most misunderstood religion, and Muslims are the most misunderstood people."

Waheed says he is a Democrat, but "on certain issues, I have been in bed with the Republicans." Collecting signatures for the May 9 town council election outside a supermarket, he talks to voters about education, business development, preserving green space. In his baseball cap, holding his clipboard, he could be any candidate anywhere.

"I am running because I am very conscious of the issues of the town," he explains. "I am not running because I want to represent Muslims."

Mosques in the U.S.

States with the largest number of mosques:

California 214
New York 170
Texas 83
Florida 78
New Jersey 61
Illinois 56
Michigan 54
Ohio 47
Pennsylvania 47
North Carolina 32
Massachusetts 29
Maryland 26

Source: American Muslim Database Project; August 2003

    American Muslims gaining a foothold in politics, UT, 23.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-03-23-american-muslims-cover_x.htm

'American Theocracy,' by Kevin Phillips

Clear and Present Dangers

March 19, 2006
The New York Times
Review by ALAN BRINKLEY

Four decades ago, Kevin Phillips, a young political strategist for the Republican Party, began work on what became a remarkable book. In writing "The Emerging Republican Majority" (published in 1969), he asked a very big question about American politics: How would the demographic and economic changes of postwar America shape the long-term future of the two major parties? His answer, startling at the time but now largely unquestioned, is that the movement of people and resources from the old Northern industrial states into the South and the West (an area he enduringly labeled the "Sun Belt") would produce a new and more conservative Republican majority that would dominate American politics for decades. Phillips viewed the changes he predicted with optimism. A stronger Republican Party, he believed, would restore stability and order to a society experiencing disorienting and at times violent change. Shortly before publishing his book, he joined the Nixon administration to help advance the changes he had foreseen.

Phillips has remained a prolific and important political commentator in the decades since, but he long ago abandoned his enthusiasm for the Republican coalition he helped to build. His latest book (his 13th) looks broadly and historically at the political world the conservative coalition has painstakingly constructed over the last several decades. No longer does he see Republican government as a source of stability and order. Instead, he presents a nightmarish vision of ideological extremism, catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness. (His final chapter is entitled "The Erring Republican Majority.") In an era of best-selling jeremiads on both sides of the political divide, "American Theocracy" may be the most alarming analysis of where we are and where we may be going to have appeared in many years. It is not without polemic, but unlike many of the more glib and strident political commentaries of recent years, it is extensively researched and for the most part frighteningly persuasive.

Although Phillips is scathingly critical of what he considers the dangerous policies of the Bush administration, he does not spend much time examining the ideas and behavior of the president and his advisers. Instead, he identifies three broad and related trends — none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies — that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt — current and prospective — that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.

The American press in the first days of the Iraq war reported extensively on the Pentagon's failure to post American troops in front of the National Museum in Baghdad, which, as a result, was looted of many of its great archaeological treasures. Less widely reported, but to Phillips far more meaningful, was the immediate posting of troops around the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which held the maps and charts that were the key to effective oil production. Phillips fully supports an explanation of the Iraq war that the Bush administration dismisses as conspiracy theory — that its principal purpose was to secure vast oil reserves that would enable the United States to control production and to lower prices. ("Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath," an oil analyst said a couple of years ago. "You can't ask for better than that.") Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, tyranny, democracy and other public rationales were, Phillips says, simply ruses to disguise the real motivation for the invasion.

And while this argument may be somewhat too simplistic to explain the complicated mix of motives behind the war, it is hard to dismiss Phillips's larger argument: that the pursuit of oil has for at least 30 years been one of the defining elements of American policy in the world; and that the Bush administration — unusually dominated by oilmen — has taken what the president deplored recently as the nation's addiction to oil to new and terrifying levels. The United States has embraced a kind of "petro-imperialism," Phillips writes, "the key aspect of which is the U.S. military's transformation into a global oil-protection force," and which "puts up a democratic facade, emphasizes freedom of the seas (or pipeline routes) and seeks to secure, protect, drill and ship oil, not administer everyday affairs."

Phillips is especially passionate in his discussion of the second great force that he sees shaping contemporary American life — radical Christianity and its growing intrusion into government and politics. The political rise of evangelical Christian groups is hardly a secret to most Americans after the 2004 election, but Phillips brings together an enormous range of information from scholars and journalists and presents a remarkably comprehensive and chilling picture of the goals and achievements of the religious right.

He points in particular to the Southern Baptist Convention, once a scorned seceding minority of the American Baptist Church but now so large that it dominates not just Baptism itself but American Protestantism generally. The Southern Baptist Convention does not speak with one voice, but almost all of its voices, Phillips argues, are to one degree or another highly conservative. On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of "Christian Reconstructionists" who believe in a "Taliban-like" reversal of women's rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a theocratic government shaped by Christian doctrine. A much larger group of Protestants, perhaps as many as a third of the population, claims to believe in the supposed biblical prophecies of an imminent "rapture" — the return of Jesus to the world and the elevation of believers to heaven.

Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse — among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. He convincingly demonstrates that the Bush administration has calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the president's policies as a response to premillennialist thought. He also suggests that the president and other members of his administration may actually believe these things themselves, that religious belief is the basis of policy, not just a tactic for selling it to the public. Phillips's evidence for this disturbing claim is significant, but not conclusive.

THE third great impending crisis that Phillips identifies is also, perhaps, the best known — the astonishing rise of debt as the precarious underpinning of the American economy. He is not, of course, the only observer who has noted the dangers of indebtedness. The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, for example, frequently writes about the looming catastrophe. So do many more-conservative economists, who point especially to future debt — particularly the enormous obligation, which Phillips estimates at between $30 trillion and $40 trillion, that Social Security and health care demands will create in the coming decades. The most familiar debt is that of the United States government, fueled by soaring federal budget deficits that have continued (with a brief pause in the late 1990's) for more than two decades. But the national debt — currently over $8 trillion — is only the tip of the iceberg. There has also been an explosion of corporate debt, state and local bonded debt, international debt through huge trade imbalances, and consumer debt (mostly in the form of credit-card balances and aggressively marketed home-mortgage packages). Taken together, this present and future debt may exceed $70 trillion.

The creation of a national-debt culture, Phillips argues, although exacerbated by the policies of the Bush administration, has been the work of many people over many decades — among them Alan Greenspan, who, he acidly notes, blithely and irresponsibly ignored the rising debt to avoid pricking the stock-market bubble it helped produce. It is most of all a product of the "financialization" of the American economy — the turn away from manufacturing and toward an economy based on moving and managing money, a trend encouraged, Phillips argues persuasively, by the preoccupation with oil and (somewhat less persuasively) with evangelical belief in the imminent rapture, which makes planning for the future unnecessary.

There is little in "American Theocracy" that is wholly original to Phillips, as he frankly admits by his frequent reference to the work of other writers and scholars. What makes this book powerful in spite of the familiarity of many of its arguments is his rare gift for looking broadly and structurally at social and political change. By describing a series of major transformations, by demonstrating the relationships among them and by discussing them with passionate restraint, Phillips has created a harrowing picture of national danger that no American reader will welcome, but that none should ignore.

Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins professor of history and the provost at Columbia University.

    Clear and Present Dangers, NYT, 19.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/books/review/19brink.html?incamp=article_popular

Students Flock to Seminaries, but Fewer See Pulpit in Future

March 17, 2006
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

ATLANTA — Among the important things Kirkland Reynolds has figured out in his three years in the seminary is that he does not want to be a church pastor.

Like many young people here at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, Mr. Reynolds, 24, hopes to put his religious education to some other use, saying he does not want to preach or take a position of authority in the community.

Across the country, enrollment is up at Protestant seminaries, but a shrinking portion of the graduates will ascend the pulpit. These seminarians, particularly the young ones, are less interested in making a career of religion than in taking their religion into other careers.

Those from mainline denominations are being drawn to a wide range of fields from academia to social service to hospital chaplaincy, said the Rev. Daniel O. Aleshire, executive director of the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada. Students who are evangelical Protestants, meanwhile, often end up at advocacy groups, sometimes called parachurches, which have defined the priorities and solidified the influence of conservative Christians.

Only about half of those graduating with a Master in Divinity now enter parish ministry, Mr. Aleshire said. The portion has fallen sharply in a generation, he said, and declined 10 to 15 percentage points in the last five years alone.

The idea of using the seminary as the jumping off point for other, seemingly unrelated pursuits, is not new; just the number of people doing it is.

George Rupp, for instance, graduated from Yale Divinity School and served as president of Rice and Columbia Universities before becoming president of the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian aid group. Thomas M. Chappell, co-founder of the Tom's of Maine line of soap and toothpaste, completed Harvard Divinity School. And Al Gore attended Vanderbilt Divinity School for a time before switching to law.

"Theological education has a lot of uses, like a legal education does," said Barbara G. Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York and director of its Center for the Study of Theological Education. "It's good to have people with a theological education doing lots of things. It's a perspective that helps."

Maggie Kulyk, 43, graduated from Candler in 1996. In divinity school, she thought she might go into academia or be ordained in the Episcopal Church. She is now a financial planner in Atlanta, helping clients with socially responsible investing.

"There's a sense that it's the kind of education that invites you to go deep into your own interior life and explore your own sense of what matters and doesn't, and if such-and-such matters, how do you behave in the world?" Ms. Kulyk said. "Knowing how to ask questions is infinitely helpful: it helps you take clients through the process, where you ask: 'What is this money for? How do you want your life to be?' "

Though mainline denominations have shrunk considerably over the last 35 years, enrollment in mainline divinity schools rose 20 percent from 1990 to 2004, according to the Association of Theological Schools. Part-time study programs and interest from minority applicants and women contributed to the gains.

At the same time, seminary graduates drifted away from becoming pastors. Among United Methodists, about 70 percent of seminary graduates in a recent survey said they would enter pastoral ministry, compared with more than 90 percent of graduates in 1970.

Mainline seminarians, including the Methodists, now largely fall into two age groups: those over 40, who are embarking on a second career in ministry, and those under 30, who are more likely to choose another profession.

At Candler, a United Methodist divinity school with about 500 students from various denominations, a majority of students is under 30, according to Cynthia Meyer, assistant dean of students. Only about half the graduates say they will become church pastors, she said.

Mr. Reynolds opted out of parish ministry after his first year at Candler despite a long commitment to the United Methodist Church, the inspiration of local pastors in his youth, his summers working with children in Belfast under the church's auspices and his wife's imminent ordination as a Methodist minister.

"Parish ministry offered job security; it was what everyone did and it seemed logical," said Mr. Reynolds, who expects to graduate in May and will apply for jobs after his wife is assigned a parish. "But I felt that preaching and having a role of authority in the community was not who I was. Still, being at seminary felt right."

The young candidates are exploring, said the Rev. Jonathan Strandjord, director for theological education at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. "Young people are thinking about possibilities, about blue-sky possibilities. Older people have mortgages and responsibilities, and their goal isn't to invent a form of ministry or find something that is really out there."

Often, seminary education, with its focus on personal spiritual growth, theology and social justice, introduces students to the idea that one's calling need not be answered in church every Sunday.

Ronald Galvin enrolled in Candler because he "wanted to make a difference in the world in some way." Since graduating in 2000, he has worked as a community activist, most recently at the Center for Working Families Inc. in Atlanta. Many of the poor people he encounters think he must be a minister and call him Reverend, he said.

"Seminary really gave me the space and the moment of pause that I needed to develop the skills to analyze the world," said Mr. Galvin, 37, who was raised Catholic. "It expanded my faith, gave me a greater appreciation for folks who are struggling, and showed that there are many sacred ways and that God is with us no matter where we are."

So far, the shrinking interest in pastoral ministry has not created a shortage of ministers in the mainline denominations, partly because they have adapted. The United Methodist Church has added licensed ministers, who have completed training programs rather than the seminary and who can perform the functions of an ordained minister except for participating in the denomination's decision-making bodies. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has long required seminary graduates to do three years of pastoral ministry.

The clearest impact has been the aging of the clergy in the mainline denominations. For example, the average age of ordination for Episcopal ministers is 44; in 1970, it was 29.

The older people entering pastoral ministry often say they needed years of other work and maturity before they could imagine leading a church. Arlindall Burks, 52, spent 26 years in the Navy and worked as a counselor at a community college in Florida before entering seminary.

Ms. Burks, an African-American who grew up Baptist in Gary, Ind., recalls becoming alienated from religion after encountering racism and rejection in society. Seven years ago, though, she began attending United Methodist churches, moved by the denomination's commitment to social justice. Now in her last term at Candler and on her way to becoming a Methodist minister, Ms. Burks said she understood why younger people often rejected pastoral ministry.

"I don't think I could have done this at 25," she said. "I had too much baggage. I was too angry. I was mad at God. I don't think I could have heard God then."

From the pulpit, she says she can do what she loves: teach and inspire people to act for social change.

"I think all that I did before this was preparation for this call," Ms. Burks added. "I don't think that I would have had the patience, the passion, the compassion before."

    Students Flock to Seminaries, but Fewer See Pulpit in Future, NYT, 17.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/national/17seminary.html?hp&ex=1142658000&en=b63d3b134f3d0fd9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Isaac Hayes quits South Park after it satirises Scientology

Wednesday March 15, 2006
Guardian
Oliver Burkeman in New York

Criticising the hit US television series South Park for being offensive is a bit like criticising Antiques Roadshow for focusing too much on old things. But this has not prevented the soul singer Isaac Hayes from quitting the show in outrage at its treatment of Scientology - ending a nine-year association with a cartoon that has left few other religious or political groups unmocked.

Mr Hayes, a Scientologist, provided the voice for Chef, South Park's resident school cook, ladies' man and love doctor. He embraced the show's ethic so fully that he reached number one in the UK in 1999 with an innuendo-laden South Park song entitled Chocolate Salty Balls.

But the singer, previously best known for the soundtrack to the 1971 movie Shaft, drew the line at an episode in which a central character, Stan, is hailed as the successor to L Ron Hubbard, who started the cult in 1952. The episode was pulled in the UK. "There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends, and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," Mr Hayes said in a statement. "As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices."

"This has nothing to do with intolerance and bigotry and everything to do with the fact that Isaac Hayes is a Scientologist and that we recently featured Scientology in an episode of South Park," said Matt Stone, who created the series with Trey Parker. "In 10 years and more than 150 episodes Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslims, Mormons and Jews. He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show. To bring the civil rights struggle into this is just a non sequitur. Of course, we will release Isaac from his contract and we wish him well."

Since its debut in 1996 South Park has won praise, and an Emmy award, for a satirical sensibility far outstripping most American television in its sharpness. It is a mark of the respect it is accorded that guest stars gladly appear in self-deprecating roles.

The country singer Alan Jackson, whose sentimental anthem Where Were You When The World Stopped Turning commemorated 9/11, even wrote a mocking parody of his own song for a 2002 episode in which Stan and friends try to build a ladder to heaven, where the US government suspects that Saddam Hussein (subsequently depicted having a gay relationship with Satan in hell) is manufacturing weapons.

    Isaac Hayes quits South Park after it satirises Scientology, G, 16.3.2006, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1731324,00.html

Billy Graham returns with Big Easy sermon

Posted 3/12/2006 8:01 PM Updated 3/13/2006 12:25 AM
USA Today

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In his first public sermon in nine months, evangelist Billy Graham delivered his message of repentance and salvation Sunday to an overflow arena crowd in this city slowly recovering from devastation.

The Rev. Billy Graham, right, talks with his son Franklin before delivering a sermon at a New Orleans service.
By Bill Haber, AP

The 87-year-old required a walker to get to the podium but was greeted with a standing ovation and screams from the capacity crowd of 16,500 inside New Orleans Arena. Another 1,500 people watched on a large screen on a concourse at the neighboring Superdome — an evacuation center where flooding and rancid conditions reigned the week after Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29.

Graham told the crowd he watched television with shock as it became clear that Katrina and the broken flood system had destroyed much of the city and caused so much suffering.

"I had no idea the punch it had," he said.

But he also said he watched in awe as rescue personnel and others came to the aid of distressed residents. That, he said, was when "we knew the God of love was watching over us."

Sunday's message was his first evangelistic sermon since June, when he led his final revival meeting in New York City. He was in New Orleans for a two-day event organized by local ministers and his son, Franklin Graham, now the leader of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Graham's 20-minute sermon included an altar call — an invitation to accept Christ as savior that is a hallmark of his evangelism. "If you're not sure of your relationship to God, if you're not certain and you'd like to be certain, I'd like you to come," he said.

Graham has preached to 210 million people worldwide in a ministry career that spanned more than six decades. But in recent years he has suffered from Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer. Four years ago, he had a series of brain surgeries — the remnants of which still cause him pain.

On Wednesday, Billy Graham toured some of the neighborhoods hardest hit when Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, unleashing torrents of water and chaos on the city.

He addressed a gathering of ministers on Thursday, saying no one could say why something like Katrina happened, but that he believes the city of New Orleans has the foundation for a spiritual revival.

    Billy Graham returns with Big Easy sermon UT, 12.3.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-12-graham-service_x.htm

The Saturday Profile

For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats

March 11, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER

LOS ANGELES, March 10 — Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.

Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.

In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.

She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.

In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.

"I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.

Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."

Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."

She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."

She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

Her views caught the ear of the American Jewish Congress, which has invited her to speak in May at a conference in Israel. "We have been discussing with her the importance of her message and trying to devise the right venue for her to address Jewish leaders," said Neil B. Goldstein, executive director of the organization.

She is probably more welcome in Tel Aviv than she would be in Damascus. Shortly after the broadcast, clerics in Syria denounced her as an infidel. One said she had done Islam more damage than the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, a wire service reported.


DR. SULTAN is "working on a book that — if it is published — it's going to turn the Islamic world upside down."

"I have reached the point that doesn't allow any U-turn. I have no choice. I am questioning every single teaching of our holy book."

The working title is, "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster."

Dr. Sultan grew up in a large traditional Muslim family in Banias, Syria, a small city on the Mediterranean about a two-hour drive north of Beirut. Her father was a grain trader and a devout Muslim, and she followed the faith's strictures into adulthood.

But, she said, her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President Hafez al-Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.

"They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'God is great!' " she said. "At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god."

She and her husband, who now goes by the Americanized name of David, laid plans to leave for the United States. Their visas finally came in 1989, and the Sultans and their two children (they have since had a third) settled in with friends in Cerritos, Calif., a prosperous bedroom community on the edge of Los Angeles County.

After a succession of jobs and struggles with language, Dr. Sultan has completed her American medical licensing, with the exception of a hospital residency program, which she hopes to do within a year. David operates an automotive-smog-check station. They bought a home in the Los Angeles area and put their children through local public schools. All are now American citizens.


BUT even as she settled into a comfortable middle-class American life, Dr. Sultan's anger burned within. She took to writing, first for herself, then for an Islamic reform Web site called Annaqed (The Critic), run by a Syrian expatriate in Phoenix.

An angry essay on that site by Dr. Sultan about the Muslim Brotherhood caught the attention of Al Jazeera, which invited her to debate an Algerian cleric on the air last July.

In the debate, she questioned the religious teachings that prompt young people to commit suicide in the name of God. "Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?" she asked. "In our countries, religion is the sole source of education and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched."

Her remarks set off debates around the globe and her name began appearing in Arabic newspapers and Web sites. But her fame grew exponentially when she appeared on Al Jazeera again on Feb. 21, an appearance that was translated and widely distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, known as Memri.

Memri said the clip of her February appearance had been viewed more than a million times.

"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations," Dr. Sultan said. "It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."

She said she no longer practiced Islam. "I am a secular human being," she said.

The other guest on the program, identified as an Egyptian professor of religious studies, Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, asked, "Are you a heretic?" He then said there was no point in rebuking or debating her, because she had blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.

Dr. Sultan said she took those words as a formal fatwa, a religious condemnation. Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on her answering machine and by e-mail.

One message said: "Oh, you are still alive? Wait and see." She received an e-mail message the other day, in Arabic, that said, "If someone were to kill you, it would be me."

Dr. Sultan said her mother, who still lives in Syria, is afraid to contact her directly, speaking only through a sister who lives in Qatar. She said she worried more about the safety of family members here and in Syria than she did for her own.

"I have no fear," she said. "I believe in my message. It is like a million-mile journey, and I believe I have walked the first and hardest 10 miles."

    For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats, NYT, 11.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/international/middleeast/11sultan.html?hp&ex=1142139600&en=4fdceb6c0558787e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

3 Students Held in Church Fires Around Alabama

March 9, 2006
The New York Times
By RICK LYMAN

Three college students from the prosperous suburbs of Birmingham, Ala., were arrested yesterday in the burning of nine Baptist churches last month in rural Alabama. Federal officials said the fires were a "joke" that spun out of control while the students were deer hunting.

After initially setting ablaze five churches in the county just south of Birmingham, two students burned four additional churches days later in more remote areas, hoping to divert investigators, the authorities said.

Two students, Benjamin N. Moseley and Russell L. DeBusk Jr., both 19, from Birmingham-Southern College, were arrested on the campus after admitting their involvement in the fires to federal agents, officials said.

The agents were led to the students by tire tracks at several burned churches, officials said.

Several hours later, the authorities arrested Matthew Lee Cloyd, 20, a student at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, whose mother owns the Toyota 4Runner that left the tracks, federal agents said in an affidavit with the criminal complaint.

The identities surprised investigators, who had speculated that the fires were the work of people familiar with the remote rural roads where the blazes were set, not products of the Birmingham upper middle class, one the son of a doctor and another of a county constable.

"This is just so hard to believe," said the state fire marshal, Richard W. Montgomery. "My profile on these suspects is shot all to heck and back."

At a mass gathering on the Birmingham-Southern campus on Wednesday afternoon, the college president, David Pollick promised that the institution would help rebuild the churches.

"Students, faculty and staff of our college are at once shocked and outraged," Dr. Pollick said. "We share the sorrow of our neighbors whose churches represented the heart and soul of their communities."

From the beginning, investigators had theorized that the fires had no racial motive, as there had been for many church fires throughout the Southeast in the mid-90's. And that, they said, was borne out.

Four churches that burned early on Feb. 3 in Bibb County, about an hour south of Birmingham, had predominantly white congregations, and one was black. All four churches burned on the morning of Feb. 7 in an even more remote stretch more than 90 minutes southwest of Birmingham had black congregations.

Officials have concluded that a church fire on Feb. 11 in another rural corner of Alabama was not connected.

"We believe this is an isolated incident," Gov. Bob Riley said. "We don't think there is any kind of organized conspiracy against religion or against the Baptists."

As a result of the arrests, Mr. Riley said, the dozens of parishioners who have been nervously standing guard over their own churches for the last month "can rest a little easier."

Mr. DeBusk and Mr. Moseley appeared briefly before Magistrate Judge Robert R. Armstrong Jr. in the Hugo L. Black Federal Courthouse in downtown Birmingham. They were slender and pale, with dark, floppy hair. Mr. DeBusk wore blue jeans and an orange hooded sweatshirt over a white T-shirt, Mr. Moseley a blue polo shirt and jeans.

Mr. Cloyd appeared separately, after his surrender.

All three were held in custody, at least until a bail hearing tomorrow.

Mr. Moseley and Mr. DeBusk were active in the theater program at their college, acting and helping backstage. This year, they performed in "Extremities," and Mr. Moseley was to appear in the spring in "Young Zombies in Love."

The Hilltop News, the campus newspaper, published yesterday under the headline "Theater Students to Appear in Film" an article that started, "BSC students Russ DeBusk and Ben Moseley are on the road to stardom."

The students were planning to appear in a locally produced independent film about a young man played by Mr. DeBusk who struggled to motivate his slacker friends.

Jenna Wright, who had worked on theatrical productions with Mr. Moseley, said she had a hard time connecting someone who would burn churches with the talented young man whom she knew.

"I am just completely in shock," Ms. Wright said. "This is just so sad. He had so much potential."

The three suspects had their own pages on Facebook.com, a networking Web site for college and high-school students.

In the area on Mr. Moseley's page where visitors can post messages, alongside more than 12 expressing shock at the arrests and promising to pray for the accused, was one that Mr. Cloyd posted on Jan. 9. It read:

"To my dearest friend Moseley:

"The nights have grown long and the interstates of Alabama drunk driverless, the state troopers bored, the county sheriffs less weary, and the deer of Bibb County fearless. 2006 is here, it is time to reconvene the season of evil! Only one problem stands in our way. I got a new cellphone for Christmas and I no longer have your number, so send it to me and evil shall once again come to pass!

"May our girlfriends be concerned about our safety, may our parents be clueless, may our beers be frosty, may our love lives be fruitful, may our weed be green as the freshly mowed grass!"

According to an affidavit signed by Walker Johnson, a special agent at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, analysis of the tire tracks led agents on Tuesday to the home of Michael and Kimberly Cloyd on the south side of Birmingham.

The tracks matched a set of tires that were specially ordered for Ms. Cloyd's 4Runner. Ms. Cloyd told agents that her son Matthew was the principal driver of the S.U.V.

Ms. Cloyd told agents that her son had told her he had not set the fires but that he knew who did, the affidavit said, adding that Dr. Cloyd related that his son told him on Tuesday that he had been present at the arsons and knew who set them.

A witness, unnamed in the affidavit, told agents that Matthew Cloyd said he and Mr. Moseley "had done something stupid," adding that it was something that Mr. Moseley had done "as a joke, and it got out of hand."

Agents later interviewed Mr. Moseley who, they said, admitted setting the five fires in Bibb County with Mr. Cloyd and Mr. DeBusk.

"Moseley stated that after they set fire to the first two churches, they saw fire trucks driving by" Mr. Johnson's affidavit said. "Moseley said that, after that, burning the other three churches became too spontaneous."

Agents said Mr. Moseley told them that just he and Mr. Cloyd had participated in the second group of fires, four days later.

"These four churches were burned as a diversion, to throw investigators off," Mr. Johnson wrote in his affidavit. "Moseley said the diversion obviously did not work."

Mr. DeBusk admitted being present at the five arsons on Feb. 3, as well as kicking in the doors of two churches. He said the three men had been shooting deer in Mr. Cloyd's S.U.V. before the fires.

At a news conference in the hangar at the Tuscaloosa County Airport that was the headquarters for the investigation, the special agent in charge for the firearms bureau, James Cavanaugh, said officials had sifted through more than 1,000 leads involving nearly 500 vehicles and 1,300 individuals before the unexpected break that led them to the Cloyds.

Jim Noles contributed reporting from Birmingham, Ala., for this article.

    3 Students Held in Church Fires Around Alabama, NYT, 9.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/national/09arson.html?hp&ex=1141880400&en=81c935b6f2bb6620&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Jewish Panel Delays a Vote on Gay Issues

March 9, 2006
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

A committee of legal experts who set policy for Conservative Judaism decided yesterday at a closed-door meeting in Baltimore to wait until December to vote on whether to lift the movement's ban on gay rabbis and same-sex union ceremonies.

The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has been considering the issue for three years, and many Jewish leaders had anticipated that the two-day meeting that ended yesterday would produce a change.

