History > 2007 > USA > Faith, sects (I)

Chocolate Jesus exhibition canceled

after Catholics protest

30.3.2007
AP
USA Today

NEW YORK (AP) — A planned Holy Week exhibition of a nude, anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ was canceled Friday after Cardinal Edward Egan and other outraged Catholics complained.

The "My Sweet Lord" display was shut down by the hotel that houses the Lab Gallery in midtown Manhattan. Roger Smith Hotel president James Knowles cited the public outcry for his decision.

The reaction "is crystal clear and has brought to our attention the unintended reaction of you and other conscientious friends of ours to the exhibition," Knowles wrote in the two-paragraph cancellation notice.

Matt Semler, the gallery's creative director, resigned in protest.

The six-foot sculpture was the victim of "a strong-arming from people who haven't seen the show, seen what we're doing," Semler said. "They jumped to conclusions completely contrary to our intentions."

But word of the confectionary Christ infuriated Catholics, including Egan, who described it as "a sickening display." Bill Donohue, head of the watchdog Catholic League, said it was "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever."

The hotel and the gallery were overrun Thursday with angry phone calls and e-mails about the exhibit. Semler said the calls included death threats over the work of artist Cosimo Cavallaro, who was described as disappointed by the decision to cancel the display.

"In this situation, the hotel couldn't continue to be supportive because of a fear for their own safety," Semler said.

The sculpture was to debut Monday evening, the day after Palm Sunday and just four days before Christians mark the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Good Friday. The final day of the exhibit was planned for Easter Sunday.

The artwork was created from more than 200 pounds of milk chocolate, and features Christ with his arms outstretched as if on an invisible cross. Unlike the typical religious portrayal of Christ, the Cavallaro creation does not include a loincloth.

Cavallaro hoped the sculpture could go on display elsewhere, according to Semler.

Cavallaro is best known for his quirky work with food as art: Past efforts include repainting a Manhattan hotel room in melted mozzarella, spraying five tons of pepper jack cheese on a Wyoming home, and festooning a four-poster bed with 312 pounds of processed ham.

    Chocolate Jesus exhibition canceled after Catholics protest, UT, 30.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-03-30-chocolate-jesus_N.htm

For Some Black Pastors,

Accepting Gay Members

Means Losing Others

March 27, 2007
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

ATLANTA — When the Rev. Dennis Meredith of Tabernacle Baptist Church here began preaching acceptance of gay men and lesbians a few years ago, he attracted some gay people who were on the brink of suicide and some who had left the Baptist faith of their childhoods but wanted badly to return.

At the same time, Tabernacle Baptist, an African-American congregation, lost many of its most loyal, generous parishioners, who could not accept a message that contradicted what they saw as the Bible’s condemnation of same-sex relations. Over the last three years, Tabernacle’s Sunday attendance shrank to 800, from 1,100.

The debate about homosexuality that has roiled predominantly white mainline churches for years has gradually seeped into African-American congregations, threatening their unity, finances and, in some cases, their existence.

In St. Paul, the Rev. Oliver White, senior minister of Grace Community Church, lost nearly all his 70 congregants after he voted in 2005 to support the blessing of same-sex unions in his denomination, the United Church of Christ.

In the Atlanta area, a hub of African-American life, only a few black churches have preached acceptance of gay men and lesbians, Mr. Meredith said. At one of those congregations, Victory Church in Stone Mountain, attendance on Sundays has fallen to 3,000 people, from about 6,000 four or five years ago, said the Rev. Kenneth L. Samuel, the senior pastor.

Some black ministers, like their white counterparts, said they had been moved to reconsider biblical passages about same-sex relations by personal events, like finding out that a friend or relative is gay. Some members of the clergy contend that because of the antipathy to gay men and lesbians, black churches have done little to address the high rate of H.I.V. infection among African-Americans.

“The church has to come to a point when it has to embrace all the people Jesus embraced, and that means the people in the margins,” Dr. Samuel said. “It really bothered my congregation when I said that as people of color who have been ostracized, marginalized, how can we turn around now and oppress other people?”

It is hard to know how many ministers who lead the country’s tens of thousands of African-American congregations are preaching acceptance of gay men and lesbians. Some leading African-American religious thinkers and leaders — like Cornel West, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes and the Rev. Michael Eric Dyson — have called for inclusion of gay men and lesbians. But other leaders are convinced that the Bible condemns homosexuality and that tolerance of gay men and lesbians is a yet another dangerous force buffeting the already fragile black family.

“It is one of several factors that are taking away the interest in traditional marriage in the African-American community,” said Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., the president of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, a black conservative Christian group. “I see the growing gay movement in the black community and our culture as almost evangelistic in nature, with what’s on television, with their legal agenda, all those things that have made homosexuality more acceptable.”

In the 13 years Mr. Meredith has led Tabernacle Baptist, he has presided over cycles of fraying and mending, this last time because of his preaching “love and acceptance,” he said. When he arrived in 1994, the congregation at Tabernacle had dwindled from several thousand members to about 110.

A compelling orator with the voice and showmanship of a stadium-rock star, Mr. Meredith quickly began to draw more new members. He preached against homosexuality. Then, five years ago, his middle son, Micah, told him that he is gay. Mr. Meredith and his wife began to read liberal theologians like Mr. Gomes and to look at Scripture again. What matters most in the Bible, Mr. Meredith said, was Jesus’ injunction to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself, and that includes gay men and lesbians.

As he preached greater acceptance of gay people, Mr. Meredith saw the face of his congregation change.

About three years ago, many older members, those who had hung on through the church’s waning, and who drove in from the suburbs because they had attended Tabernacle as young people, gradually began to leave. They took with them their generous, loyal tithing. The 90-year-old church had money to cover salaries and utilities but had a hard time paying for properties it had bought nearby. In September, Mr. Meredith held a commitment ceremony in the church for two lesbian couples. More people left after that.

As attendance dropped, the church cut back to one service on Sunday, from two. On a recent Sunday, the pews were filled with some older people like the deacons and deaconesses, though the head deacon had left recently after telling Mr. Meredith that he had turned Tabernacle into “a sissy church.”

Under banners that read “Kindness,” “Peace” and “Love,” there were young families with babies. And there were transgender people like Stacy Jackson and Nikki Brown. There were also lesbian couples like Angela Hutchins and Stephanie Champion, sitting together in the front rows.

Mr. Meredith preached about Moses, about the vision God gave him to do the right thing. He told congregants about holding on to that vision, regardless of who they were.

“Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do it because of your lifestyle, because of your sexuality, because you don’t have an education, because you’ve done time,” he said. “Because God knew you before you were born, when you were still in your mother’s womb. If God loves everybody, who am I not to love everybody?”

“Amen,” people called out. “Preach it; preach it.”

Afterward, when the sanctuary was mostly empty, Ruth Jinks, a deaconess who has been at Tabernacle since 1969, sat in a pew, cane by her side, waiting for the church van to take her home. Gay men and lesbians do not make her uncomfortable, Ms. Jinks said. They have always been in black churches, under something of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But she seems to have tired of Mr. Meredith’s mention of them. She hears from acquaintances that she goes to the “gay church.”

“I don’t think you need to be speaking about it from the pulpit all the time,” said Ms. Jinks, who is in her early 80s. “I joined this church; I support this church. I didn’t join a minister. I’m planning on staying here and will not let people run me away.”

One of the junior pastors is the Rev. Chris Brown, who grew up in a black Pentecostal church in Montgomery, Ala.

“My pastor in Alabama said gays had three rights: to redeem themselves, to repent or to die of AIDS,” said Mr. Brown, 32.

He added, “The African-American church thinks AIDS is a gay disease, and that everyone who got it deserved to.”

DeMarcus Hill, 32, said he admired Mr. Meredith’s “ability to embrace those people who everyone had rejected.” Mr. Hill once attended and worked at Tabernacle Baptist, and he is still friends with the Meredith family. But after reading the Bible closely, Mr. Hill, who is studying to be ordained as a Baptist minister, said he could not stay at Tabernacle because sex outside heterosexual marriage was not countenanced.

Mr. Hill said he agreed with Mr. Meredith that God loves everyone, including gay men and lesbians. “But God corrects you because he loves you,” he said, explaining that for gay Christians, such a correction would probably mean lifelong celibacy or eventually being with someone of the opposite sex.

    For Some Black Pastors, Accepting Gay Members Means Losing Others, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/us/27churches.html

Episcopal Church Rejects Demand for a 2nd Leadership

March 22, 2007
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Responding to an ultimatum from leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion, bishops of the Episcopal Church have rejected a key demand to create a parallel leadership structure to serve the conservative minority of Episcopalians who oppose their church’s liberal stand on homosexuality.

The bishops, meeting privately at a retreat center outside Houston, said they were aware that the stand they were taking could lead to the exclusion of the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion, an international confederation of churches tied to the Church of England.

They said they had a “deep longing” to remain part of the Communion, but were unwilling to compromise the Episcopal Church’s autonomy and its commitment to full equality for all people, including gay men and lesbians.

“If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision,” the bishops said in a statement released late Tuesday night. The bishops’ recommendations will be taken up next by the church’s executive council, which is expected to generally agree.

The bishops also called for an urgent “face to face” meeting in the United States with the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Church of England, as well as a committee of the church’s primates, who head the international provinces. The primates, at their meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, last month, issued the ultimatum to the Episcopal Church, and imposed a deadline for a response of Sept. 30.

The primates had also asked the Episcopal Church to pledge not to consecrate partnered gay bishops, and to stop authorizing blessings of same-sex couples. The bishops, while not addressing those demands for a moratorium directly, reiterated their commitment to the full inclusion of “all God’s people,” including gay men and lesbians, in church life.

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, said the bishops would spend the summer consulting with church members to develop a more complete response to the primates by September.

She said that she had previously asked the archbishop of Canterbury to visit the United States and been told that his calendar was full, but that she would ask him again.

“There is some belief in this house that other parts of the Communion do not understand us very well,” she said at a news conference after the bishops’ meeting.

The archbishop of Canterbury issued a two-sentence response on Wednesday, saying that the bishops’ statement was “discouraging and indicates the need for further discussion and clarification.” He added, “No one is underestimating the challenges ahead.”

What really agitated the American bishops was the primates’ insistence that the Episcopal Church accept a parallel authority structure composed of a “primatial vicar” and a five-member “pastoral council,” a majority of whose members would have been appointed by the primates. Bishops said they had a sense of urgency because names of potential pastoral council members were already being proposed.

Several bishops at the meeting said there was an overwhelming aversion to this plan, shared even by some of the theologically conservative bishops. The Episcopal Church defines itself, in part, by its democratic approach to decision-making, in which the bishops share power with the clergy and the laity. Many bishops feared that this new arrangement would grant too much power to foreign primates, many of whom have a more authoritarian approach to church leadership.

Bishop John Chane of Washington, D.C., said in an interview, “It was very clear that the majority of bishops, wherever they were on the theological spectrum, agreed that this scheme doesn’t match with who we are as the Episcopal Church.”

In a strongly worded assertion of autonomy, the bishops said in their statement that any attempt to impose this scheme “violates our founding principles as the Episcopal Church following our own liberation from colonialism.” The bishops included a reminder that the Episcopal Church long ago declared itself independent from the Church of England.

Several bishops also said in interviews that they believed that the pastoral council arrangement was intended to strengthen the position of conservative parishes or dioceses that want to leave the Episcopal Church and take their property with them. The breakaway parishes could claim that they came under the new pastoral council guided by the primates, and that the council was the highest authority in the Episcopal Church’s hierarchy.

Bishop Mark Sisk, of New York, said in an interview, “The concern is that that would indicate we are, in some sense, subservient to the primates, rather than simply a church in fellowship with them. And that could have significant legal implications.”

Reaction in the church was complex. Some liberal Episcopalians applauded the bishops for standing up to the primates.

“It’s a good day to be an Episcopalian,” said the Rev. Terry Martin of Holy Spirit Church, Tuckerton, N.J., who writes a liberal blog that is called fatherjakestopstheworld.

“Many priests have been writing or talking to their bishops, and it felt like the bishops heard the church. This is what many of us have been saying, that if we give the primates this power, they’re going to keep it forever.”

Response from conservatives ran the gamut from anger, to confusion, to relief that finally now the Episcopal Church would be ejected from the Communion. Reached by phone as he was leaving the bishops’ meeting, Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who leads a network of conservatives who have been asking for alternative structural oversight, said only: “I’m really thinking through what all this means.”

    Episcopal Church Rejects Demand for a 2nd Leadership, NYT, 22.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/us/22episcopal.html

Money Looms in Episcopalian Rift With Anglicans

March 20, 2007
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and NEELA BANERJEE

As leaders of the Anglican Communion hold meeting after meeting to debate severing ties with the Episcopal Church in the United States for consecrating an openly gay bishop, one of the unspoken complications is just who has been paying the bills.

The truth is, the Episcopal Church bankrolls much of the Communion’s operations. And a cutoff of that money, while unlikely at this time, could deal the Communion a devastating blow.

The Episcopal Church’s 2.3 million members make up a small fraction of the 77 million members in the Anglican Communion, the world’s third-largest affiliation of Christian churches. Nevertheless, the Episcopal Church finances at least a third of the Communion’s annual operations.

Episcopalians give tens of millions more each year to support aid and development programs in the Communion’s poorer provinces in Africa, Asia and Latin America. At least $18 million annually flows from Episcopal Church headquarters in New York, and millions more are sent directly from American dioceses and parishes that support Anglican churches, schools, clinics and missionaries abroad.

Bishops in some foreign provinces that benefit from Episcopal money are now leading the charge to punish the Episcopal Church or even evict it from the Communion. Some have declared that they will reject money from the Episcopal Church because of its stand on homosexuality.

But church officials say that their donations continue to be accepted in every province but Uganda, and that they do not intend to shut off the spigot.

“The American church is not a pariah to everybody — some people still like us,” said the Rev. Lisa Fishbeck of Carrboro, N.C., in the Diocese of North Carolina, which is setting up a program with a diocese in Botswana. “They think we’re nutty, but they still like us.”

Episcopalians are now grappling with an ultimatum issued last month by leaders, or primates, of the Anglican Communion’s 38 provinces demanding that they promise not to ordain any more openly gay bishops, or to approve any more church blessings for gay couples. If the Episcopal Church does not agree by Sept. 30, the primates threatened “consequences” that will affect the Episcopal Church’s participation in the Communion.

But whether the Episcopal Church will comply, and whether its decision puts at risk its financial arrangements with the rest of the Anglican Communion remain up in the air.

Canon James M. Rosenthal, director of communications for the Anglican Communion Office in London, said no one in the Episcopal Church has threatened to cut off money.

But Canon Rosenthal said, “Any default on the total amount of money needed would have serious implications for the Anglican Communion and its work, especially when you are talking about 30 percent or more of its budget.”

Many Episcopalians say they have spent years forming relationships with Anglicans throughout the world and would be loath to cut off support, especially for programs that support the developing world’s poor.

“I think we need the Communion, and I think most of the Communion would say it needs us,” said Margaret Larom, director of Anglican and global relations for the Episcopal Church.

Work at the Episcopal Church’s headquarters is so intertwined with the rest of the Anglican Communion that shutting off the flow of money would put a stop to much of the church’s mission and evangelism.

Officials estimate that collectively, a quarter of the church’s budget goes to international programs. There are ministries for women, for young people and for peace and justice that collaborate with Anglicans overseas, acting as host to and paying for delegations visiting the United States and going abroad.

In addition, Episcopal Relief and Development, a semi-autonomous agency with its own budget, sends $15 million overseas each year to relieve hunger, provide health care and respond to disasters — mostly by collaborating with Anglican and other churches abroad, said Rob Radtke, its president.

“In places the government can’t reach, the church has an infrastructure and delivery system that is second to none,” Mr. Radtke said. “We certainly are in partnership with people who disagree with us, and that’s just fine. We give out our money based on the need, and not on the basis of some theological discussion.”

At least 80 of the 110 dioceses in the Episcopal Church are partnered with one or more foreign dioceses, sending aid, and exchanging priests, lay teachers and missionaries, said Brother James Teets, who runs this “Companion Diocese” program at church headquarters.

After the Episcopal Church consented to the ordination in 2003 of Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, who lives with his gay partner, bishops in the African provinces declared that their churches would no longer accept money from the Episcopal Church. (One province that would not have been affected by this is Nigeria, whose archbishop has been the most outspoken opponent of the Episcopal Church’s approach to homosexuality. The church in Nigeria, the largest in the Anglican Communion with 17 million members, is largely self-supporting, Anglican officials said.)

So far, the archbishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi, is the only primate who has actually turned down money from the Episcopal Church, many church officials said in interviews.

In 2004, Archbishop Orombi’s edict led to the shutdown of a community development program financed by Episcopal Relief and Development that worked with families affected by H.I.V./AIDS.

“We were just devastated by that,” Mr. Radtke said. “No one won, and everyone was a loser.”

But this rupture was the rare exception, and most financing is still getting through. For example, the diocese of Oklahoma has continued supporting three secondary schools and 10 health centers in its companion diocese in Uganda by sending the money to a separate organization, said the Rev. Canon Charles Woltz, assistant to the Oklahoma bishop.

The Rev. Titus Presler, professor of mission and world Christianity at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, in New York, said, “It is very striking that in the midst of all these tensions, the missionary relations and Companion Diocese relationships have been able to flourish.”

The Rev. Bill Atwood, the general secretary of the Ekklesia Society, a theologically conservative aid organization in Texas, accused the Episcopal Church of using its money to buy off opponents in poor countries. “It’s a pretty lousy thing to do: to try and use money to weaken the philosophical position of people overseas,” Dr. Atwood said.

Ekklesia also disburses grants overseas and has helped to finance strategy meetings between conservative Episcopalians and their foreign Anglican counterparts, but Dr. Atwood would not divulge any financial information and it is not publicly available.

Conservative Episcopalians in the United States who disagree with their church’s course have set up their own smaller aid agency parallel to Episcopal Relief and Development. The Anglican Relief and Development Fund has disbursed $2.7 million in grants in the last two and a half years, said its executive director, Nancy Norton.

American resentment at their role as the Communion’s deep pockets emerged last year when the Episcopal Church’s executive council was asked to increase its contribution to the Anglican Consultative Council, the Communion’s central coordinating body, by 10 percent each year for the next three years from $661,0000 in 2007.

At the council’s last meeting, in England in 2005, the Episcopal Church’s representatives were asked to look on as observers, and not participate in decision making — a measure promoted by some conservative primates.

Mrs. Larom, the Episcopal Church’s director of Anglican relations, said some members of the executive council bristled at the budget request, saying, “ ‘Why should we give money when we’re not at the table?’ ” Nevertheless, the executive council approved the 10 percent increase and the Episcopal Church gave the money out of loyalty to the Communion, she said.

One of the most urgent questions ahead is whether the Americans will continue to underwrite the Lambeth Conference in London, the large gathering of Anglican bishops that happens every 10 years. The next one is in 2008. In past conferences, each American bishop who attended has paid the expenses of a bishop from overseas who needed help, Mrs. Larom said.

Anglican officials said that they were not assuming the Americans will contribute at the same rate for the 2008 conference, and that they were now looking for alternative sources.

    Money Looms in Episcopalian Rift With Anglicans, NYT, 20.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/us/20episcopal.html

Free-Speech Case Divides Bush and Religious Right

March 18, 2007
The New York Times
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, March 17 — A Supreme Court case about the free-speech rights of high school students, to be argued on Monday, has opened an unexpected fissure between the Bush administration and its usual allies on the religious right.

As a result, an appeal that asks the justices to decide whether school officials can squelch or punish student advocacy of illegal drugs has taken on an added dimension as a window on an active front in the culture wars, one that has escaped the notice of most people outside the fray. And as the stakes have grown higher, a case that once looked like an easy victory for the government side may prove to be a much closer call.

On the surface, Joseph Frederick’s dispute with his principal, Deborah Morse, at the Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska five years ago appeared to have little if anything to do with religion — or perhaps with much of anything beyond a bored senior’s attitude and a harried administrator’s impatience.

As the Olympic torch was carried through the streets of Juneau on its way to the 2002 winter games in Salt Lake City, students were allowed to leave the school grounds to watch. The school band and cheerleaders performed. With television cameras focused on the scene, Mr. Frederick and some friends unfurled a 14-foot-long banner with the inscription: “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”

Mr. Frederick later testified that he designed the banner, using a slogan he had seen on a snowboard, “to be meaningless and funny, in order to get on television.” Ms. Morse found no humor but plenty of meaning in the sign, recognizing “bong hits” as a slang reference to using marijuana. She demanded that he take the banner down. When he refused, she tore it down, ordered him to her office, and gave him a 10-day suspension.

Mr. Fredericks’s ensuing lawsuit and the free-speech court battle that resulted, in which he has prevailed so far, is one that, classically, pits official authority against student dissent. It is the first Supreme Court case to do so directly since the court upheld the right of students to wear black arm bands to school to protest the war in Vietnam, declaring in Tinker v. Des Moines School District that “it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

The court followed that 1969 decision with two others during the 1980s that upheld the authority of school officials to ban vulgar or offensive student speech and to control the content of school newspapers. Clearly there is some tension in the court’s student-speech doctrine; what message to extract from the trio of decisions is the basic analytical question in the new case, Morse v. Frederick, No. 06-278. What is most striking is how the two sides line up.

The Bush administration entered the case on the side of the principal and the Juneau School Board, which are both represented by Kenneth W. Starr, the former solicitor general and independent counsel. His law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, is handling the appeal without a fee. Mr. Starr and Edwin S. Kneedler, a deputy solicitor general who will present the government’s view, will share argument time on Monday. The National School Board Association, two school principals’ groups, and several antidrug organizations also filed briefs on the school board’s side.

While it is hardly surprising to find the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Coalition Against Censorship on Mr. Frederick’s side, it is the array of briefs from organizations that litigate and speak on behalf of the religious right that has lifted Morse v. Frederick out of the realm of the ordinary.

The groups include the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson; the Christian Legal Society; the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization based in Arizona that describes its mission as “defending the right to hear and speak the Truth”; the Rutherford Institute, which has participated in many religion cases before the court; and Liberty Legal Institute, a nonprofit law firm “dedicated to the preservation of First Amendment rights and religious freedom.”

The institute, based in Plano, Tex., told the justices in its brief that it was “gravely concerned that the religious freedom of students in public schools will be damaged” if the court rules for the school board.

Lawyers on Mr. Frederick’s side offer a straightforward explanation for the strange-bedfellows aspect of the case. “The status of being a dissident unites dissidents on either side,” said Prof. Douglas Laycock of the University of Michigan Law School, an authority on constitutional issues involving religion who worked on Liberty Legal Institute’s brief.

In an interview, Professor Laycock said that religiously observant students often find the atmosphere in public school to be unwelcoming and “feel themselves a dissident and excluded minority.” As the Jehovah’s Witnesses did in the last century, these students are turning to the courts.

The briefs from the conservative religious organizations depict the school environment as an ideological battleground. The Christian Legal Society asserts that its law school chapters “have endured a relentless assault by law schools intolerant of their unpopular perspective on the morality of homosexual conduct or the relevance of religious belief.”

The American Center for Law and Justice brief, filed by its chief counsel, Jay Alan Sekulow, warns that public schools “face a constant temptation to impose a suffocating blanket of political correctness upon the educational atmosphere.”

What galvanized most of the groups on Mr. Frederick’s side was the breadth of the arguments made on the other side. The solicitor general’s brief asserts that under the Supreme Court’s precedents, student speech “may be banned if it is inconsistent with a school’s basic educational mission.”

The Juneau School Board’s mission includes opposing illegal drug use, the administration’s brief continues, citing as evidence a 1994 federal law, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, which requires that schools, as a condition of receiving federal money, must “convey a clear and consistent message” that using illegal drugs is “wrong and harmful.”

Mr. Starr’s main brief asserts that the court’s trilogy of cases “stands for the proposition that students have limited free speech rights balanced against the school district’s right to carry out its educational mission and to maintain discipline.” The brief argues that even if Ms. Morse applied that precept incorrectly to the facts of this case, she is entitled to immunity from suit because she could have reasonably believed that the law was on her side.

The religious groups were particularly alarmed by what they saw as the implication that school boards could define their “educational mission” as they wished and could suppress countervailing speech accordingly.

“Holy moly, look at this! To get drugs we can eliminate free speech in schools?” is how Robert A. Destro, a law professor at Catholic University, described his reaction to the briefs for the school board when the Liberty Legal Institute asked him to consider participating on the Mr. Frederick’s behalf. He quickly signed on.

Having worked closely with Republican administrations for years, Mr. Destro said he was hard pressed to understand the administration’s position. “My guess is they just hadn’t thought it through,” he said in an interview. “To the people who put them in office, they are making an incoherent statement.”

The solicitor general’s office does not comment publicly on its cases. But Mr. Starr, by contrast, was happy to talk about the case and the alignment against him of many of his old allies. “It’s reassuring to have lots of friends of liberty running around,” he said in a cheerful tone, adding: “I welcome this outpouring because it will help the court see that it shouldn’t go too far either way.”

    Free-Speech Case Divides Bush and Religious Right, NYT, 18.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/washington/18scotus.html

Thousands of Christians protest Iraq war

17.3.2007
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of Christians prayed for peace at an anti-war service Friday night at the Washington National Cathedral, kicking off a weekend of protests around the country to mark the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq.

Afterward, participants marched with battery-operated faux candles through snow and wind toward the White House, where police began arresting protesters shortly before midnight. Protest guidelines require demonstrators to continue moving while on the White House sidewalk.

"We gave them three warnings, and they broke the guidelines," said Lt. Scott Fear. "There's an area on the White House sidewalk where you have to keep moving."

About 100 people crossed the street from Lafayette Park — where thousands of protesters were gathered — to demonstrate on the White House sidewalk late Friday. Police began cuffing them and putting them on busses to be taken for processing.

Police said they would not know the total number of protesters arrested until later Saturday.

The windows of the executive mansion were dark, as the president was away for the weekend at Camp David in Maryland.

John Pattison, 29, said he and his wife flew in from Portland, Ore., to attend his first anti-war rally. He said his opposition to the war had developed over time.

