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

Op-Ed Contributor

A Colony With a Conscience

December 27, 2007
The New York Times
By KENNETH T. JACKSON

THREE hundred and fifty years ago today, religious freedom was born on this continent. Yes, 350 years. Religious tolerance did not begin with the Bill of Rights or with Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom in 1786. With due respect to Roger Williams and his early experiment with “liberty of conscience” in Rhode Island, this republic really owes its enduring strength to a fragile, scorched and little-known document that was signed by some 30 ordinary citizens on Dec. 27, 1657.

It is fitting that the Flushing Remonstrance should be associated with Dutch settlements, because they were the most tolerant in the New World. The Netherlands had enshrined freedom of conscience in 1579, when it clearly established that “no one shall be persecuted or investigated because of his religion.” And when the Dutch West India Company set up a trading post at the southern tip of Manhattan in 1625, the purpose was to make money, not to save souls. Because the founding idea was trade, the directors of the firm took pains to ensure that all were welcome.

For example, while the Massachusetts Bay Colony was enforcing Puritan orthodoxy, there were no religious tests in the Dutch colony. So open was New Amsterdam that at least 16 languages were being spoken there by the 1640s; by 1654, the first Jews in what is now the United States had been able to settle there peaceably.

But religious tolerance had its limits in New Amsterdam, especially when it came to Quakers, who then had a reputation as obnoxious rabble-rousers. Peter Stuyvesant, the provincial director general and a Type A personality if ever there was one, was not going to tolerate a Quaker presence in his domain. To make his point, he ordered the public torturing of Robert Hodgson, a 23-year-old Quaker convert who had become an influential preacher. And then he issued a harsh ordinance, punishable by fine and imprisonment, against anyone found guilty of harboring Quakers.

Almost immediately after the edict was released, Edward Hart, the town clerk in what is now Flushing, Queens, gathered his fellow citizens on Dec. 27 and wrote a petition to Stuyvesant, citing the Flushing town charter of 1645, which promised liberty of conscience.

As Hart and his fellow petitioners so elegantly wrote, “We desire therefore in this case not to judge least we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand and fall to his own master.” Their logic was impeccable: “the power of this world can neither attack us, neither excuse us, for if God justify, who can condemn, and if God condemn, there is none can justify.”

The Flushing Remonstrance was remarkable for four reasons.

First, it articulated a fundamental right that is as basic to American freedom as any we hold dear.

Second, the authors backed up their words with actions — they did not whisper their opposition among themselves or protest in silence. Rather, they signed the document and sent it to the most powerful official in the colony, a man not known for toleration or for an easygoing or gracious manner.

Third, they stood up for others; none of the signers was himself a Quaker. The Flushing citizens were articulating a principle that was of little discernible benefit to themselves.

And fourth, like all great documents, the language of the remonstrance is as beautiful as the sentiments they express. “If any of these said persons come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egress and regress unto our town,” its authors wrote in the conclusion. “For we are bound by the law of God and man to do good unto all men and evil to no man.”

So what was the result? As expected, Stuyvesant arrested Hart and the other official who presented the document to him, and he jailed two other magistrates who had signed the petition. Stuyvesant also forced the other signatories to recant.

But the door had been opened and Quakers continued to meet in Flushing. When Stuyvesant arrested a farmer, John Bowne, in 1662 for holding illegal meetings in his home, Bowne was then banished from the colony. He immediately went to Amsterdam to plead for the Quakers. There he won his case. Though the Dutch West India Company called Quakerism an “abominable religion,” it nevertheless overruled Stuyvesant in 1663 and ordered him to “allow everyone to have his own belief.” Thus did religious toleration become the law of the colony.

The Bowne house is still standing. And within a few blocks of it a modern visitor to Flushing will encounter a Quaker meeting house, a Dutch Reformed church, an Episcopal church, a Catholic church, a synagogue, a Hindu temple and a mosque. All coexist in peace, appropriately in the most diverse neighborhood in the most diverse borough in the most diverse city on the planet.
 

Kenneth T. Jackson, a professor of history at Columbia,
is the editor in chief of The Encyclopedia of New York City.

    A Colony With a Conscience, NYT, 27.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/27/opinion/27jackson.html

Mass Held at Ground Zero One Last Time

December 25, 2007
Filed at 8:31 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- The first midnight Mass at ground zero was celebrated as workers were still clearing debris from the World Trade Center and recovering bodies after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The last was held Monday night, giving police, firefighters, recovery workers and victims' families a final chance to pray on Christmas Eve at the site, where intensifying construction is increasingly taking up open space.

''A lot of us felt sad this was the last official midnight Mass on-site, but at the same time, there was a sense of relief. This brought closure for us,'' the Rev. Brian Jordan said early Tuesday after the service ended. A chaplain who spent 10 months at ground zero after Sept. 11, he has since presided over every midnight Mass there.