But members of the committee said in interviews that the decision is a momentous one, and that they are still divided on whether acceptance of homosexuality is permissible under Jewish law, known as halacha.

The four legal proposals on the table were sent back to their authors for "extensive revisions," said Rabbi Joel H. Meyers, a nonvoting member of the law committee and executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, which represents the movement's 1,600 rabbis.

Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen, a Conservative rabbi at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, a predominantly gay synagogue in Manhattan that is not part of the Conservative movement, said, "I understand the need for the law committee to go through a serious halachic process, but this affects the real lives of real people, and for the people in our community there is real urgency.

"There are gay people who grew up in the synagogues and day schools and summer camps of the Conservative movement who feel the movement has turned its back on them," said Rabbi Cohen, a member of Keshet Rabbis, a group of more than 200 Conservative rabbis who support full inclusion of gay men and lesbians. "There are people who want to become rabbis who can't, couples who want the rabbis of their childhood synagogues to marry them, and they won't."

Rabbi Kassel Abelson, chairman of the law committee, said, "I'm saddened by the fact that there are people who are hurt by it, but I think we have to take seriously our process and follow it."

Some rabbis said in interviews that the committee might be stalling until the appointment of a new chancellor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, a position that has traditionally set direction for the Conservative movement.

Of the four proposals the committee is considering, two essentially oppose any change to the current law, and one advocates a substantial change of the law. One tries to find a middle ground by permitting gay rabbis and same-sex ceremonies, but prohibiting anal sex, an effort to stay consistent with a Bible passage that says, "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination."

Rabbi Abelson said the proposal that advocates a substantial change in the law was so "revolutionary" that the committee voted to put it in a category that will ultimately make it even harder to pass. The committee declared this proposal a "takanah" — a Hebrew word denoting a "fix" of existing Jewish law.

A takanah can only be approved with a vote of at least 20 of the committee's 25 members — a new rule, advocated by the Conservative movement's executive committee. Until last year, a simple majority of 13 members could approve a takanah.

The change prompted some more liberal rabbis who learned of it to suggest that the process had been rigged in anticipation of the vote on gay men and lesbians. Rabbi Abelson said the law committee had not approved a takanah in the 20 years he had served on it.

The other three proposals would require only six votes for passage, raising the possibility that conflicting rulings could be approved simultaneously.

Rabbis who are disappointed by the committee's inaction say they plan to take the issue to the convention of the Rabbinical Assembly in Mexico City this month.

    Jewish Panel Delays a Vote on Gay Issues, NYT, 9.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/national/09jews.html

An Imam in America        Part II        Part I

Tending to Muslim Hearts and Islam's Future

March 7, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDREA ELLIOTT

The young Egyptian professional could pass for any New York bachelor.

Dressed in a crisp polo shirt and swathed in cologne, he races his Nissan Maxima through the rain-slicked streets of Manhattan, late for a date with a tall brunette. At red lights, he fusses with his hair.

What sets the bachelor apart from other young men on the make is the chaperon sitting next to him — a tall, bearded man in a white robe and stiff embroidered hat.

"I pray that Allah will bring this couple together," the man, Sheik Reda Shata, says, clutching his seat belt and urging the bachelor to slow down.

Christian singles have coffee hour. Young Jews have JDate. But many Muslims believe that it is forbidden for an unmarried man and woman to meet in private. In predominantly Muslim countries, the job of making introductions and even arranging marriages typically falls to a vast network of family and friends.

In Brooklyn, there is Mr. Shata.

Week after week, Muslims embark on dates with him in tow. Mr. Shata, the imam of a Bay Ridge mosque, juggles some 550 "marriage candidates," from a gold-toothed electrician to a professor at Columbia University. The meetings often unfold on the green velour couch of his office, or over a meal at his favorite Yemeni restaurant on Atlantic Avenue.

The bookish Egyptian came to America in 2002 to lead prayers, not to dabble in matchmaking. He was far more conversant in Islamic jurisprudence than in matters of the heart. But American imams must wear many hats, none of which come tailor-made.

Whether issuing American-inspired fatwas or counseling the homesick, fielding questions from the F.B.I. or mediating neighborhood spats, Mr. Shata walks an endless labyrinth of problems.

If anything seems conquerable, it is the solitude of Muslim singles. Nothing brings the imam more joy than guiding them to marriage. It is his way of fashioning a future for his faith. It is his most heartfelt effort — by turns graceful and comedic, vexing and hopeful — to make Islam work in America.

Word of the imam's talents has traveled far, eliciting lonely calls from Muslims in Chicago and Los Angeles, or from meddlesome parents in Cairo and Damascus.

From an estimated 250 chaperoned dates, Mr. Shata has produced 10 marriages.

"The prophet said whoever brings a man and woman together, it is as if he has worshiped for an entire year," said Mr. Shata, 37, speaking through an Arabic translator.

The task is not easy. In a country of plentiful options, Muslim immigrants can become picky, even rude, the imam complains.

During one date, a woman studied the red-circled eyes of a prospective husband and asked, "Have you brought me an alcoholic?"

On another occasion, an Egyptian man stared at the flat chest of a pleasant young Moroccan woman and announced, "She looks like a log!" the imam recalled.

"This would never happen in Egypt," said Mr. Shata, turning red at the memory. "Never, never. If I knew this boy had no manners I never would have let him into my office."

The Imam's Little Black Book

The concept of proper courtship in Islam, like much about the faith, is open to interpretation.

Islamic law specifies that a man and woman who are unmarried may not be alone in closed quarters. Some Muslims reject any mingling before marriage. Others freely date. Many fall somewhere in between, meeting in groups, getting engaged and spending time alone before the wedding, while their parents look the other way.

For one Syrian in New York, a date at Starbucks is acceptable if it begins and ends on the premises: The public is his chaperon.

Mr. Shata is a traditionalist. There were few strangers in his rural town of birth, Kafr al Battikh, in northeastern Egypt. Men and women often agreed to marry the day they met, and a few made the deal sight unseen. It was rare to meet anyone from a distant province, let alone another country.

New York is not only the capital of the world, imams often joke, but also the crossroads of Islam, a human sampling more diverse than anywhere save Mecca during the annual pilgrimage known as the Hajj. Beyond the city's five boroughs, Muslim immigrants have formed Islamic hubs in California, Illinois, Michigan and Texas.

At the center of these hubs stands a familiar sight in a foreign land, the mosque. What was a place of worship in Pakistan or Algeria becomes, in Houston or Detroit, a social haven. But inside, the sexes remain largely apart.

A growing number of Muslim Web sites advertise marriage candidates, and housewives often double as matchmakers. One mosque in Princeton, N.J., plays host to a closely supervised version of speed dating. And so many singles worship at the Islamic Society of Boston that a committee was formed to match them up.

Fearing a potential surplus of single Muslim women, one Brooklyn imam reportedly urged his wealthier male congregants during a Ramadan sermon last year to take two wives. When a woman complained about the sermon to Mr. Shata, he laughed.

"You know that preacher who said Hugo Chávez should be shot?" he asked. "We have our idiots, too."

More than a matchmaker, Mr. Shata sees himself as a surrogate elder to young Muslims, many of whom live far from their parents. In America, only an imam is thought to have the connections, wisdom and respect to step into the role.

Mr. Shata began the service three months after arriving in Brooklyn in 2002, recruited to lead the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, a mosque on Fifth Avenue.

Dates chaperoned by Mr. Shata — or "meetings between candidates," as the imam prefers to call them — often take place in his distinctly unromantic office, amid rows of Islamic texts. As a couple get acquainted, the imam sits quietly at his desk, writing a sermon or surfing the Arabic Web sites of CNN and the BBC.

If there is an awkward silence, the imam perks up and asks a question ("So tell me, Ilham, how many siblings do you have?") and the conversation is moving again.

Candidates are vetted carefully, and those without personal references need not apply. But instinct is Mr. Shata's best guide. He refused to help a Saudi from California because the man would consider only a teenage wife. Others have shown an all-too-keen interest in a green card.

Those who pass initial inspection are listed in the imam's version of a little black book — their names, phone numbers, specifications and desires. Some prefer "silky hair," others "a virgin." Nearly all candidates, men and women alike, want a mate with devotion to Islam, decent looks and legal immigration status.

Scanning the book, the imam makes his pitch with the precision of a car salesman.

"There is a girl, an American convert, Dominican, looks a little Egyptian. Skin-wise, not white, not dark. Wheat-colored. She's 19, studies accounting," Mr. Shata told a 24-year-old Palestinian man one afternoon.

"This is my only choice?" replied the man, Yamal Othman, who lives in Queens.

Such questions annoy Mr. Shata. An imam, he says, should be trusted to select the best candidate. Often, though, his recommendations are met with skepticism.

"It's harder than choosing a diamond," said Mr. Shata.

Sometimes, on the imam's three-legged dates, no one seems more excited than Mr. Shata himself. He makes hurried, hearty introductions and then steps back to watch, as if mixing chemicals in a lab experiment. Love is rarely ignited, but the imam remains awed by its promise.

Mr. Shata discovered love 15 years ago, when he walked into the living room of the most stately house in Kafr al Battikh.

The imam was tall, 22, a rising star at the local mosque. For months, Omyma Elshabrawy knew only his voice. She would listen to his thunderous sermons from the women's section, out of view. Then, one evening, he appeared at her home, presented as a prospective groom to her father, a distinguished reciter of the Koran.

The young woman, then 20, walked toward Mr. Shata carrying a tray of lemonade.

"She entered my heart," said the imam.

After serving the drinks, she disappeared. Right then, Mr. Shata asked her father for her hand in marriage. The older man paused. His daughter was the town beauty, an English student with marriage offers from doctors. The imam was penniless.

But before Mr. Elshabrawy could respond, a sugary voice interrupted. "I accept," his daughter said from behind a door.

"I loved him from the moment I saw him," Ms. Elshabrawy said.

They now have four children.

The family posed last year for a Sears-style portrait, taken by a woman in Bay Ridge who photographs Muslim families in her basement. A blue sky and white picket fence adorn the background. The imam sits at center, with the baby, Mohammed, in his lap, his three daughters smiling, his wife wrapped in a lime-green hijab.

Mr. Shata carries the picture in the breast pocket of his robe. It is as close as most people get to his family. At the mosque, they are a mystery. His wife has been there twice.

Their years in America have come with great hardship, a subject the imam rarely discusses. The trouble is the illness of his 7-year-old daughter, Rawda, who is severely epileptic. She has dozens of seizures every day and rarely leaves home. No combination of medicine seems to help.

"Rawda is the wound in my heart," the imam said.

Mr. Shata offers long, stubborn theories about the value of marriage, but to observe him at home is to understand the commitment he seeks to foster in other Muslims.

The family lives in a spare, dimly lighted apartment two blocks from the mosque. Headscarves are piled over Pokémon cards. The gold-painted words "Allah is Great" are framed over a threadbare couch. In the next room, an "I {sheart} New York" bumper sticker is slapped on the wall.

Mr. Shata spends long hours away from his family, lecturing at mosques, settling disputes, whispering the call to prayer in the ears of newborn babies. On his walk home at night, he shops for groceries, never forgetting the Honey Nut Cheerios, a favorite American discovery of his children.

When he walks in the door, his face softens. Loud kisses are planted on tender cheeks. Mohammed squeals, the girls smile, sweet laughter echoes.

But then there is Rawda.

"My beautiful girl," the imam says softly one evening, holding his limp daughter in his lap after a seizure has passed. He places one pill in Rawda's mouth, then another. She looks at him weakly.

"There we go," he whispers. "Inshallah."

Her lids close with sleep. He lays her in bed and shuts off the light.

Hardship, the imam believes — like marriage, like life — is a test from God.

Foreign and Familiar

It is proof of the imam's uncommon popularity among women that he is trusted with roughly 300 female marriage candidates.

The mosque on Fifth Avenue is a decidedly male place. Men occupy every position on the board of directors. They crowd the sidewalk after prayer. Only they may enter the mosque's central room of worship. Only men, they often point out, are required to attend the Friday prayer.

One floor below is the cramped room where the women worship. On Fridays, they sit pressed together, their headscarves itching with heat. They must watch their imam on a closed-circuit television that no one seems to have adjusted in years.

But they listen devotedly. Teenage girls often roll their eyes at foreign imams, who seem to them like extraterrestrials. Their immigrant mothers often find these clerics too strict, an uncomfortable reminder of their conservative homelands.

Mr. Shata is both foreign and familiar. He presides over a patriarchal world, sometimes upholding it, and other times challenging it. In one sermon, he said that a man was in charge of his home and had the right to "choose his wife's friends."

Another day, to the consternation of his male congregants, he invited a female Arab social worker to lecture on domestic violence. The women were allowed to sit next to the men in the main section of the mosque.

The imam frowns at career women who remain single in their 30's, but boasts of their accomplishments to interest marriage candidates. He employs his own brand of feminism, vetting marriage contracts closely to ensure brides receive a fair dowry and fighting for them when they don't.

Far more than is customary, he spends hours listening to women: to their worries and confessions, their intimate secrets and frank questions about everything from menstruation to infidelity. They line up outside his office and call his home at all hours, often referring to him as "my brother" or "father." He can summon the details of their lives with the same encyclopedic discipline he once used to memorize the Koran.

"Are you separated yet?" Mr. Shata asked a woman he encountered at Lutheran Medical Center one day last July. She nodded. "May God make it easier for you," he said.

A Chaperoned Date

By most standards, the Egyptian bachelor was a catch. He had broad shoulders and a playful smile. He was witty. He earned a comfortable salary as an engineer, and came from what he called "a good family."

But the imam saw him differently, as a young man in danger of losing his faith. The right match might save him.

The bachelor, who is 33, came to Brooklyn from Alexandria, Egypt, six years earlier. He craved a better salary, and freedom from controlling parents. He asked that his name not be printed for fear of causing embarrassment to his family.

America was not like Egypt, where his family's connections could secure a good job. In Brooklyn, he found work as a busboy. He traded the plush comfort of his parents' home for an apartment crowded with other Egyptian immigrants. His nights were lonely. Temptation was abundant.

Women covered far less of their bodies. Bare limbs, it seemed, were everywhere. In Islam, men are instructed to lower their gaze to avoid falling into sin.

"In the summertime, it's a disaster for us," said the bachelor. "Especially a guy like me, who's looking all the time."

Curiosity lured him into bars, clubs and the occasional one-night stand.

But with freedom came guilt, he said. After drifting from his faith, he visited Mr. Shata's mosque during Ramadan in 2004.

The imam struck him as oddly disarming. He made jokes, and explained Islam in simple, passionate paragraphs. The bachelor soon began praying daily, attending weekly lectures and reading the Koran. By then, he had his own apartment and a consulting job.

Now he wanted a Muslim wife.

If the bachelor had been in Egypt, his parents would offer a stream of marriage candidates. The distance had not stopped them entirely. His mother sent him a video of his brother's wedding, directing him to footage of a female guest. He was unimpressed.

"I'm a handsome guy," he explained one evening as he sped toward Manhattan. It was his second date with Mr. Shata in attendance. "I have a standard in beauty."

From the passenger seat, the imam flipped open the glove compartment to find an assortment of pricey colognes. He inspected a bottle of Gio and, with a nod from the bachelor, spritzed it over his robe.

The imam and the bachelor were at odds over the material world, but on one thing they agreed: it is a Muslim duty to smell good. The religion's founder, the Prophet Muhammad, was said to wear musk.

The car slowed before a brick high-rise on Second Avenue. Soon the pair rode up in the elevator. The bachelor took a breath and rang the doorbell. An older woman answered. Behind her stood a slender, fetching woman with a shy smile.

The young woman, Engy Abdelkader, had been presented to the imam by another matchmaker. A woman of striking beauty and poise, Ms. Abdelkader is less timid than she first seems. She works as an immigration and human rights lawyer, and speaks in forceful, eloquent bursts. She is proud of her faith, and lectures publicly on Islam and civil liberties.

She was not always so outspoken. The daughter of Egyptian immigrants, Ms. Abdelkader, 30, was raised in suburban Howell, N.J., where she longed to fit in. Though she grew up praying, in high school she chose not to wear a hijab, the head scarf donned by Muslim girls when they reach puberty.

But Sept. 11 awakened her, Ms. Abdelkader said. For her and other Muslims, the terrorist attacks prompted a return to the faith, driven by what she said was a need to reclaim Islam from terrorists and a vilifying media. Headscarves became a statement, equal parts political and religious.

"There's nothing oppressive about it," said Ms. Abdelkader. "As a Muslim woman I am asking people to pay attention to the content of my character rather than my physical appearance."

The pair sat on a couch, awkwardly sipping tea. They began by talking, in English, about their professions. The bachelor was put off by the fact that Ms. Abdelkader had a law degree, yet earned a modest salary.

"Why go to law school and not make money?" he asked later.

Ms. Abdelkader's mother and a female friend who lived in the apartment sat listening nearby until the imam mercifully distracted them. The first hint of trouble came soon after.

It was his dream, the engineer told Ms. Abdelkader, to buy a half-million-dollar house. But he was uncertain that the mortgage he would need is lawful in Islam.

Ms. Abdelkader straightened her back and replied, "I would rather have eternal bliss in the hereafter than live in a house or apartment with a mortgage."

An argument ensued. Voices rose. Ms. Abdelkader's mother took her daughter's side. The friend wavered. The bachelor held his ground. The imam tried to mediate.

Indeed, he was puzzled. Here was a woman who had grown up amid tended lawns and new cars, yet she rejected materialism. And here was a man raised by Muslim hands, yet he was rebelliously moderate.

After the date, the bachelor told the imam, "I want a woman, not a sheik."

Months later, he married another immigrant; she was not especially devoted to Islam but she made him laugh, he said. They met through friends in New York.

Ms. Abdelkader remains single. The imam still believes she was the perfect match.

That evening, the imam stood on the sidewalk outside. Rain fell in stinging drops.

"I never wanted to be a sheik," he said. "I used to think that a religious person is very extreme and never smiles. And I love to smile. I love to laugh. I used to think that religious people were isolated and I love to be among people."

The rain soaked the imam's robe and began to pool in his sandals. A moment later, he ducked inside the building.

"The surprise for me was that the qualities I thought would not make a good sheik — simplicity and humor and being close to people — those are the most important qualities. People love those who smile and laugh. They need someone who lives among them and knows their pain."

"I know them," said Mr. Shata. "Like a brother."

    Tending to Muslim Hearts and Islam's Future, NYT, 7.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/nyregion/07imam.html?hp&ex=1141707600&en=b0f940707c843fdd&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Conservative Jews to Consider Ending a Ban on Same-Sex Unions and Gay Rabbis

March 6, 2006
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

In a closed-door meeting this week in an undisclosed site near Baltimore, a committee of Jewish legal experts who set policy for Conservative Judaism will consider whether to lift their movement's ban on gay rabbis and same-sex unions.

In 1992, this same group, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, declared that Jewish law clearly prohibited commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples and the admission of openly gay people to rabbinical or cantorial schools. The vote was 19 to 3, with one abstention.

Since then, Conservative Jewish leaders say, they have watched as relatives, congregation members and even fellow rabbis publicly revealed their homosexuality. Students at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, the movement's flagship, began wearing buttons saying "Ordination Regardless of Orientation." Rabbis performed same-sex commitment ceremonies despite the ban.

The direction taken by Conservative Jews, who occupy the centrist position in Judaism between the more liberal Reform and the more strict Orthodox, will be closely watched at a time when many Christian denominations are torn over the same issue. Conservative Judaism claims to distinguish itself by adhering to Jewish law and tradition, or halacha, while bending to accommodate modern conditions.

"This is a very difficult moment for the movement," said Rabbi Joel H. Meyers, a nonvoting member of the law committee and executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, which represents the movement's 1,600 rabbis worldwide.

"There are those who are saying, don't change the halacha because the paradigm model of the heterosexual family has to be maintained," said Rabbi Meyers, a stance he said he shared. "On the other hand is a group within the movement who say, look, we will lose thoughtful younger people if we don't make this change, and the movement will look stodgy and behind the times."

Several members of the law committee said in interviews that while anything could happen at their meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, there were more than enough votes to pass a legal opinion (a teshuvah in Hebrew) that would support opening the door to gay clergy members and same-sex unions. The law committee has 25 members, but only six votes are required to validate a legal opinion.

Committee members who oppose a change may try to argue that the decision is so momentous that it falls into a different category and requires many more than six votes to pass, even as many as 20, the members said. Other members may argue that no vote should be taken because the committee and the movement are too divided.

The committee may even adopt conflicting opinions, a move that some members say would simply acknowledge the diversity in Conservative Judaism. The committee's decisions are not binding on rabbis but do set direction for the movement.

"I don't think it is either feasible or desirable for a movement like ours to have one approach to Jewish law," said Rabbi Gordon Tucker of Temple Israel Center, in White Plains, a committee member who has collaborated with three others on a legal opinion advocating lifting the prohibition on homosexuality.

Even if the five Conservative rabbinical schools — in New York, Los Angeles, Jerusalem, Buenos Aires and Budapest — adopted different approaches, Rabbi Tucker said, "I don't think that would necessarily do violence to the movement."

The Conservative movement was long the dominant one in American Judaism, but from 1990 to 2000 its share of the nation's Jews shrank to 33 percent from 43 percent, according to the National Jewish Population Survey. In that same period, the Reform movement's share jumped to 39 percent, from 35, making it the largest, while Orthodox grew to 21 percent, from 16 percent. Estimates are difficult, but there are five to six million Jews in the United States.

Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University and author of "American Judaism: A History," said, "In the 1950's when Americans believed everybody should be in the middle, the Conservative movement was deeply in sync with a culture that privileged the center. What happens as American society divides on a liberal-conservative axis is that the middle is a very difficult place to be."

Rabbi Meyers, vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, said he worried that any decision on homosexuality could cause Conservative Jews to migrate to either Reform, which accepts homosexuality, or Orthodoxy, which condemns it. But Dr. Sarna said some studies suggested that many Jews who were more traditional began abandoning the Conservative movement more than 20 years ago, when it began ordaining women.

Few congregants are as preoccupied about homosexuality as are their leaders, said Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky, a professor of Talmud and interreligious studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary, who spends weekends at synagogues around the country as a visiting scholar.

"There are so many laws in the Torah about sexual behavior that we choose to ignore, so when we zero in on this one, I have to wonder what's really behind it," Rabbi Visotzky said.

The ban on homosexuality is based on Leviticus 18:22, which says, "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination," and a similar verse in Leviticus 20:13.

The law committee now has four legal opinions on the table. Although the reasoning in each is different and complex, two opinions essentially oppose any change to the current law disapproving of homosexuality, and one advocates overturning the law.

A fourth, authored by Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, rector and a professor of philosophy at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, argues that the passages in Leviticus refer only to a prohibition on anal sex and that homosexual relationships, rabbis and marriage ceremonies are permissible.

"What we're really trying to do is to maintain the authority of halacha, but also enable gays and lesbians to have a love life sanctioned by Jewish law and guided by Jewish law," said Rabbi Dorff, vice chairman of the law committee.

A change in the ban on homosexuality has been staunchly opposed by the longtime chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch. But Rabbi Schorsch is retiring in June after 20 years, and his successor could greatly affect the policy. Rabbi Schorsch declined to be interviewed for this article. Several Conservative officials said that while Rabbi Schorsch is not a member of the law committee, he is very involved in its deliberations on this issue.

If the law committee does not vote to change the prohibition, some rabbis said, the issue could resurface at the Rabbinical Assembly's convention March 19-23 in Mexico City.

Many students at the seminary say they find the gay ban offensive and would welcome a change, said Daniel Klein, a rabbinical student who helps lead Keshet, a gay rights group on campus. "It's part of the tradition to change, so we're entirely within tradition," he said. Mr. Klein said that even if the law committee did not lift the ban this week, change would come eventually.

"Imagine what will happen 10 years from now when some of my colleagues are on the law committee, when people from my generation are on the law committee," he said. "It's not going to be a close vote."

    Conservative Jews to Consider Ending a Ban on Same-Sex Unions and Gay Rabbis, NYT, 6.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/national/06rabbi.html

An Imam in America

To Lead the Faithful in a Faith Under Fire
 

March 6, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDREA ELLIOTT

The F.B.I. agent and the imam sat across a long wooden table at a Brooklyn youth center last August.

Would the imam, the agent asked, report anyone who seemed prone to terrorism?

Sheik Reda Shata leaned back in his chair and studied the agent. Nearly a year had passed since the authorities had charged two young men, one of whom prayed at Mr. Shata's mosque, with plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in Manhattan.

The mosque had come under siege. Television news trucks circled the block. Threats were made. The imam's congregants became angry themselves after learning that a police informer had spent months in their midst.

At the meeting, the imam chose his words carefully. It is not only the F.B.I. that wants to stop terrorism, he answered; Muslims also care about keeping the country safe.

"I would turn him in to you," Mr. Shata finally said, pointing his finger at the agent, Mark J. Mershon, the top F.B.I. official in New York City. "But not because I am afraid of you."

The moment captured one of the enduring challenges for an imam in America: living at the center of a religion under watch.

Mr. Shata is under steady pressure to help the authorities. At the same time, he must keep the trust of his congregants, who feel unfairly singled out by law enforcement.

The balance is delicate. It requires a willingness to cooperate, but not to be trampled on; pride in one's fellow Muslims, yet recognition that threats may lurk among them.

"It's like walking a tightrope," said Mr. Shata, 37, speaking through an Arabic translator. "You have to give Muslims the feeling that the police are not monsters. And you have to give the police the feeling that Muslims are respectful and clean."

Months spent with Mr. Shata, both around the city and in his mosque, the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, revealed the vastly complex calling of imams in the United States.

In the Islamic world, imams are defined as prayer leaders. But here, they become community leaders, essential intermediaries between their immigrant flocks and a new, Western land. When Islamic traditions clash with American culture, it is imams who step forward with improvised answers. Outside the mosque, many assume the public roles of other clergy, becoming diplomats for their faith.

But in the years since Sept. 11, diplomacy has given way to defensiveness. For American imams, no subject is more charged than terrorism. While under scrutiny themselves, imams are often called upon to usher the authorities past the barriers of fear that surround their communities. Many are reluctant. They worry that their assistance will backfire in unwarranted investigations, or a loss of credibility at the pulpit.

At Mr. Shata's mosque, people can recite a list of dubious cases as easily as popular verses of the Koran: The three Moroccan men in Detroit who were falsely accused of operating a terrorist sleeper cell; the Muslim lawyer Brandon Mayfield, who was mistakenly linked to bombings in Madrid; the two teenage girls from New York City who were held for weeks but never charged after the F.B.I. identified them as potential suicide bombers.

At the same time, imams must contend with their own mixed reputation, which is marked by a few high-profile cases, like that of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who was convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up New York landmarks.

Imams like Mr. Shata — men who embrace American freedom and condemn the radicals they feel have tainted their faith — rarely make the news.