"Quite literally on the night that shock and awe commenced, my friend and I toasted the military might of the United States," Pattison said. "We were quite proud and thought we were doing the right thing."

He said the way the war had progressed and U.S. foreign policy since then had forced him to question his beliefs.

"A lot of the rhetoric that we hear coming from Christians has been dominated by the religious right and has been strong advocacy for the war," Pattison said. "That's just not the way I read my Gospel."

The ecumenical coalition that organized the event, Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, distributed 3,200 tickets for the service in the cathedral, with two smaller churches hosting overflow crowds. The cathedral appeared to be packed, although sleet and snow prevented some from attending.

"This war, from a Christian point of view, is morally wrong — and was from the beginning," the Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, one of the event's sponsors, said toward the end of the service to cheers and applause. "This war is ... an offense against God."

In his speech, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, lashed out at Congress for being "too morally inept to intervene" to stop the war, but even more harshly against President Bush.

"Mr. Bush, my Christian brother, we do need a surge in troops. We need a surge in the non-violent army of the Lord," he said. "We need a surge in conscience and a surge in activism and a surge in truth-telling."

Celeste Zappala of Philadelphia recounted how she learned of the death of her son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, who served in the National Guard. When a uniformed man came to her door asking if she was Baker's mother, she said yes.

"'Yes,' and then I fell to the ground and somewhere outside of myself I heard someone screaming and screaming," she said.

The Friday night events mark the beginning of what is planned as a weekend of protests ahead of Tuesday's anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, which began on March 20, 2003.

On Saturday morning, a coalition of protest groups has a permit for up to 30,000 people to march from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial across the Potomac River to the Pentagon. Smaller demonstrations are planned in cities across the country.

    Thousands of Christians protest Iraq war, UT, 17.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-17-war-protest_N.htm

Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance

March 11, 2007
The New York Times
By ANDREA ELLIOTT

Under the glistening dome of a mosque on Long Island, hundreds of men sat cross-legged on the floor. Many were doctors and engineers born in Pakistan and India. Dressed in khakis, polo shirts and the odd silk tunic, they fidgeted and whispered.

One thing stood between them and dinner: A visitor from Harlem was coming to ask for money.

A towering black man with a gray-flecked beard finally swept into the room, his bodyguard trailing him. Wearing a long, embroidered robe and matching hat, he took the microphone and began talking about a different group of Muslims, the thousands of African-Americans who have found Islam in prison.

“We are all brothers and sisters,” said the visitor, known as Imam Talib.

The men stared. To some of them, it seemed, he was from another planet. As the imam returned their gaze, he had a similar sensation. “They live in another world,” he later said.

Only 28 miles separate Imam Talib’s mosque in Harlem from the Islamic Center of Long Island. The congregations they each serve — African-Americans at the city mosque and immigrants of South Asian and Arab descent in the suburbs — represent the largest Muslim populations in the United States. Yet a vast gulf divides them, one marked by race and class, culture and history.

For many African-American converts, Islam is an experience both spiritual and political, an expression of empowerment in a country they feel is dominated by a white elite. For many immigrant Muslims, Islam is an inherited identity, and America a place of assimilation and prosperity.

For decades, these two Muslim worlds remained largely separate. But last fall, Imam Talib hoped to cross that distance in a venture that has become increasingly common since Sept. 11. Black Muslims have begun advising immigrants on how to mount a civil rights campaign. Foreign-born Muslims are giving African-Americans roles of leadership in some of their largest organizations. The two groups have joined forces politically, forming coalitions and backing the same candidates.

It is a tentative and uneasy union, seen more typically among leaders at the pulpit than along the prayer line. But it is critical, a growing number of Muslims believe, to surviving a hostile new era.

“Muslims will not be successful in America until there is a marriage between the indigenous and immigrant communities,” said Siraj Wahhaj, an African-American imam in New York with a rare national following among immigrant Muslims. “There has to be a marriage.”

The divide between black and immigrant Muslims reflects a unique struggle facing Islam in America. Perhaps nowhere else in the world are Muslims from so many racial, cultural and theological backgrounds trying their hands at coexistence. Only in Mecca, during the obligatory hajj, or pilgrimage, does such diversity in the faith come to life, between black and white, rich and poor, Sunni and Shiite.

“This is a new experiment in the history of Islam,” said Ali S. Asani, a professor of Islamic studies at Harvard University.

That evening in October, Imam Al-Hajj Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid drove to Westbury, on Long Island, with a task he would have found unthinkable years ago.

He would ask for donations from the immigrant community he refers to, somewhat bitterly, as the “Muslim elite.”

But he needed funds, and the doors of immigrant mosques seemed to be opening. Imam Talib and other African-American leaders had formed a national “indigenous Muslim” organization, and he knew that during the holy month of Ramadan, the Islamic Center of Long Island could raise thousands of dollars in an evening.

It is a place where BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes fill the parking lot, and Coach purses are perched along prayer lines.

In Harlem, many of Imam Talib’s congregants get to the mosque by bus or subway, and warm themselves with space heaters in a drafty, brick building.

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Imam Talib had only a distant connection to the Islamic Center of Long Island. In passing, he had met Faroque Khan, an Indian-born doctor who helped found the mosque, but the two had little in common.

Imam Talib, 56, is a thundering prison chaplain whose mosque traces its roots to Malcolm X. He is a first-generation Muslim.

Dr. Khan, 64, is a mild-mannered pulmonologist who collects Chinese antiques and learned to ski on the slopes of Vermont. He is a first-generation American.

But in the turmoil that followed Sept. 11, the imam and the doctor found themselves unexpectedly allied.

“The more separate we stay, the more targeted we become,” Dr. Khan said.

Each man recognizes what the other has to offer. African-Americans possess a cultural and historical fluency that immigrants lack, said Dr. Khan; they hold an unassailable place in America from which to defend their faith.

For Imam Talib, immigrants provide a crucial link to the Muslim world and its tradition of scholarship, as well as the wisdom that comes with an “unshattered Islamic heritage.”

Both groups have their practical virtues, too. African-Americans know better how to mobilize in America, both men say, and immigrants tend to have deeper pockets.

Still, it is one thing to talk about unity, Imam Talib said, and another to give it life. Before his visit to Long Island last fall, he had never asked Dr. Khan and his mosque to match their rhetoric with money.

“You have to have a litmus test,” he said.

One Faith, Many Histories

Imam Talib and Dr. Khan did not warm to each other when they met in May 2000, at a gathering in Chicago of Muslim leaders.

The imam found the silver-haired doctor faintly smug and paternalistic. It was an attitude he had often whiffed from well-to-do immigrant Muslims. Dr. Khan found Imam Talib straightforward to the point of bluntness.

The uneasy introduction was, for both men, emblematic of the strained relationship between their communities.

Imam Talib and other black Muslims trace their American roots to the arrival of Muslims from West Africa as slaves in the South. That historical link gave rise to Islam-inspired movements in the 20th century, the most significant of which was the Nation of Islam.

The man who founded the Nation in 1930, W. D. Fard, spread the message that American blacks belonged to a lost Muslim tribe and were superior to the “white, blue-eyed devils” in their midst. Under Mr. Fard’s successor, Elijah Muhammad, the Nation flourished in the 1960s amid the civil rights struggle and the emergence of a black-separatist movement.

Overseas, Islamic scholars found the group’s teachings on race antithetical to the faith. The schism narrowed after 1975, when Mr. Muhammad’s son Warith Deen Mohammed took over the Nation, bringing it in line with orthodox Sunni Islam. Louis Farrakhan parted ways with Mr. Mohammed — taking the Nation’s name and traditional teachings with him — but the majority of African-American adherents came to embrace the same Sunni practice that dominates the Muslim world.

Still, divisions between African-American and immigrant Muslims remained pronounced long after the first large waves of South Asians and Arabs arrived in the United States in the 1960s.

Today, of the estimated six million Muslims who live in the United States, about 25 percent are African-American, 34 percent are South Asian and 26 percent are Arab, said John Zogby, a pollster who has studied the American Muslim population.

“Given the extreme from which we came, I would say that the immigrant Muslims have been brotherly toward us,” Warith Deen Mohammed, who has the largest following of African-American Muslims, said in an interview. “But I think they’re more skeptical than they admit they are. I think they feel more comfortable with their own than they feel with us.”

For many African-Americans, conversion to Islam has meant parting with mainstream culture, while Muslim immigrants have tended toward assimilation. Black converts often take Arabic names, only to find foreign-born Muslims introducing themselves as “Moe” instead of “Mohammed.”

The tensions are also economic. Like Dr. Khan, many Muslim immigrants came to the United States with advanced degrees and quickly prospered, settling in the suburbs. For decades, African-Americans watched with frustration as immigrants sent donations to causes overseas, largely ignoring the problems of poor Muslims in the United States.

Imam Talib found it impossible to generate interest at immigrant mosques in the 1999 police shooting of Amadou Diallo, who was Muslim. “What we’ve found is when domestic issues jump up, like police brutality, all the sudden we’re by ourselves,” he said.

Some foreign-born Muslims say they are put off by the racial politics of many black converts. They struggle to understand why African-American Muslims have been reluctant to meet with law enforcement officials in the wake of Sept. 11. For their part, black Muslim leaders complain that immigrants have failed to learn their history, which includes a pattern of F.B.I. surveillance dating back to the roots of the Nation of Islam.

The ironies are, at times, stinging.

“From the immigrant community, I hear that African-Americans have to learn how to work in the system,” said Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations, adding that this was not his personal opinion.

At the heart of the conflict is a question of leadership. Much to the ire of African-Americans, many immigrants see themselves as the rightful leaders of the faith in America by virtue of their Islamic schooling and fluency in Arabic, the original language of the Koran.

“What does knowing Arabic have to do with the quality of your prayer, your fast, your relationship with God?” asked Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. “But African-Americans have to ask themselves why have they not learned more in these years.”

Every year in Chicago, the two largest Muslim conventions in the country — one sponsored by an immigrant organization and the other by Mr. Mohammed’s — take place on the same weekend, in separate parts of the city.

The long-simmering tension boiled over into a public rift with the 2000 presidential elections. That year, a powerful coalition of immigrant Muslims endorsed George W. Bush (because of a promise to stop the profiling of Arabs).

The nation’s most prominent African-American Muslims complained that they were never consulted. The following summer, when Imam Talib vented his frustration at a meeting with immigrant leaders in Washington, a South Asian man turned to him, he recalled, and said, “I don’t understand why all of you African-American Muslims are always so angry about everything.”

Imam Talib searched for an answer he thought the man could understand.

“African-Americans are like the Palestinians of this land,” he finally said. “We’re not just some angry black people. We’re legitimately outraged and angry.”

The room fell silent.

Soon after, black leaders announced the creation of the Muslim Alliance in North America, their first national “indigenous” organization.

But the fallout over the elections was soon eclipsed by Sept. 11, when Muslim immigrants found themselves under intense public scrutiny. They began complaining about “profiling” and “flying while brown,” appropriating language that had been largely the domain of African-Americans.

It was around this time that Dr. Khan became, as he put it, enlightened. A few weeks before the terrorist attacks, he read the book “Black Rage,” by William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs. The book, published in 1968, explores the psychological woes of African-Americans, and how the impact of racism is carried through generations.

“It helped me understand that even before you’re born, things that happened a hundred years ago can affect you,” Dr. Khan said. “That was a big change in my thinking.”

He sent an e-mail message to fellow Muslims, including Imam Talib, sharing what he had learned.

The Harlem imam was pleased, if not yet convinced.

“I just encouraged the brother to keep going,” Imam Talib said.

An Oasis in Harlem

One windswept night in Harlem, cars rolled past the corner of West 113th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. A police siren blared as men huddled by a neon-lit Laundromat.

Across the street stood a brown brick building, lifeless from the outside. But upstairs, in a cozy carpeted room, rows of men and women chanted.

“Ya Hakim. Ya Allah.” O wise one. O God.

Imam Talib led the chant, swathed in a black satin robe. It was Ramadan’s holiest evening, the Night of Power. As the voices died down, he spotted his bodyguard swaying.

“Take it easy there, Captain,” Imam Talib said. “As long as you don’t jump and shout it’s all right.”

Laughter trickled through the mosque, where a translucent curtain separated men in skullcaps from women in African-print gowns.

“We’re just trying to be ourselves, you know?” Imam Talib said. “Within the tradition.”

“That’s right,” said one woman.

The imam continued: “And we can’t let other people, from other cultures, come and try to make us clones of them. We came here as Muslims.”

He was feeling drained. He had just returned from the Manhattan Detention Complex, where he works as a chaplain. Some of the mosque’s men were back in jail.

“We need power,” he said quietly. “Without that, we’ll destroy ourselves.”

Since its birth in 1964, the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood has been a fortress of stubborn faith, persevering through the crack wars, welfare, AIDS, gangs, unemployment, diabetes, broken families and gentrification.

The mosque was founded in a Brooklyn apartment by Shaykh-‘Allama Al-Hajj K. Ahmad Tawfiq, a follower of Malcolm X. The Sunni congregation boomed in the 1970s, starting a newspaper and opening a school and a health food store.

With city loans, it bought its current building. Fourteen families moved in, creating a bold Muslim oasis in a landscape of storefront churches and liquor stores. The mosque claimed its corner by drenching the sidewalk in dark green paint, the color associated with Islam.

The paint has since faded. The school is closed. Many of the mosque’s members can no longer afford to live in a neighborhood where brownstones sell for millions of dollars.

But an aura of dignity prevails. The women normally pray one floor below the men, in a scrubbed, tidy room scented with incense. Their bathroom is a shrine of gold curtains and lavender soaps. A basket of nylon roses hides a hole in the wall.

Most of the mosque’s 160 members belong to the working class, and up to a third of the men are former convicts.

Some congregants are entrepreneurs, professors, writers and musicians. Mos Def and Q-Tip have visited with Imam Talib, who carries the nickname “hip-hop imam.”

Mosque celebrations are a blend of Islam and Harlem. In October, at the end of Ramadan, families feasted on curried chicken and collard greens, grilled fish and candied yams.

Just before the afternoon prayer, a lean man in a black turtleneck rose to give the call. He was Yusef Salaam, whose conviction in the Central Park jogger case was later overturned.

Many of the mosque’s members embraced Islam in search of black empowerment, not black separatism. They describe racial equality as a central tenet of their faith. Yet for some, the promise of Islam has been at odds with the reality of Muslims.

One member, Aqilah Mu’Min, lives in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, a heavily Bangladeshi neighborhood. Whenever she passes women in head scarves, she offers the requisite Muslim greeting. Rarely is it returned. “We have a theory that says Islam is perfect, human beings are not,” said Ms. Mu’Min, a city fraud investigator.

It was the simplicity of Islam that drew Imam Talib.

Raised a Christian, he spent the first part of his youth in segregated North Carolina. As a teenager, he read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” twice. He began educating himself about the faith at age 19, when as an aspiring actor he was cast in a play about a man who had left the Nation of Islam.

But his conversion was more spiritual than political, he said.

“I’d like to think that even if I was a white man, I’d still be a Muslim because that’s the orientation of my soul,” the imam said.

He has learned some Arabic, and traveled once to the Middle East, for hajj. Yet he feels more comfortable with the Senegalese and Guinean Muslims who have settled in Harlem than with many Arabs and South Asians.

He is trying to reach out, but is often disappointed.

In November, he accepted a last-minute invitation to meet with hundreds of immigrants at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York, an opulent mosque on East 96th Street.

The group, the Coalition for Muslim School Holidays, was trying to persuade the city to recognize two Muslim holidays on the school calendar. The effort, Imam Talib learned, had been nearly a year in the making, and no African-American leaders had been consulted.

He was stunned. After all, he had led a similar campaign in the 1980s, resulting in the suspension of alternate-side parking for the same holidays.

“They are unaware of the foundations upon which they are standing,” he said.

Backlash in the Suburbs

Brush Hollow Road winds through a quiet stretch of Long Island, past churches and diners and leafy cul-de-sacs. In this tranquil tableau, the Islamic Center of Long Island announces itself proudly, a Moorish structure of white concrete topped by a graceful dome.

Sleek sedans and S.U.V.’s circle the property as girls with Barbie backpacks hop out and scurry to the Islamic classes they call “Sunday school.”

It is a testament to America’s influence on the mosque that its liveliest time of the week is not Friday, Islam’s holy day, but Sunday.

Boys in hooded sweatshirts smack basketballs along the pavement by a sign that reads “No pray, no play.” Young mothers in Burberry coats exchange kisses and chatter.

For members of the mosque — many of whom work in Manhattan and cannot make the Friday prayer — Sunday is the day to reflect and connect.

The treasurer, Rizwan Qureshi, frantically greeted drivers one Sunday morning with a flier advertising a fund-raiser.

“We’re trying to get Barack Obama,” Mr. Qureshi, a banker born in Karachi, told a woman in a gold-hued BMW.

“We need some real money,” he called out to another driver.

The mosque began with a group of doctors, engineers and other professionals from Pakistan and India who settled in Nassau County in the early 1970s.

“Our kids would come home from school and say, ‘Where is my Christmas tree, my Hanukkah lights?’ ” recalled Dr. Khan, who lives in nearby Jericho. “We didn’t want them to grow up unsure of who they are.”

Since opening in 1993, the mosque has thrived, with assets now valued at more than $3 million. Hundreds of people pray there weekly, and thousands come on Muslim holidays.

The mosque has an unusually modern, democratic air. Men and women worship with no partition between them. A different scholar delivers the Friday sermon every week, in English.

Perhaps most striking, a majority of female worshipers do not cover their heads outside the mosque.

“I think it’s important to find the fine line between the religion and the age in which we live,” said Nasreen Wasti, 43, a contract analyst for Lufthansa. “I’m sure I will have to answer to God for not covering myself. But I’m also satisfied by many of the good deeds I am doing.”

She and other members use words like “progressive” to describe their congregation. But after Sept. 11, a different image took hold.

In October 2001, a Newsday article quoted a member of the mosque as asking “who really benefits from such a horrible tragedy that is blamed on Muslims and Arabs?” A co-president of the mosque was also quoted saying that Israel “would benefit from this tragedy.”

Conspiracy theories about Sept. 11 have long circulated among Muslims, and Dr. Khan had heard discussion among congregants. Such talk, he said, was the product of two forces: a deep mistrust of America’s motives in the Middle East and a refusal, among many Muslims, to engage in self-criticism.

“You blame the other guy for your own shortcomings,” said Dr. Khan.

He visited synagogues and churches after the article ran, reassuring audiences that the comments did not reflect the official position of the mosque, which condemned the attacks.

But to Congressman Peter T. King, whose district is near the mosque, that condemnation fell short. He began publicly criticizing Dr. Khan, asserting that he had failed to fully denounce the statements made by the men.

“He’s definitely a radical,” Mr. King said of Dr. Khan in an interview. “You cannot, in the context of Sept. 11, allow those statements to be made and not be a radical.”

When asked about Mr. King’s comments, Dr. Khan replied proudly, “I thought we had freedom of speech.”

It hardly seems possible that Mr. King and Dr. Khan were once friends.

Mr. King used to dine at Dr. Khan’s home. He attended the wedding of Dr. Khan’s son, Arif, in 1995. At the mosque’s opening, it was Mr. King who cut the ribbon.

After Sept. 11, the mosque experienced the sort of social backlash felt by Muslims around the country. Anonymous callers left threatening messages, and rocks were hurled at children from passing cars.

The attention waned over time. But Mr. King cast a new light on the mosque in 2004 with the release of his novel “Vale of Tears.”

In the novel, terrorists affiliated with a Long Island mosque demolish several buildings, killing hundreds of people. One of the central characters is a Pakistani heart surgeon whose friendship with a congressman has grown tense.

“By inference, it’s me,” Dr. Khan said of the Pakistani character. (Mr. King said it was a “composite character” based on several Muslims he knows.)

For Dr. Khan, his difficulties after Sept. 11 come as proof that Muslims cannot stay fragmented. “It’s a challenge for the whole Muslim community — not just for me,” he said. “United we stand, divided we fall.”

The Litmus Test

Imam Talib and his bodyguard set off to Westbury before dusk on Oct. 14. They passed a fork on the Long Island Expressway, and the imam peered out the window. None of the signs were familiar.

He checked his watch and saw that he was late, adding to his unease. He had visited the mosque a few times before, but never felt entirely at home.

“I’m conscious of being a guest,” he said. “They treat me kindly and nicely. But I know where I am.”

At the Islamic Center of Long Island, Dr. Khan was also getting nervous. Hundreds of congregants had gathered after fasting all day for Ramadan. The scent of curry drifted mercilessly through the mosque.

Dr. Khan sprang to his feet and took the microphone. He improvised.

“All of us need to learn from and understand the contributions of the Muslim indigenous community,” he said. “Starting with Malcolm X.”

It had been six years since Imam Talib and Dr. Khan first encountered each other in Chicago. Back then, Imam Talib rarely visited immigrant mosques, and Dr. Khan had only a peripheral connection to African-American Muslims.

In the 1980s, the doctor had become aware of the high number of Muslim inmates while working as the chief of medicine for a hospital in Nassau County that oversaw health care at the county prison. His mosque began donating prayer rugs, Korans and skullcaps to prisoners around the country. But his interaction with black Muslim leaders was limited until Sept. 11.

After Dr. Khan read the book “Black Rage,” he and Imam Talib began serving together on the board of a new political task force. Finally, in 2005, Dr. Khan invited the imam to his mosque to give the Friday sermon.

That February, Imam Talib rose before the Long Island congregation. Blending verses in the Koran with passages from recent American history, he urged the audience to learn from the civil rights movement.

Dr. Khan listened raptly. Afterward, over sandwiches, he asked Imam Talib for advice. He wanted to thaw the relationship between his mosque and African-American mosques on Long Island. The conversation continued for hours.

“The real searching for an answer, searching for a solution, was coming from Dr. Khan,” said Imam Talib. “I could just feel it.”

Dr. Khan began inviting more African-American leaders to speak at his mosque, and welcomed Imam Talib there last October to give a fund-raising pitch for his organization, the Muslim Alliance in North America. The group had recently announced a “domestic agenda,” with programs to help ex-convicts find housing and jobs and to standardize premarital counseling for Muslims in America.

After the imam arrived that evening and spoke, he sat on the floor next to a blazer-clad Dr. Khan. As they feasted on kebabs, the doctor made a pitch of his own: The teenagers of his mosque could spend a day at Imam Talib’s mosque, as the start of a youth exchange program. The imam nodded slowly.

Minutes later, the mosque’s president, Habeeb Ahmed, hurried over. The congregants had so far pledged $10,000.

“Alhamdulillah,” the imam said. Praise be to God.

It was the most Imam Talib had raised for his group in one evening.

As the dinner drew to a close, the imam looked for his bodyguard. They had a long drive home and he did not want to lose his way again.

Dr. Khan asked Imam Talib how he had gotten lost.

“Inner city versus the suburbs,” the imam replied a bit testily.

Then he smiled.

“The only thing it proves,” he said, “is that I need to come by here more often.”

    Between Black and Immigrant Muslims, an Uneasy Alliance, NYT, 11.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/nyregion/11muslim.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Gingrich Admits Affair During Impeachment

March 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:47 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.

''The honest answer is yes,'' Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. ''There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards.''

Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity.

''The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge,'' the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton's 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. ''I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept ... perjury in your highest officials.''

Widely considered a mastermind of the Republican revolution that swept Congress in the 1994 elections, Gingrich remains wildly popular among many conservatives. He has repeatedly placed near the top of Republican presidential polls recently, even though he has not formed a campaign.

Gingrich has said he is waiting to see how the Republican field shapes up before deciding in the fall whether to run.

Reports of extramarital affairs have dogged him for years as a result of two messy divorces, but he has refused to discuss them publicly.

Gingrich, who frequently campaigned on family values issues, divorced his second wife, Marianne, in 2000 after his attorneys acknowledged Gingrich's relationship with his current wife, Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide more than 20 years younger than he is.

His first marriage, to his former high school geometry teacher, Jackie Battley, ended in divorce in 1981. Although Gingrich has said he doesn't remember it, Battley has said Gingrich discussed divorce terms with her while she was recuperating in the hospital from cancer surgery.

Gingrich married Marianne months after the divorce.

''There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them,'' he said in the interview. ''I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I'm ... not proud of.''

Gingrich's congressional career ended in 1998 when he abruptly resigned from Congress after poor showings from Republicans in elections and after being reprimanded by the House ethics panel over charges that he used tax-exempt funding to advance his political goals.

------

On the Net:

Focus on the Family interview (to be posted in full Friday): http://listen.family.org/daily/

    Gingrich Admits Affair During Impeachment, NYT, 9.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gingrich-Affair.html?hp

Layoffs Follow Scandal at Colorado Megachurch

March 6, 2007
The New York Times
By DAN FROSCH

DENVER, March 5 — In the wake of a scandal involving its founding pastor, the Rev. Ted Haggard, the New Life Church in Colorado Springs has been forced to lay off 44 of its 350 workers to offset a sharp drop in donations.

Mr. Haggard resigned as president of the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals in November and was removed as senior pastor of the New Life megachurch after a former male prostitute said that he had had a three-year sexual relationship with Mr. Haggard and had helped him obtain methamphetamines.

After initially denying the accusations, Mr. Haggard confessed to buying drugs from the former prostitute, Michael Jones, and admitted to what he termed “sexual immorality.” Mr. Haggard has since gone through counseling, and was declared “completely heterosexual” by a member of a panel of ministers appointed to oversee New Life.

Since the announcement of Mr. Haggard’s removal on Nov. 5, New Life’s donations have fallen to $4.9 million in the past four months, compared with $5.3 million in the same period a year earlier, said Rob Brendle, the associate pastor. The drop was previously reported in The Denver Post.

Attendance at New Life, which has an estimated 14,000 members, has declined about 15 percent, Mr. Brendle said.

“We are in a position where the reality of our financial situation is causing us to look at how we can be more efficient,” he said, “and we spent a lot of time thinking and analyzing how best to do that. These are difficult times, and these have been difficult decisions. But the floor of this church has not fallen out.”

Shortly after the scandal, the church’s board of overseers began a “moral audit” of New Life’s leaders. The audit resulted in disciplinary action against a small number of employees and the resignation of one more for “unrelated issues of sin,” said Mr. Brendle, who was among those interviewed by the board for the audit.