About 75 people attended the Mass, he said. One police officer was there for the first time; he had recently returned from military service in Afghanistan and before that Iraq, Jordan said. A sanitation worker who was involved in the ground zero cleanup and has sung at each year's service rendered ''God Bless America'' and ''O Holy Night.''

At one point in the prayers, those gathered were asked to say the names of loved ones who died in the 2001 attacks. As many as 150 names were mentioned, said Jordan, who carried a chalice dedicated to the memory of the Rev. Mychal Judge, a fire chaplain killed while performing last rites on other victims' bodies outside the trade center.

''It was poignant, it was moving, it was uplifting,'' Jordan said.

More than 150 people attended the first Mass in 2001, while thousands of workers were still removing the debris from the fallen twin towers and searching for bodies. Over the years, the service became a spiritual salve for those who participated.

''I see the healing that it does,'' construction worker Frank Silecchia said. ''It's like a pilgrimage.''

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, has moved the service at times from one part of the property to another, depending on construction. Officials hope to open five office towers, a transit hub and a Sept. 11 memorial there within the next five years.

Jordan said he decided to make this service the last after Port Authority officials told him that heavier construction would make it impossible to continue the tradition in 2008. Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman disputed that claim, saying Monday a spot would be found if Jordan wanted to hold future services at the site.

Jordan said it was fitting for this year's Mass to be the final one, noting that the most recent Sept. 11 commemoration may have marked the last time victims' families were allowed to descend into the pit at ground zero to remember their relatives.

''This was a holy night on sacred ground,'' he said. ''As I told the people at the site, it's been an honor and a privilege to be able to say Mass here.''

------

Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.

    Mass Held at Ground Zero One Last Time, NYT, 25.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Attacks-Last-Mass.html

In Chinatown, a Church Speaks in Several Languages, but With One Strong Voice

December 25, 2007
The New York Times
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

At the church, pots of red and white poinsettias were carefully arranged for midnight Mass. With the funeral service for an 82-year-old Irish-American parishioner completed in the morning, the Italian-American priest spent part of his afternoon on Monday reviewing his homily, to be delivered in Cantonese and English. A sign announcing a Christmas Eve vigil for Fujianese immigrants was taped to the window.

The preparations to celebrate Christmas at the two-century-old Church of the Transfiguration in Chinatown, like the history of the church itself, were multilayered, reflecting the nimble adaptation of a church once dominated by Irish and Italian immigrants that now claims the largest Chinese Roman Catholic congregation in the United States.

The English-language Mass, scheduled in part for the Italian-Americans, was said early, at 6 p.m., because those parishioners are now old enough that their children have long since grown up and moved away to Long Island or Staten Island. They do not like to stay out too late.

The Mass in Cantonese, which still prevails on the stretch of Mott Street where the church stands, was said at 8 p.m. And at 9:30 p.m., immigrants from the southern Chinese province of Fujian, holding Catholic prayer books printed secretly in China away from the watchful eyes of the government, gathered for their vigil to await the midnight Mass, to be said in Mandarin and English.

The vigil reflects the tradition of their worship back in China, where they would often gather, furtively and without priests, in parishioners’ homes. Catholicism in Communist China has historically been split between the state-sanctioned organization and the Vatican-based church.

With practices passed down from the Dominican order of Catholic missionaries, who achieved significant influence in Fujian in the 17th century, the Fujianese style of worship is more isolated from the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s.

Even as many Catholic churches and schools in other parts of the city have been shuttered in recent years because of dwindling membership, Transfiguration Church has continued to evolve and flourish. The church baptizes more than three dozen adults, almost all Chinese, each Easter. It celebrates Masses in three languages, drawing 800 to 900 people each Sunday. Its school’s kindergarten class has a waiting list 150 names long.

“We’re bursting at the seams here,” said the Rev. Raymond Nobiletti, a Brooklyn-born Italian-American who worked in Hong Kong for 15 years and speaks fluent Cantonese. When he first joined Transfiguration in 1991, at the request of Cardinal John J. O’Connor, Cantonese was enough to accommodate the Chinese parishioners. Since then, he has been joined by the Rev. Joseph Lin, a priest originally from Fujian Province, who can take confession in four languages.

For the midnight Mass, Father Lin recruited two extra priests to hear the confessions of long lines of Fujianese Catholics, whose worship includes making the sacrament regularly.

“Now we like to teach them not to do it so often, because it is a burden for us,” Father Lin said.

Located just down the street from the once-infamous Five Points, now reduced by development to only three and a half points, Transfiguration Church was built in 1801 with the same stone that was used to build St. Paul’s Church on Broadway. It was used by Dutch Lutherans; as Manhattan became less Dutch and more English, it evolved to serve an Episcopal congregation. The Roman Catholic Church bought the building in 1853 to serve a parish created by a Cuban exile, the Rev. Félix Varela, who directed his services to poor Irish immigrants.