The authorities are well acquainted with Mr. Shata, and speak highly of him. The officers of Mr. Shata's local police precinct often turn to him for help when Muslims in Bay Ridge refuse to be questioned. The senior F.B.I. counterterrorism official in New York, Charles E. Frahm, described his interaction with Mr. Shata as "very positive."

Mr. Frahm was in the room last August when Mr. Mershon challenged the imam. Mr. Shata and other Muslim leaders had agreed to meet the agents at the Muslim Youth Center in Bensonhurst in an effort to improve relations between the two camps.

"I have been impressed with his desire, as he's expressed it to me, to do good and do right," Mr. Frahm said.

Yet for Mr. Shata, cooperation brings conflicting emotions. He can charm a class of rookies at the 68th Precinct in Brooklyn, turning a perfunctory cultural sensitivity seminar into a comedy hour. But he is quietly outraged that an unmarked car shadows a respected Palestinian board member of his mosque.

The imam is saddened to see so many Muslims leave America, pushed out by new immigration policies, intimidation or despair. He also fears for those who have remained: for the teenage boy in his mosque who is suddenly praying at dawn, having drifted from a high school that left him alienated.

Still, Mr. Shata said, the anger and fear, no matter how deeply felt, are tempered by something greater: the devastating impact of Sept. 11 on non-Muslim Americans.

"It will take them a while to come to terms with us," he said.

A Necessary Dialogue

The competing demands on Mr. Shata became plain when he arrived in Bay Ridge about a year after Sept. 11.

Crisis gripped the city's Muslim neighborhoods. Law enforcement agents searched businesses and homes, and held hundreds of men for questioning. Women were harassed in the subway. Elementary schools lost Muslim children as their families packed up and left.

Mr. Shata's predecessor, Mohamed Moussa, was drained. "I needed a change or I would destroy myself," said Mr. Moussa, who now works as one of three imams at a well-funded mosque in Union City, N.J.

Like many mosques in struggling immigrant neighborhoods, the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge had little choice but to search abroad for a replacement. America produces few imams with the qualities sought by foreign-born Muslims: fluency in Arabic, and a superior command of the Koran and the laws that codify Islamic life.

Mr. Shata was an enticing candidate. Like Mr. Moussa, he had trained at Al Azhar University in Cairo, a citadel of Islamic scholarship. Through an Azhar professor, Mr. Moussa found Mr. Shata in Germany, where he had been working as an imam.

The men who sit on the mosque's board were pleased to find charisma in their new imam. The white brick mosque on Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge survives largely on the donations of its congregants. Only a riveting speaker can draw them.

But soon after Mr. Shata arrived, he became aware of another, less visible audience. In mosques around the city, informers were hidden among the praying masses, listening for what officials call "double talk" — one voice of extremism inside the mosque, and another of tolerance outside.

The attention did not worry Mr. Shata, he said, because he had nothing to hide. "My page is clean," he said.

But when the authorities came seeking his help, he faced a choice. He could welcome them and improve the mosque's public standing, or he could rebuff their inquiries at the risk of seeming obstructionist.

"There's a wall of silence around these mosques," said Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "It's not necessarily the imam himself who is actively engaged, but he looks the other way or allows activities in his mosque that could be dangerous."

Mr. Shata viewed cooperation as his Islamic duty. "Whoever is afraid of dialogue is hiding something," he said.

Mosque Under a Microscope

The greatest test of Mr. Shata's relationship with the authorities came with the arrest of a young Muslim congregant who was accused of plotting terrorism.

Shahawar Matin Siraj, 23, was a chatty Pakistani immigrant who worked in the Islamic bookstore next to the mosque. On the job, he was sometimes seen talking to James Elshafay, 21, a soft-spoken Muslim American from Staten Island. In August 2004, both were charged in Brooklyn federal court with conspiring to blow up the 34th Street subway station at Herald Square.

The men had been videotaped discussing the plot and scouting the subway station with a paid police informer who told them he belonged to an Islamic "brotherhood."

In the days after the arrests, reporters swarmed into Bay Ridge. Anonymous threats were called in to the bookstore, Islamic Books & Tapes. One letter to the store read, "You're all dead meat."

The imam and others at the mosque soon realized they knew the informer: a gray-haired Egyptian who called himself Osama Daoudi and said he lived in Staten Island.

"He used to say, 'My name is Osama, like Osama bin Laden,' " Mr. Shata recalled.

Mr. Daoudi had surfaced at the mosque a year earlier, said Mr. Shata. He tried to interest the imam in a real estate deal, proposing that Mr. Shata use his influence over Muslims to collect money owed to Mr. Daoudi in exchange for a secret cash commission, Mr. Shata recalled.

The imam wanted nothing to do with the scheme, he said, and kept his distance. He found Mr. Daoudi off-putting. He claimed to be the son of a famous Egyptian sheik and was known at the mosque for weeping when he prayed. But he also smoked.

"Piety in Islam forbids smoking," Mr. Shata observed.

Most striking was the anti-American sentiment that Mr. Daoudi espoused, Mr. Shata said. During visits with the imam, Mr. Daoudi complained that Americans might fear him because he had a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering. He also said that the F.B.I. wanted to search his home, the imam recalled.

"I told him, 'As long as you do nothing wrong, open your house and your heart to people,' " said Mr. Shata.

The imam said he believed that after Mr. Daoudi found him uninterested, he turned his focus to Mr. Siraj and Mr. Elshafay.

Starting in September 2003, the informer spent months drawing Mr. Siraj into the plot, teaching him about violent jihad, said Mr. Siraj's lawyer, Martin R. Stolar.

The authorities would say little about the case, which is set for trial next month. Efforts to locate Mr. Daoudi, whose name was provided by Mr. Stolar, were unsuccessful.

The Police Department's chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, dismissed Mr. Stolar's claim that the police had manufactured the plot. "We didn't propose that," he said. "We took action to stop it and there's a big difference."

Mr. Siraj had an "interest in violence" that was known to the authorities prior to an informer's involvement, Mr. Browne added.

For the imam, the informer's supposed maneuvering was not surprising. Mr. Shata shares a view common among Muslims in Bay Ridge that confidential informers are untrustworthy because some have criminal records or work for pay.

This perception irks Mr. Frahm, the F.B.I. official. Informers' reports are closely vetted, he said, and their motives are irrelevant if they provide correct information.

Mr. Frahm devotes much time to building trust among Muslim leaders. But he also warns them not to turn a blind eye to questionable activity. "You can't play part-time American," he said.

'From the Stones of Insults'

Anger at the authorities came easily at the mosque. But a quiet, if disturbing, question soon followed: Entrapped or not, what had caused these young men to entertain thoughts of terrorism?

The imam looks for answers on the crowded sidewalk outside the mosque.

The worn cement slabs along Fifth Avenue have long been divided into two social camps. After the Friday prayer, the section in front of the mosque fills with the neighborhood's Arab pioneers, gray-haired and balding Palestinians and Egyptians.

Several feet south, under the marquee of a movie theater, the neighborhood's Arab teenagers gather. Before Sept. 11, the groups rarely mingled. But in the years since, many of the younger set have returned to their faith.

The imam now rises to deliver his Friday khutba, or sermon, before rows of young men, some in low-hanging jeans and baseball caps turned backward. Many have come to learn more about their religion so they can defend it at work or at school. Others no longer feel at home elsewhere. They have been passed over for jobs, or stopped and questioned by the authorities too many times.

It is these men, and their sense of alienation, that most worry Mr. Shata. The mosque is not their only refuge. A new crop of sheesha cafes opened along the avenue after Sept. 11, filling with male chatter and the sweet smoke of water pipes.

"I once read a Spanish proverb," Mr. Shata said one evening. "The wall of hatred was asked, 'How were you built?' And the reply was, 'From the stones of insults.' "

Over the last three decades, the European immigrant enclave of Bay Ridge has given way to Gazan barbers, halal butchers and Egyptian jewelers. But the newest settlers have not always been welcome.

"It became, 'This ain't Bay Ridge anymore, it's Beirut,' " said Russell Kain, a retired community affairs officer from the 68th Precinct.

America has brought the imam his own share of taunts. A woman on a plane once asked him if he was Muslim and then demanded to change seats. Mr. Shata grew up wearing the long robes of his Egyptian homeland. He now travels in a suit.

But in Bay Ridge, he fights alienation with an open heart. He is increasingly a blend of East and West, proudly walking to the mosque in a robe and sandals, while warding off the cold with a wool Yankees hat. "I feel like I'm living in my country," he said.

It is a message he repeats everywhere he goes, one he says is the antidote to hatred. He meets with Muslim youth groups at mosques around the city, telling them not to wait for an invitation to embrace America. Even if Muslims feel singled out, Mr. Shata often says, America is still the freest country in the world.

The imam plans to stay for "as long as God wills it," he said. He got his green card in November.

Mr. Shata knows most of his congregants by face, and the 400 who pray daily by name. If he sees a young person taken by sudden devotion, his impulse is to probe. Is the person driven by faith or isolation? He can't always be sure.

The imam's concerns are shared by the F.B.I. Several officials said the bureau had recently focused its surveillance on the city's Muslim youth after learning that the London bombings last July were mostly carried out by South Asians raised in Britain. Mr. Shata and the authorities agree that young Muslims are most captive to the messages of militant sheiks.

"Islam is a religion based on intellect," he tells his young listeners. "Islam says to you: 'Think. Don't close your eyes and just follow your emotions. Don't follow the sheik. Perhaps you have a better mind than his.' "

"If you do wrong," he says, "you do wrong to the whole Islamic world."

One Imam, Many Audiences

One evening in July, Mr. Shata sat in the neat, air-conditioned living room of a brick row house in Queens. An Egyptian family had invited him over to bless their newest member, a 5-week-old girl.

The infant, swathed in soft pink cotton, slept in a car seat on the floor as her mother and grandmother offered tea and pastries. On a wide-screen television, Al Jazeera flashed news that two Algerian diplomats had been killed in Iraq.

Mr. Shata was bothered by the killers' description of the victims as "infidels." The world, he said, needed to agree on a definition of terrorism. "What I may see as terrorism, you may not see that way," he said.

Few subjects pose a more complicated test of loyalties for Mr. Shata than the struggle between Arabs and Israelis. Many Palestinians attend his mosque. When he discusses the conflict, one gets the sense that he is, again, speaking to several audiences.

Like Arabs around the world, Mr. Shata disagrees profoundly with the United States' steadfast support of Israel, and views the militant group Hamas as a powerful symbol of resistance.

When Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed by Israelis in March 2004, Mr. Shata told hundreds who gathered at a memorial service in Brooklyn that the "lion of Palestine has been martyred."

Mr. Shata is also acutely aware that the United States classifies Hamas as a terrorist group. In the same speech, he condemned all violence. "We don't hate Jews," he recalled saying. "To kill one man is to kill all mankind."

Yet in another sermon, the imam exalted a young Palestinian mother, Reem Al-Reyashi, who blew herself up in 2004 at a crossing point between Gaza and Israel, killing four Israelis. Mr. Shata described the woman as a martyr.

When asked about the speech, Mr. Shata seemed unusually conflicted. He has forged friendships with rabbis in New York — something he never imagined in Egypt. Engaging in a discussion about the Arab-Israeli struggle would invite controversy, he said, both within his mosque and outside it. "I worry this will cause trouble with my Jewish brothers," he said. He rarely broaches the topic in sermons and addressed it only reluctantly in interviews.

"I do not accept suicide operations that target civilians at any time or place," Mr. Shata said. But striking Israeli soldiers "as a means of defense" was justifiable.

The Israelis, he said, have "killed Palestinian women, destroyed their homes, taken their land and materials and made them into refugees," while Palestinians lack the military means to fight back. Islamic law forbids suicide, he said, but the Koran says Muslims can defend themselves if attacked. Ms. Al-Reyashi killed two soldiers, a border police officer and a security guard, though Palestinian and Israeli civilians were hurt.

Mr. Shata acknowledged that his opinion, while common among Arabs, is strongly opposed not only by many non-Muslims, but even by some of his congregants. "Some Muslims, if they hear this, would make me out to be a nonbeliever because they see that all these suicide operations are a must," he said. "And there are other Muslims who feel that all of these operations are forbidden.

"My nature is always to be in the middle," he said. "It's always the person in the middle who ends up being the enemy of the right and the left. I don't want to open up two fronts against me."

Mr. Shata is forceful in his condemnation of terrorism in the West, a message he feels is rarely heard. After the suicide bombings in London last year, he and other Muslims called a news conference in Brooklyn to denounce the violence. Nobody came.

In his sermons, Mr. Shata repeatedly makes the point that terrorism violates the tenets of Islam. "I feel that I breathe underwater, or that I cry in a desert," he said recently. "That nobody responds."

It was part of Mr. Shata's annual Sept. 11 speech, a tradition he began in 2003. Recordings of the sermon, titled "What Muslims Want From America," sold out at the mosque overnight.

The three Sept. 11 speeches echo the imam's journey in America. His first speech was conciliatory in tone; a treatise on the peaceful nature of Islam. In 2004, he urged Muslims to respect the law, and trust that America is not "the enemy." Last September, his message hardened.

"We want the U.S. to be just in dealing with our issues," Mr. Shata declared. A man "should not feel that he is under surveillance for every word he says, every move he makes and every piece of paper he signs."

Muslims feel isolated, yet crave acceptance, he said, likening them to their ancestors 14 centuries ago, who sought refuge from the king of Abyssinia.

"O king, we have come to thy country having chosen thee above all others," he said, reciting the words of the group's leader, Jafar Ibn Abi Talib.

"It is our hope, o king, that here, with thee, we shall not suffer wrong."

    To Lead the Faithful in a Faith Under Fire, NYT, 6.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/nyregion/06imam.html?hp&ex=1141621200&en=90318d121c033f59&ei=5094&partner=homepage

An Imam in America

A Muslim Leader in Brooklyn, Reconciling 2 Worlds

March 5, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDREA ELLIOTT

The imam begins his trek before dawn, his long robe billowing like a ghost through empty streets. In this dark, quiet hour, his thoughts sometimes drift back to the Egyptian farming village where he was born.

But as the sun rises over Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Sheik Reda Shata's new world comes to life. The R train rattles beneath a littered stretch of Fifth Avenue, where Mexican workers huddle in the cold. An electric Santa dances in a doughnut shop window. Neon signs beckon. Gypsy cabs blare their horns.

The imam slips into a plain brick building, nothing like the golden-domed mosque of his youth. He stops to pray, and then climbs the cracked linoleum steps to his cluttered office. The answering machine blinks frantically, a portent of the endless questions to come.

A teenage girl wants to know: Is it halal, or lawful, to eat a Big Mac? Can alcohol be served, a waiter wonders, if it is prohibited by the Koran? Is it wrong to take out a mortgage, young Muslim professionals ask, when Islam frowns upon monetary interest?

The questions are only a piece of the daily puzzle Mr. Shata must solve as the imam of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, a thriving New York mosque where several thousand Muslims worship.

To his congregants, Mr. Shata is far more than the leader of daily prayers and giver of the Friday sermon. Many of them now live in a land without their parents, who typically assist with finding a spouse. There are fewer uncles and cousins to help resolve personal disputes. There is no local House of Fatwa to issue rulings on ethical questions.

Sheik Reda, as he is called, arrived in Brooklyn one year after Sept. 11. Virtually overnight, he became an Islamic judge and nursery school principal, a matchmaker and marriage counselor, a 24-hour hot line on all things Islamic.

Day after day, he must find ways to reconcile Muslim tradition with American life. Little in his rural Egyptian upbringing or years of Islamic scholarship prepared him for the challenge of leading a mosque in America.

The job has worn him down and opened his mind. It has landed him, exhausted, in the hospital and earned him a following far beyond Brooklyn.

"America transformed me from a person of rigidity to flexibility," said Mr. Shata, speaking through an Arabic translator. "I went from a country where a sheik would speak and the people listened to one where the sheik talks and the people talk back."

This is the story of Mr. Shata's journey west: the making of an American imam.

Over the last half-century, the Muslim population in the United States has risen significantly. Immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa have settled across the country, establishing mosques from Boston to Los Angeles, and turning Islam into one of the nation's fastest growing religions. By some estimates, as many as six million Muslims now live in America.

Leading this flock calls for improvisation. Imams must unify diverse congregations with often-clashing Islamic traditions. They must grapple with the threat of terrorism, answering to law enforcement agents without losing the trust of their fellow Muslims. Sometimes they must set aside conservative beliefs that prevail in the Middle East, the birthplace of Islam.

Islam is a legalistic faith: Muslims believe in a divine law that guides their daily lives, including what they should eat, drink and wear. In countries where the religion reigns, this is largely the accepted way.

But in the West, what Islamic law prohibits is everywhere. Alcohol fills chocolates. Women jog in sports bras. For many Muslims in America, life is a daily clash between Islamic mores and material temptation. At the center of this clash stands the imam.

In America, imams evoke a simplistic caricature — of robed, bearded clerics issuing fatwas in foreign lands. Hundreds of imams live in the United States, but their portrait remains flatly one-dimensional. Either they are symbols of diversity, breaking the Ramadan fast with smiling politicians, or zealots, hurrying into their storefront mosques.

Mr. Shata, 37, is neither a firebrand nor a ready advocate of progressive Islam. Some of his views would offend conservative Muslims; other beliefs would repel American liberals. He is in many ways a work in progress, mapping his own middle ground between two different worlds.

The imam's cramped, curtained office can hardly contain the dramas that unfold inside. Women cry. Husbands storm off. Friendships end. Every day brings soap opera plots and pitch.

A Moroccan woman falls to her knees near the imam's Hewlett-Packard printer. "Have mercy on me!" she wails to a friend who has accused her of theft. Another day, it is a man whose Lebanese wife has concealed their marriage and newborn son from her strict father. "I will tell him everything!" the husband screams.

Mr. Shata settles dowries, confronts wife abusers, brokers business deals and tries to arrange marriages. He approaches each problem with an almost scientific certainty that it can be solved. "I try to be more of a doctor than a judge," said Mr. Shata. "A judge sentences. A doctor tries to remedy."

Imams in the United States now serve an estimated 1,200 mosques. Some of their congregants have lived here for generations, assimilating socially and succeeding professionally. But others are recent immigrants, still struggling to find their place in America. Demographers expect their numbers to rise in the coming decades, possibly surpassing those of American Jews.

Like many of their faithful, most imams in the United States come from abroad. They are recruited primarily for their knowledge of the Koran and the language in which it was revealed, Arabic.

But few are prepared for the test that awaits. Like the parish priests who came generations before, imams are called on to lead a community on the margins of American civic life. They are conduits to and arbiters of an exhilarating, if sometimes hostile world, filled with promise and peril.

An Invitation to Islam

More than 5,000 miles lie between Brooklyn and Kafr al Battikh, Mr. Shata's birthplace in northeastern Egypt. Situated where the Nile Delta meets the Suez Canal, it was a village of dirt roads and watermelon vines when Mr. Shata was born in 1968.

Egypt was in the throes of change. The country had just suffered a staggering defeat in the Six Day War with Israel, and protests against the government followed. Hoping to counter growing radicalism, a new president, Anwar Sadat, allowed a long-repressed Islamic movement to flourish.

The son of a farmer and fertilizer salesman, Mr. Shata belonged to the lowest rung of Egypt's rural middle class. His house had no electricity. He did not see a television until he was 15.

Islam came to him softly, in the rhythms of his grandmother's voice. At bedtime, she would tell him the story of the Prophet Muhammad, the seventh-century founder of Islam. The boy heard much that was familiar. Like the prophet, he had lost his mother at a young age.

"She told me the same story maybe a thousand times," he said.

At the age of 5, he began memorizing the Koran. Like thousands of children in the Egyptian countryside, he attended a Sunni religious school subsidized by the government and connected to Al Azhar University, a bastion of Islamic scholarship.

Too poor to buy books, the young Mr. Shata hand-copied from hundreds at the town library. The bound volumes now line the shelves of his Bay Ridge apartment. When he graduated, he enrolled at Al Azhar and headed to Cairo by train. There, he sat on a bench for hours, marveling at the sights.

"I was like a lost child," he said. "Cars. We didn't have them. People of different colors. Foreigners. Women almost naked. It was like an imaginary world."

At 18, Mr. Shata thought of becoming a judge. But at his father's urging, he joined the college of imams, the Dawah.

The word means invitation. It refers to the duty of Muslims to invite, or call, others to the faith. Unlike Catholicism or Judaism, Islam has no ordained clergy. The Prophet Muhammad was the religion's first imam, or prayer leader, Islam's closest corollary to a rabbi or priest; schools like the Dawah are its version of a seminary or rabbinate.

After four years, Mr. Shata graduated with honors, seventh in a class of 3,400.

The next decade brought lessons in adaptation. In need of money, Mr. Shata took a job teaching sharia, or Islamic law, to children in Saudi Arabia, a country guided by Wahhabism, a puritan strain of Sunni Islam. He found his Saudi colleagues' interpretation of the Koran overly literal at times, and the treatment of women, who were not allowed to vote or drive, troubling.

Five years later, he returned to a different form of religious control in Egypt, where most imams are appointed by the government and monitored for signs of radicalism or political dissent.

"They are not allowed to deviate from the curriculum that the government sets for them," said Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Egyptian law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Mr. Shata craved greater independence, and opened a furniture business. But he missed the life of dawah and eventually returned to it as the imam of his hometown mosque, which drew 4,000 worshipers on Fridays alone.

His duties were clear: He led the five daily prayers and delivered the khutba, or Friday sermon. His mosque, like most in Egypt, was financed and managed by the government. He spent his free time giving lectures, conducting marriage ceremonies and offering occasional religious guidance.

In 2000, Mr. Shata left to work as an imam in the gritty industrial city of Stuttgart, Germany. Europe brought a fresh new freedom. "I saw a wider world," he said. "Anyone with an opinion could express it."

Then came Sept. 11.

Soon after, Mr. Shata's mosque was defiled with graffiti and smeared with feces.

The next summer, Mr. Shata took a call from an imam in Brooklyn. The man, Mohamed Moussa, was leaving his mosque, exhausted by the troubles of his congregants following the terrorist attacks. The mosque was looking for a replacement, and Mr. Shata had come highly recommended by a professor at Al Azhar.

Most imams are recruited to American mosques on the recommendation of other imams or trusted scholars abroad, and are usually offered an annual contract. Some include health benefits and subsidized housing; others are painfully spare. The pay can range from $20,000 to $50,000.

Mr. Shata had heard stories of Muslim hardship in America. The salary at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge was less than what he was earning in Germany. But foremost on his mind were his wife and three small daughters, whom he had not seen in months. Germany had refused them entry.

He agreed to take the job if he could bring his family to America. In October 2002, the American Embassy in Cairo granted visas to the Shatas and they boarded a plane for New York.

A Mosque, a Magnet

A facade of plain white brick rises up from Fifth Avenue just south of 68th Street in Bay Ridge. Two sets of words, one in Arabic and another in English, announce the mosque's dual identity from a marquee above its gray metal doors.

To the mosque's base — Palestinian, Egyptian, Yemeni, Moroccan and Algerian immigrants — it is known as Masjid Moussab, named after one of the prophet's companions, Moussab Ibn Omair. To the mosque's English-speaking neighbors, descendants of the Italians, Irish and Norwegians who once filled the neighborhood, it is the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge.

Mosques across America are commonly named centers or societies, in part because they provide so many services. Some 140 mosques serve New York City, where an estimated 600,000 Muslims live, roughly 20 percent of them African-American, said Louis Abdellatif Cristillo, an anthropologist at Teachers College who has canvassed the city's mosques.

The Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, like other American mosques, is run by a board of directors, mostly Muslim professionals from the Palestinian territories. What began in 1984 as a small storefront on Bay Ridge Avenue, with no name and no imam, has grown into one of the city's vital Muslim centers, a magnet for new immigrants.

Its four floors pulse with life: a nursery school, an Islamic bookstore, Koran classes and daily lectures. Some 1,500 Muslims worship at the mosque on Fridays, often crouched in prayer on the sidewalk. Albanians, Pakistanis and others who speak little Arabic listen to live English translations of the sermons through headsets. It is these congregants' crumpled dollar bills, collected in a cardboard box, that enable the mosque to survive.

Among the city's imams, Bay Ridge is seen as a humbling challenge.

"It's the first station for immigrants," said Mr. Moussa, Mr. Shata's predecessor. "And immigrants have a lot of problems."

Skip 911. Call the Imam.

Mr. Shata landed at Kennedy International Airport wearing a crimson felt hat and a long gray jilbab that fell from his neck to his sandaled toes, the proud dress of an Al Azhar scholar. He spoke no English. But already, he carried some of the West inside. He could quote liberally from Voltaire, Shaw and Kant. For an Egyptian, he often jokes, he was inexplicably punctual.

The first thing Mr. Shata loved about America, like Germany, was the order.

"In Egypt, if a person passes through a red light, that means he's smart," he said. "In America, he's very disrespected."

Americans stood in line. They tended their yards. One could call the police and hear a rap at the door minutes later. That fact impressed not only Mr. Shata, but also the women of his new mosque.

They had gained a reputation for odd calls to 911. One woman called because a relative abroad had threatened to take her inheritance. "The officers left and didn't write anything," Mr. Shata said, howling with laughter. "There was nothing for them to write."

Another woman called, angry because her husband had agreed to let a daughter from a previous marriage spend the night.

To Mr. Shata, the calls made sense. The women's parents, uncles and brothers — figures of authority in family conflict — were overseas. Instead, they dialed 911, hoping for a local substitute. Soon they would learn to call the imam.

A bearish man with a soft, bearded face, Mr. Shata struck his congregants as an odd blend of things. He was erudite yet funny; authoritative at the mosque's wooden pulpit and boyishly charming between prayers.

Homemakers, doctors, cabdrivers and sheiks stopped by to assess the new imam. He regaled them with Dunkin' Donuts coffee, fetched by the Algerian keeper of the mosque, and then told long, poetic stories that left his visitors silent, their coffee cold.

"You just absorb every word he says," said Linda Sarsour, 25, a Muslim activist in Brooklyn.

The imam, too, was taking note. Things worked differently in America, where mosques were run as nonprofit organizations and congregants had a decidedly democratic air. Mr. Shata was shocked when a tone-deaf man insisted on giving the call to prayer. Such a man would be ridiculed in Egypt, where the callers, or muezzinin, have voices so beautiful they sometimes record top-selling CD's.

But in the land of equal opportunity, a man with a mediocre voice could claim discrimination. Mr. Shata relented. He shudders when the voice periodically sounds.

No sooner had Mr. Shata started his new job than all manner of problems arrived at his worn wooden desk: rebellious teenagers, marital strife, confessions of philandering, accusations of theft.

The imam responded creatively. Much of the drama involved hot dog vendors. There was the pair who shared a stand, but could not stand each other. They came to the imam, who helped them divide the business.

The most notorious hot dog seller stood accused of stealing thousands of dollars in donations he had raised for the children of his deceased best friend. But there was no proof. The donations had been in cash. The solution, the imam decided, was to have the man swear an oath on the Koran.