“Everyone’s trust was shaken,” he said. “They asked me what I know about Ted, when I knew and what I did about it. They asked me questions about the general health of my spiritual life and about personal morality and character.”

Mr. Brendle said the recent layoffs, which affected pastoral staff members and administrative assistants, among others, would help restore fiscal stability. Congregants, some of whom learned of the firings at a question-and-answer session held by a panel of church leaders during Sunday services, remained upbeat about New Life’s fortunes.

“It’s unfortunate and sad, and it hurts,” said Tim Chambers, 43, who has attended New Life for 10 years. “There are a lot of emotions that come with this, because a lot of these employees have been around a good while.

“But these individuals are getting a lot of love and support. And I think this is going to help us move forward when our new pastor comes in.”

Despite New Life’s struggles, Chris Paulene, director of member services for the National Association of Evangelicals, said other evangelical churches had not been affected by Mr. Haggard’s case.

“This is a completely isolated incident,” Mr. Paulene said. “It won’t affect the rest of the churches, at least not measurably.”

New Life, which Mr. Haggard started in his basement in 1985, is searching for his successor.

“I speak with Ted every week,” Mr. Brendle said. “He is authentically repentant and humble.”

Mr. Brendle added: “I would say that the people at New Life are confident in the process of transition that is under way and hopeful for the future. There is a pervasive sense that our best days are ahead of us.”

    Layoffs Follow Scandal at Colorado Megachurch, NYT, 6.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/us/06church.html

Evangelical’s Focus on Climate Draws Fire of Christian Right

March 3, 2007
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Leaders of several conservative Christian groups have sent a letter urging the National Association of Evangelicals to force its policy director in Washington to stop speaking out on global warming.

The conservative leaders say they are not convinced that global warming is human-induced or that human intervention can prevent it. And they accuse the director, the Rev. Richard Cizik, the association’s vice president for government affairs, of diverting the evangelical movement from what they deem more important issues, like abortion and homosexuality.

The letter underlines a struggle between established conservative Christian leaders, whose priority has long been sexual morality, and challengers who are pushing to expand the evangelical movement’s agenda to include issues like climate change and human rights.

“We have observed,” the letter says, “that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time.”

Those issues, the signers say, are a need to campaign against abortion and same-sex marriage and to promote “the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children.”

The letter, dated Thursday, is signed by leaders like James C. Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family; Gary L. Bauer, once a Republican presidential candidate and now president of Coalitions for America; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; and Paul Weyrich, a longtime political strategist who is chairman of American Values.

They acknowledge in the letter that none of their groups belong to the National Association of Evangelicals, a broad coalition that represents 30 million Christians in hundreds of denominations, organizations and academic institutions. But, they say, if Mr. Cizik “cannot be trusted to articulate the views of American evangelicals,” then he should be encouraged to resign.

Mr. Cizik (pronounced SIZE-ik) did not respond to requests for an interview yesterday, and the association’s chairman, L. Roy Taylor, was unavailable. But the Rev. Leith Anderson, president of the association, said, “We’re talking about somebody here who’s been in Washington for 25 years, has an amazing track record and is highly respected.”

“I’m behind him,” said Mr. Anderson, who was named president in November after the sudden resignation of the Rev. Ted Haggard, the Colorado pastor caught up in a scandal involving a gay prostitute.

Mr. Cizik, who is well known on Capitol Hill, has long served as one of the evangelical movement’s agenda-setters. He helped put foreign policy on the evangelical agenda in the late 1990s, focusing on the persecution of Christians in other countries.

He said in an interview last year that he experienced a profound “conversion” on the global warming issue in 2002 after listening to scientists at a retreat. Now an emblem for a new breed of evangelical environmentalists, he has been written about in Vanity Fair and Newsweek and has appeared in “The Great Warming,” a documentary on climate change.

Evangelicals have recently become a significant voice in the chorus on global warming. Last year more than 100 prominent pastors, theologians and college presidents signed an “Evangelical Climate Initiative” calling for action on the issue. Among the signers were several board members of the National Association of Evangelicals; Mr. Anderson, who has since been named its president; and W. Todd Bassett, who was then national commander of the Salvation Army and was appointed executive director of the association in January.

Mr. Haggard, then the president, and Mr. Cizik did not sign, after criticism from some of the same leaders who have now sent the letter about Mr. Cizik.

In interviews, some signers of this latest letter said they were wary of the global warming issue because they associated it with leftists, limits on free enterprise and population control, which they oppose.

“We’re saying what is being done here,” Mr. Perkins said, “is a concerted effort to shift the focus of evangelical Christians to these issues that draw warm and fuzzies from liberal crusaders.”

    Evangelical’s Focus on Climate Draws Fire of Christian Right, NYT, 3.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/us/03evangelical.html

Court Hears Arguments Linking Right to Sue and Spending on Religion

March 1, 2007
The New York Times
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — The question for the Supreme Court on Wednesday was a jurisdictional one: whether taxpayers who object to the way the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives spends its money can get into federal court to make their case.

Whether the office or its programs actually run afoul of the Constitution was not before the justices.

But any notion that this jurisdictional question was the sort of arcane, technical issue that only a law professor could love was quickly dispelled by the intensity of the argument, one of the liveliest of the term.

The fast-paced hour ended with the clear impression that the Roberts court will soon put its own stamp on the law of taxpayer standing, with potentially significant implications for the relationship between government and religion.

The real question by the end of the argument was whether a majority would be content simply to scale back a Warren court precedent that allows taxpayers to challenge the use of public money for religious purposes or whether the court would disavow the precedent altogether and keep such suits out of federal court.

Solicitor General Paul D. Clement revealed his hand slowly, bringing his argument to a pinpoint landing at the precise close of a three-minute rebuttal. If the justices could not see their way to applying the precedent narrowly, Mr. Clement said, the court should simply overrule it. “If something has to go in this area,” he said, “I think it’s an easy choice.”

Under either option the administration advocated, the court would reject a suit that the federal appeals court in Chicago reinstated last year, a challenge to conferences that Bush administration officials have held to advise religious groups on how to apply for federal grants as part of the effort to bolster the role of such groups in social service programs.

The plaintiff is the Freedom From Religion Foundation Inc. of Madison, Wis., which advocates strict separation of church and state. In a complaint filed initially in 2004, the organization argued that officials who convened and addressed the conferences used congressionally appropriated money in a way that “violated the fundamental principle of the separation of church and state.”

Under the ordinary doctrine of “standing,” which defines who may bring a suit, people who object to a government policy but who cannot claim a concrete injury from that policy have no right to sue. But in a 1968 decision, the court carved out an exception for religion cases. The case, Flast v. Cohen, gave taxpayers standing to challenge federal laws that authorized expenditures for purposes alleged to violate the First Amendment prohibition against the “establishment” of religion.

The administration position in the case argued on Wednesday, Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation Inc., No. 06-157, is that the Flast decision should be understood to include two limitations. First, Mr. Clement said, taxpayers should be limited to challenging Congressional statutes, not executive branch programs like that in this suit. Second, the solicitor general argued, taxpayers should be able to challenge only spending outside the government, not internal spending like that cited by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Did that mean, Justice Antonin Scalia asked Mr. Clement, taxpayers could challenge a statute that gave money to outside groups to build churches, but not one that directed the government to build its own church?

It was a “horrible hypothetical,” Mr. Clement replied, but Justice Scalia had understood him correctly: taxpayers should not have standing to challenge “an internal government church.”

Andrew J. Pincus, representing the foundation, told the court there was “no basis for drawing the arbitrary lines that the government suggests.” The Flast decision did not include such limitations, he said.

Mr. Clement was unruffled as the justices tossed various hypothetical questions his way. Could a taxpayer challenge a law that commemorated the Pilgrims “by building a government church at Plymouth Rock where we will have the regular worship in the Puritan religion?” Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked.

“I would say no,” Mr. Clement said.

Justice Breyer persisted, asking about a law requiring the government to build churches “all over America” dedicated to one particular sect. “Nobody could challenge it?” he asked.

“There would not be taxpayer standing,” Mr. Clement replied.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. observed that members of other denominations would not need taxpayer standing and that as victims of government discrimination, they could sue under ordinary principles of standing. This was one of the times the chief justice intervened to make the point that in practical application the government’s position was perhaps not as extreme as it sounded.

His interventions in the other side’s argument seemed to have the opposite goal, rejecting Mr. Pincus’s effort to depict his client’s position as modest. When Mr. Pincus said taxpayers should not be permitted to challenge merely “incidental” spending, the chief justice said that was no real limitation because it would ensnare the courts in deciding “whether the activity you’re challenging is incidental or not.”

Mr. Pincus denied that this initial inquiry would make much work for the courts. For example, he began, “if someone’s claim is that people in the White House have five meetings in the course of a year that they’re upset about — — ”

Chief Justice Roberts cut him off, saying, “Well, then, five meetings isn’t enough. How many?”

“What about 10?” Justice Scalia offered.

“Twenty?” the chief justice asked.

“We’ll litigate it,” Justice Scalia said. “We’ll figure out a number eventually, I’m sure.”

For Mr. Clement, the most helpful hand was that of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. As the solicitor general batted back tricky hypothetical questions, Justice Alito asked him whether the lines he was drawing “make a lot of sense in an abstract sense” or were “the best that can be done” under existing precedents.

“The latter, Justice Alito,” Mr. Clement said, evoking laughter. “I appreciate the question.”

    Court Hears Arguments Linking Right to Sue and Spending on Religion, NYT, 1.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/washington/01scotus.html

Editorial

Government by Law, Not Faith

February 28, 2007
The New York Times

The Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case that could have a broad impact on whether the courthouse door remains open to ordinary Americans who believe that the government is undermining the separation of church and state.

The question before the court is whether a group seeking to preserve the separation of church and state can mount a First Amendment challenge to the Bush administration’s “faith based” initiatives. The arguments turn on a technical question of whether taxpayers have standing, or the right to initiate this kind of suit, but the real-world implications are serious. If the court rules that the group does not have standing, it will be much harder to stop government from giving unconstitutional aid to religion.

Soon after taking office, President Bush established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and faith-based offices in departments like Justice and Education. They were intended to increase the federal grant money going to religious organizations, and they seem to have been highly effective. The plaintiffs cited figures showing that from 2003 to 2005, the number of federal grants to religious groups increased 38 percent. The Freedom From Religion Foundation and several of its members sued. They say that because the faith-based initiatives favor religious applicants for grants over secular applicants, they violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits government support for religion.

These are profound issues, but because the administration challenged the right of the foundation and its members to sue, the courts must decide whether the plaintiffs have the right to sue in this case before they can consider the constitutionality of the faith-based programs. An appeals court has ruled, correctly, that the plaintiffs have standing.

In many cases, taxpayers are not in fact allowed to sue to challenge government actions, but the Supreme Court has long held that they have standing to allege violations of the Establishment Clause. Without this sort of broad standing, many entanglements between church and state would never make it to court.

The Bush administration is pushing an incorrect view of standing as it tries to stop the courts from reaching the First Amendment issue. Taxpayers can challenge the financing of religious activity, the administration claims, only when a Congressional statute expressly authorizes the spending. There is no statute behind the faith-based initiative.

In his decision for the appeals court, Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, convincingly explained why this argument is inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s precedents on the Establishment Clause.

Procedural issues like standing can have an enormous impact on the administration of justice if they close the courthouse door on people with valid legal claims. The Supreme Court has made it clear that taxpayers may challenge government assistance to religion. The justices should affirm Judge Posner’s ruling so the courts can move on to the important question: Do the Bush administration’s faith-based policies violate the Constitution?

    Government by Law, Not Faith, NYT, 28.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/opinion/28wed1.html

Film’s View of Islam Stirs Anger on Campuses

February 26, 2007
The New York Times
By KAREN W. ARENSON

When “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” a documentary that shows Muslims urging attacks on the United States and Europe, was screened recently at the University of California, Los Angeles, it drew an audience of more than 300 — and also dozens of protesters.

At Pace University in New York, administrators pressured the Jewish student organization Hillel to cancel a showing in November, arguing it could spur hate crimes against Muslim students. A Jewish group at the State University of New York at Stony Brook also canceled the film last semester.

The documentary has become the latest flashpoint in the bitter campus debate over the Middle East, not just because of its clips from Arab television rarely shown in the West, including scenes of suicide bombers being recruited and inducted, but also because of its pro-Israel distribution network.

When a Middle East discussion group organized a showing at New York University recently, it found that the distributors of “Obsession” were requiring those in attendance to register at IsraelActivism.com, and that digital pictures of the events be sent to Hasbara Fellowships, a group set up to counter anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses.

“If people have to give their names over to Hasbara Fellowships at the door, that doesn’t have the effect of stimulating open dialogue,” said Jordan J. Dunn, president of the Middle East Dialogue Group of New York University, which mixes Jews and Muslims. “Rather, it intimidates people and stifles dissent.”

The documentary’s proponents say it provides an unvarnished look at Islamic militancy. “It’s an urgent issue that is widely avoided by academia,” argued Michael Abdurakhmanov, the Hillel president at Pace.

Its critics call it incendiary. Norah Sarsour, a Palestinian-American student at U.C.L.A., said it was disheartening to see “a film like this that takes the people who have hijacked the religion and focuses on them.”

Certainly it is a new element in the bitter campus battles over the Middle East that have encompassed everything from the content and teaching of Middle East studies to disputes over art exhibitions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to debates over free speech.

“The situation in the Middle East has been a major issue on campus for decades, but the heat has noticeably turned up lately,” said Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

At San Francisco State University, for example, College Republicans stomped on copies of the Hamas and Hezbollah flags last October at an “antiterrorism” rally. At the University of California, Irvine, the Muslim Student Union drew criticism last year for a “Holocaust in the Holy Land” program about Israel.

Brandeis University officials pulled an exhibition of Palestinian children’s drawings, including some of bloodied Palestinian children, designed to bring the Palestinian viewpoint to the campus, half of whose students are Jewish.

Three years ago a video produced by a pro-Israeli group featuring Jewish students’ complaints of intimidation by Middle East studies professors at Columbia set off a campus-wide debate over freedom of speech and academic freedom, prompting an investigation that found some fault by one professor but “no evidence of any statements made by the faculty that could reasonably be construed as anti-Semitic.”

Into this milieu stepped the producer of “Obsession,” Raphael Shore, a 45-year-old Canadian who lives in Israel, with the documentary. It features scenes like the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers, interspersed with those of Nazi rallies.

The film was directed by Wayne Kopping of South Africa, who had worked with Mr. Shore previously on a documentary about the failure of the Oslo peace efforts in the Middle East. Mr. Shore said in a recent interview that they had not set out to make a film for college students but to spur action against Islamic terrorism. “We want to spread this message to all people that will stand up and make a difference in combating this threat,” he said.

When no traditional film distributors picked it up, he said, colleges were an obvious outlet — it was screened on 30 campuses last semester — along with DVD sales on the Internet (ObsessionTheMovie.com), and showings at synagogues and other locales, including conservative ones like the Heritage Foundation in Washington. There were also repeated broadcasts of abbreviated versions or excerpts on Fox News in November and again this month, and on other media outlets like CNN Headline News.

“College students have the power with their energy, resources, time and interest to make a difference, often more than other individuals,” Mr. Shore said.

He hired a campus coordinator, Karyn Leffel, who works out of the New York City office of the Hasbara Fellowships program, which aims to train students “to be effective pro-Israel activists on their campuses.” “ ‘Obsession’ is so important because it shows what’s happening in Israel is not happening in a vacuum,” said Elliot Mathias, director of the Hasbara Fellowships program, “and that it affects all American students on campuses, not just Jewish students.”

Mr. Shore said that despite the collaboration with Hasbara, the goal was to draw a wide audience.

“The evangelical Christians and the Jews tend to be the softest market, the most receptive to the message of the film, so we have done lots with those groups,” he said. “But we are trying very hard to expand beyond those groups, because we specifically don’t want it to be seen as a film that has that connection.”

Mr. Shore describes his film as nonpartisan and balanced, and many viewers agree with him. Traci Ciepiela, who teaches criminal justice at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs and has a screening scheduled this week, says she learned from the film and did not think that it was unfair or inflammatory.

But others see it as biased. Arnold Leder, a political scientist at Texas State University, San Marcos, decided not to use it for his course “The Politics of Extremism” because of what he called “serious flaws,” including that it did not address Islam in general, the history of Islam and the schisms within the faith.

“If it were used in a class,” he said, “it would have to be treated as a polemic and placed in that context.”

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of U.C.L.A. Hillel, called the documentary propaganda and said it was “a way to transfer the Middle East conflict to the campus, to promote hostility.”

While the film carries cautions at the beginning and end that it is only about Islamist extremists — and that most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror — Muslim students who have protested say they believe the documentary will still fuel prejudice.

“The movie was so well crafted and emotion manipulating that I felt myself thinking poorly of some aspects of Islam,” said Adam Osman, president of Stony Brook’s Muslim Students’ Association, who asked that it not be shown.

While screenings were canceled under pressure at Pace and Stony Brook, Ms. Leffel said that most campus screening, like a recent one at Providence College in Rhode Island, had taken place without incident. Students at New York University decided they wanted to present it, despite misgivings by some Muslim students.

At the screening there late last month, the viewers — many of them Muslims — ganged up on Robert Friedman, a discussion leader who had been sent by the “Obsession” filmmakers. (The event was sponsored by the Middle East Dialogue Group at N.Y.U., the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life, Arab Students United and the Pakistani Students Association.)

Mr. Friedman told the audience, “You have to understand a problem before you can solve it.”

But most of the viewers, including both a rabbi and a Muslim chaplain on a discussion panel put together by the students, said the film did not foster understanding.

“The question about radical Islam and how do we fight it is unproductive,” said Yehuda Sarna, the New York University rabbi on the panel. “The question is how to break down the stereotypes facing the two religions.”

Steven I. Weiss, editor and publisher of CampusJ.com, an Internet site that covers Jewish news on campuses, said he was surprised by the Jewish skepticism to the film at N.Y.U. “Were a Jewish leader from virtually any significant organization to walk in on that discussion,” he said, “they’d be very surprised and displeased. This is the opposite of the change they’ve been looking for in campus rhetoric.”

    Film’s View of Islam Stirs Anger on Campuses, NYT, 26.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/movies/26docu.html

Nation of Islam at a Crossroad as Leader Exits

February 26, 2007
The New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

DETROIT, Feb. 25 — Louis Farrakhan, the departing leader of the Nation of Islam, gave what was billed as his last major public address here on Sunday, with his extended illness throwing into sharp focus the question of whether the group will shift toward more mainstream Islamic teachings to survive once it loses its central charismatic figure.

Mr. Farrakhan, 73, looking fairly robust for a man who emerged from major surgery six weeks ago, spent most of his two-hour address denouncing the war in Iraq and calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

“If you don’t want to impeach him,” Mr. Farrakhan said, “censure him, say to the world something went wrong with our leadership and we repent after our wrongdoing.”

He also made an appeal for religious unity in the address before thousands at Ford Field, home to the Detroit Lions football team, capping an annual convention of Nation of Islam members.

It was his first major speech since August, when health problems forced him to turn over control of the Nation of Islam to an executive committee. His health problems stemmed from radiation seeds implanted a decade ago to combat prostate cancer, said Ishmael Muhammad, the organization’s national assistant minister. The treatment obliterated the cancer but also damaged nearby organs.

Given his age and health problems, and the lack of an obvious successor, questions loom large about the future and direction of the Nation of Islam.

Nation members dismiss the notion that the organization’s viability is linked to one man. But academic experts and Muslim leaders say they believe that without Mr. Farrakhan’s leadership, the Nation — which has been divided over its teachings in the past — will shrink even more dramatically unless it shifts toward mainstream Islam’s beliefs.

The 77-year-old Nation of Islam once enjoyed a near monopoly over interpreting Islam for black Americans, using the faith as a vehicle to promote black separatism.

But it now competes with sects that branched away, and with groups ascribing to the more traditional and inclusive Islam followed by millions of Muslim immigrants and their offspring.

Along with a significant bloc of former Nation members, many of these Muslim branches oppose crucial aspects of the organization’s beliefs, which some consider blasphemy.

Leadership changes have altered the Nation’s direction in the past. Elijah Muhammad, the organization’s leader for more than 40 years until his death in 1975, was succeeded by one of his sons, Warith Deen, who broke with his father over the issue of Islamic orthodoxy (and changed his last name to Mohammed). Following Warith Deen Mohammed, this branch embraced diversity and traditional Sunni Islam’s teachings on unity.

Although members of his branch and Mr. Farrakhan’s now profess to respect each other and display less public animosity than in the early days of their split, they still spar over their beliefs.

Imam Muhammad Siddeeq, an Indianapolis cleric and senior aide to Mr. Mohammed, said that for the Nation of Islam to survive, it must turn more toward mainstream Islam.

“In the final analysis they have no option but to move in the direction we are or to just dissipate or disappear,” Mr. Siddeeq said. “This community is going to reconcile itself to pure Islam and reconcile itself to being American citizens who are part of a multicultural society.”

He echoes many others in arguing that the Nation should abandon some of its teachings. The Nation holds, among other teachings, that the group’s founder, W. Fard Muhammad, was the Mahdi, or savior, sent by God to Detroit around 1930 and that spaceships hovering above the earth will eventually play a major role in smiting sinners and rescuing the righteous.

“Those are ideas for kindergarten, a trip to Oz,” Mr. Siddeeq said. “Those are not ideas for people living in the real world.”

Ishmael Muhammad, 42, the Nation’s national assistant minister, who said he was among the youngest of Elijah Muhammad’s 21 children, said the Nation’s message of social reform still resonated, especially its call for black economic empowerment.

“There are a few black politicians and a few millionaires and a couple billionaires, but the fact is that our people are dying,” he said in an interview. “Our struggle to integrate and be accepted has left the masses behind.”

Ishmael Muhammad has sometimes been named as a possible successor to Mr. Farrakhan, as have a couple of Mr. Farrakhan’s sons, but none of them enjoy the same wide following as the departing leader.

But Ishmael Muhammad responds that the era of charismatic leaders is over — that one main goal of the Nation is teaching people to be self-sufficient, particularly in their relationship to God.

Despite his frail health, Mr. Farrakhan on Sunday demonstrated the same passion that has held followers rapt and angered his detractors. He assailed the Bush administration for the war in Iraq, which he said was built on lies and had caused great suffering and disunity.

“Sunni and Shiite lived together, Christian and Jews lived together in Iraq, you didn’t hear none of this stuff before America came in,” Mr. Farrakhan said. “There was no bombing of Shiite holy places. You don’t need to look at Shiite and Sunni, you need to look at those who came in. After they came in all hell broke loose.”

Mr. Farrakhan also urged young black Americans not to join the military.

“I am telling you brother and sister that will be the worst mistake you make to join the military today, because you will leave America in one way and you will come back in another,” he said.

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, as the battle for civil rights was growing, the separatist message, and storied converts like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, won the Nation a broad appeal. But Malcolm X quit the movement and was eventually assassinated by Nation members in a fight provoked partly over Islamic orthodoxy.

“We could not continue on this Black supremacist line and be Muslims, be part of the world community of Islam,” said Imam Faheem Shuaibe of the Masjidul Waritheen in Oakland, Calif. “When you say Muhammad is the messenger of God, but you mean Elijah Muhammad, it doesn’t work.”

Reliable statistics are very hard to come by for Muslims in the United States, but the middle range puts the population around six million; some 40 percent of them are African-Americans, a majority of whom follow Warith Deen Mohammed, experts said.

The Nation of Islam will not specify its membership numbers. But Lawrence A. Mamiya, a professor of religion and African studies at Vassar College, puts the number around 50,000, with an ardent following in prisons, where the emphasis on black identity and the struggle against racism, he said, have a pervasive appeal. There are also small branches scattered around the world, particularly in England and the Caribbean.

Breaking away from Warith Deen Mohammed’s reforms, Mr. Farrakhan began rebuilding the Nation based upon its original principles in 1978. He introduced stricter Islamic precepts into the Nation, including prayer five times a day. Members hold that they are just as Muslim as any of the faithful, indeed that North American black slaves were a kind of lost tribe of Muslims forgotten by the faith’s mainstream.

But along with his reforms, Mr. Farrakhan gained notoriety and drew widespread criticism for speeches that were deemed racist against whites, particularly Jews.

In 1995, he organized the Million Man March on Washington, and although he failed to translate that into a sustainable political movement, he became one of the few leaders who appealed to a wide spectrum of black Americans.

Academics who study Islam in America suggest that the followers of Mr. Farrakhan and Warith Deen Mohammed will eventually gravitate elsewhere.

One possible national leader is Siraj Wahhaj, an imam based in Brooklyn. He quit the Nation years ago but came to the convention here to lead Friday prayers, urging Muslim unity in a sermon liberally sprinkled with quotes from the Koran in fluent Arabic.

Many immigrant Muslims question whether Nation members should be called Muslims. Even the followers of Warith Deen Mohammed are criticized by some for giving more weight to his pronouncements than to the holy texts.

“They still haven’t reached the point where there is no color,” said Yassir Chadly, an imam based in Oakland, who immigrated from Morocco 30 years ago. “Islam is universal; it can’t be cut into little sections.”

Such statements make followers of the Nation bristle.

“We are not imitators of Arab culture; that would put us in an inferior position and make them our superiors,” said Muhammad Muhammad, a 40-year-old adherent from Oklahoma City.

In the long run, academic experts said, it is the debate over religion that will most likely relegate the organization to a marginal position after Mr. Farrakhan is gone.

“He talked black, but to join his organization you had to commit yourself to his religion, and the religion has a lot of quirks in it,” said Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky.

Mr. Bagby said that younger Nation members and potential members might find it hard to accept all of the branch’s teachings. “They are realizing that you can be committed to the black community and have a black agenda and still be a Sunni Muslim.”

    Nation of Islam at a Crossroad as Leader Exits, NYT, 26.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/us/26farrakhan.html?hp

A Church Protest Ends Quickly, but the Anger Is Likely to Endure

February 14, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES BARRON

Carmen Villegas did not expect the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York to send burly guards into her church, Our Lady Queen of Angels, but it did. She did not expect to be at the center of a chaotic scene, shouting at church officials and flinging open the front door of the church, but she was.