As the Irish assimilated, the pews came to be filled by Italians instead. “The real steppingstone came when the Chinese came, because the church could have died,” said Father Nobiletti. The Irish and Italian immigrants came from a Catholic heritage; many of the Chinese did not. “We had to move and get out and get them.”

So the church worked on services for immigrants, including English language classes, and expanded offerings for families with young children. Like many other religious institutions, the church has continued to serve as a bridge between government and immigrants. When the Golden Venture ran aground in Queens in 1993, bringing nearly 300 desperate Chinese immigrants to the shore, the Police Department asked the church if it had any Fujianese speakers.

And the earlier generations of Chinese immigrants, mostly Cantonese, have themselves begun to assimilate, moving out of Chinatown into the suburbs. Wing Fong, 54, was married at Transfiguration and his three children were baptized there. Though he now lives in Cream Ridge, N.J., he brought his family back to the church on Monday for the 6 p.m. Mass. “You have a constant flow of incoming and leaving,” said Mr. Fong, observing the changes in the church.

At the 6 p.m. Mass, Father Nobiletti recited the names of Jesus’ ancestors, including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David. Looking out onto the congregation, he said, “We are all part of this genealogy.”

    In Chinatown, a Church Speaks in Several Languages, but With One Strong Voice, NYT, 25.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/nyregion/25mass.html

Green Light for Institute on Creation in Texas

December 19, 2007
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON — A Texas higher education panel has recommended allowing a Bible-based group called the Institute for Creation Research to offer online master’s degrees in science education.

The action comes weeks after the Texas Education Agency’s director of science, Christine Castillo Comer, lost her job after superiors accused her of displaying bias against creationism and failing to be “neutral” over the teaching of evolution.

The state’s commissioner of higher education, Raymund A. Paredes, said late Monday that he was aware of the institute’s opposition to evolution but was withholding judgment until the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board meets Jan. 24 to rule on the recommendation, made last Friday, by the board’s certification advisory council.

Henry Morris III, the chief executive of the Institute for Creation Research, said Tuesday that the proposed curriculum, taught in California, used faculty and textbooks “from all the top schools” along with, he said, the “value added” of challenges to standard teachings of evolution.

“Where the difference is, we provide both sides of the story,” Mr. Morris said. On its Web site, the institute declares, “All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week” and says it “equips believers with evidences of the Bible’s accuracy and authority through scientific research, educational programs, and media presentations, all conducted within a thoroughly biblical framework.”

It also says “the harmful consequences of evolutionary thinking on families and society (abortion, promiscuity, drug abuse, homosexuality and many others) are evident all around us.”

Asked how the institute could educate students to teach science, Dr. Paredes, who holds a doctorate in American civilization from the University of Texas and served 10 years as vice chancellor for academic development at the University of California, said, “I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.”

He said he had no ready explanation for the panel’s recommendation. “I asked about the decision,” Dr. Paredes said Monday in a phone interview from Austin. “I got a three-inch-thick folder an hour ago. We’re going to give it a full review.” But, he said, “If it’s approved, we’ll make sure it’s of high quality.”

Approval would allow the institute, which moved to Dallas this year from near San Diego, to offer the online graduate program almost immediately while seeking accreditation from national academic authorities like the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges within two years.

In California, the only other state where Mr. Morris said the institute was offering degrees, it won recognition from the state superintendent of public instruction in 1981 but was denied license renewal in 1988. The institute sued and in 1992 won a $225,000 settlement that allowed it to continue offering degrees; it now operates under the California Department of Consumer Affairs. Dr. Morris said his program was accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, which is not recognized by Texas.

Last month, in a sign that Texas was being drawn deeper into creationism controversy, Ms. Comer, 57, was put under pressure to resign as science director after forwarding an e-mail message about a talk by a creationism critic, Barbara Forrest, a professor at Southeastern Louisiana State University.

Lizzette Reynolds, a deputy commissioner who called for Ms. Comer’s dismissal, later told The Austin American-Statesman she was surprised she resigned. Ms. Reynolds did not respond to a message left at her office.

The Texas Education commissioner, Robert Scott, told The Dallas Morning News that Ms. Comer was not forced out over the message, adding, “You can be in favor of science without bashing people’s faith.” He did not return phone calls to his office.

Ms. Comer said the commissioner should show her where she was bashing anyone’s faith. “He just doesn’t get it,” she said.

    Green Light for Institute on Creation in Texas, NYT, 19.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/education/19texas.html

Romney: Attacks on Religion Go Too Far

December 12, 2007
Filed at 9:44 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BOSTON (AP) -- Republican Mitt Romney retorted to questions about his faith by surging rival Mike Huckabee on Wednesday, declaring that ''attacking someone's religion is really going too far.''