"Whoever lies while taking an oath on the Koran goes blind afterward," said Mr. Shata, stating a belief that has proved useful in cases of theft. A group of men lured the vendor to the mosque, where he confessed to stealing $11,400. His admission was recorded in a waraqa, or document, penned in Arabic and signed by four witnesses. He returned the money in full.

Dozens of waraqas sit in the locked bottom drawer of the imam's desk. In one, a Brooklyn man who burned his wife with an iron vows, in nervous Arabic scrawl, never to do it again. If he fails, he will owe her a $10,000 "disciplinary fine." The police had intervened before, but the woman felt that she needed the imam's help.

For hundreds of Muslims, the Bay Ridge mosque has become a courthouse more welcoming than the one downtown, a police precinct more effective than the brick station blocks away. Even the police have used the imam's influence to their advantage, warning disorderly teenagers that they will be taken to the mosque rather than the station.

"They say: 'No, not the imam! He'll tell my parents,' " said Russell Kain, a recently retired officer of the 68th Precinct.

Marriage, Mortgage, McDonald's

Soon after arriving in Brooklyn, Mr. Shata observed a subtle rift among the women of his mosque. Those who were new to America remained quietly grounded in the traditions of their homelands. But some who had assimilated began to question those strictures. Concepts like shame held less weight. Actions like divorce, abhorred by Mr. Shata, were surprisingly popular.

"The woman who comes from overseas, she's like someone who comes from darkness to a very well-lit place," he said.

In early July, an Egyptian karate teacher shuffled into Mr. Shata's office and sank into a donated couch. He smiled meekly and began to talk. His new wife showed him no affection. She complained about his salary and said he lacked ambition.

The imam urged him to be patient.

Two weeks later, in came the wife. She wanted a divorce.

"We don't understand each other," the woman said. She was 32 and had come from Alexandria, Egypt, to work as an Arabic teacher. She had met her husband through a friend in Bay Ridge. Her parents, still in Egypt, had approved cautiously from afar.

"I think you should be patient," said the imam.

"I cannot," she said firmly. "He loves me, but I have to love him, too."

Mr. Shata shifted uncomfortably in his chair. There was nothing he loathed more than granting a divorce.

"It's very hard for me to let him divorce you," he said. "How can I meet God on Judgment Day?"

"It's God's law also to have divorce," she shot back. The debate continued.

Finally, Mr. Shata asked for her parents' phone number in Egypt. Over the speakerphone, they anxiously urged the imam to relent. Their daughter was clearly miserable, and they were too far away to intervene.

With a sigh, Mr. Shata asked his executive secretary, Mohamed, to print a divorce certificate. In the rare instance when the imam agrees to issue one, it is after a couple has filed for divorce with the city.

"Since you're the one demanding divorce, you can never get back together with him," the imam warned. "Ever."

The woman smiled politely.

"What matters for us is the religion," she said later. "Our law is our religion."

The religion's fiqh, or jurisprudence, is built on 14 centuries of scholarship, but imams in Europe and America often find this body of law insufficient to address life in the West. The quandaries of America were foreign to Mr. Shata.

Pornography was rampant, prompting a question Mr. Shata had never heard in Egypt: Is oral sex lawful? Pork and alcohol are forbidden in Islam, raising questions about whether Muslims could sell beer or bacon. Tired of the menacing stares in the subway, women wanted to know if they could remove their headscarves. Muslims were navigating their way through problems Mr. Shata had never fathomed.

For a while, the imam called his fellow sheiks in Egypt with requests for fatwas, or nonbinding legal rulings. But their views carried little relevance to life in America. Some issues, like oral sex, he dared not raise. Over time, he began to find his own answers and became, as he put it, flexible.

Is a Big Mac permissible? Yes, the imam says, but not a bacon cheeseburger.

It is a woman's right, Mr. Shata believes, to remove her hijab if she feels threatened. Muslims can take jobs serving alcohol and pork, he says, but only if other work cannot be found. Oral sex is acceptable, but only between married couples. Mortgages, he says, are necessary to move forward in America.

"Islam is supposed to make a person's life easier, not harder," Mr. Shata explained.

In some ways, the imam has resisted change. He has learned little English, and interviews with Mr. Shata over the course of six months required the use of a translator.

Some imams in the United States make a point of shaking hands with women, distancing themselves from the view that such contact is improper. Mr. Shata offers women only a nod.

Daily, he passes the cinema next to his mosque but has never seen a movie in a theater. He says music should be forbidden if it "encourages sexual desire." He won't convert a non-Muslim when it seems more a matter of convenience than true belief.

"Religion is not a piece of clothing that you change," he said after turning away an Ecuadorean immigrant who sought to convert for her Syrian husband. "I don't want someone coming to Islam tonight and leaving it in the morning."

Trust in God's Plan

Ten months after he came to America, Mr. Shata collapsed.

It was Friday. The mosque was full. Hundreds of men sat pressed together, their shirts damp with summer. Their wives and daughters huddled in the women's section, one floor below. Word of the imam's sermons had spread, drawing Muslims from Albany and Hartford.

"Praise be to Allah," began Mr. Shata, his voice slowly rising.

Minutes later, the imam recalled, the room began to spin. He fell to the carpet, lost consciousness and spent a week in the hospital, plagued by several symptoms. A social worker and a counselor who treated the imam both said he suffered from exhaustion. The counselor, Ali Gheith, called it "compassion fatigue," an ailment that commonly affects disaster-relief workers.

It was not just the long hours, the new culture and the ceaseless demands that weighed on the imam. Most troubling were the psychological woes of his congregants, which seemed endless.

Sept. 11 had wrought depression and anxiety among Muslims. But unlike many priests or rabbis, imams lacked pastoral training in mental health and knew little about the social services available.

At heart was another complicated truth: Imams often approach mental illness from a strictly Islamic perspective. Hardship is viewed as a test of faith, and the answer can be found in tawwakul, trusting in God's plan. The remedy typically suggested by imams is a spiritual one, sought through fasting, prayer and reflection.

Muslim immigrants also limit themselves to religious solutions because of the stigma surrounding mental illness, said Hamada Hamid, a resident psychiatrist at New York University who founded The Journal of Muslim Mental Health. "If somebody says, 'You need this medication,' someone may respond, 'I have tawwakul,' " he said.

Mr. Gheith, a Palestinian immigrant who works in disaster preparedness for the city's health department, began meeting with the imam regularly after his collapse. Mr. Shata needed to learn to disconnect from his congregants, Mr. Gheith said. It was a concept that confounded the imam.

"I did not permit these problems to enter my heart," said Mr. Shata, "nor can I permit them to leave."

The conversations eventually led to a citywide training program for imams, blending Islam with psychology. Mr. Shata learned to identify the symptoms of mental illness and began referring people to treatment.

His congregants often refuse help, blaming black magic or the evil eye for their problems. The evil eye is believed to be a curse driven by envy, confirmed in the bad things that happen to people.

One Palestinian couple in California insisted that their erratic 18-year-old son had the evil eye. He was brought to the imam's attention after winding up on the streets of New York, and eventually received a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Mr. Shata had less success with a man who worshiped at the mosque. He had become paranoid, certain his wife was cursing him with witchcraft. But he refused treatment, insisting divorce was the only cure.

Time and again, Mr. Shata's new country has called for creativity and patience, for a careful negotiation between tradition and modernity.

"Here you don't know what will solve a problem," he said. "It's about looking for a key."

    A Muslim Leader in Brooklyn, Reconciling 2 Worlds, NYT, 5.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/nyregion/05imam.html?hp&ex=1141534800&en=934a4e8cc4d105a4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A Terror Case That Resonates Close to Home

March 6, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDREA ELLIOTT

In the back seat of a tan Toyota, Shahawar Matin Siraj fidgets nervously. He is trying to decide whether to help bomb a subway station in New York.

Mr. Siraj, a 23-year-old Pakistani immigrant, says he does not want people to die. He needs time to think. He also wants to ask his mother's permission before he can move forward.

An older man in the front seat sighs. "The other time you said different, now you say different," the man says in thickly accented English.

The moment, which was captured for the New York Police Department in August 2004 by a video camera placed in the car's dashboard, may be central to a criminal case against Mr. Siraj.

Days after the encounter was recorded, Mr. Siraj and another young man shown in the video, James Elshafay, were arrested and charged in federal court with conspiring to blow up the subway station at Herald Square. The older man in the car, identified by a defense lawyer as Osama Daoudi, told Mr. Siraj and Mr. Elshafay that he belonged to an Islamic "brotherhood." In fact, he had been working as a paid police informer.

Little evidence from the case, which is set for trial in April, has emerged publicly in the 18 months since the arrests. But the video of the defendants, along with recent court testimony and interviews with lawyers and relatives of Mr. Siraj, offers glimpses into the story that is likely to unfold in court.

The arrests on Aug. 27 came days before the Republican National Convention in New York. The police said that Mr. Siraj and Mr. Elshafay had sketched diagrams of the station and had been recorded discussing other New York targets, though the authorities also stressed that the men had never obtained explosives and were not affiliated with any known terrorist group.

The defendants were motivated by the wish to cause economic harm and disruption, but also said they wanted to avoid killing people, according to the criminal complaint.

Mr. Elshafay was not indicted, and may be cooperating with the prosecution, said Mr. Siraj's lawyer, Martin R. Stolar. Mr. Elshafay's lawyer and mother both declined to comment on the case.

Mr. Siraj's relatives and lawyers assert that he was entrapped by the informer, whose identity the police would not confirm. The man offered to give Mr. Siraj money so he could fly to Pakistan to find a bride, according to information turned over to the defense by prosecutors last fall.

But during a hearing in January, Mr. Siraj testified that on the day of his arrest, he admitted that the plot to bomb the subway station had been his idea.

Mr. Siraj came to Queens from Karachi, Pakistan, with his family in June 1999. His parents said that he never spoke of religious or political causes. They described him as kindhearted and boyish: he kept pet turtles at his home in Queens, and loved cartoons.

When news of the arrests emerged, Mr. Siraj's parents wondered if the police had the wrong man. Mr. Siraj's mother, Shaheena Parveen, said she fainted when she saw the video.

"I just can't understand what happened to him," she said.

It was not the first time Mr. Siraj had been arrested: Two months earlier, he was charged with assault. The police said he fought with a customer at an Islamic bookstore in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in a dispute over a phone card.

Mr. Siraj worked at the store while taking night classes in computer networking. He seemed to have little interest in Islam, said his parents. But nearly a year before his arrest in the subway plot, he began spending time in the company of the Egyptian man who was later revealed to be working for the police. The two prayed together at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, the mosque next to the bookstore.

The older man dropped by the store almost daily and often drove Mr. Siraj home to Queens, said Mr. Siraj's parents. The informer did not begin recording their conversations until eight months later, and by then, argued Mr. Stolar, the man had steered Mr. Siraj onto a path of intolerance.

The informer claimed to be battling liver cancer and told Mr. Siraj that Jewish doctors at a hospital in New York had refused him treatment because he was Muslim, said Ms. Parveen. She also said the man had shown her son photos of prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib.

During the 92-minute-video, shown to a reporter by Mr. Stolar, the three men seem well acquainted. Their conversation jogs between tension and laughter.

At one point, the informer retrieves two backpacks from the trunk. Mr. Siraj and Mr. Elshafay examine the bags and discuss whether a bomb would fit inside.

Before the end of the video, Mr. Siraj agrees to help plan the attack but not to handle any bombs. Mr. Elshafay says he is willing to plant the bomb, and offers to dress "like a Jew."

"They'll never check a Jew," he said.

    A Terror Case That Resonates Close to Home, NYT, 6.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/nyregion/06imamside.html

Muslims in America

March 4, 2006
The New York Times

The number of Muslims living in the United States remains a subject of debate. The most reliable estimates range from three million to six million. Neither the Census Bureau nor Citizenship and Immigration Services collects information on the religious affiliation of individuals. Surveys paid for by religious organizations, both Islamic and non-Islamic, have been suspected of either underestimating or inflating the total. Those estimates based on self-reporting by mosques are thought to overstate membership. But it is also believed that many Muslims do not attend mosques regularly, and that the number of those who respond to surveys is low.

    Muslims in America, NYT, 4.3.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/nyregion/05side.html

The march of the Mormons

The Latter-day Saints are on the rise in the US, and a Republican named Mitt Romney has hopes of becoming the first Mormon president. But the church has one serious image problem: polygamy. Which is why HBO's new drama, about a man with three wives, is stirring up controversy. By Julian Borger

Monday February 27, 2006
Guardian
Julian Borger
 

There is a quirky new drama coming to American television next month. It is called Big Love, and HBO will air it in a plum weekly slot, just after The Sopranos. Like The Sopranos, Big Love is a tale of marital strife in a dysfunctional family, only in this case the central character is not a Mafioso but a regular guy from Utah who happens to have three wives - hence the wry title.

It is another tale of American subculture. As with the Mob in New Jersey, polygamy in rural Utah may be illegal, but is nevertheless a widely accepted part of the landscape. Big Love is being heavily promoted and boasts big-screen stars.

Tom Hanks is one of the producers, Bill Paxton plays the Viagra-popping husband, with Chloe Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Ginnifer Goodwin as his three wives. Harry Dean Stanton is cast in the role of the community's sinister polygamist-in-chief.

Most importantly for the audience figures, in a television-watching society somewhat jaded by manufactured edginess, the show has succeeded in generating some genuine political controversy. It so happens that this is a particularly sensitive moment in American politics to be making a noise about polygamous marriage.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, introduced polygamy to the US before the civil war, but it has spent more than a century trying to disown its continued practice by more than 20,000 renegade Mormon fundamentalists in the backwaters of the western states, as well as in Mexico and Canada.

Polygamy is a constant embarrassment to the church in its quest for mainstream acceptance and top-level political influence.

The church elders, who call themselves the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, have insisted that every episode of HBO's Big Love begin with a disclaimer stating that the Latter-day Saints church does not sanction plural marriage. (The producers insist they intended to put out such a disclaimer anyway, saying the Mormon church's opposition was integral to the narrative, raising its "dramatic stakes".)

The truth is that the Mormon church has managed to live down the Osmonds, but it is still struggling to live down polygamy 116 years after banning the practice. Polygamy survives like a batty old aunt in the attic, sounding off at the most embarrassing moments.

All this is not entirely the church's fault. The fundamentalist sects in Utah and beyond who still use the Mormon label generate a disproportionate number of news stories, mostly about horribly abused women and children. Yet some critics say the church leadership, in its multi-spired temple in downtown Salt Lake City, must shoulder some of the blame. It has sent mixed signals on plural marriages, turned a blind eye to polygamists in its own ranks decades after the ban, and done little to help victims of abuse. Although the church's 1890 "manifesto" against polygamy prohibits it here on earth, the scriptures retain it as a celestial ideal for believers who find their way to the kingdom of heaven.

Such criticisms have long been an irritant to the Mormon hierarchy, but of late they have become excruciating. Now more than ever, the Mormon apostles do not want dirty old laundry to be aired on prime-time television, just as the Latter-day Saints seem poised to fulfil their founder's prophecy and scale the supreme heights of US government.

A Mormon from Nevada, Harry Reid, is currently the most powerful Democrat in Congress and could take command of the Senate if the Democrats do well in congressional elections this November. Meanwhile, another Mormon, Mitt Romney, is likely to declare a run for the presidency.

Romney, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, is a direct descendant of one of the Mormon church's original pilgrims. He joined the Mormon priesthood at 12, and became a church elder at 18, before serving as a missionary in France. In December, he announced that he would not seek re-election for the governorship, and he is now making all the manoeuvres and noises that typically presage the declaration of a candidacy for the White House.

Romney will be a serious contender in 2008. He has a record as a successful businessman and administrator, transforming first the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and then the high-spending liberal state of Massachusetts from financial basket cases to success stories.

He has shown the breadth of his appeal by winning the governorship in deeply Democratic Massachusetts - "a bit like being a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention", as Romney puts it. And at 58, Romney has the advantage of relative youth over the Republican front-runner, Senator John McCain, who is 11 years his senior.

No matter how Romney performs in 2008, his candidacy will do two things - it will turn him into a national figure, and it will pose the question: is America ready to put a Mormon in the White House?

Hardly anyone batted an eyelid when Harry Reid emerged as the Senate minority leader in 2004. In fact the Democrats, convinced they had lost that year's elections on "moral values", were proud of Reid's Mormon credentials.

The church is a byword for conservatism (95% of American Mormons voted for Bush in 2004) and Reid is anti-abortion, opposed to gay marriage and gun control and defends capital punishment.

But he is liberal on bread-and-butter issues such as health and education, and that is good enough for the Democrats in this time of exile. Reid at least offers potential crossover appeal in conservative "red" states.

Reid's Mormonism is unthreatening. America does not fear excessive religious zeal in its Democrats, as it tends not to worry about weakness on security from its Republicans. It would be counterintuitive. In any case, the job of Senate minority leader is a backroom task for a political engineer. It does not hold sway over the Union.

But a Mormon running as a Republican for the presidency is another matter. Americans want their presidents not just to represent them, but also to embody them somehow as a nation.

Would a Mormon be permitted to do that?

The precedents are not favourable. Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Latter-day Saints church, declared his presidential candidacy in 1844, at a time when his followers were a community of outcasts in Illinois. In July that year, he was shot dead by an anti-Mormon at the age of 38, before his campaign even got going. His successor, Brigham Young, fled west to Utah with the remaining Saints (including Miles Park Romney, Mitt Romney's great-great-grandfather).

They took with them Smith's prophecy that one day a Mormon would come to America's rescue.

Mormons would be "the staff upon which the nation shall lean", the prophet predicted, when the constitution "is on the brink of ruin". The next man to try to fulfil that prophecy was Mitt Romney's father, George, an automobile executive and a three-term Republican governor of Michigan who was born in a polygamous Mormon community in Mexico. He launched an ill-fated presidential campaign in 1967, but proved too gaffe-prone even to last until the official starting post, the New Hampshire primary.

In 2000, it was the turn of Orrin Hatch, a softly spoken Republican senator from Utah, but his campaign was quickly crushed under the Bush steamroller. Before Hatch's effort collapsed, a survey found that 17% of Americans would not vote for a Mormon president under any circumstances.

"One reason I ran was to knock down the prejudicial wall that exists," Hatch later told the Weekly Standard. "I wanted to make it easier for the next candidate of my faith."

That candidate is Romney, who insists that the diehard opposition to Mormonism accounts for only a few per cent of the electorate. That may be optimistic on his part. Elections, especially presidential elections, act like a giant magnifying glass on a candidate's weak points, and Romney's chief weakness will be Mormon history and dogma.

The press will want to know, for example, whether he wears the Mormon's secret and sacred undergarments beneath his politician's suit. There will be a fresh look at why the Latterday Saints' priesthood was closed to black people until 1978, and whether its principal text, the Book of Mormon, is inherently racist. Evangelical conservatives, the backbone of the Republican party, will quiz him on his faith.

Many deny that it is Christian at all. "The challenge to governor Romney would be the most serious in the Republican primaries," said John Green, an expert at the Pew Forum on Religion and Politics. "Many of the evangelicals take a dim view of the Latter-day Saints. The Southern Baptists regularly label the Mormons as a dangerous cult. So you could imagine his opponents might bring this up."

Although Christ is a central figure in Mormon beliefs, the church teaches that God has a material body, and was fathered by another God. Joseph Smith also said that man can ultimately ascend to heaven and become "what God is": divine. Yet despite - or perhaps because of - these fundamental differences from established Christian dogma, the church is a powerful and growing force. It claims 12 million adherents around the world, two-thirds of them in the US, where it is one of the fastest-growing religions.

That's a lot of potential campaign volunteers. The Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints is, after all, the only truly American mass religion. It places the Garden of Eden in Jackson County, Missouri, and claims Christ visited America after the resurrection to promise his second coming, also in Missouri. It is an entirely home-grown faith. Joseph Smith founded the religion in 1830 in upstate New York, telling his followers an angel had appeared to him and handed him the Book of Mormon in the form of gold tablets.

Smith gave the tablets back after translating them from the original "reformed Egyptian". According to the Book of Mormon, Israelites came to the American continent 600 years before Christ, but split into two feuding tribes, Nephites and Lamanites. The Nephites were "pure" (the word was "white" in Mormon scriptures until 1981) and led by a great man called Mormon. Lamanites were idol-worshipping and wicked, and therefore suffered the "curse of blackness" that turned their skins dark. The Lamanites eventually wiped out the Nephites, which is why Christopher Columbus found only brown-skinned native Americans when he arrived. All these Mormon tenets will come under unprecedented scrutiny in a presidential race, which will be an uncomfortable time for the apostles in Salt Lake City.

The difference between a cult and a religion may only be a couple of thousand years, but while the origins of mainstream Christian faiths have acquired the blurred patina of age, the Mormon scriptures are jarringly recent and, in many cases, patently wrong. DNA testing, for example, has shown that the first Americans arrived from Asia, not from the Middle East.

But no Mormon doctrine or practice has proved more troubling to the church than polygamy. The principle did not form part of Smith's original scriptures, but came to him as a revelation years later. He is said to have taken a second wife, a 16-year-old housemaid, in 1833 - and 30 more wives over the next decade, to the disgust of some of his disciples.

The legacy endured for nearly half a century after Smith's death, and the church only surrendered it as a compromise, in return for Utah statehood. Polygamy has dogged Mormonism ever since, and it will dog Mitt Romney's bid to become the Latter-day Saints' first president.

The fact is that polygamy makes lousy politics - for all the same reasons it will no doubt make great television.

    The march of the Mormons, G, 27.2.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1718609,00.html

More Than 1,000 Protest Cartoon Depiction of Prophet

February 18, 2006
The New York Times
By KAREEM FAHIM

More than 1,000 Muslims gathered yesterday for a rally and prayer session across the street from the Danish Consulate in Manhattan, protesting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that have set off a series of violent demonstrations around the world since their first publication in Denmark.

The rally, billed by the organizers as a stand against the vilification of Muslims, was considerably larger than another one this month, drawing South Asian, Arab, African-American and other Muslims to a plaza a block from the United Nations as the sun peeked out after a morning of rain.

In a program that lasted several hours, the speakers talked about the responsibility that comes with free speech and their reverence for the prophet to a peaceful crowd that included families with small children and student groups.

"We were tired of demonization," said Dr. Shaikh Ubaid, a spokesman for the Muslim Leadership Council, which organized the rally. "There is a rise of Islamophobia in Europe. More and more Americans think negatively about Islam." The depiction of the prophet as a terrorist mirrored insults that in the past were heaped on other immigrant populations here, including blacks, Jews and Native Americans, he said.

Today, he added, the insults against those groups are widely considered to be taboo.

Many protesters said the cartoons, first published in a newspaper in Denmark, had stirred up an old fear, that Muslims in the West remain strangers to their neighbors, even generations after arriving here.

But a number of attendees said they mainly viewed the cartoons as an indicator of the tensions facing the surging Muslim population in Europe, adding that American papers had largely shied away from publishing them.

In addition to being offensive, Muslims say, the cartoons are improper because they depict the Prophet Muhammad. One of the 12 cartoons printed by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten shows Muhammad wearing a turban in the shape of a bomb.

The cartoons have set off protests — including violent ones in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya, where several people were reported to have died yesterday — and a boycott of Danish goods. The protest yesterday was a stark contrast to others across the globe, which in some cases have culminated in clashes with the authorities.

A few police officers peered through binoculars down on the gathering, at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, while officers from the Police Department's community affairs unit mingled with protesters on the street.

After an opening round of speeches, Imam Siraj Wahhaj of Masjid At-Taqwa in Brooklyn delivered a sermon, speaking English peppered with lines in Arabic. The sight of so many people sitting on prayer mats, plastic sheets and cardboard boxes prompted him to remark that it had taken a controversy to bring so many Muslims together for a Friday prayer.

Of the cartoons, he said: "These are the boundaries of Allah. Don't go past them."

Magdy Eleish, a 56-year-old Queens resident, said he went to the protest because he "wanted to do something," adding that he hoped that the rally would inspire non-Muslims to read about the prophet. "Our feelings are hurt," he said. "If someone insults your father, don't you hurt?"

Wael Mousfar, president of the Arab Muslim American Federation, said the way to prevent future conflicts is by educating non-Muslims about the faith.

"Ignorance is the enemy," he said. The gathering had its provocateurs. A few men from a group called the Islamic Thinkers Society roamed around the plaza carrying signs, including one with photographs of President Bush and Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the Danish paper, with targets placed on their foreheads. Some of them gathered near Mr. Wahhaj as he spoke, prompting members of his private security detail to tell the men to lower their signs.

Toward the end of the program, four representatives of the Muslim groups traveled across the street to speak with the Danish consul general, Torben Gettermann, presenting him with a letter, books about Muhammad and Islamic culture and a Koran. "It was very fruitful," said Dr. Ubaid of the Muslim Leadership Council. "He is interested in building bridges."

Vikas Bajaj and Andrea Elliott contributed reporting for this article.

    More Than 1,000 Protest Cartoon Depiction of Prophet, NYT, 18.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/18/nyregion/18protest.html

At Religious Universities, Disputes Over Faith and Academic Freedom

February 18, 2006
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

A gay film festival opened at the University of Notre Dame last week with a sold-out showing of "Brokeback Mountain." On Valentine's Day, Notre Dame students staged a production of "The Vagina Monologues."

Though the events have been held for the past few years, it may have been their last time on campus. In speeches and interviews recently, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame's new president, has said that staging the events on campus implies an endorsement of values that conflict with Roman Catholicism.

The film festival had to change its name, and "The Vagina Monologues" was performed in a classroom, not a theater, by a group that was not allowed to sell tickets to raise money for women's groups as it once had.

"Precisely because academic freedom is such a sacred value, we must be clear about its appropriate limits," Father Jenkins said last month in a speech before faculty members and students. "I do not believe that freedom of expression has absolute priority in every circumstance."

The controversies at Notre Dame are the latest and most high profile among disputes at many other religiously affiliated universities about how to promote open inquiry and critical thinking while adhering to the tenets of a given faith. Tensions seem most acute at some Catholic and Baptist universities, in large part because student bodies and faculties have grown more diverse and secular over the years, some theologians and historians said.

For instance, The Catholic University of America in Washington and Providence College in Rhode Island, among others, have sent productions of "The Vagina Monologues" off campus, and four other Catholic colleges have canceled the performances. The Georgia Baptist Convention voted late last year to break with Mercer University in Macon, Ga., in part because the school permitted a gay rights group to operate on campus.

For many, the disputes at Notre Dame arise from different ideas about what it means to be Catholic. Those who oppose the events say they contradict the church's core teachings on human sexuality. Others contend that prohibiting events runs counter to a Catholic intellectual tradition of open-mindedness.

"The Catholic Church in many respects is a multicultural place," said Ed Manier, a professor of philosophy, a graduate of Notre Dame and a Catholic. "Practicing Catholics do not hold exactly the same beliefs about how the faith needs to be translated into the public sector, matters of law or even into issues as serious as moral development of children."