She did not expect to be arrested, but she was, after she refused to leave.

And she did not expect the archdiocese to close her beloved East Harlem church, two weeks early, but late Monday night, that is exactly what it did.

“We wanted a peaceful vigil,” she said yesterday after some sleep and a change of clothes. “Things changed because the diocese — the tactics it used were so inappropriate.”

Ms. Villegas and some fellow parishioners occupied the sanctuary for about 28 hours, protesting the archdiocese’s plan to shut down Our Lady Queen of Angels on March 1. Late Monday, police officers led Ms. Villegas and five other parishioners out of the red-brick church in plastic handcuffs. They were given summonses for trespassing.

They had decided to remain in the church after it became clear that anyone who did not leave would be arrested. The others in a crowd of about 40 left, with some saying they feared deportation if arrested.

“I can’t believe that they would go to such lengths to get us out of the church when all we were doing was praying, all we were doing was singing, all we were doing was trying to protect where we’ve gone to church,” said Patricia Rodriguez, 43, one of the six arrested.

A spokesman for the archdiocese, Joseph Zwilling, released an account that dovetailed with what the protestors said unfolded in the church on Monday night. “As a result of this regrettable event and the possibility of future events of this kind,” he said, “ it has been decided that the parish is to be closed immediately.”

Yesterday, the church’s double red doors were locked tight.

The protest had begun quietly on Sunday, when a small group of parishioners stayed behind as the lights and heat were turned off after the evening Mass. Others took their places on Monday morning and spent the day praying and singing “Ave Maria” from time to time.

But the mood became tense when the guards appeared on Monday evening. “They have guards and we are armed with rosaries and Bibles,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “Really, what harm were we going to do?”

The guards accompanied Msgr. Dennis Mathers, the vice chancellor of the archdiocese, who had worked on the church-closing plan. With him was Edward Reigadas, the archdiocesan director of insurance.

The archdiocese said the two officials carried a letter from Bishop Dennis J. Sullivan, the vicar general of the archdiocese, asking the protesters to leave the church building. It also urged them to become active at one of four other churches that are within a few blocks of Our Lady Queen of Angels, which is on East 113th Street between Second and Third Avenues.

The monsignor delivered that message to the protesters from the pulpit. “He didn’t say ‘hello’ or ‘how are you,’ ” said Ms. Villegas, who recognized him from meetings about the church-closing plan. “He had a red book in his hand. He opened it and said, ‘The church is closed, you can go to Mass at St. Ann’s, St. Cecilia.’ He said, ‘You can go to this church, to that church, to that church, to that church; you have to leave.’ ”

As he left the sanctuary, Ms. Villegas said that she called after him, saying the protesters had questions they wanted to ask. He did not return.

Mr. Reigadas took the pulpit and read a similar message in Spanish.

Ms. Villegas said she was so offended that the archdiocese had not sent higher-ranking officials that she began shouting that parishioners should withhold contributions to a fund that goes to the archdiocese.

Then, she said, her cellphone rang. The caller was Melissa Mark-Viverito, a city councilwoman who represents East Harlem. She was outside the church and said the guards would not let her in.

One of the guards in the sanctuary “approached me to hear what I was saying,” Ms. Villegas said, so she walked into the vestibule on the 113th Street side of the church — the main entrance. The guard did not follow her.

The church’s front door had been closed and locked from the outside all day. The protesters and reporters covering the vigil had been coming and going by a side door that had been propped open. But by evening that door, too, had been locked.

Ms. Villegas flung open the front door. Ms. Mark-Viverito and a throng of television camera crews, reporters and parishioners rushed through. With them, Ms. Villegas said, were several police officers.

Before long, she said, the officers were joined by others who conferred with church officials in a room off the sanctuary. Finally, after 10 p.m., a police official told the crowd to leave by 11:30, she said.

“I said, ‘If they’re going to arrest us, let’s do it so everybody in the world will know what Cardinal Egan has done to us,’ ” Ms. Villegas said.

The police said yesterday that the officers had begun monitoring Our Lady Queen of Angels after two parishioners at a church in Yonkers also being shut down were arrested in a sit-in on Sunday.

The police said that the archdiocese wanted everyone out of the church, and the guards passed that word to the officers on the scene.

Yesterday, some parishioners talked of organizing a service outside the church on Sunday. Some walked by and looked at a sign that had been taped to the front door, saying the church was closed. Some remembered weddings, baptisms and funerals.

“This,” said Toby Patanella, referring to the arrests and the closing, “has been a nightmare for us, my wife and I. It’s like a slap in the face.”

    A Church Protest Ends Quickly, but the Anger Is Likely to Endure, NYT, 14.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/nyregion/14church.html

Believing Scripture but Playing by Science’s Rules

February 12, 2007
The New York Times
By CORNELIA DEAN

KINGSTON, R.I. — There is nothing much unusual about the 197-page dissertation Marcus R. Ross submitted in December to complete his doctoral degree in geosciences here at the University of Rhode Island.

His subject was the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago. The work is “impeccable,” said David E. Fastovsky, a paleontologist and professor of geosciences at the university who was Dr. Ross’s dissertation adviser. “He was working within a strictly scientific framework, a conventional scientific framework.”

But Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.

For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one “paradigm” for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, “that I am separating the different paradigms.”

He likened his situation to that of a socialist studying economics in a department with a supply-side bent. “People hold all sorts of opinions different from the department in which they graduate,” he said. “What’s that to anybody else?”

But not everyone is happy with that approach. “People go somewhat bananas when they hear about this,” said Jon C. Boothroyd, a professor of geosciences at Rhode Island.

In theory, scientists look to nature for answers to questions about nature, and test those answers with experiment and observation. For Biblical literalists, Scripture is the final authority. As a creationist raised in an evangelical household and a paleontologist who said he was “just captivated” as a child by dinosaurs and fossils, Dr. Ross embodies conflicts between these two approaches. The conflicts arise often these days, particularly as people debate the teaching of evolution.

And, for some, his case raises thorny philosophical and practical questions. May a secular university deny otherwise qualified students a degree because of their religion? Can a student produce intellectually honest work that contradicts deeply held beliefs? Should it be obligatory (or forbidden) for universities to consider how students will use the degrees they earn?

Those are “darned near imponderable issues,” said John W. Geissman, who has considered them as a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of New Mexico. For example, Dr. Geissman said, Los Alamos National Laboratory has a geophysicist on staff, John R. Baumgardner, who is an authority on the earth’s mantle — and also a young earth creationist.

If researchers like Dr. Baumgardner do their work “without any form of interjection of personal dogma,” Dr. Geissman said, “I would have to keep as objective a hat on as possible and say, ‘O.K., you earned what you earned.’ ”

Others say the crucial issue is not whether Dr. Ross deserved his degree but how he intends to use it.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Ross said his goal in studying at secular institutions “was to acquire the training that would make me a good paleontologist, regardless of which paradigm I was using.”

Today he teaches earth science at Liberty University, the conservative Christian institution founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell where, Dr. Ross said, he uses a conventional scientific text.

“We also discuss the intersection of those sorts of ideas with Christianity,” he said. “I don’t require my students to say or write their assent to one idea or another any more than I was required.”

But he has also written and spoken on scientific subjects, and with a creationist bent. While still a graduate student, he appeared on a DVD arguing that intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism, is a better explanation than evolution for the Cambrian explosion, a rapid diversification of animal life that occurred about 500 million years ago.

Online information about the DVD identifies Dr. Ross as “pursuing a Ph.D. in geosciences” at the University of Rhode Island. It is this use of a secular credential to support creationist views that worries many scientists.

Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, a private group on the front line of the battle for the teaching of evolution, said fundamentalists who capitalized on secular credentials “to miseducate the public” were doing a disservice.

Michael L. Dini, a professor of biology education at Texas Tech University, goes even further. In 2003, he was threatened with a federal investigation when students complained that he would not write letters of recommendation for graduate study for anyone who would not offer “a scientific answer” to questions about how the human species originated.

Nothing came of it, Dr. Dini said in an interview, adding, “Scientists do not base their acceptance or rejection of theories on religion, and someone who does should not be able to become a scientist.”

A somewhat more complicated issue arose last year at Ohio State University, where Bryan Leonard, a high school science teacher working toward a doctorate in education, was preparing to defend his dissertation on the pedagogical usefulness of teaching alternatives to the theory of evolution.

Earle M. Holland, a spokesman for the university, said Mr. Leonard and his adviser canceled the defense when questions arose about the composition of the faculty committee that would hear it.

Meanwhile three faculty members had written the university administration, arguing that Mr. Leonard’s project violated the university’s research standards in that the students involved were being subjected to something harmful (the idea that there were scientific alternatives to the theory of evolution) without receiving any benefit.

Citing privacy rules, Mr. Holland would not discuss the case in detail, beyond saying that Mr. Leonard was still enrolled in the graduate program. But Mr. Leonard has become a hero to people who believe that creationists are unfairly treated by secular institutions.

Perhaps the most famous creationist wearing the secular mantle of science is Kurt P. Wise, who earned his doctorate at Harvard in 1989 under the guidance of the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, a leading theorist of evolution who died in 2002.

Dr. Wise, who teaches at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., wrote his dissertation on gaps in the fossil record. But rather than suggest, as many creationists do, that the gaps challenge the wisdom of Darwin’s theory, Dr. Wise described a statistical approach that would allow paleontologists to infer when a given species was present on earth, millions of years ago, even if the fossil evidence was incomplete.

Dr. Wise, who declined to comment for this article, is a major figure in creationist circles today, and his Gould connection appears prominently on his book jackets and elsewhere.

“He is lionized,” Dr. Scott said. “He is the young earth creationist with a degree from Harvard.”

As for Dr. Ross, “he does good science, great science,” said Dr. Boothroyd, who taught him in a class in glacial geology. But in talks and other appearances, Dr. Boothroyd went on, Dr. Ross is already using “the fact that he has a Ph.D. from a legitimate science department as a springboard.”

Dr. Ross, 30, grew up in Rhode Island in an evangelical Christian family. He attended Pennsylvania State University and then the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, where he wrote his master’s thesis on marine fossils found in the state.

His creationism aroused “some concern by faculty members there, and disagreements,” he recalled, and there were those who argued that his religious beliefs should bar him from earning an advanced degree in paleontology.

“But in the end I had a decent thesis project and some people who, like the people at U.R.I., were kind to me, and I ended up going through,” Dr. Ross said.

Dr. Fastovsky and other members of the Rhode Island faculty said they knew about these disagreements, but admitted him anyway. Dr. Boothroyd, who was among those who considered the application, said they judged Dr. Ross on his academic record, his test scores and his master’s thesis, “and we said, ‘O.K., we can do this.’ ”

He added, “We did not know nearly as much about creationism and young earth and intelligent design as we do now.”

For his part, Dr. Ross says, “Dr. Fastovsky was liberal in the most generous and important sense of the term.”

He would not say whether he shared the view of some young earth creationists that flaws in paleontological dating techniques erroneously suggest that the fossils are far older than they really are.

Asked whether it was intellectually honest to write a dissertation so at odds with his religious views, he said: “I was working within a particular paradigm of earth history. I accepted that philosophy of science for the purpose of working with the people” at Rhode Island.

And though his dissertation repeatedly described events as occurring tens of millions of years ago, Dr. Ross added, “I did not imply or deny any endorsement of the dates.”

Dr. Fastovsky said he had talked to Dr. Ross “lots of times” about his religious beliefs, but that depriving him of his doctorate because of them would be nothing more than religious discrimination. “We are not here to certify his religious beliefs,” he said. “All I can tell you is he came here and did science that was completely defensible.”

Steven B. Case, a research professor at the Center for Research Learning at the University of Kansas, said it would be wrong to “censor someone for a belief system as long as it does not affect their work. Science is an open enterprise to anyone who practices it.”

Dr. Case, who champions the teaching of evolution, heads the committee writing state science standards in Kansas, a state particularly racked by challenges to Darwin. Even so, he said it would be frightening if universities began “enforcing some sort of belief system on their graduate students.”

But Dr. Scott, a former professor of physical anthropology at the University of Colorado, said in an interview that graduate admissions committees were entitled to consider the difficulties that would arise from admitting a doctoral candidate with views “so at variance with what we consider standard science.” She said such students “would require so much remedial instruction it would not be worth my time.”

That is not religious discrimination, she added, it is discrimination “on the basis of science.”

Dr. Dini, of Texas Tech, agreed. Scientists “ought to make certain the people they are conferring advanced degrees on understand the philosophy of science and are indeed philosophers of science,” he said. “That’s what Ph.D. stands for.”

    Believing Scripture but Playing by Science’s Rules, NYT, 12.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/science/12geologist.html

Protest Vigil Begins at Church Set to Be Closed by Archdiocese

February 12, 2007
The New York Times
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

A score of parishioners began a protest vigil inside a 120-year-old Roman Catholic church in East Harlem yesterday and vowed to stay until the Archdiocese of New York reverses its decision to close the parish as part of a broad reorganization.

The protest at Our Lady Queen of Angels apparently took the church and the archdiocese by surprise, but the police were not called and there was no other response — and no indication that the archdiocese would retreat. A spokesman for the archdiocese said he had no particulars on the protest.

At another church closed by the archdiocese yesterday, Our Lady of the Rosary in Yonkers, which has served many Portuguese immigrants and their descendants, 10 parishioners began a sit-in after the last Mass. The police were called and all but two left after a warning. The two who refused were arrested for trespassing, a violation, and were released after being issued desk appearance tickets. One, Michael Costa, 19, of Yonkers, later showed up at the East Harlem church and spoke to the protesters.

Since the archdiocese announced last month that 21 churches would close or merge with others in the 405-parish, 10-county archdiocese, to address demographic changes and a shortage of priests, some Catholics have dug in for a fight. They have planned protests and enlisted help from advocates who have resisted church closings in Boston. Parishioners from Our Lady Queen of Angels staged a march two weeks ago.

Yesterday at Our Lady Queen of Angels, a gracefully peaked red-brick edifice on East 113th Street, between Second and Third Avenues, the band of protesters remained behind after the last Mass. They huddled together in the back pews in the soft light filtering through stained-glass images of the saints. They sang hymns in Spanish, recited Hail Marys and discussed the tactics of a protracted occupation, focusing on door locks, food supplies, blankets and other logistics.

And on their passions for their church. “People have been baptized here and married here, received first communion here, been confirmed here,” said Carmen Villegas, 52, a parishioner for 33 years and a protest leader who said the closing of Our Lady Queen of Angels had been set for March 1. “We’re going to stay in prayer,” she said. “When they close the church, we are going to stay inside.”

Carmen Fascio, 51, a nurse who has attended the church for 35 years, urged the protesters not to respond to anyone who disapproved of their action, especially anyone who offered a provocation. “When people come with aggression,” she said, “we have to take a very passive role.”

Jose M. Grajales, a lawyer for the protesters, said that even though the closing was still weeks away, church officials had changed the locks on the front door over the weekend, “like a thief in the night,” as he put it. The protesters decided to begin their vigil now to avoid being shut out later, he said.

Like members at other churches assigned for closing, those at Our Lady Queen of Angels have been fiercely protective of their parish, often forming attachments that last for generations. The church was founded in 1886, first serving German and later Italian immigrants. Today, its members include Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans and Ecuadorans. Some acknowledged that attendance had dwindled in recent years to fewer than 400 people.

Margarita Darada, 81, who has attended the church for 54 years, brought sandwiches and cake for the protesters and declared: “I’m going to defend my church. I want to see this door open. It cannot be closed. Why pick on Queen of Angels? Why pick on this lonely church that serves the community? It’s a sacred fight.”

The start of the vigil was observed by the pastor, the Rev. Gerard Mulvey, clad in a cowled brown friar’s robe with a white rope belt, who had no comment but who locked the front door and asked the protesters to leave by a side door with a one-way lock. It was overseen by Peter Borré, a Harvard-educated activist who spent his working career on energy issues in the private sector and government.

Mr. Borré, 68, co-chairman of a Catholic group in Boston called the Council of Parishes, has helped organize vigils to resist church closings in the Boston area, aiding in four church occupations that he said have lasted for 28 months. He told the East Harlem protesters to bring sleeping bags, sweat clothes and other items for a long siege, and spoke of around-the-clock church vigils as an effective tactic.

“It becomes a rallying point for the local parishioners to resort to direct action, to save their parish,” Mr. Borré said. “The vigil creates the breathing room, the space in time, to push on three other fronts.” The other fronts, he said, were appeals to the Vatican, civil lawsuits and arousing public awareness.

Mr. Borré has been in touch with parishioners at Mary Help of Christians in the East Village, another parish set to be closed about March 1. It was unclear if members of that parish also intended to mount an occupation.

Ms. Villegas said the Queen of Angels protesters had sent a letter to Cardinal Edward M. Egan asking him to reverse the decision to close their parish and informing him of their vigil. “We caution the archdiocese of New York,” the letter said, “to consider very carefully whether it will imprison its own parishioners for engaging in a prayerful vigil.” A copy was sent to the 23rd police precinct in East Harlem.

Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the letter had not been received and that he had no information on the protest at Our Lady Queen of Angels, and could not address questions about possible responses. But he said the parish, like others designated for realignments, had been given ample opportunity to be heard in what he called “an incredibly detailed and lengthy process” of reviews over several years. “Everyone had a chance to have their say as part of that process,” he said.

David Gibson, a journalist and author who writes frequently about religion, said yesterday that he saw little prospect of a successful prolonged protest against the New York Archdiocese closings. The closings in Boston closings came amid “an almost perfect storm” of anger over priest sex-abuse scandals. In New York, the closings were decided with “much greater care” and over a much longer time, he said.

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

    Protest Vigil Begins at Church Set to Be Closed by Archdiocese, NYT, 12.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/nyregion/12church.html

New Episcopal Leader Braces for Gay-Rights Test

February 11, 2007
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

At a book party last week at the New York headquarters of the Episcopal Church, a line of more than 100 fans waited to have the church’s new presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, sign copies of her new book of sermons, “A Wing and a Prayer.”

Bishop Jefferts Schori, the first woman presiding bishop in the history of the Anglican Communion, appeared a bit surprised at the celebrity treatment but clearly enjoyed the sentiment.

She is about to head off to a hostile reception.

This week, Bishop Jefferts Schori will represent the Episcopal Church at a meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with the presiding bishops of the 37 other provinces in the global Anglican Communion, the world’s third-largest church body. Some of those bishops, known as primates, have broken their ties with the American church after it ordained an openly gay bishop and permitted the blessing of same-sex unions.

Some primates have said they will not sit at the same table with Bishop Jefferts Schori. Some have threatened to walk out of the meeting.

In an interview in her office last week, Bishop Jefferts Schori said the conflict was more about “biblical interpretation” than about homosexuality.

“We have had gay bishops and gay clergy for millennia,” she said. “The willingness to be open about that is more recent.”

She said that what she wanted to convey to her fellow primates was that despite the highly-publicized departure of some congregations (a spokesman said 45 of 7,400 have left and affiliated with provinces overseas), the Episcopal Church has the support of most members, who are engaged in worship and mission work, and not fixated on this controversy.

“A number of the primates have perhaps inaccurate ideas about the context of this church. They hear from the voices quite loudly that this church is going to hell in a handbasket,” she said. “The folks who are unhappy represent a small percentage of the whole, but they are quite loud.”

In the global picture, however, those unhappy with the Americans are a significant bloc, and some are ready to cut off the American branch of the Anglican Communion. Conservatives were emboldened recently when an influential bishop, N. T. Wright of Durham, England, said in an interview, “Even if it means a bit of pruning, the plant will be healthier for it.”

Bishop Jefferts Schori said the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, had accommodated the conservatives because he also presides over the Church of England, where the conservatives are a more substantial presence than in the United States, and are increasingly assertive.

Bishop Jefferts Schori, who is 52, exudes a cool presence, sitting erect in a crimson shirt and white clerical collar. She uses few words to make her points. In her previous career, she was an oceanographer, specializing in squid and octopuses.

Ordained a priest only 13 years ago, she is the former bishop of Nevada, where she permitted blessings for gay couples and voted to confirm the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson, who is openly gay, as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. She was elected presiding bishop last June, a nine-year assignment.

She said opposition came primarily from a “handful of primates,” led by Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, with support from those in Uganda and Rwanda. She said they had made it appear as if the bulk of the Anglican Communion was arrayed against the Americans, when that was not the case.

“It’s abundantly clear that there’s a diversity of opinion in the provinces of the Communion” she said. Asked why they are not more vocal, she said, “I think that has to be tenderly nurtured. You don’t want to put people in a precarious situation” by encouraging them to speak out against their own primates.

One African bishop recently did so. After the House of Bishops in Tanzania voted in December to cut ties to the Episcopal Church and stop accepting its donations, Bishop Mdimi Mhogolo, who leads the Diocese of Central Tanganyika, wrote a letter saying, “The issue of homosexuality is not fundamental to the Christian faith.”

At the meeting in Tanzania, Bishop Jefferts Schori is to sit down with the primates of 13 provinces that do not ordain women as priests, not to mention as bishops. But she said her sex was not the reason some primates were preparing to shun her. The problem is that some bishops say the Episcopal Church has failed to repent or to declare a moratorium on gay blessings, steps required by a committee of officials commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2004.

She is likely to be face to face with Archbishop Akinola, who has created a rival network of conservative churches in the United States.

Bishop Jefferts Schori said that if she is rebuked at the meeting, it will not be anything new; she experienced that before as an oceanographer: “The first time I was chief scientist on a cruise, the captain wouldn’t speak to me because I was a woman.”

Asked how she would respond if primates walked out on her, she said, “Life is too short to get too flustered.”

    New Episcopal Leader Braces for Gay-Rights Test, NYT, 11.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/us/11bishop.html?hp&ex=1171256400&en=4cd943bae659e8a0&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Mormon Candidate Braces for Religion as Issue

February 8, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 — As he begins campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is facing a threshold issue: Will his religion — he is a Mormon — be a big obstacle to winning the White House?

Polls show a substantial number of Americans will not vote for a Mormon for president. The religion is viewed with suspicion by Christian conservatives, a vital part of the Republicans’ primary base.

Mr. Romney’s advisers acknowledged that popular misconceptions about Mormonism — as well as questions about whether Mormons are beholden to their church’s leaders on public policy — could give his opponents ammunition in the wide-open fight among Republicans to become the consensus candidate of social conservatives.

Mr. Romney, in an extended interview on the subject as he drove through South Carolina last week, expressed confidence that he could quell concerns about his faith, pointing to his own experience winning in Massachusetts. He said he shared with many Americans the bafflement over obsolete Mormon practices like polygamy — he described it as “bizarre” — and disputed the argument that his faith would require him to be loyal to his church before his country.

“People have interest early on in your religion and any similar element of your background,” he said. “But as soon as they begin to watch you on TV and see the debates and hear you talking about issues, they are overwhelmingly concerned with your vision of the future and the leadership skills that you can bring to bear.”

Still, Mr. Romney is taking no chances. He has set up a meeting this month in Florida with 100 ministers and religious broadcasters. That gathering follows what was by all accounts a successful meeting at his home last fall with evangelical leaders, including the Rev. Jerry Falwell; the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is a son of the Rev. Billy Graham; and Paula White, a popular preacher.

Mr. Romney said he was giving strong consideration to a public address about his faith and political views, modeled after the one John F. Kennedy gave in 1960 in the face of a wave of concern about his being a Roman Catholic.

Mr. Romney’s aides said he had closely studied Kennedy’s speech in trying to measure how to navigate the task of becoming the nation’s first Mormon president, and he has consulted other Mormon elected leaders, including Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, about how to proceed.

Mr. Romney appears to be making some headway. Several prominent evangelical leaders said that, after meeting him, they had grown sufficiently comfortable with the notion of Mr. Romney as president to overcome any concerns they might have about his religion.

On a pragmatic level, some said that Mr. Romney — despite questions among conservatives about his shifting views on abortion and gay rights — struck them as the Republican candidate best able to win and carry their social conservative agenda to the White House.

“There’s this growing acceptance of this idea that Mitt Romney may well be and is our best candidate,” said Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal advocacy group, and a prominent host on Christian radio.

Mark DeMoss, an evangelical public relations consultant who represents many conservative Christian groups, said it was “more important to me that a candidate shares my values than my faith,” adding, “And if I look at it this way, Mr. Romney would be my top choice.”

Mormons consider themselves to be Christians, but some beliefs central to Mormons are regarded by other churches as heretical. For example, Mormons have three books of Scripture other than the Bible, including the Book of Mormon, which Mormons believe was translated from golden plates discovered in 1827 by Joseph Smith Jr., the church’s founder and first prophet.

Mormons believe that Smith rescued Christianity from apostasy and restored the church to what was envisioned in the New Testament — but these doctrines are beyond the pale for most Christian churches.

Beyond that, there are perceptions among some people regarding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the church is formally known, that account for at least some of the public unease: that Mormons still practice polygamy (the church renounced polygamy in 1890), that it is more of a cult than a religion and that its members take political direction from the church’s leaders.

Several Republicans said such perceptions could be a problem for Mr. Romney, especially in the South, which has had a disproportionate influence in selecting Republican presidential nominees.

Gloria A. Haskins, a state representative from South Carolina who is supporting Senator John McCain for the Republican nomination, said discussions with her constituents in Greenville, an evangelical stronghold, convinced her that a Mormon like Mr. Romney could not win a Republican primary in her state. South Carolina has one of the earliest, and most critical, primaries next year.

“From what I hear in my district, it is very doubtful,” Ms. Haskins said. “This is South Carolina. We’re very mainstream, evangelical, Christian, conservative. It will come up. In this of all states, it will come up.”

But Katon Dawson, the state Republican chairman, said he thought Mr. Romney had made significant progress in dealing with those concerns. “I have heard him on his personal faith and on his character and conviction and the love for his country,” Mr. Dawson said. “I have all confidence that he will be able to answer those questions, whether they be in negative ads against him or in forums or in debates.”

Mr. Romney’s candidacy has stirred discussion about faith and the White House unlike any since Kennedy, including a remarkable debate that unfolded recently in The New Republic. Damon Linker, a critic of the influence of Christian conservatism on politics, described Mormonism as a “theologically unstable, and thus politically perilous, religion.”