Founded largely by religious orders, Catholic universities were originally meant to educate Catholic immigrants and to train workers for Catholic institutions like hospitals and schools. The struggle to balance academic freedom and adherence to church teachings began in earnest after the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965, as many Catholic universities opened further to the secular world and sought to become top-tier schools by hiring more lay faculty members and broadening curriculums.

In 1967, a group of Catholic university presidents, led by the president of Notre Dame, the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, issued the Land-of-Lakes Statement, which said a university could not thrive without institutional autonomy and academic freedom, an idea still disputed by some Catholics.

"There was a real effort to beef up the academic respectability of universities," said Patrick J. Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a watchdog group. "Our view is that that went too far, and Catholic colleges strayed from Catholic teaching."

Notre Dame, in South Bend, Ind., has 12,000 students, about 85 percent of them Catholic. Compared with other prestigious Catholic universities like Georgetown University and Boston College, Notre Dame has the reputation of being largely more conservative on thorny social issues, including sexuality, students and faculty members said.

In the last three to four years, the university has received "scores of complaints" about the play and the film festival, said Dennis K. Brown, a spokesman. This year, the Queer Film Festival changed its name to Gay and Lesbian Film: Filmmakers, Narratives, Spectatorships. Mr. Brown said Father Jenkins did not call for the change. Liam Dacey, a recent graduate who founded the festival three years ago, said the university insisted because the old title was deemed celebratory of homosexuality.

The university prohibited "The Vagina Monologues" from fund-raising after it collected $15,000 last year for groups that fight violence against women. The university said the play was an academic event and, as such, was not allowed to raise money. The play's proponents said that the fund-raising was halted because anti-abortion activists complained that the groups involved had given money to support abortion.

Father Jenkins was traveling and answered questions by e-mail. Mr. Brown said the president hoped to articulate his plan for balancing the university's religious and academic missions by the end of the spring semester and that it would include a decision about the sponsorship of the play and the festival.

Father Jenkins has heard from critics on both sides. This month, Bishop John M. D'Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese, called for the university to cancel the play. A new group, United for Free Speech, is asking faculty members and students to sign a petition requesting that the university maintain its openness in sponsoring academic endeavors. It has 3,000 signatures, said Kaitlyn Redfield, 21, an organizer.

The central question is whether the school's sponsorship of the film festival and the play, and similar events, amounts to an endorsement of values at odds with Catholic teaching. Father Jenkins commended "The Vagina Monologues" for trying to reduce violence against women. But he objected to the work's "graphic descriptions" of various sexual experiences.

In his speech last month he said. "These portrayals stand apart from, and indeed in opposition to, the view that human sexuality finds its proper expression in the committed relationship of marriage between a man and a woman that is open to the gift of procreation."

Faculty members whose classes explore sexuality and gender worry that their work might be limited because of the subjects they broach, Professor Manier said. "Sponsorship isn't the same as endorsement," he added. "Sponsorship means an idea can be discussed and performance can be discussed."

Some students said that the understanding of academic freedom at a Catholic university should be different from that at a secular university. "We have our own measures of what's good and what's right," said Nicholas Matich, 22, the politics editor of The Irish Rover, a conservative student newspaper. " 'The Vagina Monologues' is performed everywhere else in the academic world. It doesn't mean Notre Dame should do it, too."

Catholic universities do not move in lockstep on controversial issues, and much depends on campus culture, said Michael J. James, executive vice president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. Of the 612 American colleges that are staging the play from Feb. 1 to March 8, 35 are Catholic universities, one more than last year, according to V-Day, an anti-violence organization affiliated with the play.

"There are people who say that the play has no place on a Catholic campus," the Rev. Kevin Wildes, president of Loyola University New Orleans, wrote last year in a statement sanctioning the play. "To exclude the play from a Catholic campus is to say either that these women are wrong or that their experience has nothing important to say to us. I would argue that these are voices that a Catholic university must listen to if we are to understand human experience and if we are to be faithful to the one who welcomed all men and women."

Catholic teachings seem to allow divergence on complicated issues like human sexuality. In the last decade, the number of gay and lesbian groups at colleges, including religious ones, has risen steadily, according to gay rights and academic groups. Notre Dame does not have an officially sanctioned group for gay and lesbian students. Many other Catholic institutions do, including 24 of the 28 members of the Association of Jesuit Universities and Colleges, an increase from a decade ago, said the Rev. Charles L. Currie, the association president.

Watching the controversy unfold at Notre Dame is Father Hesburgh, who, though long retired, retains a campus office. He said Father Jenkins's effort to define what Notre Dame stood for was important. But in an interview, Father Hesburgh also said a modern university had to face the crucial issues of the times.

"I think the real test of a great university," he said, "is that you are fair to the opposition and that you get their point of view out there. You engage them. You want to get students' minds working. You don't want mindless Catholics. You want intelligent, successful Catholics."

Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from South Bend, Ind., for this article.

    At Religious Universities, Disputes Over Faith and Academic Freedom, NYT, 18.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/18/national/18notredame.html

Megachurches growing in number and size

Posted 2/5/2006 8:03 AM
USA Today

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A new survey on U.S. Protestant megachurches shows they are among the nation's fastest-growing faith groups, drawing younger people and families with contemporary programming and conservative values.

The number of megachurches, defined as having a weekly attendance of at least 2,000, has doubled in five years to 1,210. The megachurches have an estimated combined income of $7.2 billion and draw nearly 4.4 million people to weekly services, according to "Megachurches Today 2005."

The study, released Friday, based its findings on 406 surveys from megachurches. It was written by Leadership Network, a non-profit church-growth consulting firm in Dallas, and the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, which did a similar survey in 2000.

Leadership Network's clients are large churches in the U.S. and Canada looking to grow or maintain growth with new ideas and methods. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research is part of the non-denominational Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.

"When you add up all that megachurches are doing from books to video to the networks of connection across the nation, you can't say this phenomena of more than 1,200 megachurches is anything but really one of the most influential factors of American religion at this point in time," said Scott Thumma, researcher for the study and sociology professor at Hartford Seminary.

The South has the most share with 49%, including Texas with 13%. California led the nation with 14% but is part of a declining western region with 25%, seven percentage points lower than five years ago.

While large churches have flourished throughout history, early records show that the U.S. had about six large churches in the early part of the 20th century. That number grew to 16 by 1960 and then in the 1970s, they began to proliferate and draw public attention.

Megachurches founded since 1990 have more growth from year to year than any others and have the highest median attendance at about 3,400.

Oak Hills Church in San Antonio draws up to 5,200 weekly. Visitors have a special parking lot, are greeted there and inside the church by volunteers and invited to sip coffee at its "Connection Cafe" where video and print materials are presented about church programs.

"The main thing we work really hard at is having a good program for every age group," said Jim Dye, executive minister at Oak Hills. "We want the affluent to feel welcome and the hardworking, labor person, living payday to payday, to feel as welcome as anyone else."

The growth of megachurches in recent decades has come about because of a common historic cycle in U.S. religion: faith institutions reinventing themselves to meet the consumerlike demands of worshippers, said Paul Harvey, American history professor at the University of Colorado who specializes in U.S. religious history.

"We have a market economy of religion," he said. "Megachurches just show the instant adaptability of religious institutions. They reflect how Americans have morphed their religious institutions into the way they want them to be. Religious institutions have to respond to that."

Well-stated goals for growth, including orientation classes for new members, and a slew of programming for many demographics were a pattern for megachurches in the study. They also commonly have contemporary worship services with electric guitars and drums and frequent use of overhead projectors during multiple services throughout the week.

Their emphasis on evangelism, propelled mostly by word of mouth from enthused members, has been a constant, said researcher Dave Travis with Leadership Network.

"These large churches have figured out how to address the needs of people in a relevant, engaging way that is actually making a difference in their lives," he said.

The study also provides information about the age of megachurches, specifically that one-third reported they were founded 60 years ago or more. It also countered the notion that they are all independent congregations: 66% report belonging to a denomination — although most downplay this aspect in their church names and programming.

Other findings:

• 56% of megachurches said they have tried to be more multiethnic and 19% of their attendance is not from the majority race of the congregation.

• The average yearly income of megachurches is $6 million, while they spend on average $5.6 million each year.

• The states with highest concentrations of megachurches are California (14 percent), Texas (13 percent), Florida (7 percent) and Georgia (6 percent).

• The average megachurch has 3,585 in attendance, a 57% increase compared to five years ago.

    Megachurches growing in number and size, UT, 5.2.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-05-mega-churches_x.htm

Evolution Measure Splits State Legislators in Utah

February 5, 2006
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 3 — Faith's domain is evident everywhere at the Utah Legislature, where about 90 percent of the elected officials are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prayers are commonplace, and lawmakers speak of their relationship with God in ordinary conversation.

So it might be tempting to assume that legislation relating to the divisive national debate about the teaching of evolution in public schools would have a predictable outcome here.

Senate Bill 96 is proving that assumption wrong. The bill, which would require science teachers to offer a disclaimer when introducing lessons on evolution — namely, that not all scientists agree on the origins of life — has deeply divided lawmakers. Some leaders in both parties have announced their opposition to the bill, and most lawmakers say that with less than a month left in the legislative session, its fate remains a tossup.

One of the reasons why is State Representative Stephen H. Urquhart, a Republican from southern Utah whose job as majority whip is to line up votes in his party. Mr. Urquhart announced last week that he would vote against the bill.

"I don't think God has an argument with science," said Mr. Urquhart, who was a biology major in college and now practices law.

Mr. Urquhart says he objects to the bill in part because it raises questions about the validity of evolution, and in part because the measure threatens traditional religious belief by blurring the lines between faith and science.

Supporters of the bill, which passed the Senate on a 16-to-12 vote one day before Mr. Urquhart's announcement, still predict that it will pass in the House. They say the bill is not about religion, but science. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., a Republican and former Mormon missionary, has not said what he will do if the bill reaches his desk.

"I don't have to talk about religion — it's of no meaning and it's not part of this discussion," said State Representative James A. Ferrin, a Republican and the sponsor of the bill in the House. "It's not about belief, it's about not overstepping what we know."

Opponents of the bill, including State Senator Peter C. Knudson, the Republican majority leader, openly laugh at talk like that.

"Of course it's about religion," Mr. Knudson said.

He and other lawmakers say that part of the debate here is in fact over what kind of religion would be buttressed by the legislation. Although the Origins of Life bill, as it is formally known, does not mention an alternative theory to evolution, some legislators say they think that voting yes could be tantamount to supporting intelligent design, which posits an undefined intelligence lurking behind the miracles of life and which differs greatly from the Mormon creation story.

"There are people who say, 'That's not my religion,' or that it will only confuse our children," said State Representative Brad King, a Democrat and the minority whip in the House, who also plans to vote against the bill. "For me, it's sort of that way," added Mr. King, whose father, a Mormon bishop, taught evolution at the College of Eastern Utah.

Others say that Mormonism, with its emphasis that all beings can progress toward higher planes of existence, before and after death, has an almost built-in receptivity toward evolutionary thought that other religions might lack. Still others oppose the state's inserting itself in matters of curriculum, which are mostly under the control of local school districts.

Advocacy groups who follow the battle over the teaching of evolution nationally say that what happens here could be important far beyond state borders.

"It's being watched very closely because of the very conservative nature of the state," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, based in Washington. "If the legislation is rejected in Utah, it would be a very strong signal that the issue should be avoided elsewhere."

Missouri's legislature is considering a bill requiring "critical analysis" in teaching evolution. An Indiana lawmaker has called evolution a type of religion and proposed a bill banning textbooks that contain "fraudulent information."

Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky, a Republican, pointed out in his State of the State address earlier this month that alternative explanations for the origins of species can already be taught in Kentucky schools. A spokesman for Mr. Fletcher said he was not advocating alternatives to evolution, but merely pointing out the options.

The Utah bill's main sponsor, State Senator D. Chris Buttars, a Republican from the Salt Lake City suburbs, said he was not surprised by the debate it had inspired. He said ordinary voters were deeply concerned about the teaching of evolution.

"I got tired of people calling me and saying, 'Why is my kid coming home from high school and saying his biology teacher told him he evolved from a chimpanzee?' " Mr. Buttars said.

Evolutionary theory does not say that humans evolved from chimpanzees or from any existing species, but rather that common ancestors gave rise to multiple species and that natural selection — in which the creatures best adapted to an environment pass their genes to the next generation — was the means by which divergence occurred over time. All modern biology is based on the theory, and within the scientific community, at least, there is no controversy about it.

Even so, one important supporter of the bill, State Representative Margaret Dayton, a Republican and chairwoman of the House Education Committee, said her convictions had been underlined in recent days. "A number of scientists have been in touch with me, and I can verify that not all scientists agree," Ms. Dayton said.

Utah's predominant faith has also made its stance less predictable on other issues touching on religion in school — notably school prayer. Enthusiasm for the idea has been muted or ambivalent, said Kirk Jowers, a professor of political science and director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah. Professor Jowers pointed to the awareness among Mormons of their religion's minority status in the nation and world.

"It was kind of a realization that if you push to have prayer in school, then outside of Utah, the prayer would not typically be a Mormon's prayer, so is that road you want go down?" Professor Jowers said.

Katie Kelley contributed reporting from Denver for this article.

    Evolution Measure Splits State Legislators in Utah, NYT, 5.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/national/05evolution.html

On Long Island, Catholic Church's Shift Draws Critics

February 5, 2006
The New York Times
By PAUL VITELLO

Among American Catholics raised in the years after the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, church teaching has usually mixed orthodoxy with contemporary notions about the value of dialogue, self-exploration and the full-fledged participation of women in society. Whether by coincidence or not, theirs has been the generation of Catholics that produced the first widespread alarm about the sexual abuse of children by priests, a problem said by some to date back many generations.

But a reorganization of the doctrinal teaching system within the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island, which was announced last week, has raised concerns among some Roman Catholics. They believe it augurs a shift to pre-Vatican II conservatism, a diminished role for women in the church and a new authoritarian stamp on the way 1.4 million church members on Long Island learn what it means to be Catholic and interact with their church.

The announcement offered few details, but the broad sweep of the personnel changes made clear that the reorganization would affect the way children learn the catechism, the way church members are counseled regarding marriage and bereavement, the standards by which doctrinal textbooks are selected and the specific terms and conditions by which people may be included in the Catholic communion.

Church officials said the restructuring was intended only to "re-ground" the faithful in the basic tenets of the church as attendance and financial support have declined, a change most church officials link not to the abuse scandal but to a drift away from orthodoxy. Bishop William F. Murphy, writing in the diocesan newspaper on Wednesday, said the reorganization reflected an "assessment of our strengths and weaknesses," but stressed that it "would not mean a major change in the content of what we offer, which is the teaching of the Church."

Critics, however, claimed that the reorganization was carried out after little consultation with the current diocesan administrators of doctrinal teaching, and that the changes will most affect two departments — the Office of Catechesis and the Office of Laity and Family — whose staffs are almost entirely female. The diocese's plan calls for the layoff of all 22 full-time staffers in those offices. All but three of them are women — either lay professionals, members of religious orders or secretaries and office managers, according to Phyllis Zagano, a senior research associate in the religion department at Hofstra University who specializes in the study of women in the Catholic church.

The departments' mission was the training of the several thousand volunteers who serve in the 134 parishes of the diocese, teaching and counseling children and adults in various situations — a function that, as a result of the shortage of priests in recent decades, has become increasingly important, church observers say.

"What this looks like to me, from the outside, is that Bishop Murphy is not comfortable with women having a role in the teaching of church doctrine," Ms. Zagano said.

Sean P. Dolan, a spokesman for the diocese, said that while the number of women in the offices was large, it was premature to assume that women would not be fairly represented in the new system, a combined agency into which the departments would be folded, along with an adult education academy known as the Pastoral Formation Institute. The agency will be elevated to a status within the bishop's inner cabinet, a status none of the predecessor agencies had.

"There is no prejudice involved here whatsoever," Mr. Dolan said. The workers let go could to apply for jobs in the new office, he added.

In a blunter version of Bishop Murphy's reference to the diocese's "strengths and weaknesses," Mr. Dolan said in a telephone interview, "We have about 20,000 baptisms and about 20,000 marriages every year in this diocese, and the question we have to face is, why only a fraction of those people are going to church."

Timothy Kunz, a lay director of religious formation at St. Peter of Alcantara Church in Port Washington, said he viewed the restructuring as "a paradigm shift toward the absolute" and away from "diversity and dialogue among church leaders within the diocese."

"Bishop Murphy tends to make decisions with very limited consultation," said Mr. Kunz, who is an employee of the diocese but had not heard about the changes until about a week ago.

Bishop Murphy said in his column this week, however, that the process of re-evaluation that led to the changes involved "an almost year-long process that sought input from over 600 persons."

Like other critics, Mr. Kunz said the changes seemed to reflect a growing impatience among church leaders with a generation raised on a collaborative and humanistic approach to church teaching favored after the Second Vatican Council.

It was hard to tell how Bishop Murphy's initiative jibed with the policies of other American bishops, or to what extent it indicated a general trend. Bill Ryan, a spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said each bishop was responsible for his own diocese, and "must decide for himself how best to serve his flock."

But Bishop Murphy has been closely allied with a conservative group of bishops, including the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas J. Olmsted, who has banned politicians who are pro-choice or support gay rights from his churches and reinstated the Latin Mass in some parishes. Bishop Olmsted was invited to address an assembly of religious and lay leaders at the Rockville Centre diocese headquarters last October.

Mr. Dolan, the diocesan spokesman, said however that Bishop Murphy's changes of the doctrinal teaching administration had been made solely in reaction to his own mission to teach and spread the faith among a flock that is growing on Long Island mainly among Hispanic and Korean immigrants.

"Why doesn't the current generation have the grounding in the faith that previous generations had?" Mr. Dolan asked. "We have to address that."

Parishioners interviewed Friday outside the diocese's flagship church, St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, said they were unaware of the planned changes and seemed unaware of the diocese's notion that they were less well-grounded in church teaching than earlier generations. Sister Carolann Masone said she hoped that the changes, whatever they were, would refocus the church on its mission of helping the poor.

Dan Bartley, a chairman of the Long Island chapter of the Voice of the Faithful, a national group formed in response to the priest abuse scandal, said the announcement this week had sent a shock wave through the community of liberals and activists in the diocese. "What I see here is a bishop who intends to encourage a 'pay, pray and obey' type of Catholic faith. This is definitely a step backward."

Mr. Dolan said the bishop was aware that some would be unhappy with the new order, but said "change is always harder on some than on others."

Peter C. Beller contributed reporting for this article.

    On Long Island, Catholic Church's Shift Draws Critics, NYT, 5.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/nyregion/05church.html

Fires Destroy 3 Churches and Damage 2 in Alabama

February 4, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM NOLES and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Feb. 3 — Suspicious fires destroyed three small churches and damaged two others in central Alabama early Friday, officials said.

All five fires, which investigators said broke out between midnight and 3 a.m., were in rural Bibb County. There were no injuries.

The state fire marshal, Richard Montgomery, said three of the fires were definitely arsons, based on evidence at the scenes. The other two remained "extremely suspicious," he added.

Federal officials said they were looking into whether the fires were hate crimes.

"We're looking to make sure this is not a hate crime and that we do everything that we need to do," said Charles E. Regan, an assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I. office here.

Unlike the origins of a rash of church fires in central Alabama in the mid-1990's, race does not appear to be a factor, officials said. One church, Pleasant Sabine, is predominantly black. The congregations at the other Bibb County churches are white.

In neighboring Chilton County, fire damaged a former sanctuary for a church in Fairview on Thursday afternoon, said Ragan Ingram, assistant commissioner at the State Insurance Department. The department includes the state fire marshal's office.

Though that fire is under investigation, it is not considered suspicious and it is not clear that it has anything to do with the other fires, Mr. Ingram said.

The Bibb County fires, he said, were being considered "highly suspicious because of their proximity and similar time frames."

Four churches, Ashby and Rehobeth, both destroyed, and Antioch and Old Union, moderately damaged, were affiliates of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pleasant Sabine was a Missionary Baptist church.

News of the fires spread quickly early Friday morning, just minutes after the calls went out from the county dispatcher to firefighters and emergency responders. Members of the churches arrived to help fight the blazes. Other people drove to their own churches to stand guard.

Jimmy Jones, a retired elementary school principal who lives in Six Mile, about 10 miles from Centreville, said his son called him about the fires around 4 a.m. They drove to Mr. Jones's church, Six Mile Baptist, five or six miles from Ashby Baptist.

In the flurry of calls between deacons and neighbors, a rumor began that a black Nissan Pathfinder sport-utility vehicle had been seen at Ashby Baptist not long after the fire started. While Mr. Jones was waiting at his church in the early morning, he said, an S.U.V. that looked like a Pathfinder pulled into the driveway, stopped and returned to the highway.

"I followed him for a ways through the woods," Mr. Jones said. "For about three, four, five miles out by another little Baptist church."

After trailing the S.U.V. to a particularly empty stretch of highway where cellphone reception is spotty at best, Mr. Jones turned around and returned to the Six Mile church.

He said church members were planning to take turns guarding the church on Friday night. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is investigating the fires, along with state and local authorities.

Bibb County is a rural, heavily wooded county of little more than 20,000 residents. It is a far cry from neighboring Shelby County, which has become a fast-growing suburb of Birmingham, and Tuscaloosa County, home of the University of Alabama. The county is crisscrossed by narrow highways and dotted with small Baptist churches, with congregations that often number in the low double digits. Many of the churches date from the 19th century.

The Pleasant Sabine building, just across a cemetery from Antioch Baptist, dated from the late 1800's, members said.

Although the Ashby Baptist congregation is 149 years old, the building that was burned dates from 1919, the pastor, Jim Parker, said.

The Old Union Baptist building, which was damaged, dates from 1886 and some residents said that the Rehobeth Baptist building, known by a neon sign on the roof that said "God is Love," was the oldest.

The fires occurred in a sparsely populated area south of Brierfield and west of the city of Centreville.

Residents speculating on motives were quick to mention crystal meth, which they say has become something of an epidemic in recent years. With miles of remote roads and acres of backwoods, the county is a natural place for crystal meth operations to flourish.

Mr. Parker, who has been pastor of Ashby Baptist for two years, said the fire was started near the pulpit, apparently in some silk flowers that were decorations for the sanctuary.

Wendy Argo, a children's minister at Old Union, said two church deacons who went to stop the fire found two flower pots and an American flag ablaze at the altar.

Mr. Ingram of the Insurance Department said the way the fires started remained undetermined.

As for this Sunday, the congregations that lost their churches are making do. The Alabama Baptist Board of Missions has offered mobile chapels and financial aid to some of the congregations.

Nearby, Shady Grove Baptist Church is opening its doors two hours early for the Ashby congregation to have its services.

"The Lord's been really good to us and allowed us to do some really good work here," Mr. Parker said. "Whoever did this was not in their right mind."

Jim Noles reported from Birmingham, Ala., for this article, and Campbell Robertson from New York.

    Fires Destroy 3 Churches and Damage 2 in Alabama, NYT, 4.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/national/04churches.html

Rare Kind of Scandal Accord in Spokane Diocese

February 2, 2006
The New York Times
By SARAH KERSHAW

SEATTLE, Feb. 1 — The Roman Catholic Diocese of Spokane, Wash., one of three in the country to have filed for bankruptcy in the aftermath of the sexual abuse scandals, agreed Wednesday to pay nearly $46 million to settle claims by 75 people who allege abuse by priests, lawyers involved in drawing up the settlement said.

If approved by a bankruptcy court and the plaintiffs, the agreement will provide one of the largest payouts per victim of any of the settlements reached across the nation since the church encountered crisis in 2002 with disclosure of abuse in the Boston Archdiocese.

But victims' advocacy groups and lawyers familiar with the agreement's details said it was also significant because it included rare nonfinancial concessions by Bishop William S. Skylstad.

Among those concessions is an agreement by the diocese to stop referring to "alleged victims" of priests' abuse rather than simply "victims," said Tim Kosnoff, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers. The victims, Mr. Kosnoff said, are to be allowed to return to the parishes where they came into contact with their molesters and possibly face them, a provision that victims' groups said appeared to be a first. They will also be permitted to write about their experiences in the diocesan newspaper, with a full page devoted to that purpose each month for the next three years.

Further, Mr. Kosnoff said, the bishop will lobby state lawmakers to abolish statutes of limitations on child sex crimes and will go to every parish where any plaintiff was abused, tell the parishioners that an abusive priest had ministered there and encourage them to report any suspicions of abuse.

Diocesan officials did not return telephone calls seeking comment Wednesday. But at a televised news conference, Bishop Skylstad, who is also president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, "To those of you who say this settlement will be a burden, I would say that this scandal is a burden we can no longer afford not to resolve."

The bishop apologized to the victims in his 82-parish diocese "for the terrible wrongs inflicted on you in the past."

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, based in Chicago, said the nonfinancial "prevention and healing reforms are unusual and encouraging."

Mr. Clohessy, who was in Spokane on Wednesday and said he had read most of the settlement's details, added, "It's very tough to get bishops to agree to much of anything else, to say, 'Look, you were hurt,' " rather than " 'You've got us over a barrel, here's some money, go away.' "'

In addition to the Spokane Diocese, which sought bankruptcy protection in 2004, the Archdiocese of Portland, Ore., and the Diocese of Tucson, Ariz., have also filed for bankruptcy in the face of costly sexual abuse claims.

In the Portland and Spokane cases, judges have ruled that all parish and church buildings are legal assets, after the dioceses argued that other than the chancelleries and other main buildings, they did not technically own those properties.

Those rulings were important, Mr. Clohessy said, because they vastly increased the assets considered available for payments to plaintiffs seeking compensation for sexual abuse.

A federal judge in Portland ruled last month that trials involving as many as 100 plaintiffs there could move forward. The Tucson Diocese reached a $22.2 million settlement last summer.

    Rare Kind of Scandal Accord in Spokane Diocese, NYT, 2.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/national/02priests.html

Evangelical Filmmakers Criticized for Hiring Gay Actor

February 2, 2006
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — Christian ministers were enthusiastic at the early private screenings of "End of the Spear," made by Every Tribe Entertainment, an evangelical film company. But days before the film's premiere, a controversy erupted over the casting of a gay actor that has all but eclipsed the movie and revealed fault lines among evangelicals.

The film relates the true story of five American missionaries who were killed in 1956 by an indigenous tribe in Ecuador. The missionaries' families ultimately converted the tribe to Christianity, and forgave and befriended the killers. The tale inspired evangelicals 40 years ago with its message of redemption and grace, and the film company expected a similar reception.

On Jan. 12, though, the Rev. Jason Janz took the filmmakers to task for casting Chad Allen, an openly gay man and an activist, in the movie's lead role as one of the slain missionaries, and later, his grown son.