The article brought a stinging rebuttal in the same publication from Richard Lyman Bushman, a Mormon who is a history professor at Columbia University, and who said Mr. Linker’s arguments had “no grounding in reality.”

Mr. Romney is not the first Mormon to seek a presidential nomination, but by every indication he has the best chance yet of being in the general election next year. His father, George Romney, was a candidate in 1968, but his campaign collapsed before he ever had to deal seriously with questions about religion.

Senator Hatch said his own candidacy in 2000, which was something of a long shot, was to “knock down prejudice against my faith.”

“There’s a lot of prejudice out there,” Mr. Hatch said. “We’ve come a long way, but there are still many people around the country who consider the Mormon faith a cult.”

But if Mr. Romney has made progress with evangelicals, he appears to face a larger challenge in dispelling apprehensions among the public at large. A national poll by The Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News last June found 37 percent said they would not vote for a Mormon for president.

Mr. Romney offered assurances that seemed to reflect what Kennedy told the nation in discussing his Catholicism some 50 years ago. Mr. Romney said the requirements of his faith would never overcome his political obligations. He pointed out that in Massachusetts, he had signed laws allowing stores to sell alcohol on Sundays, even though he was prohibited by his faith from drinking, and to expand the state lottery, though Mormons are forbidden to gamble. He also noted that Mormons are not exclusively Republicans, pointing to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader.

“There’s no church-directed view,” Mr. Romney said. “How can you have Harry Reid on one side and Orrin Hatch on the other without recognizing that the church doesn’t direct political views? I very clearly subscribe to Abraham Lincoln’s view of America’s political religion. And that is when you take the oath of office, your responsibility is to the nation, and that is first and foremost.”

He said he was not concerned about the resistance in the polls. “If you did a poll and said: ‘Could a divorced actor be elected as president? Would you vote for a divorced actor as president?’ my guess is 70 percent would say no. But then they saw Ronald Reagan. They heard him. They heard his vision. They heard his experience. They said: ‘I like Ronald Reagan. I’m voting for him.’ ”

Adam Nagourney reported from Washington, and Laurie Goodstein from New York.

    Mormon Candidate Braces for Religion as Issue, NYT, 8.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/us/politics/08romney.html?hp&ex=1170997200&en=392fd9e5e4d7de08&ei=5094&partner=homepage

U.S. evangelicals eye renewed domestic drive

Wed Feb 7, 2007 12:02PM EST
Reuters
By Ed Stoddard

DALLAS (Reuters) - The number of southern U.S. evangelical Christians is not growing as fast as the wider population, leading to a renewed effort to win converts on the domestic front from key groups like the Hispanic community.

That was one message that came through at a three-day "Empower Evangelism" conference hosted by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, or SBTC, which wrapped up on Wednesday.

"There has been a slowdown of the growth of our churches and our converts ... We have not been keeping pace with the population growth," said Frank Page, president of the national Southern Baptist Convention and a pastor from South Carolina.

Growth is important for the evangelical movement with its heavy emphasis on the "conversion experience."

According to the convention's North American Mission Board, in 1990 the population to church ratio for every Southern Baptist church nationwide was 6,549 to one.

In 2005 the ratio had widened to 6,783 to one, reversing earlier trends. The Southern Baptists did not provide numbers on the broader evangelical movement but it is a telling trend given their zeal.

America still has 60 million evangelicals out of a population of 300 million and about 16 million call themselves Southern Baptists.

They are an influential group in the United States. Politically they are often associated with conservative causes and are a key base of support for the Republican Party.

"In states such as Texas there has been massive population growth especially among ethnic groups and we have not kept pace," Page told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.

Much of that growth has been among the Hispanic population which is traditionally Catholic and is viewed as a key target for Protestant evangelical activity.

At this week's conference, Spanish translations were pointedly available for the talks and sermons.

"We are looking to the Hispanic population for growth," said Mike Gonzales, the Hispanic Initiative and Ethnic Ministries Director of the SBTC.

He said there was now 127 Hispanic Baptist churches affiliated with the SBTC compared to 77 just over two years ago -- fast growth but it is very recent and off a low base.

CHANGING OIL FOR CHRIST

Besides reaching out to fast growing ethnic communities the conference also focused broadly on the domestic front with "coffee house" and other forms of evangelism promoted.

"This conference is encouragement for people to redouble their efforts to develop nontraditional and innovative methods in sharing the good news of Christ," Page said.

"My church for example four times a year does a massive 'single mother oil change' where we help fix their cars. We say we just want to show you the love of Christ in a practical way," he said.

Ryan Heller, a 35-year-old pastor in a community just north of Dallas, said he began his evangelical activities with neighborhood festivities that included clowns and parades.

Door-to-door marketing tactics were also employed.

"We started knocking on doors and asking people if they were going to go to a new church in town what they would like to see that church look like and do," he said.

"Our church is conservative theologically but in our church what we practice is very contemporary ... we have very contemporary music and a band which is pretty much a rock band," he said.

In just over three years he said his church had grown from scratch to regular attendance rates of between 300 and 350 -- growth that the movement would like to see elsewhere.

    U.S. evangelicals eye renewed domestic drive, R, 7.2.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0741145420070207

Ousted Pastor ‘Completely Heterosexual’

February 7, 2007
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

Forced by a gay sex scandal to resign as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Rev. Ted Haggard now feels that after three weeks of intensive counseling, he is “completely heterosexual,” says an overseer of the megachurch Mr. Haggard once led.

The church official, the Rev. Tim Ralph, said in an interview published yesterday by The Denver Post that Mr. Haggard had also told the board of overseers that his only sexual relationship involving another man had been with Michael Jones, the onetime Denver prostitute who exposed that three-year affair last fall. Mr. Jones said then that he was making it public because Mr. Haggard had acted hypocritically in promoting a constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriage.

Mr. Haggard, who as a result of the scandal was ousted by the overseers in November as senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, broke a three-month silence over the weekend when he contacted members of the church by e-mail to tell them that he was healing.

His three weeks of counseling, in Phoenix, felt like “three years’ worth of analysis and treatment,” but now “Jesus is starting to put me back together,” Mr. Haggard wrote in the e-mail message, which was published in The Colorado Springs Gazette on Monday.

“I have spent so much time in repentance, brokenness, hurt and sorrow for the things I’ve done and the negative impact my actions have had on others,” he said.

Mr. Haggard could not be reached for comment yesterday. Mr. Ralph declined through a spokeswoman to comment, and there was no response to telephone calls and e-mail to another overseer or to a New Life spokesman. But Mr. Ralph told The Denver Post that Mr. Haggard had come out of the counseling convinced of his heterosexuality.

“He is completely heterosexual,” Mr. Ralph told The Post, adding that Mr. Haggard’s homosexual activity had not been “a constant thing.”

Dr. Jack Drescher, a New York psychiatrist who is an expert on issues of gender and sexuality, said that while it was people’s prerogative to identify their sexual orientation as they wanted, the notion of being able to change that orientation was “not consistent with clinical presentations, but totally consistent with theological belief.”

“Some people in the community that Mr. Haggard comes from believe homosexuality is a form of behavior, a sinful form of behavior based on certain things in the Bible, and they don’t believe you can create a healthy identity based on sinful behavior,” Dr. Drescher said. “So they define it as a behavior that can be changed, and there is this thinking that if you control those behaviors enough, heterosexual attractions will follow.”

Mr. Haggard said in his message to New Life members that he and his wife were taking online courses to get master’s degrees in psychology, and Mr. Ralph told The Post that the oversight board had recommended to Mr. Haggard that he take up secular work.

    Ousted Pastor ‘Completely Heterosexual’, NYT, 7.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/us/07haggard.html

Episcopal church's new dawn

Updated 2/5/2007 7:24 AM ET
USA Today
By Cathy Lynn Grossman

NEW YORK — Every time Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori dons her personalized vestments, there's a vision of sunrise.

Colors of the "new dawn," cited so often by the prophet Isaiah, are sewn into her personalized mantle and bishop's hat — an orange glow rises from a green hem to a dawn-blue band below purple heavens.

Jefferts Schori herself stands for a new day in her church:

• The first female presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

• The first and only female primate, head of one of the 38 national and regional churches, in the world's largest non-Catholic Christian denomination.

• The leader who faces a costly fracture among the faithful, a crack radiating across the Anglican world.

Since her election in June and installation in November, a tiny but influential number of churches from Virginia to California — "one-half of 1% of the 7,200 congregations," she says — have spurned her leadership and the liberal direction of the Episcopal Church to align with Southern Hemisphere traditionalists.

The long-simmering tensions between those who adhere to a strict interpretation of the Bible and those who read it less literally came to a boil in 2003. That's when the church's governing body approved the election of the church's first openly gay bishop, the Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Jefferts Schori has been excoriated by conservatives for her theological views. Some primates say they won't sit in the same room with her at her first meeting of the primates in Tanzania next week.

Yet, despite "white-hot animosity thrown at her, she's unflappable," New York Bishop Mark Sisk says.

Confronted with seemingly intractable conflicts, Jefferts Schori smiles like someone well versed in Matthew 6:25's refrain: "Be not anxious." The world is all of God, she says, so go forward.

"I'm no Pollyanna. I just try to look at the world with the expectation that I will find signs of God. The burning bush is an invitation, if we are willing to engage it."

She's at ease answering questions, speaking in a low voice, slowly and precisely. She zeros in to make a point by leaning forward to fix her intent gaze on a visitor.

She has had little time to personalize her functional New York office with its view of the United Nations. But one thing she treasures rests on her desk: a slice of shale embedded with an ammonite, a fossil ancestor of the chambered nautilus.

It is circular, complex, ruggedly beautiful — and has been extinct for 65 million years. It was a gift from her parents 30 years ago, as she commenced her first career in biological oceanography.

Introverted but not afraid

Jefferts Schori is as conversant on squids as on Scripture. She's also an instrument-rated pilot with a Cessna 172 stashed in Nevada, where she was bishop before taking national office. Lean and fit at 52, she spent Christmas Day climbing a snowy peak near Death Valley.

For all her adventurous spirit, scientific curiosity and pastoral experience since becoming a priest in 1994, she calls herself an introvert in her new book, A Wing and a Prayer. Yet she says that "fear should not block faithfulness."

Or optimism. To hear her talk, the future of her denomination is brighter every day, with many "healthy, vital churches."

What of breakaway churches?

She's sad to see them go, but not so sad that she won't fight for their properties. "The institution cannot give away its birthright and the gifts that belong to future generations. Our desire to reconcile continues, but if (the seceding churches) would prefer to be part of another tradition, then they are welcome to go. They just can't take what doesn't belong to them," she says, leaning forward.

"The church's laws are broad but they are there, and beyond these lines you cannot go. Crossing boundaries has consequences."

Condemnations from Global South primates?

Jefferts Schori steers the discussion to the positive, focusing on the mission she shares with many of the African primates to address the terrible plagues of war, poverty, disease and hunger.

"We can work on these together. Human need is so overwhelming that it seems incredibly sinful to spend time" on church politics.

What she omits: The Anglican Church in Tanzania recently declared itself in "severely impaired communion" with the Episcopal Church. The Archbishop of Uganda said he wouldn't meet with her because of her stance on biblical faith and morality.

The head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who invited Jefferts Schori to Tanzania, also invited some dissident U.S. conservative leaders. But the Anglican Archbishop of Southern Africa has been quoted saying that to boycott a legitimately elected primate while "Africa is on fire … is like fiddling while Rome burns" and "goes against God's fundamental call for unity and reconciliation."

Jefferts Schori is unruffled.

"It's not about me. This is not a table that belongs to any one province. It's God's table," she says,

What about her denomination's declining numbers?

Statistics don't scare her, she says. Yes, membership is down from 3.2 million in 1960 to 2.2 million today, a downward trend similar to all the mainline churches.

A new Gallup survey shows that the number of Americans who say they "consider themselves part of a Christian tradition" fell 6 percentage points, from 80% to 74%, from 1999 to 2006, while the number of people who say they are not part of any religious tradition rose from 13% to 18% in the same period.

Reaching out with social action

"It's no longer the social norm to be a Christian," Jefferts Schori says. Her answer isn't to ramp up on orthodoxy but to reach out to all ages and cultures with Christlike social action.

Critics say she equivocates on essential doctrine — the necessity for atonement and the exclusivity of salvation through Christ. They cite interviews in which she has said living like Jesus in this world was a more urgent task than worrying about the next world.

"It's not my job to pick" who is saved. "It's God's job," she tells USA TODAY.

Yes, sin "is pervasive, part of human nature," but "it's not the centerpiece of the Christian message. If we spend our time talking about sin and depravity, it is all we see in the world," she says.

Here's where blood rushes into the blogs and critics pounce.

"Her theological statements are not orthodox Christian, not orthodox Anglican. Frankly, they're bizarre," says the Rev. Canon David Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council. He has aligned with a group of U.S. churches that now answer to the Archbishop of Nigeria.

Sisk disagrees sharply.

"She's profoundly faithful to the central claims of the church and the Scriptures. People who say she's not are making that up. They just don't agree with her. And the fact that she stays calm in the face of a lot of pumped-up hype, that she just doesn't buy it, irritates them."

Indeed, asked about her critics, Jefferts Schori doesn't blink. She leans in, drops her voice even lower and cuts to the chase.

She sees two strands of faith: One is "most concerned with atonement, that Jesus died for our sins and our most important task is to repent." But the other is "the more gracious strand," says the bishop who dresses like a sunrise.

It "is to talk about life, to claim the joy and the blessings for good that it offers, to look forward.

"God became human in order that we may become divine. That's our task."

    Episcopal church's new dawn, UT, 5.2.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-02-04-jefferts-schori-cover_x.htm

After Shooting, Amish School Embodies Effort to Heal

January 31, 2007
The New York Times
By MELODY SIMMONS

NICKEL MINES, Pa., Jan. 30 — Nearly four months ago, a milk delivery-truck driver lined up 10 girls in a one-room schoolhouse in this Amish farming community and opened fire, killing five of them and wounding five others before turning the gun on himself.

Ten days after the shooting, Amish leaders demolished the school building, which stood off a quiet two-lane road. And about a month later, Amish residents, including relatives of the girls who had been killed, banded together to build a one-room schoolhouse about 200 yards from the old one, on an acre of land owned by an Amish farmer.

The school, to be finished in mid-February, is set to open in March. Brick with beige siding, it has a front porch and sits behind a set of farmhouses, shielded from view of those passing on the nearby road. There are “No Trespassing” signs at the entrances.

For now, students are attending class in a local garage.

“They wanted to get the kids in as protective an atmosphere as they could,” said John Coldiron, a zoning officer for Bart Township, where Nickel Mines is situated . “It’s very private.”

Mr. Coldiron, who has been involved with the construction since ground was broken this month, said the new schoolhouse had sturdier windows and doors and stronger locks than the old one.

“This is kind of a washing — getting rid of the old and putting up the new,” he said. “It’s all really good stuff” for the community.

For others, the school “is a symbol of hope,” said Rita Rhoads, 53, a Mennonite who is a certified nurse midwife and helped in the births of some of the shooting victims. “We want the kids to just quietly show up one day and go to school normally.”

Four of the five girls who were wounded have returned to class. One remains in a coma and is being cared for at home, Ms. Rhoads said.

Confronted with tragedy, the Amish are taught to forgive and go on. And that is what the 2,700 residents of Bart Township have been trying to do since the attack, on Oct. 2. “People don’t fuss about it,” Mary Stoltzfus, 36, a member of the community, said outside Fisher’s Houseware and Fabrics. “It has calmed down.”

Ms. Rhoads said that although the victims’ families and friends had been devastated, “there’s no anger.”

“There is a lot of ‘why?’ ” she said. “But life goes on. The healing continues. It’s not to say they’re not sad. They are sad. They are mourning, but they’re doing well.”

The Amish and the non-Amish have given the widow of the gunman, Charles C. Roberts IV, and the couple’s three children comfort and unconditional support. Neighbors put up a Christmas tree at the local volunteer fire hall and decorated it with toys and gift cards for the family. Soccer players at Solanco High School in nearby Quarryville made it a point to show their encouragement by attending soccer matches played by the Robertses’ young son Brice.

Donations from around the world have poured into funds set up to help pay burial expenses for the dead and medical costs for the survivors, Ms. Rhoads said. A pregnant teacher at the school whom Mr. Roberts allowed to leave before he started shooting gave birth to a baby girl and named her after one of the youngest victims, Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7.

“The whole world has been great to us with their donations and support,” said Chief H. Curtis Woerth of the Bart Township Fire Company. The schoolhouse had been a mile from the fire station, and Chief Woerth’s eyes welled up as he recalled the day.

“Our hearts, they’ll never mend,” he said. “It’s just like it was yesterday to all of us. It’s what we’re trained to do, but when you sit in those classes all those hours, you never think it will be something so close to you.” Members of his department still receive counseling to help them deal with the shooting.

Rich Ressel, an emergency medical technician and a volunteer firefighter who was among the first to arrive at the school, said he was haunted each time he heard the sound of a horse-drawn buggy.

“I’ll never forget the pitter-patter of the horse hooves going down the street for the funerals,” Mr. Ressel said. “It was so quiet. We stood out front of the station when they went by. Every time I hear that, it brings me back to it.”

On the wall in a firehouse dining room is a watercolor of the schoolyard painted by a local artist, Elsie Beiler. Its title is “Happier Days,” and it depicts the Amish children of Nickel Mines playing, without a care, before the shooting. Five birds, which some say represent the dead girls, circle in the blue sky above.

Ms. Beiler said the fact that she knew some of the victims’ families had inspired her to paint the scene and to donate some of the money from the sale of prints to the victims’ fund. “I pray for the families of the children,” Ms. Beiler said. “And I thought about what a struggle it was for them to live out each day in forgiveness.”

    After Shooting, Amish School Embodies Effort to Heal, NYT, 31.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/us/31amish.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

A Cleric’s Journey Leads to a Suburban Frontier

January 28, 2007
The New York Times
By ANDREA ELLIOTT

MIDDLETOWN, N.J. — Sheik Reda Shata pushed into Costco behind an empty cart. He wore a black leather jacket over his long, rustling robe, a pocket Koran tucked inside.

The imam, a 38-year-old Egyptian, seemed not to notice the stares from other shoppers. He was hunting for a bargain, and soon found it in the beverage aisle, where a 32-can pack of Coca-Cola sold for $8.29. For Mr. Shata, this was a satisfying Islamic experience.

“The Prophet said, ‘Whoever is frugal will never suffer financially,’ ” said the imam, who shops weekly at the local store and admits to praying for its owners. He smiled. “These are the people who will go to heaven.”

Seven months have passed since Mr. Shata moved to this New Jersey suburb to lead a mosque of prosperous, settled immigrants. It is a world away from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where he toiled for almost four years, serving hundreds of struggling Muslims for whom America was still new.

His transition is a familiar one for foreign-born imams in the United States, who often start out in city mosques before moving to more serene settings.

For Mr. Shata, Middletown promised comfort after years of hardship. He left behind a tiny apartment for a house with green shutters set amid maple trees and sweeping lawns. He got a raise. He learned to drive.

But the suburbs have brought challenges that Mr. Shata never imagined. His congregation in Brooklyn may have been on the margins of American society, but it was deeply rooted in Islam. Muslims in Middletown were generally more assimilated but less connected to their mosque.

To be a successful suburban imam, he found, meant persuading doctors and lawyers not to rush from prayers to beat traffic. It meant connecting with teenagers who drove new cars, and who peppered their Arabic with “like” and “yeah.” It meant helping his daughter cope with mockery at school, in a predominantly white town that lost dozens of people on Sept. 11.

Mr. Shata knew from his years in Brooklyn that the job demanded more than preaching and leading prayers, the things for which he was trained in Egypt. In America, he helped to arrange marriages. He mediated between the F.B.I. and his people. He set up a makeshift Islamic court to resolve disputes among hot dog vendors.

Last summer, as he prepared to join a new community where the median income is roughly $86,000, he reminded himself that Islam has no quarrel with wealth — as long as the wealthy are pious. Still, he was stunned when a man at the mosque bought his daughter a new car, only for her to request a different model.

“Islam says to a Muslim you can own the world if you want, but don’t get attached to it,” said Mr. Shata, speaking Arabic through a translator. “Put the world in your hands, not your heart.”

The open spaces of Monmouth County appealed to the imam after years in a crowded city. But with space comes distance. It hardly surprised Mr. Shata that prayer attendance was thin; many congregants live more than 20 miles away.

In a land of Little League and shopping malls, signs of Muslim identity are few. At first glance, Mr. Shata’s new mosque could pass for an elegant office building. It has no minaret and a barely visible dome.

Girls in head scarves are scarce at the local public schools. Some cover their heads with hooded sweatshirts.

Compared with his congregants, the imam sometimes looks like an apparition from another century. In his silk hat and robe, he preaches to men in suits or blue jeans, cellphones clasped to their belts.

But Mr. Shata believes this group is vital to Islam’s future in the West. The religion’s survival, he said, depends not only on its ability to flourish in the immigrant footholds of America, but in its most settled corners.

“We are in this country, and we must learn to live with its people,” Mr. Shata said. “We have to absorb them and they have to absorb us.”

Leaving Brooklyn

One sunny afternoon in September, the mosque’s parking lot was empty but for a red 1997 Dodge Neon. It circled around and around, with Mr. Shata at the wheel. He was practicing for his driving test.

“Now we’re at the stop sign, and we must stop out of respect,” he said, slamming on the brakes. The car halted violently. Then he stomped his sandaled foot on the gas, and the car lurched ahead.

Mr. Shata had never driven a car until he moved to Middletown. As a boy, he became frightened of driving after a tractor killed a man in his Egyptian farming village. Since moving to the United States in 2002, he had managed without a car. But in the suburbs he had no choice.

Middletown is only 43 miles southwest of the city, but to Mr. Shata, it seemed farther.

In Brooklyn, his daily walk to the mosque, Masjid Moussab, caused a commotion, with cabdrivers honking and shopkeepers waving. In Middletown, where Mr. Shata now lives next to the mosque, he sees deer and rabbits on his way to the dawn prayer.

But Brooklyn had a way of following him. Fathers in Bay Ridge still sought the imam’s help in finding suitable husbands for their daughters. Unhappy wives called for the imam’s marital advice.

Every Friday, a dozen of Mr. Shata’s former Brooklyn congregants began appearing in Middletown to hear his weekly sermon.

“Maybe he’s here in body, but his soul is there,” said Amgad Abdou, an Egyptian driver who came every week, his limousine full. “He’s like the Statue of Liberty, part of the skyline. He’s part of Bay Ridge.”

Mr. Shata missed the city at times. But his relationship with Muslims in Brooklyn had changed after a series of articles about him appeared in The New York Times last March.

At first, he found himself a minor celebrity. The articles were reprinted in Arabic-language newspapers, both in the United States and the Middle East. Hundreds of strangers reached out to him, seeking advice.

The imam’s “little black book” — a roster of Muslims in search of spouses — quickly lengthened, by a third, to 820 phone numbers and names.

But the articles also stirred a controversy Mr. Shata never expected. Many Muslims were shocked to read that the imam thought oral sex was permissible for married couples (even though respected Islamic scholars in the Middle East concurred with his opinion, he said). Others objected to his view that Muslims could sell liquor or pork if they could find no other work.

One critique of Mr. Shata on a jihadist Web site in England singled out his hometown, Kafr al Battikh, which is known for its watermelons. “Oh, Allah,” it read, “preserve Islam and Muslims from the evil people of watermelons.”

In Bay Ridge, the articles prompted a fistfight outside a Dunkin’ Donuts. Fliers warned in Arabic that the imam was “a devil.”

“He just wanted to please the West,” said Hesham Elashry, a local Egyptian tailor. “No one can change Islam to make people happy.”

After weeks of defending himself, Mr. Shata felt worn down.

Other mosques had long tried to lure him away. As word of his troubles spread, recruiters stepped forward.

“He was tied to his people,” said Mohammed Mosaad, who sits on the board of the mosque in Middletown.

Like many suburban mosques, Masjid Al-Aman, which means “mosque of peace,” began in the 1980s with a group of families who met privately to pray. Eventually, they bought a six-acre property on Red Hill Road and raised $1.7 million to build their mosque, which was completed in 2003.

Leaders of the mosque, which has a largely Egyptian congregation, called the imam for months. They offered to renovate a house on the property, with a new kitchen and a custom-made library.

Mr. Shata prayed for a sign from God. One morning at dawn, the imam said, he heard a voice telling him that the mosque in Middletown “is peace.”

He resigned that day.

Planting New Roots

One evening in July, shortly before Mr. Shata moved to the suburbs, he paid the mosque in Middletown a visit.

Crickets chirped. The grass whispered. The stars blinked from above.

The imam circled the mosque, accompanied by three friends. He paused to look at the trees, which seemed to sparkle.

Mr. Shata turned to the men and asked if the forest might have jinn, the Arabic word for spirits.

“No,” one of the men replied. “The bugs light up here.”

It was one of many things that impressed Mr. Shata about his new environment. He loved to sit on his front porch and write his Friday sermons. The rain, he said, was “like a symphony of music.”

In Brooklyn, the imam’s family rarely left their apartment. His 8-year-old daughter, Rawda, is epileptic and used to suffer frequent seizures. Now the four children run freely on the grass. Rawda has not had a seizure for months, ever since doctors changed her medication.

The imam’s wife, Omyma, looked up at the sky one September afternoon.

“Smell! Smell!” she said, inhaling deeply. “Pure oxygen. Pure.”

But if Mr. Shata’s family life had improved, his new mosque needed work.

In Bay Ridge, congregants lingered after prayers, exchanging kisses and hugs. In Middletown, an air of anonymity hung over the mosque.

“We needed someone to bring us together,” said one member, Omar Mostafa, 42.

Mr. Shata began by memorizing the names of his roughly 600 congregants and tracking their attendance. (The same prodigious memory had enabled him to memorize the Koran by the age of 8.)

A Jordanian-born cardiologist, Raed Jitan, missed the Friday prayer soon after he was introduced to the new imam. When the doctor reappeared at the mosque, he was stunned to hear Mr. Shata call out, “Raed, where have you been?”