An assistant pastor at the independent Red Rocks Baptist Church in Denver, Mr. Janz posted his comments on his fundamentalist Christian Web site, sharperiron.org. He also asked the filmmakers to apologize for their choice.

The executives at Every Tribe stood by Mr. Allen. Jim Hanon, the director, said he was by far the best actor for the role. "If we make films according to what the Bible says is true, it's incumbent upon us to live that," he said. "We disagree with Chad about homosexuality, but we love him and worked with him, and we feel that's a Biblical position."

More than 100 pastors of churches across the country signed a letter drafted by Mr. Janz and addressed to Every Tribe expressing their disappointment in the casting of Mr. Allen.

Some evangelicals have boycotted the film, and Every Tribe's executives said that they had also turned over to the authorities material that they considered threatening.

"Does anyone really believe that Chad Allen was the best possible actor for Nate Saint?" Mr. Janz asked in his Jan. 12 Web log entry, referring to one of the characters in the movie. "That would be like Madonna playing the Virgin Mary."

After discussions with executives at Every Tribe, Mr. Janz wrote in an e-mail message that he had recently corrected a few assertions in his original posting and sent the corrections to his audience and members.

But Mr. Janz, who said he rarely weighed in on the culture wars, stood by his previous statement that "we must realize that the Christian message and the messenger are intricately related."

He wrote that Mr. Allen's homosexuality was not so much the problem as was his open activism for gay causes, and that if a drunk who "promoted drunkenness" had acted in the movie, "I'd be just as mad."

One Web log, nossobrii.blogspot .com, written by Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Seminary in Minneapolis, stated in a Jan. 13 entry: "Granted, we must not overreact. And it would probably be an overreaction to firebomb these men's houses. But what they have done is no mistake. It is a calculated strategy."

Greg Clifford, chief operating officer of Every Tribe, said the company, based in Oklahoma, had alerted the F.B.I. there about the Web log. The F.B.I. did not return phone calls yesterday about the matter.

Mr. Janz said he had not been contacted by the F.B.I., and Mr. Bauder could not be reached for comment.

Many evangelicals are concerned that young people inspired by the movie will look up Mr. Allen on the Web and "get exposed to his views on homosexuality, and that would cause some of them to question Biblical views of homosexuality and every other sin," said Will Hall, executive director of BPNews.net, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has published articles critical of Every Tribe's decisions.

Other evangelicals said they felt that the message of the film should override such considerations.

Bob Waliszewski, head of the media review department at Focus on the Family, said that he was saddened by e-mail messages from angry Christians who said they would not see the movie.

A generation of young people were inspired to become missionaries by the true story, and Mr. Waliszewski said he had hoped a new generation would be moved by "End of the Spear."

"Has Focus on the Family made a strong statement against homosexuality? Absolutely," he said. "But what is the message of the product? And do we at Focus feel compelled to check on the sexual history of everyone in a movie? Did they have a D.U.I.? Did they pay their taxes?"

Mr. Hanon echoed: "If we start measuring the sin of everyone in a movie, we would never be able to make a picture because none of us would be left."

Mr. Allen, 31, who assists troubled young gay men and lesbians and speaks on behalf of same-sex marriage, said the response stemmed from fear that he could influence young people to become gay, a notion he dismissed.

Every Tribe, he said, did not see him as a threat. "When they offered me the part, my first thought was, Do they know who they're talking to?" he said in a phone interview.

He said that Mr. Hanon had told him there would be people on both sides who would be unhappy with the decision but suggested that they talk through the matter and show that they could respect one another's differences and work together.

Mr. Allen said: "When he said that, my hair stood on end, and I got up, and said: 'Absolutely! Yes!' "

    Evangelical Filmmakers Criticized for Hiring Gay Actor, NYT, 2.2.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/national/02spear.html?hp&ex=1138942800&en=656f7613d09368cf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Democrats in 2 Southern States Push Bills on Bible Study

January 27, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — Democrats in Georgia and Alabama, borrowing an idea usually advanced by conservative Republicans, are promoting Bible classes in the public schools. Their Republican opponents are in turn denouncing them as "pharisees," a favorite term of liberals for politicians who exploit religion.

Democrats in both states have introduced bills authorizing school districts to teach courses modeled after a new textbook, "The Bible and Its Influence." It was produced by the nonpartisan, ecumenical Bible Literacy Project and provides an assessment of the Bible's impact on history, literature and art that is academic and detached, if largely laudatory.

The Democrats who introduced the bills said they hoped to compete with Republicans for conservative Christian voters. "Rather than sitting back on our heels and then being knocked in our face, we are going to respond in a thoughtful way," said Kasim Reed, a Georgia state senator from Atlanta and one of the sponsors of the bill. "We are not going to give away the South anymore because we are unwilling to talk about our faith."

In Georgia, the proposal marked a new course for the Democratic Party. The state's Democrats, including some sponsors of the bill, opposed a Republican proposal a few years ago to authorize the teaching of a different Bible course, which used a translation of the Scriptures as its text, calling it an inappropriate endorsement of religion. The sponsors say they are introducing their Bible measure now partly to pre-empt a potential Republican proposal seeking to display the Ten Commandments in schools.

In Alabama, a deeply religious state where Democrats support prayer in the schools and a Democratic candidate for governor recently introduced her campaign with the hymn "Give Me That Old Time Religion," the Bible class bills reflect Democrats' efforts to distance themselves from the national party.

"We have always had to somewhat defend ourselves from the national Democratic Party's secular image, and this is part of that," said Ken Guin, a representative from Carbon Hill, leader of the Democratic majority in the State House and a sponsor of the measure.

Democrats in other states are moving in the same direction, jumping into a conversation about religion and values that some party leaders began after the 2004 election, when President Bush and the Republicans rode those themes to victory.

In Indiana, Democratic legislators are among the leaders of a bipartisan effort to preserve the recitation of specifically Christian prayers in the Statehouse. In Virginia, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine relied heavily on religious themes and advertised on evangelical radio stations to win election last fall; Democratic Party leaders have called his campaign a national model.

In an interview, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, promised that Democrats would do a better job talking about values to religious voters. "We have done it in a secular way, and we don't have to," he said, adding, "I think teaching the Bible as literature is a good thing."

Christian conservatives, however, say they have been pushing public schools to offer courses on the Bible for decades, and Republicans in both Alabama and Georgia say some schools already offer such electives.

"Their proposal makes them modern-day pharisees," State Senator Eric Johnson of Georgia, the Republican leader from Savannah, said in a statement. "This is election-year pandering using voters' deepest beliefs as a tool."

Saying he found "a little irony" in the fact that the Democratic sponsors had voted against a Republican proposal for a Bible course six years ago, Mr. Johnson added, "It should also be noted that the so-called Bible bill doesn't use the Bible as the textbook, and would allow teachers with no belief at all in the Bible to teach the course."

Betty Peters, a Republican on the Alabama school board who opposed the initiative in that state, also dismissed the initiative as "pandering." Democrats, she argued, had adopted a new strategy: "Let's just wrap ourselves in Jesus."

For the last dozen years, most efforts to promote teaching the Bible in public schools have come from the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, a conservative Christian group based in Greensboro, N.C., that advocates using the Bible as the primary textbook. The group says about 320 school districts in 37 states offer its curriculum.

But its curriculum often draws attacks from civil liberties groups. Democratic sponsors of the Bible class bills say their efforts would help shield local school districts from First Amendment lawsuits, in part by recommending a more neutral approach.

The textbook they endorse was the brainchild of Chuck Stetson, a New York investment manager and theologically conservative Episcopalian who says he was concerned about public ignorance of the Bible.

Mr. Stetson helped produce "The Bible and Its Influence" as the centerpiece of a course that seeks to teach about the Bible and its legacy without endorsing or offending any specific faith.

The textbook came to the attention of Democratic legislators in Alabama and Georgia through the advocacy of R. Randolph Brinson, a Republican and founder of the evangelical voter-registration group Redeem the Vote.

Mr. Brinson, who said he was working with legislators in other states as well, described his pitch to Democrats as, "Introducing this bill will show the evangelical world that they are not hostile to faith."

Some liberals are unhappy, however. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argued that "The Bible and Its Influence" was "problematic" because it omitted "the bad and the ugly uses of the Bible," like the invocation of Scripture to justify racial segregation.

Conservative Christian groups have been skeptical, too. "This appears to be a calculated effort by the Democrats to try to out-conservative the conservatives," said Stephen M. Crampton, a lawyer for the American Family Association, a conservative Christian group that supports the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools.

"To mention any curriculum by name is suggestive of some back-room deal cut with the publishers," Mr. Crampton said.

For his part, Mr. Stetson, founder of the group that produced the textbook, said a political fight was not what he wanted. "We are the first English-speaking generation to have lost the biblical story," he said, lamenting that studying the Bible had become "a political football."

    Democrats in 2 Southern States Push Bills on Bible Study, NYT, 27.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/politics/27religion.html

Church: Hinckley in hospital for 'routine' procedure

Posted 1/24/2006 7:29 PM
USA Today

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Gordon Hinckley, the 95-year-old president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was hospitalized Tuesday for what church officials described as a routine procedure.

Hinckley, president of the 12 million-member Mormon church since 1995, was at an undisclosed hospital Tuesday afternoon, church spokeswoman Kim Farah said.

No other details, including which hospital and the nature of the medical procedure, were immediately available.

Hinckley, a third-generation Mormon, has worked for the church for 70 years. He is its most-traveled president, and remains active in church affairs despite his age. In December, he attended a 200th anniversary celebration in Vermont marking the birth of church founder Joseph Smith.

Presidents of the Mormon church serve for life.

Mormonism is one of the world's fastest-growing religions. The church has doubled in size every 14 or 15 years since 1950.

The architect of the church's vast public relations network, Hinckley has long worked to burnish the faith's image as a world religion far removed from its peculiar and polygamous roots.

In 2004 President Bush awarded Hinckley the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., in a ceremony at the White House.

    Church: Hinckley in hospital for 'routine' procedure, UT, 24.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-24-mormon-leader_x.htm

Black gay rights group turns to clergy

Posted 1/21/2006 2:56 PM Updated 1/21/2006 7:04 PM
USA Today

ATLANTA (AP) — Churches have an obligation to help end the "poisoned atmosphere" surrounding the acceptance of homosexuals, the Rev. Al Sharpton said at a weekend summit organized by a national black gay rights group.

The Rev. Al Sharpton calls on churches to end the "poisoned atmosphere" of homophobia.
Gene Blythe, AP

The group invited religious leaders to brainstorm ways to get their message of tolerance across to church leaders, who are some of the most influential figures in black communities. Several portrayed it as a civil rights issue.

"Our dialogue is the possibility of being acknowledged, loved and accepted. It can happen," said Donna Payne, vice president of the National Black Justice Coalition, composed of black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists.

Sharpton, a former Democratic presidential candidate who headlined Friday's start to the summit, said black church leaders need to acknowledge that homophobia affects everyone's civil rights.

"You cannot talk about civil rights and limit who's included in the civil movement," Sharpton told about 150 people at First Iconium Baptist Church.

He said it is every church's obligation to help end the "poisoned atmosphere" of acceptance of homosexuals. "The church should have a front seat in the car leading toward dialogue, leading toward tolerance," he said.

In 2004, a predominantly black Atlanta-area church where Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter Bernice serves as an elder held a march calling for a national ban on gay marriage. The march's organizer, Bishop Eddie Long, said his followers "did not come in a march of hatred," but the event did not sit well with gay rights groups.

King's widow, Coretta Scott King, has called gay marriage a civil rights issue and denounced proposed amendments to ban it.

"History has shown that every time a church has gone on the side of exclusion, they have been wrong," said Pat Hussein, an activist and summit participant. "Hopefully there can be things made right."

The Rev. Kenneth Samuel, pastor of Victory Baptist Church in the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain, received a standing ovation when he called for equality for all people and an end to hate crimes targeting homosexuals.

"These are heart-wrenching issues," Samuel said. "Anytime we talk to people about identity or sense of values, we have to address them with passion and intellect along with their spirituality."

    Black gay rights group turns to clergy, UT, 21.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-21-gay-rights-group-clergy_x.htm

Television Cul-de-Sac Mystery: Why Was Reality Show Killed?

January 21, 2006
By JACQUES STEINBERG
The New York Times

AUSTIN, Tex. - A year ago, Stephen Wright and his partner, John Wright, embarked on a sociology experiment that only a reality show producer could concoct: theirs was one of seven families competing to persuade the residents of a cul-de-sac here to award them a red-brick McMansion purchased on their behalf by the ABC television network.

The unscripted series, "Welcome to the Neighborhood," was heavily promoted and scheduled to appear in a summer time slot usually occupied by "Desperate Housewives." Stephen Wright, 51, who was already living in a nice house a few miles away with his partner and adopted son, said he participated primarily for one reason: to show tens of millions of prime-time viewers that a real gay family might, over the course of six episodes, charm a neighborhood whose residents overwhelmingly identified themselves as white, Christian and Republican.

As it turned out, the Wrights did win - beating families cast, at least partly, for being African-American, Hispanic, Korean, tattooed or even Wiccan - but outside of a few hundred neighbors (who attended private screenings last summer) and a handful of journalists, almost no one has been able to see them do so.

Ten days before the first episode was to be shown, ABC executives canceled "Welcome to the Neighborhood," saying that they were concerned that viewers who might have been appalled at some early statements made in the show - including homophobic barbs - might not hang in for the sixth episode, when several of those same neighbors pronounced themselves newly open-minded about gays and other groups.

ABC acted amid protests by the National Fair Housing Alliance, which had expressed concern about a competition in which race, religion and sexual orientation were discussed as factors in the awarding of a house. But two producers of the show, speaking publicly about the cancellation for the first time, say the network was confident it had the legal standing to give away a house as a game-show prize. One, Bill Kennedy, a co-executive producer who helped develop the series with his son, Eric, suggested an alternative explanation. He said that the protests might have been most significant as a diversion that allowed the Walt Disney Company, ABC's owner, to pre-empt a show that could have interfered with a much bigger enterprise: the courting of evangelical Christian audiences for "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Disney hoped that the film, widely viewed as a parable of the Resurrection, would be the first in a profitable movie franchise.

In the months and weeks before "Welcome to the Neighborhood" was to have its premiere, as Disney sought to build church support for "Narnia," four religious groups lifted longtime boycotts of the company that had been largely prompted by Disney's tolerance of periodic gatherings by gay tourists at its theme parks. Representatives for two of those groups now say that broadcasting "Neighborhood" could have complicated their support for "Narnia." One, the Southern Baptist Convention, with more than 16 million members, lifted the last of the boycotts against Disney on June 22, a week before ABC announced it was pulling the series.

When asked to respond to Mr. Kennedy's contention about "Narnia," Kevin Brockman, an ABC spokesman, said, "That's so ludicrous, it doesn't even merit a response." But Mr. Kennedy said he found ABC's stated reasons for canceling the series unconvincing. Although he acknowledged that he had "no smoking gun" to prove the link between "Narnia" and the fate of "Welcome to the Neighborhood," "I don't believe in coincidences," he said.

"Narnia," a joint venture with Walden Media, has gone on to earn almost $600 million since its release last month, on an investment of more than $150 million. "Neighborhood," by contrast, cost an estimated $10 million.

Now, nearly a year after production on "Neighborhood" concluded - and four months after the Wrights moved into the house - the couple, their new neighbors, Mr. Kennedy and another of the show's producers say they remain bewildered by the abrupt turn in the show's fortunes, including the statement by the network, which owns the rights to the series, that it has no plans either to broadcast it or allow it to be sold to another outlet.

The producers say that it is worth noting that a show that exists mainly to dispel people's tendencies to prejudge strangers was itself a victim of prejudgments. They also note that in a universe of failed reality-show relationships, this experiment has actually succeeded, yet only out of public view.

Since September, when the Wrights moved into their four-bedroom home in the Circle C Ranch development in southwest Austin, they have had standing Friday-night dinners with one neighborhood family (the Stewarts) and Sunday-night dinners with another (the Bellamys), whose twin teenage daughters are now their son's regular baby sitters.

Meanwhile, the neighbor who was the Wrights' earliest on-camera antagonist - Jim Stewart, 53, who is heard in an early episode saying, "I would not tolerate a homosexual couple moving into this neighborhood" - has confided to the producers that the series changed him far more than even they were aware.

No one involved in the show, Mr. Stewart said, knew he had a 25-year-old gay son. Only after participating in the series, Mr. Stewart said, was he able to broach his son's sexuality with him for the first time.

"I'd say to ABC, 'Start showing this right now,' " Mr. Stewart said in an interview at his oak kitchen table. "It has a message that needs to be heard by everyone." (Mr. Stewart first discussed his son publicly with The Austin American-Statesman.)

While other ABC shows have gay characters - including the new comedy "Crumbs" - "Neighborhood" features a real gay couple and their prospective neighbors in a continuing dialogue about homosexuality, including interpretations of the Bible.

In a recent interview, Richard Land, an official with the Southern Baptist Convention involved in the negotiations with Disney last year to end the group's boycott of the company, said he did not recall any mention of "Neighborhood." He added, however, that had the show been broadcast - particularly with an ending that showed Christians literally embracing their gay neighbors - it could have scuttled the Southern Baptists' support for "Narnia."

"I would have considered it a retrograde step," Mr. Land said of the network's plans to broadcast the reality series. "Aside from any moral considerations, it would have been a pretty stupid marketing move."

Paul McCusker, a vice president of Focus on the Family, which had supported the Southern Baptist boycott and reaches millions of evangelical listeners through the daily radio broadcasts of Dr. James Dobson, expressed similar views.

"It would have been a huge misstep for Disney to aggressively do things that would disenfranchise the very people they wanted to go see 'Narnia,' " he said.

Asked whether Disney's plans for "Narnia" had affected "Neighborhood," Mr. Brockman of ABC referred a reporter to comments made on July 26 by Stephen McPherson, the president of ABC Entertainment, to a gathering of television critics. At that time it was not widely known that a gay couple had won the competition. Instead, Mr. McPherson, a champion of the show until its sudden cancellation, was asked if he had been influenced by criticism by civil rights groups.

"If I stopped airing things just because advocacy groups had issues with it, we would run a test pattern," Mr. McPherson said. Rather, he said, he had begun to worry that some of the neighbors' most intolerant statements early on could confuse the audience's understanding of "the message you were trying to get across."

Hank Cohen, a former president of MGM Television Entertainment, a partner with ABC in "Neighborhood," said no one at the network had given him a direct answer as to what had transpired behind the scenes, and "the lack of any single coherent reason cited by them opens them up to all kinds of conjecture."

The full series, a copy of which was given to The New York Times by an advocate, is often raw, as contestants and judges speak openly about their preconceptions, only to observe in amazement as some of their ideas - though by no means all - melt away. Much of the give-and-take occurs in the series's version of the tribal council on "Survivor," as the three couples charged with giving away the house (bought by ABC for more than $300,000) meet to eliminate one family each episode.

Still, the neighbors' attitudes toward homosexuality constitute the dominant theme. That the tide may be shifting is telegraphed in an all-male scene in a hot tub, of all places, when one neighbor, John Bellamy, observes that Mr. Stewart appears to be softening his views toward gays. "I love you for that," Mr. Bellamy says, before cautioning, "Not in a weird kind of hot-tub love, with no chicks in the hot tub."

For Stephen Wright, who was recruited for the series through his church, which has a predominantly gay membership, the outcome has been bittersweet.

On the one hand, he has yet to achieve his goal of telling his family's story before a big audience. "We opened our souls and the life of our family, and we did it because we thought we could make a difference," he said.

But Mr. Wright said he took solace that through their participation in the series, he and his partner had had a positive impact on at least one relationship, that of Mr. Stewart and his son.

"We said at the outset that if we changed one person's heart or mind, it would be worth it," he said. "We have empirical evidence we did that."

"And," he added, "we won a house."

    Television Cul-de-Sac Mystery: Why Was Reality Show Killed?, NYT, 21.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/21/arts/television/21welc.html?hp&ex=1137906000&en=43df4035c8d21fca&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Black Churches' Attitudes Toward Gay Parishioners Is Discussed at Conference

January 21, 2006
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

ATLANTA, Jan. 20 - About 150 African-American ministers and gay activists from around the country gathered here Friday to begin a two-day conference to combat what they assert is widespread prejudice against gay men and lesbians within black churches.

Though most black Christians are liberal on pocketbook issues, they are social conservatives, speakers at the conference said. Yet getting black churches to accept gay men and lesbians has gained particular urgency over the last two years, participants noted.

The high rate of H.I.V. infection among blacks stems in part, they said, from the unwillingness of black ministers to discuss sexuality. They contended that the Republican Party and white evangelical Christians attracted a small but significant number of black votes in the 2004 presidential election by arguing for a nationwide ban on same-sex marriage and appealing to their conservative mores.

"In 2004, the religious right was concerned about re-electing George W. Bush," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who spoke at the conference held here at First Iconium Baptist Church. "They couldn't come to black churches to talk about the war, about health care, about poverty. So they did what they always do and reached for the bigotry against gay and lesbian people."

Ministers at the conference and some of their critics at other black churches agreed that getting black churches to embrace openly gay individuals would be a tough fight.

Conservative black ministers in Atlanta have so far not taken up invitations to discuss attitudes toward gay men and lesbians, said the Rev. Kenneth L. Samuel, pastor of Victory Church in nearby Stone Mountain. Moreover, ministers who are willing to preach acceptance of gay men and lesbians stand to lose many parishioners, Dr. Samuel and others said.

"This is a learning experience, and it has not been without costs," the Rev. Timothy McDonald, pastor of First Iconium, said of his decision to be host of the conference, organized by the National Black Justice Coalition, an advocacy group for gay men and lesbians based in Washington. "Have we gotten nasty phone calls? Yes. Do I have the marks to show for it? Yes. But I think Jesus took some unpopular stances, too."

Through 2004 and early 2005, black evangelical ministers worked with their white counterparts to muster support for a ban on same-sex marriage. That campaign's momentum may be flagging somewhat because of inaction by Congress and the president on a constitutional amendment to prohibit the unions, said Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., a proponent of the ban and pastor of Hope Christian Church in College Park, Md.

Still, black preachers like Mr. Jackson are crisscrossing the country, trying to draw more black members of the clergy to their cause.

This week, the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of the evangelical Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, Wash., raised the possibility of boycotts of companies like Microsoft, Nike and Boeing for their support of legislation in Washington State prohibiting discrimination in housing, employment and insurance on the basis of sexual orientation.

Last year, Microsoft edged away from its support of the bill, a move for which Mr. Hutcherson took credit. Then, weeks later it reversed course again and backed the bill.

In his speech at the Atlanta conference, Mr. Sharpton implied that African-American clergy members who accept gay men and lesbians might have let crucial black votes go to the Republican Party in 2004 because of their unwillingness to confront conservatives in their midst. Ministers who do speak out may pay a steep price, if the experience of Dr. Samuel of Victory Church is any indication.

When Dr. Samuel began to preach forcefully on the acceptance of gay men and lesbians two years ago to his mostly African-American congregation, 1,000 of his approximately 5,000 parishioners left in protest. Their departure dealt a blow to Victory Church's finances, and for a time, its morale, but the church remains large by any standard. Pastors of smaller churches may be less inclined to preach tolerance in the face of such costs, ministers said.

The divisions among black Christians over homosexuality seem largely the same as those among other Christians. Conservative Christians of any race, many of whom call homosexuality an abomination as defined by the Bible, consider being gay a choice or a lifestyle.

Others say that sexual orientation is innate, and therefore gay men and lesbians are equally God's children. They also caution blacks against using the Bible to perpetuate injustice against gay Americans, recalling that whites used Scripture in the 19th century to defend slavery.

The discussion over sexuality becomes particularly fraught among African-Americans because of their history of oppression, ministers said. Blacks often bridle at comparisons made between the civil rights struggle of African-Americans and the campaign by gay men and lesbians for equal protection under the law.

Some blacks are also loath to accept gay men and lesbians in their midst because the sexuality of African-Americans has been stereotyped as promiscuous and unhealthy, said Alton Pollard III, director of black church studies at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

"I don't think that black people are more homophobic than anyone else," Dr. Pollard said, "but blacks have been stigmatized for so long as sexual beings that any discussion of homosexuality causes even greater discomfort."

Ministers and organizers of the conference said the next step would be for attendees to meet with clergy members, friends and family and begin a discussion of homosexuality at their churches. Yet even if that were to occur, some participants said they expected little to change soon.

Akbar Imhotep, a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church attending the conference who is considering ordination, said, "I just feel that the day is a long time in coming when a man and a man and their children can walk into an A.M.E. church and they will be welcomed."

    Black Churches' Attitudes Toward Gay Parishioners Is Discussed at Conference, NYT, 21.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/21/national/21church.html

Alleged killer of pedophile priest testifies

Posted 1/20/2006 9:32 PM
USA Today

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — The inmate accused of killing pedophile priest John Geoghan took the witness stand Friday, describing years of childhood sexual and physical abuse that his attorneys said helped drive an uncontrollable rage that led to the slaying.

Defendant Joseph Druce gestures a thumbs up while accompanied by a court officer as he walks out of a Worcester, Mass., court.
By Tom Rettig, Pool/AP

Joseph Druce referred to killing the defrocked priest only once during his hour-long testimony, after describing being raped by a staff member at a residential school he attended as a boy.

"That's what triggered me ... I heard them talking about it," he said, apparently referring to earlier testimony about Druce's claims that he had overheard Geoghan talking to other inmates about molesting boys.

Druce's lawyers don't dispute that he killed Geoghan, a central figure in the Catholic Church's clergy sex abuse scandal, but they say he was suffering from severe mental illness and should not be convicted.

Druce, 40, told investigators he killed Geoghan in his prison cell in August 2003 to stop him from molesting more children. Earlier Friday, as Druce was being escorted out of the courtroom for a recess, he shouted "God save all the innocent kids."

At the time of his death, Geoghan was serving a 9- to 10-year prison sentence for fondling a 10-year-old boy, but he was accused in lawsuits of sexually abusing some 150 children over three decades in the Boston Archdiocese.

Druce had gone to the residential school from ages 8 to 13. He said two staff members there regularly sexually and physically abused him — spanking him, locking him in a closet and holding his head under water.

Druce also said he was raped three times by a 26-year-old man friend who his mother had sent him to live with when he was 13.

"I didn't let it happen. I couldn't stop it," he said.

Druce, who is already serving a life sentence for killing a man he suspected of making a pass at him, was expected to resume his testimony on Monday.

A defense psychiatrist testified Friday that Druce was suffering from several mental illnesses and was unable to control his rage.

Keith Ablow of New England Medical Center said Druce suffered greatly during his childhood, including beatings from his father and repeated rapes by several people he trusted.

When Druce allegedly overheard Geoghan talking about his plans to get out of prison and leave the country so he could molest more children, it brought back painful memories of Druce's own rapes, Ablow said.

"He came to see himself as an avenger of those acts, and that led directly to (Geoghan's murder)," Ablow said.