It became common to hear the imam interrupt himself, midsermon, with admonitions like, “Ahmed, don’t fall asleep on me.”

One Friday, Mr. Shata ordered the congregants to stand up and exchange compliments. Another day, he told them they could not leave before shaking hands.

By the early fall, Masjid Al-Aman was a different place. Attendance at daily prayers had quadrupled. The imam’s evening lectures were packed.

“The seeds have taken root very fast,” Mr. Shata said.

He was relieved that many of his new congregants seemed modern-minded. But he is still adjusting to the fact that, at dinner parties, men and women often eat together. (Such engagements do not violate Islamic law, Mr. Shata said, but he and his wife prefer more traditional gatherings where men and women sit in separate rooms and have their own entrances.)

Mr. Shata uses Islamic contracts in Middletown, as he had in Brooklyn, to help settle disputes between married couples. But the money involved sometimes makes him gasp. In Brooklyn, a man had agreed to pay his wife $10 every time he insulted her. In Middletown, a similar contract brought $1,000 per insult.

Wealth became a frequent theme in his sermons.

“The true value of a person is not in his clothing, car or bank account, but in his account with Allah,” he said in one sermon.

At times, Mr. Shata could not help but think of his own financial status. He told himself that it did not matter that his house was modest compared with the “palaces” of some congregants, or that his used Dodge stood out among their Lexuses and BMWs.

“I am very satisfied with what God has given me,” he said one afternoon.

He did not know then that his 12-year-old daughter, Esteshhad, wanted to ask him for a cellphone.

A Generation to Guide

On Sunday mornings, the main worship area of the mosque — a place normally reserved for men — becomes a teenage oasis.

Girls in head scarves sit to one side, and boys in sweatshirts and varsity jackets to the other. Their cellphones beep with text messages as the imam stands before them.

“Who has a question today?” he asked one recent Sunday.

A curly-haired boy raised his hand. “According to the Prophet, at what age should a young man get married?” he asked.

Mr. Shata launched into a careful lecture about how modern life is different from the Prophet’s time, when boys married at 16. Islam, he said, dictates no specific age.

“Can a man marry more than one wife?” another boy asked.

“Why are the questions about marriage today?” the imam replied. “What’s going on?”

The room was silent. He wiped his glasses, trying to buy time.

“If you are able to marry one,” he finally said, “don’t think about marrying another one.”

Another hand shot up, that of a 16-year-old girl. “What are the specific circumstances that allow a man to marry a second wife?” the girl, Sara Abdelmottlib, asked.

Once again, the imam was cornered. Back in Egypt, young Muslims were reticent in the presence of sheiks. But in America, Mr. Shata noticed, children are taught to ask many questions.

Mr. Shata had no doubt about the answer: According to Islamic law, a man is allowed up to four wives. But the imam also believed that such arrangements never worked, and that discussing them was unhelpful in the United States.

He stared at the girls.

“There is no woman out there who agrees to her husband marrying a second wife, even if she cannot bear children,” he said.

Then he turned to the boys. “A man who is not satisfied with one wife will never be satisfied with four,” he said.

Miss Abdelmottlib looked over at the boys, her chin raised in triumph.

Mr. Shata often feels out of place among his youngest congregants. They seem so different from him — the way they dress, the way they speak, even the way they think. But he considers no part of his job more important.

“The tree of faith in their hearts has to be constantly watered before it dries up,” he said.

It seemed to Mr. Shata that young Muslims in the suburbs had no guide to help them balance Islamic virtues with adolescent urges, the culture of their parents with the pressures of their peers.

Some men at the mosque complained that their sons refused to kiss their hands in a show of respect. Mr. Shata sided with the boys: This tradition was cultural, he said, not Islamic.

Other parents forbade their daughters from joining swim teams at school, arguing that Islamic law does not allow women to reveal their bodies in public. The imam suggested a compromise: they could swim in bodysuits, with only females present.

Still, it was one thing for Mr. Shata to mediate these problems at the mosque, and another to face them at home.

The Home Front

One afternoon this month, a yellow school bus with mechanical problems pulled into the mosque’s parking lot.

The imam had just finished the afternoon prayer and was leaving the mosque. Eagerly, he walked up to the bus, his long robe flapping. He wondered if his daughter Esteshhad might be onboard.

As he drew closer, he saw the children pointing at him and laughing. He struggled, in English, to offer the driver help, but she politely declined. He searched for his daughter. It was not her bus. Relieved, he walked away.

For Esteshhad, life had been hard enough, he thought. After attending an Islamic school in Brooklyn, she is now one of only two girls who wear head scarves at her public middle school. She sits alone at the front of her bus. In the cafeteria, she eats by herself.

“They keep thinking I’m weird,” she said. “I feel weird, too.”

She hears about sleepovers and trips to the mall, but she has yet to experience these things. Her mother cannot drive, and Mr. Shata is reluctant to chauffeur his children until he feels safer in the car.

Outside school, Esteshhad’s only other contact with her peers comes at the mosque. But even there — where some girls carry designer bags — she often feels left out.

One night this month, she sat slouched on the edge of her bed. If only she had a cellphone or an iPod, she said, she might have friends.

“I have friends,” her 7-year-old sister, Rahma, piped up.

“You don’t wear a hijab,” Esteshhad shot back.

Recently, her mother noticed that Esteshhad had forgotten parts of the Koran. She was also becoming more assertive.

A sign outside her room read, “Please knock before entering!” and then, in smaller letters, “I’m angry.”

Esteshhad’s mother has thought of enrolling her again in an Islamic school, but Mr. Shata is reluctant. He wants to give public school a chance. Still, it pains him to see Esteshhad so alone.

When asked how he would respond if Esteshhad stopped wearing a head scarf, the imam thought for a moment. Such a scenario, for him, would have been unthinkable in Egypt.

“I would try to convince her and I would find 1,001 ways to her heart,” he said. “I hate aggression. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, ‘Teach, don’t humiliate.’ ”

Teaching, for the imam, also means learning. He will learn as he goes, he said, with Esteshhad at school, with the teenagers at his mosque.

It is a path he began in Brooklyn. To live an Islamic life in America, he said, requires a curious mind and a strong heart.

Mr. Shata tries to bring both to his youth group every week.

Only 11 young Muslims came to the first meeting in October. Now, the imam looks out at a room full of faces.

“Sixty and counting,” he said.

    A Cleric’s Journey Leads to a Suburban Frontier, NYT, 28.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/nyregion/28imam.html?hp&ex=1170046800&en=346d349e2e298abd&ei=5094&partner=homepage

At Churches Set to Close, Faithful Dig In for Battle

January 27, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

A week after the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York released its final list of 21 parishes to be closed as part of a broad reorganization, some parishioners are digging in for a battle, enlisting help from parishioners in the Boston Archdiocese who successfully resisted some church closings there with round-the-clock sit-ins.

Parishioners from Our Lady Queen of Angels in East Harlem plan to march today in their neighborhood to protest the archdiocese’s decision to shutter their parish. They have also invited Peter Borré, co-chairman of a group in the Boston Archdiocese called the Council of Parishes that fought church closings, to speak to them and offer advice on how to take on church authorities.

The decision to consult with Mr. Borré, 68, who has also been in touch this week with parishioners at Mary Help of Christians in the East Village, which is also on the closing list, could portend a protracted struggle ahead for archdiocesan officials in New York.

“We’re not out to tell anybody what to do,” Mr. Borré said. “That’s up to the parishioners. But we’ll share willingly all of our experiences.”

In Boston, Roman Catholic officials have sought to close 83 parishes since 2004, but parishioners managed to win at least partial reprieves for about two dozen churches through a combination of appeals to the Vatican, lawsuits, sit-ins and news media attention, Mr. Borré said.

In about half the cases, the victories are for now only temporary, he added, with authorities merely holding off on a promised closing, or delaying issuing a final date for the “suppression” of the parish.

But in the other cases, he said, archdiocesan officials actually reversed their decision to close the parish, or at least allowed parishioners to keep their church building as a worship site, or established for them smaller chapels attached to another parish.

Parishioners are still conducting sit-ins in five churches, in some cases occupying the buildings 24 hours a day for 27 straight months, holding services week in and week out without a priest, even though the churches are considered closed by church authorities.

The efforts of Mr. Borré’s organization have been extensively chronicled in The Boston Globe. Mr. Borré, a Harvard graduate who spent his career working on energy issues in government and the private sector, is in many ways an unlikely crusader against the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He got involved in fighting church authorities when his parish in Charlestown, Mass., was scheduled to close. He and other parishioners won a partial reprieve when the archdiocese agreed not to close their church completely but allowed them to keep their building as a worship site connected to another parish.

A member of Mary Help of Christians contacted Mr. Borré for advice this week, but church members have not yet decided their next move. They will be convening tomorrow to discuss strategy, said another longtime member, Marlena Palacios. They are contemplating, among other possibilities, a protest in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, she said.

But an important question is how many parishioners feel strongly enough to devote themselves to the effort.

“A lot of people want to fight,” Ms. Palacios said. “A lot of people want to keep it open, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to get involved.”

Parishioners at Our Lady Queen of Angels began mobilizing almost immediately after the announcement last week.

Established in 1886, the parish initially served German immigrants. Today, it caters to a mixture of Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Dominicans and black congregants. Attendance at the parish has dwindled to about 400 at Sunday services.

For members of the mostly immigrant congregation, said Carmen Villegas, 52, a longtime parishioner, the church is a home away from home.

“There’s only a few places we feel at home, and at Queen of Angels, we feel at home,” she said. “They’re taking our home from us.”

Ms. Villegas said she had been in touch over the past year with Francis Piderit, a New York-area leader of Voice of the Faithful, a national organization that was formed in the aftermath of the clergy sexual abuse scandal to press for more accountability and transparency from Roman Catholic leaders.

Voice of the Faithful organized a meeting in the spring for parishes on the initial New York Archdiocesan list to discuss their options.

Soon after last week’s announcement, Mr. Piderit contacted Ms. Villegas to offer his condolences, told her about Mr. Borré’s successful efforts in Boston and asked if she might want to talk with him. She immediately agreed, she said.

“They have done a great job in Boston,” Ms. Villegas said. “They have stopped the process in some of the churches.”

The next day, Mr. Borré offered to fly down to meet with Ms. Villegas and others from the parish.

Last Sunday, Ms. Villegas stood at the altar after the Spanish-language Mass and told her fellow parishioners about Mr. Borré and called on them to form a prayer circle for the church outside after service. “I got up in the pulpit and said, ‘We are resisting this decision,’” Ms. Villegas said. “If you want to join me, I’ll be outside.”

About 150 people gathered and sang “We Shall Overcome,” she said. About 50 more gathered after the English-language Mass.

Ms. Villegas, who has been a member of the parish since 1974, said she was unsure if the church had enough people to hold a round-the-clock sit-in, something Mr. Borré said required about two dozen committed members.

Gloria Lopez, 61, said she was prepared do whatever was necessary to keep her church open.

“We’re not going to budge from the church,” she said. “They won’t be able to get us out.”

Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said that the churches on the closing list already had their chance to make their case. “We believe we have acted properly, carefully, consulting at every step along the way. The decisions have been made, and there is no intention to go back on them.”

    At Churches Set to Close, Faithful Dig In for Battle, NYT, 27.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/nyregion/27church.html

S.C. Catholic Diocese to Settle Claims

January 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:37 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- The Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston announced Friday it has agreed to settle child sex abuse claims, putting in place a pool of $12 million for damages.

The settlement between the diocese and attorneys representing possible victims has been given initial approval by a judge, the diocese announced in a news release. It didn't say how many possible victims there were.

The agreement creates two classes. One would be those born before August 30, 1980, who were sexually abused as children. The second class includes spouses and parents of abused children.

An arbitrator will review and validate claims, according to the statement.

''I deeply regret the anguish of any individual who has suffered the scourge of childhood abuse and I am firmly committed to a just resolution of any instance in which a person who holds the responsibility of a protector has become a predictor,'' Bishop Robert Baker wrote in a letter to the state's Roman Catholics.

    S.C. Catholic Diocese to Settle Claims, NYT, 26.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Church-Abuse-Settlement.html

Outspoken Catholic Pastor Replaced; He Says It’s Retaliation

January 26, 2007
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

In his last Mass as pastor at the inner-city parish in Detroit where he had served for 23 years, Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton told his parishioners that he was forced to step down as pastor because of his lobbying efforts on behalf of the victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy, a stance that put him in opposition to his fellow bishops.

Last weekend, the archbishop of Detroit, Cardinal Adam Maida, sent a letter to the parish, St. Leo, saying Bishop Gumbleton had to be removed because of church rules on retirement. But as Bishop Gumbleton, who turns 77 on Friday and had already retired last year as a bishop, told his parish last Sunday, there are many pastors even older than he who are allowed to continue serving.

“I’m sure it’s because of the openness with which I spoke out last January concerning victims of sex abuse in the church. So we’re all suffering the consequences of that, and yet, I don’t regret doing what I did because I still think it was the right thing to do,” he said, as the congregation rose and erupted in applause.

Bishop Gumbleton, though he never led a diocese, is known nationally in church circles as a liberal maverick. He co-founded the peace ministry Pax Christi and accompanied antiwar delegations to Haiti and Iraq. He broke ranks with church teaching by preaching in favor of acceptance of gay men and lesbians and the ordination of women.

Last January, he lobbied in favor of a bill in Ohio to extend the statute of limitations and allow victims of sexual abuse to sue the church many years after they were abused. He said he was speaking out because he had been abused by a priest as a teenage seminarian and knew how hard it was to speak publicly even decades later. Bishops in Ohio opposed the bill, which failed.

A spokesman for the archdiocese of Detroit, Ned McGrath, said Bishop Gumbleton’s removal from St. Leo Parish had nothing to do with his lobbying on sexual abuse or his political stands.

All bishops are required at age 75 to submit resignation letters to the pope, Mr. McGrath said, and the pope has the option to accept or reject the resignation. Bishop Gumbleton’s resignation was accepted last year, and, Mr. McGrath said, “it was with the understanding that he would give up any pastoral office.”

Cardinal Maida announced in his letter to parishioners that he had appointed a new pastor, the Rev. Gerard Battersby.

In his brief remarks at Mass on Sunday, Bishop Gumbleton told the parish that after he turned 75, he had sent a separate resignation letter to Cardinal Maida asking to stay on as pastor at St. Leo’s on a year-by-year basis. He said he was surprised by his sudden replacement.

“I did not choose to leave St. Leo’s,” he said. “It’s something that was forced upon me.”

Three canon lawyers interviewed on Thursday said there was nothing in canon law that would prohibit an archbishop from permitting a retired auxiliary bishop from serving as a pastor after 75.

Bishop Gumbleton, who has already moved out of his room behind the church and plans to move into an apartment in Detroit, did not respond to an interview request. A video of his remarks during Mass was taken by a parishioner and posted on the Web site of the National Catholic Reporter, an independent Catholic weekly newspaper that publishes a column by Bishop Gumbleton.

Mary M. Black, a parishioner at St. Leo’s, said: “Almost universally, everyone in the parish is hurt and angry and upset and bewildered.”

Ms. Black said: “He talks after Mass with people, and he is there ahead of Mass to say the rosary for anybody who has problems. And we all have his personal phone number. You do not have to go through a secretary. He was a pastor in the truest sense of the word.”

    Outspoken Catholic Pastor Replaced; He Says It’s Retaliation, NYT, 26.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/us/26bishop.html

Ex - Church Official Guilty in Porn Case

January 22, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:59 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) -- The former music director of a church where former President Bush once worshipped pleaded guilty on Monday to possessing child pornography.

Robert F. Tate, 64, of Greenwich, admitted possessing between 150 and 300 pornographic images of children, some engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Prosecutors said some children in the images were younger than 12 years old.

''Yes, your honor. I regret to say I did it,'' Tate told a federal judge.

Tate was the longtime music director of Christ Church in Greenwich, where former President George H.W. Bush attended while growing up. Funeral services for his parents, Prescott Bush Sr. and Dorothy Walker Bush, were held there.

At his last hearing in December, President Bush's aunt and other members of the church attended to support Tate.

Tate faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced April 12.

    Ex - Church Official Guilty in Porn Case, NYT, 22.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Church-Director-Arrest.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

21 Parishes Face Shutdown in New York

January 20, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York yesterday issued a final list of 21 parishes that will close, ending a wrenching period of uncertainty for thousands of parishioners, some of whom had waited for several years to learn the fate of their church.

The tally was considerably fewer than the 31 parishes that were on an initial list, released last March, of those recommended for closings.

Ten parishes in the archdiocese will close completely — the parishioners will be forced to go elsewhere. Some among the other 11 will get a smaller chapel built for them, perhaps within another building, that is under the jurisdiction of another parish, or they will be able to keep their building and become missions attached to other parishes. But they will lose their pastor and many of the services that come with being a full-fledged parish, a bitter outcome for many.

The announcement brings to a close a tumultuous stretch of dramatic announcements, extended over two years, of scores of parish or school closings for Roman Catholics in not just the New York Archdiocese, which is made up of Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island, Westchester and a swath of upstate, but also in the Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes Queens.

The reshuffling was driven by new demographic realities and immigration patterns that have left some once-booming churches in mostly urban settings nearly empty; others, many in the suburbs, have overflowed. Roman Catholic officials said they were trying to reposition themselves to better serve their people for the 21st century.

“We sought an in-depth understanding of what our people needed,” Cardinal Edward M. Egan said yesterday at a news conference at Cathedral Girls High School in Manhattan. “We listened, listened, listened. We learned much. I might add, we learned well.”

Cardinal Egan tried to be upbeat about the announcement, stressing the opening of new parishes to accommodate growth in the northern part of the archdiocese and in Staten Island: “I’m delighted to be able to share with you a lot of good news,” he said, opening his remarks.

Bishop Dennis J. Sullivan, a vicar general of the archdiocese who has shepherded the reorganization process since early 2005, said there would be no timetable for closing each parish. He said officials would work with congregations to determine the “proper pastoral moment.”

“We’re not saying, ‘We’re closing you down tomorrow,’ ” he said. “We would be very remiss to do that, and we won’t do that.”

As for what will become of the church properties, officials said their goal was to convert them to other uses in the archdiocese. If that was not possible, they said their preference was to hold on to the grounds and lease them out.

“If you sell property, you can never get it back,” said Msgr. Douglas Mathers, who played a key role in the reorganization.

Four parishes recommended for closing last March were still awaiting a decision. Church officials explained that they needed more time to evaluate them.

“We needed more time to get it right,” Bishop Sullivan said.

The 31 parishes that had originally been on the recommended list for closing have faced uncertainty for the past 10 months. That list had also included 14 schools, but after hearing appeals from school officials and parents, archdiocesan officials reduced the list of school closings in April to nine before turning their attention to the parishes.

But even though parish appeal meetings were concluded by midsummer, no decision was announced for months.

For those who did get news yesterday about the fate of their parishes, there were moments of laughter and tears, prayers of thanksgiving and heartfelt grief in sanctuaries and rectories from Staten Island to the Catskills.

At Mary Help of Christians in Manhattan, parishioners gathered amid the statues of saints that have looked down upon them for generations. They hugged, wiped away tears and prayed after learning their more than century-old parish would be closing.

For many parishioners, there was a palpable anger toward Cardinal Egan and the archdiocese. Their church, while small, with just 300 worshipers every Sunday, is nevertheless full of life, with more than 30 active ministries, they said.

“If it was a church that was not being used, then it would be perfectly understandable,” said Rafael Jaquez, 52, who participated in the parish’s appeal to the archdiocese. “This church is very much alive. It’s very vibrant.”

He and others vowed to fight the decision. Archdiocese officials are hoping to avoid what unfolded in the Boston Archdiocese in recent years after a string of closings, when parishioners held sit-ins and in some cases managed to win stays for their churches.

“There will be battles,” said Josephine Gaglio, who has attended Mary Help of Christians for more than two decades and said she would resist the archdiocese’s decision. “We will do whatever we have to do.”

Most pastors interviewed yesterday were measured in their reactions.

“You run the gamut, from deep sadness to anger,” said the Rev. Mark Hyde, pastor of Mary Help of Christians, in the East Village. “It’s almost like a death in the family: why this person, why this time. The questions are almost impossible to answer, but it’s a fact of life.”

Across town at St. Vincent de Paul, which features a French-language Mass that draws French speakers from across the city, the Rev. Gerald Murray said he understood the archdiocese’s decision but expressed worries about reports that the Chelsea church, with its vaulted ceiling and images of angels, will be torn down.

“It’s sad to be losing this beautiful building,” he said. “I understand the cardinal’s reasons and I think it’s a reasonable decision.”

Meanwhile, several miles north, at St. Rita of Cascia in the Bronx, in front of a display case that contains a relic of St. Rita — a piece of her bone — parishioners went to offer prayers of thanksgiving after learning the church, which had been slated to close in March, had been spared.

St. Rita, according to the Rev. Jose Gutierrez, the church’s pastor, is the “patron saint of impossible cases.”

“When we thought that the church would be closed, people came to pray to St. Rita that it would stay open,” he said. “This week, people have come to pray for thanks.”

But at St. Paul in Staten Island, there was confusion. Should they celebrate or not? Parishioners got word that their parish would close and that they would lose their pastor, but they would get to keep their building as they join another parish. The church had originally been slated to close completely.

By 10 a.m., when the announcement was expected, a small group had gathered in the church rectory. Margaret Moschetto, one of the parishioners there, said she was feeling queasy. “I’m just trusting in the Holy Spirit that he’ll do best for the people,” she said.

Later, Michael McVey, president of the parish council, burst into the room with the news that “we won.” The pair hugged, while Ms. Moschetto burst into tears.

Only later did it dawn on her that the picture was not quite as rosy as she had first thought. Msgr. Vincent Bartley, St. Paul’s pastor, arrived to explain that there would be a new administrator for the church and it was unclear whether the church’s ministries to Hispanics in the area and the poor would continue.

Nevertheless, he said was delighted the elderly in the congregation would still have a place nearby to worship. Mary Tighe, 82, a member of St. Paul’s for 62 years, expressed a mixture of sadness and resignation about the prospect of joining another parish but said she would press on.

“We have to go along,” she said. “We can’t change it. They’re doing the changes, not us.”

Rebecca Cathcart, Ann Farmer and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

    21 Parishes Face Shutdown in New York, NYT, 20.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/20/nyregion/20churches.html?hp&ex=1169355600&en=feae5fba689df668&ei=5094&partner=homepage

New York Archdiocese Shutting 10 Parishes

January 19, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York announced today that it is closing 10 parishes and merging 11 others as part of a far-reaching reorganization plan, bringing to an end a decision-making process that has dragged on for more than five years and trapped many parishioners in uncertainty.

Mary Help of Christians in Manhattan and St. Mary in the Bronx are among those that will be closed, according to the list issued today. Nine parishes and six missions originally recommended to be closed or to be merged with other parishes will retain their current status. These include St. Rita of Cascia parish in the Bronx, Guardian Angel parish in Manhattan, Saint Benedict the Moor mission in Manhattan and Blessed Sacrament mission in Orange County.

“These decisions are the culmination of an extensive three-year planning process, which involved long and careful consultation,” the archdiocese said in a statement. “This process, established by Edward Cardinal Egan, was designed to identify the religious, spiritual and education needs of the Catholic faithful throughout the entire archdiocese, and determine how those needs could best be met.”

One priest who spoke of the changes on Thursday characterized the final list as much less draconian than had been feared by many across the archdiocese, which stretches from Staten Island to the Catskills. He said that Cardinal Egan appeared to have backed away from taking drastic steps to address the problems that spurred the reorganization, including a shrinking corps of priests and demographic changes that had left many parishes struggling to fill pews while others overflowed.

The other parishes to be closed are Our Lady Queen of Angels in Manhattan; St. John the Baptist de LaSalle in Staten Island; Our Lady of the Rosary and St. Margaret of Hungary, both in Yonkers; St. Stanislaus in Hastings; Holy Cross in Sleepy Hollow; Most Sacred Heart in Port Jervis; and St. John the Baptist in Poughkeepsie.

The complete list of parishes to be closed or merged are on the archdiocese’s website at ny-archdiocese.org.

In some cases, the parishes will be closed completely and parishioners obliged to go elsewhere, but in other cases smaller churches may be built as chapels for the community, or congregations may be able to keep their buildings and become missions attached to other parishes. But that would mean they would lose many services, like having a priest on site.

The pastors of the affected parishes were notified during a meeting on Wednesday with Bishop Dennis J. Sullivan, the archdiocese’s vicar general, who has been overseeing the reorganization process since early 2005.

The pastors were asked to keep the decisions secret until the official announcement today during a news conference at Cathedral Girls High School in Manhattan.

Msgr. Gerald Murray, the pastor of St. Vincent de Paul, said on Thursday that he was grateful the announcement was finally coming.

“We welcome the announcement because January marks five years since our parish was first contacted about being subject to possible closure,” he said. “It’s been five years that we’ve been waiting.”

Several parishioners appeared surprised on Thursday that the process was actually coming to an end.

“I thought it was a long-drawn-out process that was never going to conclude,” said Chuck Van Buren, a parishioner at Nativity Church in Manhattan, which was on the preliminary list.

The reorganization, which will include the creation of several new parishes and the construction of new church buildings in some areas, has long been a delicate task for archdiocesan officials.

Churchgoers are fiercely protective of their parishes, often forming attachments that endure for generations. Many of these churches have also been stalwarts in their neighborhoods for decades. Similar overhauls in other dioceses around the country have resulted in ugly public battles between parishioners and church officials, something archdiocesan officials hope to avoid in New York.

Cardinal Egan originally intended to plunge into the redrawing of parish lines soon after he became archbishop in 2000, but the scandal over sexual abuse by priests made him put it off.

Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell was initially put in charge of “realignment,” as it came to be called by archdiocesan officials, but he left to become the bishop of Springfield, Mass., in April 2004, leading to another long delay.

The process got started again in earnest in early 2005, when Bishop Sullivan took over. Cardinal Egan indicated then that the reorganization would be completed by September 2005. But a preliminary list of recommendations for 31 parishes and 14 schools to be closed was not released until March 2006.

After hearing appeals from school officials and parents, archdiocesan officials reduced the list of school closings in April to nine, and then turned to the parishes.

Many endangered parishes were vocal in fighting back, holding vigils and enlisting the help of politicians and the surrounding community. The parish appeal meetings, often emotional, were wrapped up by midsummer.

In August, Bishop Sullivan presented his recommendations to the archdiocese priests’ council, and an announcement appeared imminent at that point. But Cardinal Egan’s knee operation in the fall further delayed the process.

Meanwhile, parishioners did their best to divine their future. At St. Augustine’s in the Bronx, parishioners were heartened in recent weeks when scaffolding went up for repairs to the interior of their church, suggesting that the archdiocese would not take the time to fix up their building if it was going to be closed.

“Some people said, ‘Wow, that’s really good,’ ” said Claire Harris, a parishioner.

Today’s announcement confirmed that St. Augustine’s will be spared, with no change in its status.

Maria Newman contributed reporting.

    New York Archdiocese Shutting 10 Parishes, NYT, 19.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/nyregion/19cnd-church.html?hp&ex=1169269200&en=922d9350761fe1c6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A Church’s Challenge: Holding On to Its Young

January 16, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID GONZALEZ

When Frankie Lora chuckles, his bass guitar bounces and he loses the beat. Sometimes the pianist next to him stumbles and can’t keep up with the choir. And one singer gets so emotional that she veers off into tearful shouts of praise.

If music is the motor that drives Pentecostal worship, the band and choir at Ark of Salvation for the New Millennium, a little storefront church in west Harlem, could use a tuneup. Ragged and off-key at times, they are easily outclassed when they sit in with the seasoned musicians at other churches.

Yet they grab attention for one simple reason: They are often the only teenagers in the room.

As Pentecostalism advances across the world, winning converts faster than any other Christian denomination and siphoning believers from more established faiths, it is also suffering its own slow leak: young people who are falling away from the faith.

Mainline Christian churches have grappled with the problem for years. And recently, evangelical leaders in the United States sounded an alarm over “an epidemic of young people leaving.”

But the loss is doubly distressing for Pentecostals, evangelical Christians who can be especially zealous in seeking new members and rejecting the secular culture they feel is luring adolescents away from religion.

Against that backdrop, Ark of Salvation is an unusual success. Unlike most of the other Pentecostal churches they visit, this 60-member congregation has attracted a devoted core of teenagers — more than a dozen — who sing and pray at every service. This is no accident.

When the first of them showed up two years ago at the austere storefront on Amsterdam Avenue, dragged along by friends or family, they had little inclination toward religion or music. But Pastor Danilo Florian saw in them the seeds of his church band. More important, he saw in this motley bunch of knockabout youngsters the future of his fledgling church.

He gave them instruments. He paid for music lessons. And he lavished gifts that few of them had ever known, growing up in fractured families and on dangerous streets: Attention. Praise. Expectations.

Today, they are thriving. The bassist, Frankie Lora, looks as if he may defy his mother’s fears that he will end up like his brother, who is serving a life sentence for murder. The pianist, Juan Carlos Matias, once lonely and aimless, is studying to become an engineer. And the singer, Jessica Marte, who was cutting class and fighting at age 12, now dreams of opening a clothing store for Christian girls.

They have also embraced a strict — and sometimes strait-laced — moral code, which they are urged to spread to friends and strangers.

But they are still teenagers, living in a city filled with temptations for quick pleasure and easy money that the founders of Pentecostalism a century ago never imagined. At school, they have classmates who live only for the latest music, gadgets or fashions, or friends who sell drugs. At home, some have parents who ridicule their faith.

And being teenagers, they have their own doubts and questions about their newfound religion’s many rules and rituals. Frankie still recalls his disbelief when he saw people shouting, crying and twitching at his first service. “I was looking at them like they were retarded,” he said. “I never saw jumping like that in the street.”

Reaching these young people took a lot of work. Keeping them in church as they enter the wider world may prove even harder.

For the pastor and the other adults who lead the congregation’s youth group, that means striking a balance between keeping them in line and letting them find their own way. It means shielding them not only from the evils of the world, but also from the excesses of some other churches.

And for the teenagers, it means navigating a tricky adolescence in which the boundaries are strict, but not always understandable. They can have cellphones and video games, but are told not to watch television. They can date, but preferably only other Pentecostals and then sometimes only with a chaperon. Dancing is taboo, but they can gyrate in religious ecstasy. Horror movies are bad, yet preachers regale them with gruesome visions of the apocalypse.

These young people struggle. They sometimes bend the rules, or drift away from religion altogether. But for now, at least, most have their faith in God, and something else just as powerful: the feeling that for the first time, someone has faith in them.

Frankie’s Fight

Frankie lives the way he plays his bass — trying mightily to get it right.

He stopped screaming at his parents and has cut back on cursing, but sometimes the words still slip out. His grades are improving, but Italian class still vexes him. “I might have to copy from a friend,” he joked.

Sometimes he prays to be strong. He certainly looks it, with a bruiser’s thick arms and barrel chest, and a scowl to match. Just three years ago, Frankie ran with a rowdy pack. At 14, he was arrested and handcuffed to a pole at the local station house for stealing Pokémon cards from a Barnes & Noble. His mother grounded him for a year.

She was not overreacting. She knew what could happen to neighborhood boys like Frankie when they turned 16. “The same age my brother was when he started killing,” he said.

Until his mother died of cancer in November, Frankie’s new faith was the lifeline she clung to, hoping he would not turn out like his older brother, Jose, who is in prison for two murders.

In the mid-1990s, their stretch of 109th Street was awash in cocaine and bullets. Jose and his crew killed a rival dealer and later avenged the murder of his father’s friend. They called themselves Natural Born Killers.

“My brother had beef with everybody on the streets,” Frankie said. “My mother would hear gunshots, and she would go downstairs looking for him to see if he was alive or dead.”

For years, she refused to let Frankie leave their apartment, finally letting him go outside, he said, only after “everybody got locked up.” On evenings when she was away, he hung out with friends at a bodega, bragging about fights, sex and girls. They rode their bikes around Manhattan all night, or drank rum and beer.

“We were the baddest ones in the neighborhood,” he said. “Crazy stuff.”

The Loras went to Sunday Mass, but weekends were better known for family parties filled with music and liquor. Nobody blinked when the boys tipped a few beers.

Two years ago, Frankie and his cousin Juan Carlos Matias visited an older cousin, Roy Guzman, who was excited about a new storefront church he had just joined. The three were close, playing basketball and video games. But Roy grew serious that night, warning that if Christ returned, the two boys would be damned.

That message, from an admired older cousin, nudged them to visit the Ark. A week later, they joined.

Up front, their future beckoned: a keyboard and drums, untouched since the pastor’s son was expelled from the band after taking up with an older girl. Jefferson Abreu, a friend Frankie had invited to church, asked to play the drums, and Juan Carlos began noodling on the keyboard. Frankie was already studying the bass.

Today, his calm demeanor defies both his looks and his past. Pastor Florian connected with him. “The pastor is cool,” he said. “He doesn’t lie to us. He is a little kid, like us.”

Frankie enjoys a joking camaraderie with his bandmates, sometimes cupping his hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh or rolling his eyes at a sour note. But seeing his old friends can be awkward. When they curse, he laughingly tells them to stop. When they talk about fighting or sex, he stays quiet.

He tried getting them to visit the church.

“They’re now selling drugs, hustling,” he said of the boys on the block. “I tell them to think about God. They say, ‘Yeah, it’s true.’ But they don’t feel like coming. They got to make money.”

His home life has been hectic. Before she died, his mother, Altagracia, had been hospitalized repeatedly for gall bladder cancer, returning home weak and needing care. His father, Francisco, he said, insults the Ark, calling it a scam to fleece them of what little money they have.

A rough-looking man, Francisco Lora is the only family member who has not converted to Pentecostalism. He scorns the congregation’s belief that their prayers kept his wife alive through years of surgery and chemotherapy. And he scoffs at his son Jose’s conversion in prison last year.

“What is the use if you already killed a lot of people?” he snarled while mopping at the bodega where he works. “If you do something bad, you should think about God before. But they look for God afterward.”

Frankie tries to ignore his father’s rage, focusing instead on all that has to be done: schoolwork, practicing the bass and praying for his brother’s release — even though Jose is ineligible for parole until 2054.

“I wish he was out,” Frankie said. “To see what it feels like to have a brother.”

‘We Are the Bridge’

Frankie is not the only teenager yearning for an older brother or sister. So when Pastor Florian looked for someone to start a youth group and nurture his congregation’s future, he picked the man who had brought Frankie into the church — his cousin Roy Guzman — and Roy’s wife, Giselle.

A newlywed couple in their mid-20s, the Guzmans are old enough to be confident in their beliefs, yet young enough to remember being city kids confused about school, dating or friends who think your religion is crazy.

“Most of the people at the church are very mature, very old,” said Giselle, a petite, bubbly woman who easily passes for a high school student. “We are the bridge between both generations. If young people have questions, they are not going to ask the elders. They’re going to ask us.”

Not that the elders are stingy with advice. Ramon Romero growls that the young musicians rush through prayers to spend more time practicing. Eneida Vasquez warns them about watching anything on television. Jeans in church or earrings anytime are forbidden, and the pastor even discouraged one boy from buying a pink shirt.

Sometimes the thou-shalt-nots seem endless. When the teenagers trooped one evening into Juan 3:16, a basement church celebrating its 37th anniversary, festive music and balloons promised a party. Instead, a glowering, skeletal woman — a visiting preacher — railed against reggaeton music and even country outings.

“You do not replace God with the garbage of this world,” she shouted indignantly. “You cannot contaminate yourself in the world. We need to be apart!”

Giselle, who helped her husband lead the youth group, was horrified. “She said it was wrong to go to amusement parks,” she recalled in their walk-up on 109th Street, where the irreverent sitcom “Arrested Development” droned in the background. “That you have to be in church 24/7.”

The temptation to keep a tight rein on the young is strong in storefront churches. Pablo Polischuk, a Pentecostal minister and psychologist in Boston, cautions that these man-made prohibitions can be so severe that they deny normal teenage impulses. That, in turn, can backfire.

“The philosophy is to insulate and isolate to preserve them from a toxic environment, but it does not prepare them to face that environment with dignity,” Dr. Polischuk said. “When you try to protect them so much, the end result is the first germ that goes through them spoils them.”

So the Guzmans try to accommodate the young people, going to movies and playing video games with them. Once a month, in a variation on a slumber party, the teenagers stay overnight at church, watching Christian movies and chatting.

“People think Christians have to be boring,” Roy said. “That’s not true.”

Pastor Florian takes them swimming, biking and on trips to amusement parks. When one boy got a weekend job that kept him from services, the pastor went easy on him because the boy needed the money.

And though his sermons sometimes condemn the secular world, the pastor holds up the Guzmans as examples of well-educated Christians who have succeeded in that world. Both have degrees in engineering and mathematics from New York University and Stevens Institute of Technology. Roy works for the technology and consulting firm Accenture, while Giselle now works for a construction company.

In fact, Pastor Florian sometimes sees danger for the teenagers in religion.

One summer afternoon, Roy, Frankie and the others piled excitedly into the church van for the Youth Explosion, a revival meeting at St. Mary’s Park in the South Bronx. But the stage and the audience were dominated by adults, some with a hard-edged look from their hell-raising days.

The presiding preacher promised to heal people with cancer and AIDS. Waving his hand like a sideshow psychic, he said he sensed there were teenagers in the audience whose lives were imperiled: a young man with a dragon tattoo, a suicidal girl, a gun-toting teenager. As if on cue, they rose and went up to pray.

But even before the prayers ended, Pastor Florian hustled his teenagers back into the van. “That was all just a show,” he said later. “It gave me such embarrassment.”

The ceaseless vigilance is hard, but every so often it pays off.

For the young people of the Ark and their mentors, the transforming moment came in June 2005. After a year of prayer, study and noisy nights in the storefront, the congregation gathered one tranquil Saturday morning along the haze-shrouded banks of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania.

The Guzmans joined a procession of seven white-clad teenagers and three other adults, down a boat ramp to the gravelly shore. As they lined up in silent anticipation, Pastor Florian asked: “Who does not want to be baptized? You still have time.”

No one wavered. Slowly, the pastor, his wife and two other preachers waded chest-deep into the river. They turned to the crowd on shore and beckoned.

Frankie was among the first. Pastor Florian cradled his beefy shoulders, whispered urgently into his ear, dunked him backward and gently lifted him back up. The dazed teenager staggered to shore and clutched his weeping mother.

Juan Carlos emerged from the water heaving with sobs. Roy, who was last, punched the air victoriously. When they regrouped on shore, soaked and shivering, Pastor Florian reminded the teenagers that they were no longer children from the block, but missionaries to the world.

“Now,” he said, “you are workers.”

A Hard Sell

The work started soon enough. One night just a month after the baptism, Genesis Mora, all of 13 years old, paced a stifling living room crammed with young people. Four girls sat near the back, and she fixed her gaze on these potential recruits.

“You think your friends are going to be there for you when you have problems,” she told them, dismissively shaking her head. “But when problems and tribulations come, they distance themselves.” Christians, she said, are different.

Earlier, her fellow teenagers from the Ark — prompted by the pastor — each stepped up to tell how their faith made them stronger, how their grades had improved.

It is a measure of how much the pastor expects of these young people that they are entrusted with preaching to outsiders. And it is a measure of how much he wants to attract even more that he regularly arranges home visits to seek converts in a relaxed setting.

This night, a family in the congregation had offered its west Bronx apartment, a half-hour drive from the church, and invited neighbors, who spilled into the hallway. Pastor Florian — trading his suit for a polo shirt and khakis — sat among them, keeping his young charges on message.

“When you study, God is there with you, too,” he chimed in. “He sees what you study and records it in your mind.”

The teenagers from the Ark were friendly yet persistent. The invited girls listened quietly. Afterward, Jessica Marte and another girl flanked one, asking her to the Ark.

The girl hesitated. “I feel my heart beating,” she said, nervously.

“That is Jesus talking to you,” Jessica said.

As peer pressure goes, it was gentle but unmistakable. In the end, however, none of the girls visited, standing up the pastor when he went to pick them up. Indeed, the youth group’s efforts are often met with blank stares, smirks or empty promises.

But this is how the congregation attracted the teenagers it has — through invitations from cousins and classmates — and the pastor keeps telling them they must bring in more. Much of his mission is offering alternatives for the young people he sees sitting bored on stoops every day or running wild in the night. And one of his biggest dreams is an after-school center where they could study, play — and convert.

“Imagine if we had a place where they could play basketball,” he said. “We could play some Christian music in the background, too. I promise you, after a week like that, you will see changes.”

Still, the biggest changes in the teenagers have been prompted not by social events or preaching, but by one another. Jessica, whose mother dragged her to services, says she was finally won over by watching Frankie, a tough guy turned tender.

“I was amazed at him,” she said. “It was cool that I could see other kids like me, who had problems in school like I did and used to hang out. I saw how they changed.”

Jessica, 15, was an unlikely convert. Two years ago she was rowdy on the streets, defiant at home and about to drop out of the eighth grade. Now she is in church every night. Long ago, she put away her earrings and began wearing skirts.

“My friends were like, ‘Oh, my God! What are you doing?’ ” she laughed.

Yet any limits she has placed on herself have been matched by new expectations. She wants to open a store for Christian girls offering fashionable skirts that are neither too short nor too long. And though she still quarrels with her mother, she seems to channel that emotion into religious fervor.

One night, Jessica arrived at church fuming because her mother wanted her to baby-sit. Soon, she was singing so intensely that she trembled violently and collapsed to the floor, almost banging her head on the pulpit.

The service stopped.

The congregation gazed in awe at this Pentecostal rite of passage: In their eyes, the girl before them had just received the Holy Spirit. A friend gently stroked Jessica’s hair while one woman jumped and shook next to the girl’s motionless body.

Jessica soon stirred awake and was lifted to her feet. When the service ended, the other girls rushed up to her and pressed for details, as if she had just come home from a date. What had happened? What was it like?

Bewildered and tired, Jessica said she really couldn’t explain it, but she felt peaceful. She felt loved. She felt different.

“You know what I say,” she said later. “You’ll never be the same as when you came in.”

‘God Doesn’t Do Things Quick’

The pastor looked a little sad as Frankie and the others trickled into church one evening last April. Even though the congregation had attracted a few new teenagers, he feared it was not enough.

Some others had visited but never returned. And one mainstay was drifting away: a 16-year-old who had stopped attending regularly, just before she was to preach her first sermon — and around the time her father went back to prison.

Pastor Florian was particularly worried about one boy who liked hip clothes and sweet cologne and was friendly with even the toughest guys on the block. The boy was troubled. The task was daunting. The pastor turned to Roy — who had converted Frankie and others — to pray for him every day.

“You cannot let him go,” the pastor implored.

Just in case, he assigned a second adult to pray for the boy.

But Roy’s life was becoming complicated. He and his wife were expecting their first child, and he had started a job with an international consulting firm that has kept him away from home during the week.

Three other adults now lead the youth group, and attendance at meetings has grown spotty.

Frankie still shows up. At 17, he is still not quite sure where he is headed, especially since the chilly November day when the congregation crowded into a funeral parlor in Washington Heights. His mother was laid out in a silver coffin, dressed in white with a lacy veil gracing her head.

“Now I’m left here to suffer,” Frankie said. “But if she’s in heaven, I’m O.K. She’s watching over me.”

Others may be watching as well. His bandmates still count on him to make time for practice. One woman promised his dying mother she would make sure he didn’t stray from church. His father is looking to him to help pay the bills.

Frankie said he might have to enroll in night school so he could work during the day. But his brother, Jose, hopes Frankie will heed his urgent — though unlikely — career advice.

It started when Frankie visited him in prison recently and encouraged him to turn to God for help. “He said God doesn’t do things quick,” Frankie recalled.

Instead, Jose is depending on Frankie. He told him to become a professional baseball player so he could get a signing bonus, get a lawyer and get him out.

Chalk it up to teenage bluster or blind faith, but Frankie said he might try out for his school team, even though he hasn’t stepped on a ball field in two years. Maybe, he said, he could find a baseball camp upstate where a scout could discover him.

“Right now I’m depending on baseball,” he said. “I’m only depending on baseball.”

Pastor Florian, however, is depending on Frankie. For his future. For his faith. For his church.

What he whispered into the boy’s ear just before baptizing him in the Delaware River was this: You are destined to become a preacher.

    A Church’s Challenge: Holding On to Its Young, NYT, 16.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/nyregion/16storefront.html

Building a Church, and Paying Off a Sacred Debt

January 15, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID GONZALEZ

As his 7-year-old daughter lay near death, Danilo Florian raged. The doctors could do no more. His prayers — a desperate turn to the religion he had abandoned long ago to pursue a successful jewelry business — seemed equally futile.

He had come to New York years earlier from the Dominican Republic with nothing but the desire to prosper as a family man and businessman. Now, as it all fell apart in a Manhattan hospital, he sought a few moments of silence in a dimly lighted room off the intensive care ward.

Then it happened. Out of nowhere, he says, came a voice.

“Do business with me,” it demanded.

Sixteen years later, the girl is a young woman, and Mr. Florian is keeping his end of the bargain. The jewelry business is long gone. He abandoned it to heed the call to serve God, plunging into Pentecostalism and founding Ark of Salvation, a shoebox of a storefront church in west Harlem that explodes most nights with prayer and song.

Today, the word “pastor” hardly describes this dynamo who propels a flock of 60 — most of them Dominican immigrants of modest means — round the clock and through the week. Teacher, chief cheerleader and social director, he is even the chauffeur who ferries them to services all over town in a secondhand airport van, usually after eight hours at a factory job making luxury handbags.

To the adults, he is the confidant who counsels them through crises. To the teenagers, he is the surrogate father who praises them and takes them on outings. To the needy, he is the benefactor who slips them a little cash. To all, he is the leader who promises a glorious future in a grand new church, even though they have saved a small fraction of the fortune it would cost.

“Pelea, pelea, pelea,” he murmured one night as he made his rounds in the church van, mouthing the words to a hymn. Fight, fight, fight.

The battle is not just for this storefront. In thousands of tiny, sometimes fly-by-night churches around the globe, men like Pastor Florian get things started and keep them going against tremendous odds. Their success or failure may decide whether Pentecostalism continues growing faster than any other Christian group.

They work largely on their own, without the hierarchies or resources that sustain the clergy of other faiths. Many are self-taught and self-supporting. Mr. Florian, 50, who takes no salary from his church, has only a few years of night-school Bible classes, no pastoral training and no ambition to join a larger denomination, as some storefront pastors do.

His ministry reflects the startling intimacy that has been Pentecostalism’s essence since it began a century ago: what matters the most — even for a leader of souls — is a transforming personal encounter with God.

Like many storefront ministers, Pastor Florian lives modestly in the same kind of rough-edged neighborhood as his members. But unlike his peers who hurl brimstone or promise miracles, he is cautious and quiet. A serene figure even when worship is frenzied, he can silence the crowd with a raised hand.

He is also human. Disorganized and absent-minded, he loses cellphones, gets lost driving, forgets appointments and would miss even more if his wife and co-pastor, Mirian, did not keep careful watch. At the end of his hectic days, exhaustion tugs on his sturdy frame.

And though he is too private to discuss it much, he struggles with disappointment. Although he believes that the deal he struck with God saved his daughter, his two younger children have drifted away from the faith.

For a man who sees himself in so many ways as a father, that is painful. For a storefront pastor, it is also useful, allowing the people who walk through the church doors on Amsterdam Avenue to see themselves in him.

“It unites us, because he is human,” said Lucrecia Perez, who recently spent eight months in a homeless shelter. “He has to work like us. He has gone through need.”

A Business Proposition

Father figures always let him down.

His father was a businessman, making a nice living running cockfights, a taxi service and a bodega in the Dominican towns where Mr. Florian grew up, the oldest of five children. But by his teenage years, he says, his father had squandered it all on bad bets, strong drink and frequent affairs.

The boy thought he had found someone to look up to in Padre Camilo, the pastor of the Roman Catholic church where he was an altar boy. But one day the rumors flew that the priest had gotten drunk in a bar and begun shooting his pistol.

“I didn’t believe it because I admired him and loved him,” Mr. Florian said. “Whether it was true or not, I still don’t know. But it got into my mind.”

His faith vanished as the family’s tumbling fortunes forced them to a poor neighborhood in Santo Domingo, the sprawling capital, where his mother ran a candy store and a fruit stand. Their comedown was humbling: He had to sell ice cream to his high school classmates at recess.

“They would look at you like you were really poor,” he said. “Like we were less.”

Like any adolescent adrift, he searched for something or someone to rely on. He found both when a friend invited him to a crusade led by Yiye Avila, a fiery traveling preacher from Puerto Rico who is now one of the most popular Pentecostal evangelists in the Americas. He converted that night.

But his new faith was tenuous. After juggling two jobs to help pay for college, he followed his family to New York in 1979 and found a job at a jewelry factory that consumed his time. He even met Mirian, a Roman Catholic, through a factory friend. They married in 1982 and had a daughter, Dianne, the next year.

His labors began to pay off. After he started a lucrative business making buttons and medals at home, a client in Mexico hired him to set up a factory there, and in 1990 proposed a huge deal: commemorative jewelry that churches would sell for Pope John Paul II’s visit that year to Mexico City.

Then Dianne fell ill with encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, ending up in the intensive care ward at St. Luke’s Hospital. For 10 days, her body was racked with convulsions.

One afternoon after Christmas, Mr. Florian said, doctors told him they could do nothing for the little girl who lay comatose, tethered to tubes and surrounded by religious statues his wife’s family had brought. That evening, he sought quiet in a room off the ward.

“There’s no hope,” he recalled thinking. “She’s only 7. Who could help? I did everything possible.”

Then, as he tells it, came the voice.

“Work with me,” he heard.

He looked around. He was alone, and frightened.

“Do business with me,” the voice commanded. “Reconcile with me.”

He thought of the jewelry business that had consumed him, and of the religious medals that would make him even more money. Ambition and greed had brought him to this, and he felt shame.

He tried pushing the matter out of his mind. But the voice returned, he said, warning that if he did not agree in 15 minutes, the girl would die.

“It was a strong voice,” he said. “Like a horn. I thought I was going crazy. I cried, I cried and I cried. And in my mind, I left everything.”

Tranquillity washed over him, though it was fleeting as he returned to his daughter’s bedside. A nurse scrambled from the room, and a stench wafted through the air. He thought Dianne had died.

“She was sitting up in the bed,” he said. “She had vomited something black. But she sat up.”

The child recovered and, sticking to the bargain, the Florians searched for a congregation. Mirian felt unwelcome at the local Catholic church, and they faded into anonymity at a busy Pentecostal congregation. Then they found Exodo, a small Pentecostal group near their apartment on Amsterdam Avenue.

Mr. Florian insists he had no intention of becoming a preacher. But his playfulness and patience with young people led to his being named co-pastor. In 2000, upset with how Exodo was being run, he and eight others went looking for a place to pray until they could join another congregation.

One of them, Ramón Romero, discovered a basement room on 134st Street that was crawling with rats inside and drug dealers outside. He and Mr. Florian drove out the rats with a machine that blasted high-pitched noise. The landlady was so relieved to see Christians instead of crack addicts that she provided the space free.

On the street one day, someone called Mr. Florian “Pastor.” He laughed it off, but Mr. Romero did not. “You will be our pastor,” he declared. “We do not need to find another church.”

On the cusp of 2001, they chose a big name for their little sanctuary, befitting the year and their quest: the Pentecostal Church Ark of Salvation for the New Millennium. For Danilo Florian, the work had just begun.

A Home Divided

Sunday is no day of rest for Pastor Florian. On this particular one, he was deep into his sermon, preaching about hope and home life. “If anyone is the enemy of the family, it is Satan,” he said. “Every family has to struggle against the beast in the home.”

A reminder of those trials was slumped in the back row. His teenage son, Danilito, glumly played with his cellphone and held hands with his girlfriend, an older girl who had a baby by a previous boyfriend.

“How glorious it is when a father can say, ‘There is my child,’ ” the pastor continued. “How joyful a child would feel to hear you say, ‘I am proud of you.’ ”

Danilito, chatting with his girlfriend, ignored him.