Prosecutors say Druce carefully and methodically planned the murder for five weeks, watching for the moment when he could slip into Geoghan's cell without being detected by guards and bringing a book with him to jam the cell door shut.

    Alleged killer of pedophile priest testifies, NYT, 20.1.2006, http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-20-priest-slaying_x.htm

In 'Design' vs. Darwinism, Darwin Wins Point in Rome

January 19, 2006
The New York Times
By IAN FISHER and CORNELIA DEAN

ROME, Jan. 18 - The official Vatican newspaper published an article this week labeling as "correct" the recent decision by a judge in Pennsylvania that intelligent design should not be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution.

"If the model proposed by Darwin is not considered sufficient, one should search for another," Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, wrote in the Jan. 16-17 edition of the paper, L'Osservatore Romano.

"But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science," he wrote, calling intelligent design unscientific. "It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious."

The article was not presented as an official church position. But in the subtle and purposely ambiguous world of the Vatican, the comments seemed notable, given their strength on a delicate question much debated under the new pope, Benedict XVI.

Advocates for teaching evolution hailed the article. "He is emphasizing that there is no need to see a contradiction between Catholic teachings and evolution," said Dr. Francisco J. Ayala, professor of biology at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Dominican priest. "Good for him."

But Robert L. Crowther, spokesman for the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle organization where researchers study and advocate intelligent design, dismissed the article and other recent statements from leading Catholics defending evolution. Drawing attention to them was little more than trying "to put words in the Vatican's mouth," he said.

L'Osservatore is the official newspaper of the Vatican and basically represents the Vatican's views. Not all its articles represent official church policy. At the same time, it would not be expected to present an article that dissented deeply from that policy.

In July, Christoph Schönborn, an Austrian cardinal close to Benedict, seemed to call into question what has been official church teaching for years: that Catholicism and evolution are not necessarily at odds.

In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times, he played down a 1996 letter in which Pope John Paul II called evolution "more than a hypothesis." He wrote, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."

There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that evolution explains the diversity of life on earth, but advocates for intelligent design posit that biological life is so complex that it must have been designed by an intelligent source.

At least twice, Pope Benedict has signaled concern about the issue, prompting questions about his views. In April, when he was formally installed as pope, he said human beings "are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution." In November, he called the creation of the universe an "intelligent project," wording welcomed by supporters of intelligent design.

Many Roman Catholic scientists have criticized intelligent design, among them the Rev. George Coyne, a Jesuit who is director of the Vatican Observatory. "Intelligent design isn't science, even though it pretends to be," he said in November, as quoted by the Italian news service ANSA. "Intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

In October, Cardinal Schönborn sought to clarify his own remarks, saying he meant to question not the science of evolution but what he called evolutionism, an attempt to use the theory to refute the hand of God in creation.

"I see no difficulty in joining belief in the Creator with the theory of evolution, but under the prerequisite that the borders of scientific theory are maintained," he said in a speech.

To Dr. Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University and a Catholic, "That is my own view as well."

"As long as science does not pretend it can answer spiritual questions, it's O.K.," he said.

Dr. Miller, who testified for the plaintiffs in the recent suit in Dover, Pa., challenging the teaching of intelligent design, said Dr. Facchini, Father Coyne and Cardinal Schönborn (in his later statements) were confirming "traditional Catholic thinking." On Dec. 20, a federal district judge ruled that public schools could not present intelligent design as an alternative to evolutionary theory.

In the Osservatore article, Dr. Facchini wrote that scientists could not rule out a divine "superior design" to creation and the history of mankind. But he said Catholic thought did not preclude a design fashioned through an evolutionary process.

"God's project of creation can be carried out through secondary causes in the natural course of events, without having to think of miraculous interventions that point in this or that direction," he wrote.

Neither Dr. Facchini nor the editors of L'Osservatore could be reached for comment.

Lawrence M. Krauss, a professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, said Dr. Facchini's article was important because it made the case that people did not have to abandon religious faith in order to accept the theory of evolution.

"Science does not make that requirement," he said.

Ian Fisher reported from Rome for this article, and Cornelia Dean from New York.

    In 'Design' vs. Darwinism, Darwin Wins Point in Rome, NYT, 19.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/science/sciencespecial2/19evolution.html?hp&ex=1137733200&en=2811e6f12e535548&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Group Seeks I.R.S. Inquiry of Two Ohio Churches

January 16, 2006
The New York Times
By STEPHANIE STROM

A group of religious leaders has sent a complaint to the Internal Revenue Service requesting an investigation of two large churches in Ohio that they say are improperly campaigning on behalf of a conservative Republican running for governor.

In their complaint, the clergy members contend that the two Columbus-area churches, Fairfield Christian Church and the World Harvest Church, which were widely credited with getting out the Ohio vote for President Bush in 2004, have allowed their facilities to be used by Republican organizations, promoted the candidate, J. Kenneth Blackwell, among their members and otherwise violated prohibitions on political activity by tax-exempt groups.

They are asking the I.R.S. to examine whether the churches' tax exemptions should be revoked and are requesting that Mark W. Everson, the federal tax commissioner, seek an injunction to stop what they consider improper activities.

Both churches denied that any of their activities violated limitations on nonprofit political activity. "We endorse values, but not candidates," said the Rev. Russell Johnson, Fairfield's leader.

He said Mr. Blackwell had been featured at events because he was the only candidate who had spoken out strongly in favor of an amendment to the State Constitution banning same-sex marriage that passed last fall. Mr. Johnson noted that he was meeting with a Democratic candidate for Congress this week.

World Harvest Church and a recently formed affiliated organization, Reformation Ohio, issued a statement saying their voter registration efforts have been conducted in diverse neighborhoods and that they were committed to full compliance with all applicable federal laws.

But the leaders who supported the complaint said that the two churches had gone too far. "I have become very concerned about how it could be that churches were becoming almost an extension of a political party," said the Rev. F. Allan Debelak, the minister of a Lutheran church in the Columbus area and a signer of the complaint. "They have been giving what seems to be an endorsement, even if they never used the word, an endorsement of Ken Blackwell."

Thirty-one clergy members representing a variety of Christian and Jewish denominations signed the complaint, which was shown to the news media on Sunday. Rabbi Harold J. Berman said he had signed because he was concerned that the line between church and state was becoming blurred. "I think government is clearly impaired when churches get too actively involved in government," he said, "and I think religion gets impaired when government acts in religious affairs."

After a series of forums on faith and values at North Congregational Church in Columbus, a group of moderate Christians, constitutional scholars and clergy began collecting examples last fall of activities by Fairfield and World Harvest to support a complaint to the tax authorities. They stepped up their efforts after The Los Angeles Times reported that All Saints Church, a large liberal Episcopal church in Pasadena, Calif., was under investigation for its political activities.

The I.R.S. told All Saints that a guest sermon on Oct. 31, 2004, by a former pastor might have jeopardized its tax exemption. In the sermon, the pastor imagined a debate between Jesus Christ, President Bush and John Kerry, and it criticized the Iraq war.

The church said that the sermon in no way violated I.R.S. boundaries.

World Harvest and Fairfield Christian frequently note the prohibitions on political activity and say they are careful not to violate them. Each church has created separate entities whose goals are to increase political participation among Christians and to encourage them to vote, but those groups are also subject to constraints on political activity.

The complaint questions, for example, how the Ohio Restoration Project, a nonprofit organization led by Mr. Johnson, Fairfield's leader, obtained charitable status when among its stated purposes are to support and promote legislation. The group has said its goal is to create an army of "Patriot Pastors" to help increase the participation of church members in this year's statewide elections.

Reformation Ohio, which was started by Rod Parsley, pastor at World Harvest, is a church, according to its registration with the Ohio secretary of state. Its goal is to win 100,000 converts, register 40,000 new voters and help the poor.

Those organizations and their affiliated churches have sponsored several improper events, the complaint says. For example, the Fairfield County Republican Party Central Committee met at Fairfield in March to fill a precinct vacancy. Churches are permitted to lease their facilities for political purposes so long as they charge market rates.

Carl Tatman, the committee chairman, said that it did not pay rent for the space. "The church was nice enough to volunteer the space as a donation," he said.

A month later, the Republican Club of Northwest Fairfield County held a fund-raiser at the church. Brian Sauer, its chairman, said the group paid a fee but he did not recall how much. "I want to make it clear that our club has no affiliation with any type of religious group," he said.

Mr. Blackwell has been the only candidate for governor at a number of events organized by the Ohio Restoration Project and Reformation Ohio, including a rally in front of the Statehouse in October.

The I.R.S. allows nonprofit groups to organize events featuring political candidates if all legally qualified candidates are invited. Spokesmen for one Democratic and two Republican candidates for the governor's office said they were invited but did not participate.

But Brian Flannery, a Democratic candidate, said he has never been invited to events organized by Fairfield Christian Church, the World Harvest Church or their affiliates.

It is not always enough, however, to invite all the candidates. According to a 2002 I.R.S. publication on election year issues, an "organization that invites two opposing candidates to speak at its events with the knowledge and expectation that one will not accept the invitation because of well-known opposing viewpoints may not be considered to have provided equal opportunity to all candidates."

The complaint notes Mr. Blackwell's appearance at more than eight events held by the churches or their affiliated organizations since August. And Mr. Blackwell is scheduled to be featured this spring in radio ads - "Ohio for Jesus" - paid for by the Ohio Restoration Project.

Mr. Parsley has been careful not to endorse anyone from his pulpit, which would clearly violate I.R.S. rules, but he has expressed his support for candidates in other locations. There have been widespread reports of the contributions he and his mother made to Mr. Blackwell's campaign, and shortly before the 2004 presidential election, he said in an interview with ABC News that he supported President Bush.

His church has also invited conservative Republicans like Ann Coulter and John Ashcroft to speak, and they have voiced support for Mr. Blackwell. In August, former Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat who has aligned himself with the conservative Christian movement, stood in World Harvest's pulpit at a Reformation Ohio meeting and told Mr. Blackwell, who was seated in the front pew, "You are the kind of leader this state - any state - needs."

    Group Seeks I.R.S. Inquiry of Two Ohio Churches, NYT, 16.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/national/16church.html

As part of their last group therapy session the women buy gifts for their unborn fetuses.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Some Abortion Foes Forgo Politics for Quiet Talk        NYT        16.1.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/national/16abortion.html?ei=5094&en=30a167e9de460750&hp=&ex=
1137387600&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1137387701-Zy8y85z9LOPgQAFV4v68Fw

A photo of a mother and child sits next to a box of tissues in a prayer room at the center.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Some Abortion Foes Forgo Politics for Quiet Talk        NYT        16.1.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/national/16abortion.html?ei=5094&en=30a167e9de460750&hp=&ex=
1137387600&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1137387701-Zy8y85z9LOPgQAFV4v68Fw

Some Abortion Foes Forgo Politics for Quiet Talk

Published: January 16, 2006
The New York Times
By JOHN LELAND
 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The eight women sat in a semicircle facing a wooden cross, reflecting on the abortions they said they had never gotten over.

Though they now opposed abortion, they criticized the demonstrators who protest outside clinics.

"They think they're helping these women," said Mendy Mason, 34, who described being suicidal and depressed after her abortion. For women like her, she said, the demonstrators only inflict more pain.

"The pro-life movement wants to demonize the mother and concentrate on protecting the innocent child," Ms. Mason said. "But you can't rip a baby from a woman's womb without ripping out her heart. My babies are in a much better place than I am."

The women in this Bible study, a postabortion recovery group, are far from the public battles over abortion laws and the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. But in their quiet way, they represent a dimension of the anti-abortion movement that is just as passionate and far-reaching, consisting not of protesters or political activists but of Christian therapy groups, crisis pregnancy centers, adoption ministries, and support programs for single mothers and their children.

"The media attention has all gone to the political wing," said James R. Kelly, a professor of sociology at Fordham University in New York who has written about the history of abortion in America. "But the first national organizations in the movement were not political; they were service groups that provided direct aid to women so they would not abort. These are low-key and hidden, but they were always there and had more volunteers than the political side."

The group here in Louisville - eight women gathered on a Saturday morning, each with her own box of tissues - suggests the breadth of this part of the movement. The group, called Free Indeed, is part of A Woman's Choice Resource Center, which says it has an annual budget of $900,000 and provides free ultrasound and other services, including counseling, diapers, baby clothes and adoption referrals, to more than 4,000 women a year.

Estimates of the number of such places, often called crisis pregnancy centers, range from 2,300 to 3,500 nationwide, compared with about 1,800 abortion providers.

A Woman's Choice is an offshoot of the largest church in Kentucky, Southeast Christian Church, an independent evangelical congregation with weekly attendance of 18,000 and an annual budget of $25 million. The center is a separate nonprofit corporation but was founded by the church and shares board members with it. The church started the center after deciding not to join the political fray with Operation Rescue, a confrontational anti-abortion group.

Over a two-day period at the center, the message to women was consistent: abortion was psychologically and physically damaging, and God would help provide for their children, however difficult the women's straits, and in the short term, the center would supply some necessities.

Nicole Embry, 21, said her boyfriend wanted her to have an abortion, but she was already having nightmares about it. A counselor, Theresa Skeeters, recorded her information on a clipboard. "The decision you make is going to affect your entire life," Mrs. Skeeters told Ms. Embry. "I know from experience from someone dear to my heart who made a choice for abortion, I know the pain she's going through, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I can testify, it doesn't go away."

Danielle, 18, said her boyfriend and her mother wanted her to have an abortion, but she did not want to. She said that if her boyfriend insisted, she might give in, although abortion was against her values. Danielle and several other women interviewed did not want their last names to be used for privacy reasons.

"How would you feel toward him if you did abort?" asked Hollie Colwick, a registered diagnostic medical sonographer, showing Danielle an ultrasound image of her uterus on a television screen, and playing the fetal heartbeat on an audio speaker. "Would you feel you killed your baby because of him?"

Along with the pregnancy center, Southeast Christian Church also maintains an extensive overseas adoption ministry that members consider part of the church's "pro-life" mission. "When you're taking children out of Ukraine, that's choosing life," said Kathy Drane, who started the Ukraine program after adopting a daughter from an orphanage there.

A Woman's Choice links the church to a national network of crisis pregnancy centers and postabortion groups that share marketing strategies, legal advice and literature emphasizing what they say are the harmful effects of abortion - including increased risk of breast cancer and a psychological condition called postabortion syndrome, which are considered scientifically unsupported by the National Cancer Institute and the American Psychological Association.

Like many crisis pregnancy centers, A Woman's Choice is designed to look and feel like a medical center, not a religion-based organization with an agenda. Becky Edmondson, the executive director, said the center chose the look and name to reach women who were bombarded with pressures to abort and might think they had no other choice.

If callers ask how much the center charges to perform an abortion, Lisa Arnold, a counselor and leader of the postabortion group, said: "I say, 'It changes, but why don't you come in for an ultrasound and we'll talk about it.' You don't want to deceive them, but you want a chance to talk to them." Once women come to the center, staff members - who oppose abortion even in cases involving rape and incest - encourage them to make further appointments, and refer them to doctors who share the center's views on abortion.

Anne Ahola, the counseling director of EMW Women's Surgical Center, the abortion provider across the street, dismissed A Woman's Choice as a "fake" health clinic that tricks women into coming in to have abortions then provides inaccurate information about abortion and about their pregnancies. Crisis pregnancy centers have long been criticized for such practices, and courts have limited the terms they can use to pitch their services.

Over two days, women came to A Woman's Choice with a variety of needs and interests. Some wanted the free diapers or maternity clothes. Some needed official confirmation of their pregnancy so they could receive state aid. A 20-year-old who asked not to be identified said she was not considering an abortion but wanted to see an ultrasound to help her accept her unwanted pregnancy.

Though the center has a medical doctor and nurse practitioner on staff, the main function of the free ultrasound sessions is persuasive, not diagnostic, said Dr. Bill Cutrer, the center's medical director. "The primary purpose is to show them that it's not a clump of tissues but a human being," Dr. Cutrer said.

Jessie, 18, came in with her mother after visiting Planned Parenthood, because they needed someone else to talk to. Jessie wanted to have the baby; her mother thought she was too young. On the ultrasound table, Mrs. Colwick did not mention abortion, but told Jessie, "Well, congratulations, this is super exciting." Jessie left with a bag containing a knit bonnet and blanket, an appointment to return and a referral to a doctor who works closely with the center. Like other visitors to the pregnancy center, she received a brochure for the postabortion group - "because we want them to know we're here for them, even if they decide to walk through those doors," Mrs. Edmondson said, referring to the surgical center.

For the postabortion group, Nov. 12 was the final day of a five-week program. Mrs. Arnold, who has a degree in pastoral counseling from Trinity Theological Seminary, an accredited online school, led the group in a memorial service for their unborn children, presenting each woman with a "certificate of life."

The women recited poems or letters to their unborn children and brought gifts for them, which the center will pass to others who chose to carry their pregnancies to term. Each took a turn at the lectern, addressing her aborted child by name.

"Dearest Travis, I know you have forgiven me for terminating your life," said Kathy, a business owner who cried as she placed a baby's baseball outfit under the cross, saying she bought it because she knew Travis would have been an athlete.

Surveys of postabortive women about their experiences have produced mixed and inconclusive results, allowing advocates on either side of the abortion issue to claim support for their view of whether abortion leaves regrets or psychological damage. Two analyses published in the same peer-reviewed medical journal, using the same data, came to opposite conclusions about whether women who have abortions suffer more depression than women who give birth after unwanted pregnancies.

Several women in the postabortion group said that they did not favor a ban on abortion, for fear of back-alley procedures, but said that women should have more information about abortion's psychological impact - perhaps a video of women like themselves. Seven of the eight women said they had considered suicide over their abortion.

Brooke, 30, said she had been raped twice and married four times, and only recently found stability in her life by acknowledging her responsibility to the children she chose not to bear. She addressed her unborn children as Scarlet and Jacob. "I can now allow myself to think of you and miss you," she said. "I no longer pretend that you don't exist."

Missy Reigel, 30, read from a text she had found in a Christian bookstore, written in the voice of an unborn child. "I was safe in my mother's womb, then a doctor found me and ripped me apart," Mrs. Reigel read.

She said she had gone to a secular therapist after her abortion, but he ascribed her problems to her alcoholism, not to the abortion. But Mrs. Reigel said she had not felt healed until she went through the postabortion program.

"I wanted to hold onto the grief because it was all that I had of my baby," she said. "This has healed me of a pain I didn't know was there."

[Last weekend, A Woman's Choice expanded its services, with a 7,200-square-foot, $600,000 community center for single mothers and children, with G.E.D. classes, an exercise center, a free clothing boutique and courses in parenting, anger management and home finances.]

For Mrs. Edmondson, the center's executive director, these services are as important to the anti-abortion movement as the political battles over abortion laws. "In the early days, I did the political thing a little bit, but that wasn't for me," she said. "We're concerned, we read, we vote, but we're busy taking care of the families that come in. When these girls hear protesters say, 'You're killing your baby,' they say, 'You're not thinking about me, it's just the baby.' Whether they abort or have their children, we love them."

    Some Abortion Foes Forgo Politics for Quiet Talk, NYT, 16.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/national/16abortion.html?ei=5094&en=30a167e9de460750&hp=&ex=1137387600&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1137387701-Zy8y85z9LOPgQAFV4v68Fw

Preaching a Gospel of Wealth in a Glittery Market, New York

January 15, 2006
The New York Times
BY MICHAEL LUO

It is time to pass the offering buckets at World Changers Church New York, and Troy and Cheryal Anderson are eager to give the Lord his due. They wave their blue offering envelope overhead, as all around them worshipers whoop and holler their praises to God.

Inside the envelope is 10 percent of the weekly pay Mr. Anderson takes home as an electrician's apprentice - he earns about $30,000 a year - and a little more for the church's building fund.

The Andersons, who live in the Bronx, are struggling financially. A few weeks ago, the couple, who have two young children, had no money to buy groceries. But they believe what their pastor, the Rev. Creflo A. Dollar Jr., said on this recent Saturday night about the offering time: "It's opportunity for prosperity."

"Remember," said Mr. Dollar, a familiar figure across the country because of his "Changing Your World" television show and best-selling books, "if you sow a seed on a good ground, you can expect a harvest."

Mr. Dollar, whose Rolls-Royces, private jets, million-dollar Atlanta home and $2.5 million Manhattan apartment, furnish proof to his followers of the validity of his teachings, is a leading apostle of what is known as the "prosperity gospel."

It is a theology that is excoriated in many Christian circles but is becoming increasingly visible in this country, according to religious scholars. Now, it is beginning to establish a foothold in New York City, where capitalism has long been religion.

Mr. Dollar - his real name - is the most prominent among a host of prosperity preachers that have put down roots in the city. He is quick to insist that he warns Christians to "love God, not money" and teaches "total life prosperity," meaning prosperity not only in finances but in everything from health to family life.

"Money by itself cannot define prosperity," Mr. Dollar said in a recent phone interview. "When you say, 'prosperity,' people think money. They are not incorrect, but they are incomplete."

Asking the faithful to donate is a part of virtually all religions. Outside of Christianity, Muslims pay zakat, and Jewish synagogues have membership dues. Conservative Protestants see tithing - offering a portion, usually a tenth, of one's income back to God and the church - as a biblical mandate.

Many Catholic churches suggest that tithing be divided between the local church and a charity of their choice. Most teach that believers can trust God to take care of their needs.

It is the connecting of religious faithfulness, especially in giving, to material riches that causes many Christians, including other evangelicals, to accuse prosperity teachers of verging on heresy.

"There's no question that almost every Christian leader - reformed, Pentecostal, however you want to call it - sees it as a blight on the face of Christianity," said Timothy C. Morgan, deputy managing editor at Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine. "Yet it's so seductive."

The theology taps into the country's self-help culture, said William C. Martin, a professor emeritus of religion and public policy at Rice University in Houston. "One of the goals of America is for you to become prosperous," he said. "For the church to put a blessing on that and say, 'God wants you to be rich,' is quite appealing."

While prosperity preachers were largely discredited in this country in the late 1980's with the rash of scandals involving religious broadcasters, the booming television ministries of a coterie of new prosperity kings, including Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn and Mr. Dollar, demonstrates its staying power. Mr. Dollar, 41, a former college football player, started World Changers Church in Atlanta in an elementary school cafeteria in 1986.

The church now has almost 25,000 members, according to church officials.

But New York City is Mr. Dollar's largest television market. And just over a year ago, Mr. Dollar began flying up from Atlanta to preach at Saturday night services in the theater at Madison Square Garden. Membership at World Changers Church New York is now at more than 5,000, church officials said.

Frederick K. C. Price, a prosperity preacher from Los Angeles, has also set up in New York, starting Crenshaw Christian Center East in Upper Manhattan several years ago. The church attracts about a thousand worshipers every Sunday.

In Lower Manhattan, Dan Stratton, a former commodities trader and acolyte of Kenneth Hagin, another well-known name in prosperity circles, serves as pastor of the Faith Exchange Fellowship, which caters to professionals. Mr. Stratton has written a book called, "Divine ProVision: Positioning God's Kings for Financial Conquest."

And among Latinos in New York City, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, a Pentecostal prosperity church that originated in Brazil, has experienced rapid growth.

New York has long been acquainted with prosperity preachers, having given the world the Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II, the indefatigable man known as "Reverend Ike."

Reverend Ike, a religious broadcasting pioneer who favored gaudy suits, fancy cars and aphorisms like, "the lack of money is the root of all evil," became a fixture on 1,500 television and radio stations in the 1970's. These days, Reverend Ike maintains a lower profile but continues to minister every week from his church in Upper Manhattan.

The Andersons started attending World Changers last summer. Mrs. Anderson, 29, discovered Mr. Dollar on late-night television. When the couple learned he had started a church in New York, they decided to visit. On their first Saturday, Mr. Dollar preached about loving others.

"I thought, 'Are you kidding me?' " Mr. Anderson said. "You're preaching on love to a bunch of New Yorkers?"

Mrs. Anderson wanted to join the church right away, but Mr. Anderson, 32, was more cautious. The next week it was Mrs. Anderson having second thoughts. They agreed to become members in their fourth week.

Mr. Dollar's mantra is to preach the Bible with "simplicity and understanding." And that is what many of his followers say they appreciate most: his ability to decode the Bible and offer advice for daily living.

Mr. Anderson said he started to apply Mr. Dollar's teachings on love at his job, trying to be more helpful to people. The couple also started to apply his teachings on tithing.

But just as they started to give, their children became sick, and the family began to fall badly behind on the bills. "Things went from bad to worse," Mr. Anderson said.

A few weeks ago, they had no food and no money. A concerned neighbor, however, surprised them with groceries. Another friend offered winter coats for their children, ages 5 and 7.

The Andersons attributed the unexpected gifts to God's provision and said they looked to the testimonies of others in the church for inspiration

Latrell Hope, 27, her older brother, Tylon Thomas, 34, and their mother, Margaret McLeod, were among the several thousand people who showed up for the church's first service in October 2004. The family had begun watching tapes of Mr. Dollar together on Sundays and had become "partners" of World Changers, sending donations and prayer requests to Georgia.

But the family was also in the midst of financial travails. Before coming to World Changers, both Latrell and Tylon were out of work for more than a year. They wound up living in a ramshackle Brooklyn apartment. At night, they cried and prayed together.

Several months ago Latrell landed a job through a temp agency as a marketing assistant, and Tylon got a job as a supervisor of a law firm's copy center. According to Mr. Thomas, the key was diligence, "sowing his seed," as the Bible teaches, and learning to "activate" what Mr. Dollar was preaching in his life.

Mr. Dollar and other prosperity preachers say they take their message straight from the Bible, noting that figures like Solomon and David were wealthy. But many evangelical theologians contend that prosperity preachers are quoting selectively.

Prosperity is indeed prominent in the Old Testament, but the hardship experienced by Jesus' followers is prominent in the New Testament, said Professor John Jefferson Davis Jr., who teaches systematic theology and Christian ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an evangelical institution outside Boston. "Part of the problem is things are out of focus here, and what Jesus makes very clear and central, self-denial and bearing your cross, is somehow left on the cutting-room floor."

Wall Watchers, an evangelical organization that monitors the finances of Christian ministries, gave Mr. Dollar's organization an "F" grade for financial transparency in its yearly report and urged donors not to give to it and similar groups. World Changers officials say members can inspect audited financial statements on the church's finances if they desire, but they declined to release them to The New York Times.

According to church officials, the New York church collects an average of $345,000 a month, which works out to more than $4 million annually; the Atlanta church's operating budget is $80 million a year. The offering collected in New York stays entirely in New York, Mr. Dollar said.

About $800,000 of it goes toward renting the theater in Madison Square Garden; an additional $84,000 pays for the church's rented office space nearby; only about $120,000 is spent on the salaries of three people who are on staff. The bulk of the rest, according to church officials, is designated for the church's building fund. The church hopes to raise $200 million for a complex in the city.

Mr. Dollar's salary is set by a compensation board at the Georgia church, but he declined to reveal it. He also declined to say how much of his salary and fees he donates back to the church, except to say that he is one of the church's biggest givers.

He and his wife live in a million-dollar mansion in Atlanta that is owned by the church. He has said that his two Rolls-Royces were gifts from congregants. But shortly after he started the New York church, he and his wife, Taffi, purchased a $2.5 million apartment in the new Time Warner Center on their own.

As for the Andersons, they are confident that material rewards are on the way for them. They have already grown tremendously in other areas, they said. It is just a matter of time before the blessing spills over.

    Preaching a Gospel of Wealth in a Glittery Market, New York, NYT, 15.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/nyregion/15prosperity.html

Christian school suing UC over college credits

Posted 1/12/2006 10:58 PM
USA TODAY
By Martin Kasindorf

LOS ANGELES — A Christian high school's lawsuit against the University of California is escalating the culture war over the role of religion in public education.

Calvary Chapel Christian School, which has 1,300 students, are fighting to receive college credit for some courses.
Chris Carlson, AP

The Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murrieta, Calif., with 1,300 students, is suing UC for not giving credits for some courses with a "Christian viewpoint" when students apply for university admission. The lawsuit is about theological content in "every major area in high school except for mathematics," says Wendell Bird, a lawyer for Calvary Chapel.

Courses in dispute include history, English, social studies and science. In federal court here, U.S. District Judge S. James Otero could rule soon on the university system's motion to dismiss the high school's claims that its First Amendment rights to free speech and religion were infringed.

The school has also sued on other grounds, such as that UC has unconstitutionally treated Calvary students unequally compared to other students.

This clash over separation of church and state comes amid recent battles on whether religion can be incorporated into teaching evolution and science. Last year, the Kansas Board of Education rewrote science standards to cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

Last month, a federal judge ruled that the Dover, Pa., school board acted unconstitutionally in requiring science students to learn the "intelligent design" theory of life's origins along with evolution. Intelligent design is the idea that some forms of life are so complex that they must have been shaped by a designer who is left unspecified.

And this week, a group of parents in Lebec, Calif., sued to stop the high school from teaching intelligent design as a philosophy course.

Textbooks from Christian publishers

The civil rights lawsuit filed by Calvary Chapel alleges that the 10-campus University of California is trampling the freedom of "a religious school to be religious." UC rejected the content of courses such as "Christianity's Influence in American History" and "Christianity and Morality in American Literature."

In court documents, UC says the free-speech clause of the First Amendment gives it the right to set admission standards. "What we're looking for is this: Is the course academic in nature, or is it there to promote a specific religious lifestyle?" UC spokeswoman Ravi Poorsina says.

The university rejected some class credits because Calvary Chapel relies on textbooks from leading Christian publishers, Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book. A biology book from Bob Jones University presents creationism and intelligent design alongside evolution. The introduction says, "The people who have prepared this book have tried consistently to put the Word of God first and science second."

UC says such books would be acceptable as supplementary reading but not as the main textbook.

Bird, Calvary Chapel's lawyer, says this is the first case of its kind because California is the only state that rejects giving credit for high school courses and textbooks on the grounds that they put religion over academics. Any decision in the case is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Bird says.

Religious educators and public universities nationwide have stakes in the outcome, says Charles Haynes, senior scholar on religious liberty issues at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va.

The case "could have serious implications for religious schools all across the country if the university wins," Haynes says.

UC's policies are "likely to have a chilling effect on Christian schools," he says. "And what about Muslim schools? Are they next? They teach within a Koranic framework. That doesn't mean those kids aren't well-educated."

Parents who home school their children also should be watching the case, says John Green, senior fellow in religion and politics at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in Washington, D.C. "Home schoolers, including people on the left, do it because they feel that their values are not being taught."

Ken Smitherman, president of the 5,400-member Association of Christian Schools International, contends that the Constitution bars a state university from denying applicants credit for courses that cover "standard material" but add a religious viewpoint.

"We're not teaching that water boils at a different temperature, or that the periodic table of elements doesn't have some of (the elements)," he says.

The lawsuit against UC alleges that the university accepts courses from other schools taught from a particular viewpoint, such as feminist, African-American or countercultural, so the school can't discriminate against "a viewpoint of religious faith."

Six students also plaintiffs

Smitherman's group, based in Colorado Springs, has joined the lawsuit. Six Calvary Chapel students who say they want to attend UC, including the football team's quarterback, also are plaintiffs.

Smitherman says enrollment in Christian schools could suffer if parents believe it disqualifies their kids from attending UC, which has 208,000 students. The separate California State University system, with 405,000 students on 23 campuses, adopts UC's admission standards.

Robert Tyler, a lawyer for Calvary Chapel, says parents send children to private schools because "they want their kids to be taught from a particular perspective, and the United States Constitution specifically protects that right."

Christopher Patti, a lawyer for the university, says UC isn't stopping Calvary Chapel or its students "from teaching or studying anything." He says students are free to take courses uncertified by UC, and there are alternative paths to admission — including taking extra SAT tests in specific subjects.

UC has certified 43 Calvary Chapel courses and has admitted 24 of the 32 applicants from the high school in the past four years, Patti says.

    Christian school suing UC over college credits, UT, 13.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-12-christian-school_x.htm

Detroit bishop reveals he was once abused by priest

Posted 1/11/2006 9:57 AM Updated 1/11/2006 9:28 PM
USA TODAY
By Cathy Lynn Grossman

A 75-year-old Detroit Catholic bishop stunned his church, Ohio legislators and victims of sexual abuse nationwide Wednesday when he revealed one reason he supports victims' rights to sue, no matter how long ago the abuse occurred: He was molested by a priest more than 60 years ago.

Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, 75, of Detroit speaks Wednesday at a press conference in Columbus, Ohio.
By Kiichiro Sato, AP

"I have more insight into why it is so difficult for victims to come forward within the legal time limits, to expose themselves, open up their privacy to the public," Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton said.

When he was a 14-year-old student in a high school seminary, Gumbleton said, a professor in his 40s took him to a cottage, wrestled with him and put his hands down his pants.

"I knew it wasn't right, and I didn't want it to happen anymore," he said in a telephone interview before a news conference in Columbus, Ohio.

There, he joined with the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests in lobbying the Ohio House of Representatives. The House is considering legislation, already passed unanimously by the state Senate, to open a one-year window in the statute of limitations on sexual abuse by clergy.

Gumbleton is the first bishop to publicly support such a window. Ohio bishops, like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are adamantly opposed.

"I am not out to get the Ohio bishops, but I care about these victims. I have a deep sense of compassion for how difficult it has been for them," he said.

As a teenager, he said, he was troubled but not traumatized, and he never told his parents about the incident. The professor, whom he did not identify, died a decade ago, he said. He thought but never knew for certain that no one else was victimized.

"We all think we were the only one," said Barbara Blaine, founder and president of the abuse survivors network.

Gumbleton argued that full disclosure of the abuse is essential to hold perpetrators and the church accountable, heal victims and restore the church's "moral credibility" at a time when "more than a few feel that church social teachings ring with hypocrisy."

In a written statement released earlier, Gumbleton said he spoke only for himself, as a priest for 49 years, a bishop for 37 years, and "out of my own experience of being exploited as a teenager through inappropriate touching by a priest."

"It might seem easier to keep the evils hidden, to move on and trust that the future will be better. But I am convinced that a settlement of every case by our court system is the only way to protect children and to heal the brokenness within the church," he wrote.

But Mark Chopko, general counsel for the bishops group, said Wednesday that creating a window for litigation is "fundamentally unjust," and he wondered whether Gumbleton "thought through all the implications" of such legislation.

"His whole life has been committed to helping the poor and those disserved by society. What happened to him was wrong. But this 'window' is also wrong," Chopko said.

"It won't protect one more child in the USA."

The abuse scandal has cost the church more than $1 billion in settlements with victims, care and counseling for victims and priests, and prevention programs.

Three dioceses facing claims — Portland, Ore., Tucson and Spokane, Wash. — have filed for bankruptcy, and the Archdiocese of Boston shuttered dozens of parishes. In California, which changed its law in 2003 to allow more than 800 accusers to file suit, hundreds of negotiations are stalled in a battle between the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and insurance companies over liability for claims.

More than 5,000 priests abused more than 11,000 minors in a 55-year period, according to a study sponsored by the bishops and conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The bishops also instituted an elaborate prevention and reporting program in every parish and an annual national audit of bishops' compliance.

"The church is fundamentally committed to a just resolution of these claims," Chopko said, even when they are "desperately out of date and barred by the statute of limitations."

Chopko said the window "undermines these efforts" while prompting "an outpouring of litigation," driving dioceses to or over the edge of bankruptcy.

"It could result in an disruption in parish life, or cutback in services to save money. The people who bear the brunt sit in the pews today and those, by and large, are the poor and the vulnerable."

    Detroit bishop reveals he was once abused by priest, UT, 11.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-11-bishop_x.htm

Vatican Grants Church Trial in Abuse Case

January 7, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDY NEWMAN and MICHAEL LUO

After waging a public battle against the Archdiocese of New York, the most prominent Roman Catholic priest in the archdiocese to be accused in the sexual abuse scandals was granted a church trial yesterday by the Vatican to determine whether he should receive the ultimate punishment of removal from the priesthood.

The priest, Msgr. Charles M. Kavanagh, former head fund-raiser for the archdiocese and an immensely influential figure in Catholic circles, has fought Cardinal Edward M. Egan since 2002, when the cardinal suspended him and asked the Vatican to bar him from returning to the ministry.

Monsignor Kavanagh is the first Catholic cleric in New York to be granted a trial since the sexual abuse scandals emerged in 2002. Twelve others were denied trials by the Vatican and either defrocked or sentenced to a life of prayer and penance, archdiocese officials said.

Monsignor Kavanagh, 68, was suspended after a former student at the high school he had run told the archdiocese that during a six-year friendship more than 20 years ago, the monsignor touched him in a sexual manner and twice lay atop him and rubbed against him.

Monsignor Kavanagh maintains that his relationship with the student was affectionate but not sexual. In 2004, he took the rare step of publicly attacking the cardinal, accusing him of threatening him to keep him from fighting his suspension and of denying him full access to his disciplinary file.

The trial will be conducted behind closed doors by a tribunal of three to five canon law judges in Erie, Pa. Cardinal Egan had asked that that the case be moved out of New York to a "more sedate" environment, archdiocese officials said. No date has been set.

While Monsignor Kavanagh called the Vatican's decision a victory - "All I want is a full and fair hearing," he said - several national experts said that such trials have been growing more common since the adoption of rules in 2002 requiring that cases involving accusations of sexual abuse be sent to Rome for examination.

The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a longtime champion of abuse victims, said the Vatican's disciplinary wing, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had granted several dozen American priests trials since 2002. "What is happening is not unusual," he said, adding that he would not say it was "a victory for anybody."

The archdiocese's spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, said he was not quite sure what to make of the Vatican's decision.

"This is the first case of its kind that we've had," he said. "Because this is something new, we really don't know what it means."

Monsignor Kavanagh's accuser, Daniel Donohue, greeted the news of the trial warily. "If this is going to get us closer to the truth, then I welcome the opportunity," Mr. Donohue said. "That will be determined by how much due process, transparency and inclusion there is here."

In 1978, Monsignor Kavanagh was rector of Cathedral Preparatory Seminary in Manhattan, a high school for boys considering the priesthood.

Daniel Donohue was a 14-year-old freshman, and a rising star on the basketball court and in the classroom.

Monsignor Kavanagh became his spiritual mentor and best friend, Mr. Donohue said. Their physical relationship progressed to long hugs and holding hands, he said.

During his sophomore year, when he sometimes stayed in the same residence as Monsignor Kavanagh, the priest would watch him in his bedroom through a keyhole, Mr. Donohue said. (According to Mr. Donohue's family, Monsignor Kavanagh later wrote in a letter to Mr. Donohue that he had just been checking to make sure the boy was praying.)

Mr. Donohue said that during his senior year, when he and Monsignor Kavanagh shared a hotel room at an anti-abortion rally in Washington, the monsignor stripped to his underwear and lay on top of him, "rubbing his body and rubbing his face on me."

Mr. Donohue said he eventually saw the relationship as destructive, broke it off and asked Monsignor Kavanagh for an apology, which has never come. He said the experience had shattered his faith and led him eventually to drop out of seminary college. Now 41, he is married with four children and lives in Oregon.

Monsignor Kavanagh, meanwhile, was made rector of St. Raymond's Church in the Bronx, one of the city's biggest and most prominent parishes. In 1994 he was named vicar of development - chief fund-raiser - for the archdiocese. He held both positions until his suspension.

Even after his suspension, Monsignor Kavanagh remained a revered figure to some. Parties in his honor in 2003 were attended by hundreds of guests. His powerful defenders included a former state assemblyman, John C. Dearie, and a former spokesman for Gov. George E. Pataki, Michael McKeon.

Yesterday, Monsignor Kavanagh said he was grateful for all the support. "It's been an incredibly rich time," he said, "and it would not have happened except I had to face this brokenness in my life, this test."

Daniel J. Wakin contributed reporting for this article.

    Vatican Grants Church Trial in Abuse Case, NYT, 7.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/nyregion/07priest.html

Chicago church, home of early gospel, razed by fire

Posted 1/6/2006 5:11 PM Updated 1/6/2006 11:58 PM
USA Today

CHICAGO (AP) — A massive fire Friday destroyed a landmark 1890 church on Chicago's South Side that played a major role in the development of gospel music.

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire at a landmark church in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson, Getty Images

The roaring blaze, which started shortly after 3 p.m., gutted the Pilgrim Baptist Church and collapsed its roof and steeples, the flames and thick black smoke shooting so high they could be seen from miles around.

The cause of the blaze at the church, designed by the famous architectural firm headed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, was not immediately known.

"It's like hearing a close relative has died or a good friend. It's heartbreaking," said Ned Cramer, curator of the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

The church was where Thomas A. Dorsey — considered the father of gospel music — perfected his cross of the raw soulfulness of the blues with the sacred music of his youth.

He was Pilgrim's music director from 1932 until the late 1970s, and his all-time greatest hit, Take My Hand, Precious Lord, was popularized by the late Mahalia Jackson and became the favorite song of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Over the decades, the gospel stars who performed at Pilgrim included Sallie Martin, James Cleveland, and the Edwin Hawkins Singers. The funeral service for early 20th century boxing champion Jack Jackson also was held at the church, Taylor said.

Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford said work was being done on the roof just prior to the fire.

"There's nothing definitive yet (on the cause)," Langford said. "We know some repairs were made to the roof, but we don't know what kind."

Neighbor Terrance Jackson he said he saw men working on the building's roof before the fire. Fire Commissioner Cortez Trotter said three or four people had worked on the roof Friday.

The only injuries from the fire were minor ones to several firefighters. One firefighter had debris in the eye and the other suffered smoke inhalation, Trotter said.

More than an hour after the blaze, the fire still had not been fully contained and 180 firefighters and some 50 pieces of equipment were on the scene.

"There will be nothing left on the inside," Langford said.

The church, designated a Chicago landmark in 1981, was originally a synagogue after it was built between 1890 and 1891 but has housed the church since 1922. The church does not have a pastor but has a congregation of about 300 people, said Robert Vaughn, the church's chairman of the trustees.

The church's heyday was in the 1940s, when it had about 10,000 members, said the Rev. Hycel B. Taylor, the church's pastor for four years starting in 2001.

"It is a great loss in numerous ways," Taylor said. "It was the center of spiritual life for the community for so long."

During its history, he said it had been "the quintessential black megachurch."

He said he feared the church's archives — including old photographs and Dorsey's original sheet music — may have been destroyed in the fire.

Cramer said the church was a place where architects Sullivan and Adler experimented with the features that made them famous — such as vaulted ceilings, amazing acoustics and ornamental designs, like the terra cotta panels with intricate foliage designs.

Cramer said Adler's father was the rabbi of the synagogue when it was designed, "a wonderful family connection."

"For Chicago to lose a landmark like this is irreplaceable. It's devastating," Cramer said.

Kris Carter, a neighbor, said the beautiful church had been remodeled a year or two ago. The church was constructed of solid masonry with a peaked roof and was built in the Romanesque Revival style.

Vaughn said they had been renovating the church for about three years and the work was just about done. He said the renovations had cost about $500,000.

"It's unreal to me now even though I'm looking right at it," Vaughn said.

The city issued a building permit for the church on Oct. 14, 2005 to replace the roof, install new gutters and work on the chimney, said Pete Scales, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Buildings.

The fire forced students from the nearby Illinois College of Optometry to be evacuated.

Student Kathryn Baruth, 23, said she was in the library when the fire started.

She said at first it looked like only a small fire because she saw only some smoke. Then, firefighters went into the church and shortly after two windows blew out and flames started shooting from the building.

"You could feel the heat from the fire in the library," she said.

Watching the destruction was tough for people at the scene.

"It has such a large, rich legacy that can't be replaced," said Illinois Congressman Bobby Rush. "It's like a giant oak tree that gave comfort and shade to those that came through."

Taylor, the church's former pastor, said he hopes it will be rebuilt.

"It would be a mammoth effort though," he said.

    Chicago church, home of early gospel, razed by fire, UT, 6.1.2005, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-06-church-fire_x.htm

Mayor Balances Hasidic Ritual Against Fears for Babies' Heal

January 6, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG and ANDY NEWMAN

With three days to go before Election Day, ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, held what was by far the largest rally of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's campaign. With searchlights bouncing across the Brooklyn sky and klezmer music blaring from speakers hoisted on cranes, thousands of Hasidic Jews, in black hats or head scarves, cheered the beaming mayor from rooftops and blocks upon blocks of bleachers.

When one of the most revered Orthodox leaders, Rabbi David Niederman, addressed the throngs, he praised the mayor for his push to create more affordable housing, his takeover of the public schools and his support for the constitutional separation of church and state.

For many in the crowd, the last reference was code for the administration's decision to hold off from taking action against an ancient form of ritualistic circumcision practiced by some Hasidic rabbis that had been linked to three cases of neonatal herpes in late 2004, one of them fatal.

But now, with the election over, the city's Health Department, while not banning the procedure, is angering those Hasidic leaders just the same by pushing a public health campaign against the rite, in which the practitioner, or mohel, sucks the blood from the circumcision wound to clean it. The department took the action after linking the rite to additional cases of herpes in infants, one of whom suffered brain damage as a result.

Some in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities say the city is infringing upon their religious rights. They go so far as to accuse Mr. Bloomberg of reneging on what they say they took as an election-year assurance that the administration would leave the matter to rabbinical authorities. But others outside those communities had been harshly critical of the administration, saying that it failed to take adequate action against a practice that has been endangering the lives of infants.

The dispute, which had the mayor trying to calm rabbinical leaders at Gracie Mansion yesterday in what his aides called a frank exchange, has put Mr. Bloomberg in the rare position of balancing a key constituency against the policies of one of his most trusted commissioners. And it occurs against the backdrop of the roiling ethnic politics of New York, with Orthodox leaders having threatened to disrupt the mayor's inauguration last Sunday by wearing yellow stars like the ones Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany.

The Bloomberg administration denies that politics have had anything to do with its decisions, and administration officials say they made no pre-election promises regarding the rite.

"The mayor has a fundamental commitment to public health," said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the commissioner of health and mental hygiene. "That didn't change when it looked like the smoking ban was going to cost him re-election, and it didn't change in this case."

Still, Dr. Frieden said, there were plenty of other factors to make an issue affecting a small percentage of city Jews as thorny as the smoking ban that the mayor pushed in 2002, which affected millions. In this case, Dr. Frieden said, the administration is trying to balance religious rights against the health of infants by educating parents about the dangers of the procedure.

"There's no question this is one of the most delicate issues I've ever had to deal with," he said.

Dr. Frieden and other officials said they were forced to act in recent weeks after discovering the two new cases of herpes infection.

But some Hasidic leaders see political motivations at work.

"The whole thing seems to be that Bloomberg before the election just told the health commissioner, 'Listen, cool it down, and wait till after the election,' " said Isac Weinberger, a leader in the Satmar Hasidic sect in Williamsburg. "It was a flip-flop. He fooled the community."

The health department began focusing on the risks of the procedure, known as metzitzah b'peh, after it learned that one boy in Staten Island and twins in Brooklyn, circumcised by the same mohel in 2003 and 2004, contracted Type-1 herpes.

That form of herpes can prove deadly for infants, who, health officials argue, are of particular risk during metzitzah b'peh. Most non-Orthodox Jews have abandoned the practice, as have even many Orthodox Jews.

But Orthodox rabbis who support the procedure say 2,000 to 4,000 such circumcisions are still performed each year in the city. They insist the procedure is safe and does not transmit herpes, which can be contracted by infants from their mothers, during childbirth. For some Jews the procedure is crucial to raising boys in a Jewish tradition.

"We chose America because of religious freedom. That's why we are here," Rabbi Niederman said this week in an interview at City Hall. "There is no compromise on this issue, because we know it is safe."

The issue erupted in August, when the health department prepared an order prohibiting the mohel whom the department had linked to the three cases of herpes, Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, from performing further circumcisions. After members of the Rabbinical Council of Rabbis promised to keep him from performing circumcisions and to investigate the cases involving him, the health department stopped drafting the order.

The mayor and his health commissioner said they would continue to study the matter but that they would not ban the practice, with Mr. Frieden saying that such a ban could be seen as interfering with religious freedom, and that a ban would be unenforceable anyway.

And, in a message heard loud and clear by rabbinical leaders, Mr. Bloomberg said on his radio program, "It is not the government's business to tell people how to practice their religion," although he also promised, "We're going to do a study, and make sure that everyone is safe."

Some outside the Hasidic communities criticized the mayor's statement, seeing it as a decided change of tack for an administration that had banned smoking and taken an aggressive stand on public health issues in general.

"He has made it legally impossible to have a cigarette and a cocktail at the same time, anywhere in the city," fumed the writer Christopher Hitchens on Slate in August. "I'll trade him his stupid prohibitionist ban if he states clearly that it is the government's business to protect children from religious fanatics."

An editorial last week in a local Yiddish newspaper, Der Blatt, cited the mayor's position then as a catalyst for the huge campaign rally for him on Nov. 5 in Williamsburg.

"What has been promised to us prior to the recent elections - and this was the only request we made - was that the subject of metzitzah b'peh should be completely untouched by the city department of health," the editorial said. "This and only this was the reason why thousands of Orthodox Jews registered themselves to vote, undersigned a petition to the mayor, came out in droves, men, women and children, to an unprecedented rally."

Rabbi Niederman said this week that he believed that Orthodox Jews supported Mr. Bloomberg because of many of his policies, not just his position on the rite, and said it would be unfair to question his political motives. Nonetheless, he said, "Before the election, we were very proud that the mayor did the right thing."

He said he was "astonished" and "shocked" by the city's more recent actions.

In December, Dr. Frieden wrote an "open letter" to Jews recommending against the practice and highlighting an alternative in which a sterile tube is used. He has also announced a plan to hand out literature about the practice's dangers to postnatal mothers. And a new health department alert has reminded hospitals of a mandate to report what Dr. Frieden described as "all unusual manifestations of disease" in newborns.

Dr. Frieden said his hand was forced when his department discovered the new cases of neonatal herpes - one coming in the spring, the other, in which the infant suffered brain damage, coming in October - and conclusively determined that they and the earlier cases were caused by metzitzah b'peh.

He emphasized that the city had no plans to take more aggressive action against the procedure. "I really have bought into the worldview that says for some part of the community metzitzah b'peh is integral to circumcision, and circumcision is integral to being Jewish," he said.

One public health specialist, Dr. William M. McCormack, director of the infectious disease program at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, said Dr. Frieden's move "was probably the least that he could have done with a clear conscience."

But members of the Central Rabbinical Council said that Dr. Frieden was in effect going over rabbis' heads by talking directly to their congregations in an attempt to persuade them to abandon a centuries old religious practice.

An open letter responding to Dr. Frieden, signed by "a member of the Jewish community" but approved by Hasidic leaders, said, "The citizens of the observant Jewish community live by the our own Director of Surveillance, with mandates that have guided and preserved our families for thousands of years."

Rabbi Niederman, who attended last night's meeting at Gracie Mansion, said the mayor calmed the rabbis by calling for a meeting of doctors who agree with the city and doctors who agree with the rabbis at which they would find "common ground."

"Maybe it needs a Camp David, you know what I mean, for three days, and nobody leave the room until an agreement is reached," Rabbi Niederman said.

    Mayor Balances Hasidic Ritual Against Fears for Babies' Heal, NYT, 6.1.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/06/nyregion/06rite.html

Pa. school board rescinds "intelligent design" policy

Posted 1/3/2006 8:15 PM Updated 1/3/2006 10:29 PM
By Martha Raffaele, Associated Press
USA Today

DOVER, Pa. — Dover's much-maligned school policy of presenting "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution was officially relegated to the history books Tuesday night. (Related item: U.S. judge rejects intelligent design)
On a voice vote, and with no discussion beforehand, the newly elected Dover Area School Board unanimously rescinded the policy. Two weeks earlier, a judge ruled the policy unconstitutional.

"This is it," new school board president Bernadette Reinking said Tuesday, indicating the vote was final and the case was closed.

A different group of school board members had been in control when the policy was approved in October 2004. The policy required that a statement be read to Dover public school students about "intelligent design" before ninth-grade biology class lessons on evolution.

The statement said Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps." It also referred students to an "intelligent-design" book, Of Pandas and People.

Eight families sued, and on Dec. 20, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III sided with their argument that the concept of "intelligent design" — which attributes the existence of complex organisms to an unidentified intelligent cause — is religious, not scientific. The judge said that violated the establishment clause in the First Amendment.

Dover biology teacher Jennifer Miller was relieved Tuesday night to know the policy was officially off the books.

"I will feel comfortable again teaching what I'd always felt comfortable teaching," she after the meeting, attended by a crowd of about 100 people.

School board members declined to comment after the vote.

Most of the previous board members who had defended the policy were ousted in the November election, replaced by candidates who pledged to eliminate the policy.

Policy defenders had said they were trying to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives with the policy. But the judge said the board's real purpose was "to promote religion in the public school classroom," and said intelligent design could not be taught as an alternative to evolution in biology classes.

"I tried ... to warn the board that we were facing a disaster and obviously I was not persuasive enough," said Jeff Brown, a former board member who resigned in protest after the policy passed. He said the costly court battle could have been avoided.

The Dover policy and high-profile lawsuit added fuel to a national debate over "intelligent design."

In Kansas, where state officials have been arguing over the teaching of evolution since 1999, education officials recently approved science standards that treat evolution as a flawed theory.

In Georgia, the state schools superintendent drew protests in 2004 for proposing a science curriculum that replaced the word "evolution" with "changes over time." Last year, a federal judge ordered Cobb County schools to remove from biology textbooks stickers that called evolution a theory, not a fact.

    Pa. school board rescinds "intelligent design" policy, UT, 3.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-01-03-intelligent-board-policy_x.htm