Family is a pillar of any church’s life, and even more so at Ark of Salvation. The day the Florians converted, their three children joined them at the altar, and went on to sing or play music at services.

But at the Catholic schools they have attended, they have been exposed to different beliefs. As teenagers, they have pulled away from their parents and sometimes their faith.

Dianne, now 23 and fully recovered from her illness, remains the stalwart. Until her student teaching in New Jersey made increasing demands on her time in recent months, she was a fixture at services, singing with a throaty growl. On New Year’s Eve, she was married at the storefront, with her father officiating.

She is not shy. During Bible study at church, she has sparred with her father over women’s role in marriage. One summer, she drew her parents’ ire for spending too much time at a catering job. She treasures her independent streak, which she credits to the Jesuits who taught her in grade school and at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City.

But her assertiveness is tempered by a feeling that because she is the pastor’s daughter, the congregation watches her every move. “You try to live your life in the right way,” she said, “so people don’t say things to other people.”

And her life, after all, is intertwined with her father’s conversion. She says a big reason she stays in the fold is the debt she owes — and the gratitude she feels — for her recovery.

Her father puts it far more bluntly. “The Lord gave her her life back,” he said. “If she leaves, she could die.”

He and his wife were less strict with Dianne’s 22-year-old sister, Danitza, now a senior at St. Peter’s. Last summer she moved in with her boyfriend. Her father now wishes he had kept her at home.

Until recently, Danitza attended church sporadically. One Sunday, she showed up in a tight T-shirt with the word “sexy” emblazoned across the chest. But she respectfully joined the line of supplicants waiting for a final blessing.

As her mother anointed the girl’s forehead with oil, Pastor Florian stood to the side and sobbed.

Tearful moments like that are the few public hints that all is not well with his family. One Saturday, as he plopped down on the parlor sofa for an interview at their house in Bedford Park in the Bronx, the quiet was broken by giggles behind the locked door of his son’s room.

Danilito, who at 18 looks like a younger version of his father, was inside with his girlfriend, Silka. Although the congregation agreed that Danilito was a gifted drummer and singer, his father had expelled him from the church band.

“Someone who is sinning cannot touch the instruments that are used to adore the Lord,” Pastor Florian said, moments after the boy cracked open the door, grabbed his sneakers and dashed off with Silka.

Danilito has since taken up with a new girl, but he has also flirted with real danger. Last summer, he hung out with friends outside a nearby building where neighbors suspected that drugs were being sold.

“It fills me with such shame,” his father said. “The image everybody here has of my family is of my daughters going to college with God’s help. Now they see him with those boys. It’s like he threw everything to the gutter.”

The pastor pleaded with him to stay away, but he refused — until September, when one friend was shot dead.

Out of respect, the congregation says nothing about the family’s troubles. And though Pastor Florian wishes he could confide in someone besides his wife, he keeps his feelings to himself.

“I can’t talk to anyone because there would be gossip,” he said, “and that destroys a church.”

The children of many pastors, he says, fall away from religion. “Maybe because you do not give them as much time as you should, since you have to spend time with the other children,” he speculated. “They could become jealous.”

He and his wife take comfort in believing they have done all they could for their children. “They have a foundation,” he said. “God will call them like he called me.”

‘I Don’t Sleep Anymore’

The streets of Bedford Park are mercifully quiet at 6 a.m. when Pastor Florian gets up, pulls on a polo shirt, khakis and sneakers and walks to the D train for the 45-minute commute to the garment district.

He has worked in factories since arriving in New York, spending the last dozen years at Judith Leiber, where he polishes stones and precious metals for intricately jeweled handbags that fetch thousands of dollars. The bags may be delicate, but the work is exacting. When he gets home around 5 p.m., he trudges up the creaking stairs.

Then his real job begins.

He rests for a few moments, grabs a snack and dons a natty suit, tie and shined shoes. His wife by his side, he climbs into the church van to round up the congregation for that night’s services, driving all over the Bronx and Upper Manhattan. Whatever they do, he is with them, even if he is not preaching. He must set an example.

“You can’t say, ‘I go to church once a week’ and leave it closed the rest of the week,” he explained. “When I have a church, it is open seven days a week.”

Ark of Salvation almost meets his ideal: There are no services on Monday. Bible class is on Thursday, youth services on Friday and adult services on Wednesday. Tuesdays and Saturdays, a small delegation conducts a service in someone’s apartment or visits another church, as far away as Queens or Brooklyn. Sunday is the week’s highlight, as the Florians preside over three hours of song, testimony and preaching.

Afterward, the couple linger to counsel people. They help clean and repair the storefront. Intent on keeping the teenagers off the streets during the summer, Pastor Florian leads day trips to the Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania or quick jaunts to Yonkers for hot dogs and video games.

The fact is, from the moment he wakes to when he dozes off 20 hours later after reading Scripture or researching sermons, he hardly pauses.

“I’ve always worked,” he said, shrugging. “That’s why I don’t sleep anymore.”

Despite the unending demands, he is calm and cheerful, almost unnaturally so. Annoyance flashes across his eyes when he looks down from the pulpit at a paltry turnout. But if more is bothering him, he seldom lets on. “A pastor always has to have a happy face and be in his glory,” he said.

Yet not too happy or too glorious. While other Pentecostal ministers shake or shout, Pastor Florian prefers to pray quietly. He is careful how he acts in church, especially after visiting revivals where preachers made wild claims.

“If someone says they are going to heal the sick, leave,” he warned his congregation. “For a miracle to happen, people need faith. Their faith heals them. Man does not do miracles.”

And because he knows that some preachers care more about lining pockets than saving souls, his appeals for money are few and understated. Inside his home, he pauses to make something clear: “Everything I have, I had before becoming a pastor.”

The Florians’ boxy house is tucked into a neighborhood whose noisy fringes are plagued by drugs and violence. The pastor has been stopped by the police and questioned, but he says those slights bring him closer to the lives of his congregation.

He dotes on the house, painting or ripping up carpets. Proud of his self-taught craftsmanship, he showed off a new door he had installed.

“Give a Dominican a piece of thread, and he’ll make you an airplane,” he said with a laugh. “Ever since I came to New York, I was told that if they ever ask you at a job if you have experience, say yes.”

His wife and her mother run a day care center in a warren of colorful rooms on the second floor. She is a whiz at multitasking, feeding one child while comforting another and answering her phone.

Small wonder that the pastor relies on her at home and in church, where she is known as Pastora. For years she drove a school bus, and still navigates the city better than he. In those days, she imagined they would be living in Miami by now, easing into a slower and more affordable life.

“I knew if he became pastor, that would be it for Miami,” she said. “It’s not easy.”

Beyond the Storefront

The church van smelled of quickly eaten fried-chicken dinners as Pastor Florian cruised up Amsterdam Avenue with a dozen people crammed inside. As always on a Saturday night, they were visiting another church. As always, something was on his mind besides the traffic and the sermon he was about to give.

Real estate.

“There was a place on 152nd Street for $580,000,” he told his wife. “There is another place available on 156th Street. The owner used to have a cafe downstairs and prostitutes upstairs.”

As the van passed building after building, he rattled off the history of each one that fit the bill for his ideal church. Mirian’s eyes widened when she saw a meticulously restored brick structure on 126th Street. “That would be good for a church,” she said. “The first floor!”

He said nothing, but smiled faintly.

This is how he found the Ark’s current home: traveling the streets, keeping his eyes open. But today that rented storefront hardly meets the congregation’s needs.

Last spring, they were homeless for two weeks after an upstairs neighbor left the bathtub running and the ceiling collapsed. The room is cramped, with no space for all the community services Pastor Florian feels he needs to attract new members and keep the church growing: a soup kitchen, youth programs, immigration counseling and activities for the elderly.

So even as he tackles his overstuffed schedule, he always has one unfinished job, and it is his biggest ever: finding a permanent home where his congregation — not some landlord — can control its future. A place where it can graduate from storefront to institution.

That means money, and lots more than the church has in its anemic savings account. Collections bring in about $2,500 a month, half of which covers the rent. On average, $1,000 goes for insurance, utilities, gasoline and help for people in a pinch. If they are lucky, maybe a few hundred dollars remains.

At that rate, it will take decades to raise the $200,000 down payment Pastor Florian estimates they need to buy a new place. So far they have only $13,000, from special collections and food sales.

Time may be running short. The neighborhood is gentrifying, pushing real estate prices higher. One nearby storefront congregation has already been forced to move in with another.

Even the pastor’s own finances are in peril. His employer has told him he will be let go next month, joining dozens of workers laid off since last summer.

Yet that setback and the church’s meager finances do not seem to faze Pastor Florian, who reassures his congregation that God will provide. Somehow, faith will trump finances.

“We are not guided by logic,” he told them one Sunday. “Having a temple in New York is difficult. We may not have the resources, but we have faith we will get one.”

And as strange as it may sound, he harbors a small hope that the storefront will be their last earthly home.

Just as God’s voice came to him in the darkness 16 years ago, he lives each day awaiting a second call: the trumpet blast announcing the rapture, the day when most Pentecostals believe they will be summoned to heaven — rising out of their busy factories, church vans and frantic schedules.

The sidewalk outside the Ark was rank and grimy one Wednesday night in May. Scraps of food spilled from trash bags that had been picked clean of cans and bottles to redeem. The usual clutch of men in the bodega argued about politics and baseball.

But inside the church, the walls thumped with music. Several congregations from other parts of town were crammed into the seats, and more people squeezed in through the narrow doorway.

The room was unbearably hot. The noise was deafening. Pastor Florian was beaming.

“I am full of joy,” he said. “It does not matter if you are from Brooklyn or Queens, for wherever we are, God has called us to be one people.”

He peered over the top of his reading glasses.

“I wish the Lord would come tonight,” he said. “After the service is over, I’d love to hear that trumpet sound.”

    Building a Church, and Paying Off a Sacred Debt, NYT, 15.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/nyregion/15storefront.html

Religion News in Brief

January 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:25 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SWANNANOA, N.C. (AP) -- A local foundation has bought the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's summer camp here for $5 million and plans to revive the facility with a similar religious focus.

The Peter J. Fontaine Foundation purchased the camp and about 300 acres of land just east of Asheville in December, according to a Jan. 3 announcement. The foundation wants to reopen the area this summer under the name Camp Cedar Cliff, maintaining focus on evangelism and traditional summer camp activities.

''My kids had gone to Cove Camp. It was an important part of their lives,'' said Peter Fontaine, the foundation's president. ''We decided to pick up that torch and continue that particular mission field.''

About 2,000 kids usually attended Cove Camp during four months in the summer. The Graham association stopped offering the summer camp last year but still used the site for retreats, former Cove Camp director Hugh Wright said.

The Graham association will finance part of the sale with a $3 million loan to Fontaine's nonprofit that must be repaid next year, according to the deed for the site.

Fontaine, an entrepreneur from Florida who lives with his wife and four children in Asheville, said he became interested in the summer camp business when he heard Cove Camp had closed.

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Slovak Jews, Gypsies protest Catholic archbishop pro-Nazi comment

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) -- Slovakian Jewish and Gypsy communities have sharply criticized a Roman Catholic archbishop for praising the country's authoritarian wartime rule by pro-Nazi priest Jozef Tiso.

Archbishop Jan Sokol said in a TV interview Jan. 4 that Tiso's rule was a ''time of well-being.''

''I remember him from my childhood. We used to be very poor and under his rule, the situation greatly improved,'' the archbishop said on Bratislava's TA3 TV.

Most of Slovakia's Jews perished in concentration camps during World War II, an era when Slovakia served as a puppet state to Nazi-run Germany and was headed from 1939-1945 by Tiso, a Catholic monsignor. He was executed for treason by Czechoslovak authorities in 1947.

An association of Slovakia's Jewish religious communities said Sokol ''had failed to mention the fate of over 70,000 Slovak Jews who were deported by the Slovak government'' to Nazi concentration camps, where most of them perished. Only about 4,000 Jews still live in Slovakia.

''Archbishop Jan Sokol offended Holocaust victims when he spoke positively'' about the time Tiso was in power in Slovakia, said the Central Association of Jewish Religious Communities.

Slovakia's Council of Roma Communities also criticized Sokol's remarks. Many of Slovakia's Roma, or Gypsies, perished in Nazi camps. About 70 percent of the 5.4 million Slovaks are Roman Catholic, and Sokol's statement drew criticism from some of them, as well.

Sokol's office dismissed the criticism and said the archbishop ''presented his personal views.''

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Episcopal bishop leaves Alaska for indigenous ministry in Canada

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) -- The Episcopal bishop for Alaska has been named the Anglican Church of Canada's first national indigenous bishop.

The Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald, 52, will oversee aboriginal parishioners in Canada starting March 1.

The new position is not the norm in Anglican tradition -- appointing a bishop who is pastor to a group of people no matter where they live, rather than in a specific geographic area. But at a 2005 national gathering in Pinawa, Manitoba, indigenous Anglicans requested a national indigenous bishop.

''It is a different way of organizing what is already there,'' MacDonald wrote in a letter to Alaska Episcopal churches. ''It takes more seriously aboriginal culture, authority and identity and tries to give expression to that.''

There are 220 Native Anglican congregations in Canada, he said.

''We are not interested in simply reproducing in Native communities the Anglican Church as it exists in the southern part of Canada,'' he said. ''We want one that really allows Native people patterns of being, organizing and governing.''

The appointment was announced January 6 by Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, the leader, or primate, of the Anglican Church of Canada.

MacDonald claims native ancestry on both sides of his family but is not enrolled in a tribe. He is an assisting bishop of Navajoland Area Mission for the U.S. Episcopal Church, a position he will maintain. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. wing of the global Anglican Communion.

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Virginia city to commemorate religious freedom anniversary

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. (AP) -- Religious, civic and educational institutions in Fredericksburg are planning ceremonies to mark the 230th anniversary of the writing of Virginia's Statute of Religious Freedom.

Thomas Jefferson and others drafted the statute while meeting in Fredericksburg in 1777. Enacted nine years later, the statute separated church and state, gave equal status to all faiths and served as a model for the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

''When I came to Fredericksburg five or six years ago, I didn't know Thomas Jefferson had written a religious freedom act for Virginia. So I think the event is about education, as well as celebration, of what he did,'' said event coordinator Jim Berry.

Festivities begin Jan. 14 with a downtown religious freedom parade and ceremony sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. The parade will start at the downtown train station and end at the Monument for Religious Freedom, where the Knights have celebrated the anniversary annually for several years.

Members of all faiths are encouraged to attend, Berry said.

''We've tried to reach out to as many non-Christian groups as we can locate to come join us,'' he said.

Other events are planned by the Fredericksburg Council for the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which this year is focusing on Islam.

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Pope Benedict XVI baptizes 13 newborns in the Sistine Chapel

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI baptized 13 newborns in the Sistine Chapel, continuing a tradition of Pope John Paul II.

Wails rang out in the frescoed chapel as the pontiff addressed the small gathering of parents, children, godparents and other relatives gathered there, but the babies went quiet when Benedict poured holy water over their heads to administer the sacrament.

''The birth of these babies has given a special meaning to Christmas in your family,'' the pope said Jan. 7. After the baptism, the babies all were given white gowns to signify their new state of purity and their entrance into the Roman Catholic Church.

''Wear them without stains for eternal life,'' Benedict said.

John Paul, who died April 2005, always seemed to enjoy the baptism Mass, often joking when the children's cries muffled his own words.

The baptism marks the day that celebrates the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River and the end of the Christmas season.

Benedict referred to the baptism in the Sistine Chapel in comments after the Mass to tourists and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square under a drizzle. He invited them ''to pray for these new Christians, their parents and their godfathers and godmothers.''

    Religion News in Brief, NYT, 11.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Religion-Briefs.html?pagewanted=1

Police: Man sets fire to nativity scene

Updated 1/7/2007 2:41 AM ET
AP
USA Today

RICHMOND, Calif. (AP) — A man walked into a church, doused a nativity scene with a flammable liquid and set it ablaze in front of a practicing choir, police said.

Robert Mills, 40, of San Pablo, was arrested Friday night while hiding in a park minutes after police said he walked into St. Cornelius Parish and announced he was going to set the church on fire.

Mills told everyone to leave but blocked the doorway until he began showering the sanctuary with the liquid, giving choir members a chance to escape, said Richmond Police Lt. Enos Johnson.

The fire destroyed the nativity scene, a lectern and carpeting, and caused extensive smoke damage. No one was injured.

Prosecutors will likely charge Mills with arson and possibly false imprisonment because the building was occupied when the fire occurred, police said.

"If they establish it's a hate crime, they could go in that direction," Johnson said.

Mills remained in custody at a detention facility in Martinez on Saturday. It was not clear if he had an attorney.

    Police: Man sets fire to nativity scene, UT, 7.1.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-07-nativity-fire_x.htm

Farrakhan recovering from surgery

Updated 1/6/2007 3:33 PM ET
AP
USA Today

CHICAGO (AP) — Minister Louis Farrakhan, who recently ceded leadership of the Nation of Islam to an executive board because of ill health, has undergone a 12-hour operation, the organization said Saturday.

Physicians have told Farrakhan's family they were pleased with the operation's outcome but will monitor him closely for the next 24 to 48 hours, the Chicago-based group said in a statement.

No other details were released, and a man who answered the telephone at the office of Farrakhan's chief of staff declined to reveal the nature of the surgery or where it was performed.

Farrakhan, 73, wrote in a Sept. 11 letter to followers that he was anemic and 20 pounds lighter because of complications from an ulcer in the anal area. He had surgery in 2000 for prostate cancer.

He turned leadership of the Nation of Islam over to an executive board while he recovered, saying the movement must prove that it "is more than the charisma, eloquence and personality" of one person.

The Nation of Islam and the movement's newspaper, the Final Call, posted Saturday's statement on their websites, but did not give additional details.

A spokesman for the Final Call did not immediately return a telephone call Saturday from The Associated Press.

    Farrakhan recovering from surgery, UT, 1.6.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-06-farrakhan-health_x.htm

Embezzlement Is Found

in Catholic Dioceses

January 5, 2007
The New York Times
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and STEPHANIE STROM

A survey by researchers at Villanova University has found that 85 percent of Roman Catholic dioceses that responded had discovered embezzlement of church money in the last five years, with 11 percent reporting that more than $500,000 had been stolen.

The Catholic Church has some of the most rigorous financial guidelines of any denomination, specialists in church ethics said, but the survey found that the guidelines were often ignored in parishes. And when no one is looking, the cash that goes into the collection plate does not always get deposited into the church’s bank account.

“As a faith-based organization, we place a lot of trust in our folks,” said Chuck Zech, a co-author of the study and director of the Center for the Study of Church Management at Villanova.

“We think if you work for a church — you’re a volunteer or a priest — the last thing on your mind is to do something dishonest,” Mr. Zech said. “But people are people, and there’s a lot of temptation there, and with the cash-based aspect of how churches operate, it’s pretty easy.”

Specialists in church ethics said they believed this was the first study to assess the extent of embezzlement in a denomination.

Officials at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said they had seen the study, which was released just before Christmas and was first reported in the National Catholic Reporter, and were considering ways that parishes could tighten their financial controls.

“The Villanova study does not come as a surprise,” said Bishop Dennis M. Schnurr, treasurer of the bishops’ conference. “This is something that the bishops in this country have been looking at for some time. They are aware of a need to look for mechanisms that can assist parishes in accountability and transparency.”

Mr. Zech and his co-author, Robert West, a professor of accounting at Villanova, did not set out to look for embezzlement. They were conducting a study of internal financial controls in Catholic dioceses and sent a battery of questions to chief financial officers in the nation’s 174 Catholic dioceses; 78 responded. Mr. Zech said he was surprised that so many dioceses had detected embezzlement. In 93 percent of those cases, police reports were filed.

He said the survey did not ask who stole the church money. But it did ask who detected the theft, and found that it was most often the parish priest, followed by the bookkeeper, an internal auditor or the parish finance council.

In October alone, three large cases of embezzlement surfaced, including one in Delray Beach, Fla., where two priests spent $8.6 million on trips to Las Vegas, dental work, property taxes and other expenses over four decades.

In the survey, 29 percent of the dioceses reported thefts of less than $50,000.

Most denominations have had cases of embezzlement, sometimes by top officials. In June, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. fired its second-ranking financial officer, Judy Golliher, after she admitted stealing money that church officials put at more than $132,000.

Many nonprofit organizations that accept cash donations experience theft, and churches are particularly vulnerable, said John C. Knapp, director of the Southern Institute for Business and Professional Ethics, at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

“Churches have a tendency to be in denial about the potential for this conduct in their midst,” Mr. Knapp said. “When ethics seminars or ethics codes are proposed in churches, they are often met with resistance from people who say, ‘Why in the world would we need this? After all, this is the church.’ Whereas in business, people readily recognize that this sort of thing can happen.”

The Salvation Army is widely considered exemplary among nonprofits in handling cash collections. The red buckets in which bell ringers collect donations are covered and locked, and all buckets must be returned to a central location, where at least two people count the number and type of bills, coins and checks, said Major George Hood, the charity’s national spokesman.

The money must be deposited in the bank within 24 hours, and different people reconcile the initial tallies with bank records, Major Hood said.

In the Catholic Church, parishes and high schools handle many cash transactions, making them vulnerable to theft, the Villanova report notes.

Canon law requires each parish to have a finance council to provide oversight. But Bishop Schnurr, who heads the diocese in Duluth, Minn., said there were no standards for how finance council members were chosen or whether they should have any expertise in accounting or finance.

Only 3 percent of the dioceses said they annually conducted an internal audit of their parishes, and 21 percent said they seldom or never audited parishes, the survey found.

This lack of scrutiny is at the core of the problem, said Francis J. Butler, president of Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities, a nonprofit organization independent of the church.

“You’re taking a lot of risk,” Mr. Butler said, “and these days the church cannot afford to take these kinds of risks.”

Bishop Schnurr said the study’s findings on lack of parish oversight contradicted his experience. But both he and Kenneth W. Korotky, chief financial officer for the bishops’ conference, said a committee could soon consider writing guidelines for the composition of parish finance councils and how often dioceses should audit parishes.

But they cautioned that the bishops’ conference could not make guidelines mandatory, because each bishop was in charge of administering his own diocese.

Jack B. Siegel, a tax lawyer and expert on nonprofit management who has commented on church fraud on his blog, charitygovernance.com, said he kept a tally of church frauds and was surprised by how many occurred at Catholic churches.

“I got interested because I thought, wait, I’ve heard a lot about pedophilia, why aren’t I hearing about these financial problems,” Mr. Siegel said.

He said he was impressed with the guidelines that the bishops’ conference and other Catholic organizations have offered.

But he said, “How those standards and guidelines get put into practice is what really matters.”

    Embezzlement Is Found in Catholic Dioceses, NYT, 5.1.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/us/05church.html?hp&ex=1168059600&en=eda95b78557f619d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

First Muslim in U.S. Congress

to use historic Koran

Wed Jan 3, 2007 12:55 PM ET
Reuters



CHICAGO (Reuters) - The first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, attacked for planning to use the Koran at his swearing-in instead of a Bible, will use a copy of the Muslim holy book once owned by Thomas Jefferson, an official said on Wednesday.

Representative-elect Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat, requested the 18th century copy of the Koran for the unofficial part of his swearing in on Thursday, according to Mark Dimunation, chief of rare books and special collections at the Library of Congress in Washington.

Ellison, a Muslim convert who traces his U.S. ancestry to 1741, wanted a special copy of the book to use, Dimunation said, and approached the library for one.

The third U.S. president, serving from 1801 to 1809, Jefferson was a collector with wide-ranging interests. His 6,000-volume library, the largest in North America at the time, became the basis for the Library of Congress.

Ellison, elected in November, initially came under attack in the blogosphere and by at least one conservative radio commentator after he said he would use the Koran in his unofficial ceremony.

Members are sworn in to the U.S. House of Representatives as a group with no Bibles or other books involved; but in a country where three out of every four people consider themselves Christians, the Bible has traditionally been used in ensuing unofficial ceremonies.

These unofficial events among other things provide each member with a photo opportunity for themselves and their constituents.

Rep. Virgil Goode, a Virginia Republican who represents the area where Jefferson lived, was one of those who criticized Ellison for wanting to use the Koran, calling for strict immigration policies specially crafted to keep Muslims out of the United States.

The English translation of the Koran from Jefferson's collection dates to the 1750s. Jefferson sold his collection to the U.S. Congress after its library was lost when the British burned the Capitol during the War of 1812. Much of his collection was destroyed in an ensuing fire in 1851 but the Koran that Ellison will use survived, Dimunation said.

Ellison, a native of Detroit, will be one of 42 blacks in the House next term. There will be one black U.S. senator.

    First Muslim in U.S. Congress to use historic Koran, R, 3.1.2007, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2007-01-03T175527Z_01_N03401297_RTRUKOC_0_US-CONGRESS-KORAN.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-L3-Politics+NewsNews-3

In annual predictions,

Robertson predicts terrorist attack

on U.S. soil in '07

Posted 1/3/2007 1:23 AM ET
AP
USA Today

VIRGINIA BEACH (AP) — In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in "mass killing" late in 2007.

"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network. "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

Robertson said God also told him that the U.S. only feigns friendship with Israel and that U.S. policies are pushing Israel toward "national suicide."

Robertson suggested in January 2006 that God punished then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a stroke for ceding Israeli-controlled land to the Palestinians.

The broadcaster predicted in January 2004 that President Bush would easily win re-election. Bush won 51% of the vote that fall, beating Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

In 2005, Robertson predicted that Bush would have victory after victory in his second term. He said Social Security reform proposals would be approved and Bush would nominate conservative judges to federal courts.

Lawmakers confirmed Bush's 2005 nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. But the president's Social Security initiative was stalled.

"I have a relatively good track record," he said. "Sometimes I miss."

In May, Robertson said God told him that storms and possibly a tsunami were to crash into America's coastline in 2006. Even though the U.S. was not hit with a tsunami, Robertson on Tuesday cited last spring's heavy rains and flooding in New England as partly fulfilling the prediction.

In annual predictions, Robertson predicts terrorist attack on U.S. soil in '07, UT, 3.1.2007,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-01-03-robertson-prediction_x.htm