In an article to be published Sunday in The New York Times, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks, ''Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?''

Romney, vying to become the first Mormon elected president, declined to answer that question during an interview Wednesday, saying church leaders in Salt Lake City had already addressed the topic.

''But I think attacking someone's religion is really going too far. It's just not the American way, and I think people will reject that,'' Romney told NBC's ''Today'' show.

Asked if he believed Huckabee was speaking in a coded language to evangelicals, Romney praised his rival as a ''good man trying to do the best he can,'' but he added, ''I don't believe that the people of this country are going to choose a person based on their faith and what church they go to.''

Huckabee has been surging in recent opinion polls, taking the GOP lead in Iowa and pressing closer to Rudy Giuliani in polling.

The former Massachusetts governor also was asked why he used the term ''Mormon'' only once last week in a highly publicized speech about religion in which he said he was proud of his faith.

''Actually, we prefer the name 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,''' he said. '''Mormon' used to be a nickname and I don't use it a lot, but now and then I do because people know what faith I'm referring to, and I talked about 'my faith' a number of times, and I don't imagine anybody is confused about what faith I have.''

The authoritative Encyclopedia of Mormonism, published in 1992, does not refer to Jesus and Satan as brothers. It speaks of Jesus as the son of God and of Satan as a fallen angel, which is a Biblical account.

A spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Huckabee's question is usually raised by those who wish to smear the Mormon faith rather than clarify doctrine.

''We believe, as other Christians believe and as Paul wrote, that God is the father of all,'' said the spokeswoman, Kim Farah. ''That means that all beings were created by God and are his spirit children. Christ, on the other hand, was the only begotten in the flesh and we worship him as the son of God and the savior of mankind. Satan is the exact opposite of who Christ is and what he stands for.''

Romney also defended his first negative ad of the presidential campaign in Iowa, where Huckabee has erased Romney's long-standing lead in the polls. The spot, which began airing Tuesday, highlights Huckabee's support for in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants when he was governor of Arkansas, as well as his support for their being eligible for scholarships.

''It's not negative; it's accurate,'' Romney said. ''It's an ad that shows the differences on a very important topic, and actually, if you agree with Mike Huckabee's positions, it's a positive ad for him. If you agree with my position, it's a positive ad for me.''

Romney dismissed Huckabee's rise in the polls -- saying he's seen similar surges from GOP rivals John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson -- but he said scrutiny will follow his rival's rise to the top tier.

''I think Mike was desperately hoping that we would get through this without people taking a close look at his positions and his record, but his record on immigration, on pardons for criminals, on reducing the penalties for meth lab dealers, on taxing and spending -- he increased spending from $6 billion to $16 billion. I think those features in his record will cause those numbers to turn around,'' Romney said.

    Romney: Attacks on Religion Go Too Far, NYT, 12.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Romney-Huckabee.html

Historic split for U.S. Episcopals

Sun Dec 9, 2007
12:16am EST
Reuters
By Adam Tanner

FRESNO, California (Reuters) - An entire California diocese of the U.S. Episcopal Church voted to secede on Saturday in a historic split after years of disagreement over the church's expanding support for gay and women's rights.

Clergy and lay representatives of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Fresno in central California, voted to leave the church, which has been in turmoil since 2003 when U.S. Episcopalians consecrated their first openly gay bishop.

"We've seen a miracle here today," Bishop John-David Schofield said after the vote. "We are already outside the jurisdiction of the Episcopal Church."

The head of the U.S. Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, said the church had received word of the decision "with sadness."

"We deeply regret their unwillingness or inability to live within the historical Anglican understanding of comprehensiveness," she said in a statement.

There are about 2.4 million members of the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the 77-million-member global Anglican Communion, as the worldwide church is called.

Delegates voted 173-22 for secession, far more than the two-thirds majority needed. They later voted to align the 8,800-member diocese with the conservative Anglican Church of the Southern Cone, based in South America.

Amid the dissent of recent years, the Episcopal Church said 32 of its 7,600 congregations had left, with 23 others voting to leave but not taking the final step.

San Joaquin, with 47 churches in 14 counties, is the first of the church's 110 dioceses to complete the split.

Last year it voted overwhelmingly at its annual convention to split with the U.S. church, but held off on a final decision until Saturday's meeting.

Divisions and schisms have plagued Christianity since its earliest days, but the airing of differences through the media and Internet on hot-button social issues such as gay rights and the role of women have given prominence to disputes once debated behind closed doors.

In recent years, the Episcopal Church has faced dissent over the consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire and the blessing of gay unions practiced in some congregations.

There is also disagreement over the role of women. San Joaquin is one of only three U.S. dioceses that do not consecrate female priests.

DISPROPORTIONATE INFLUENCE

The Episcopal Church represents less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, yet its members have long had a disproportionate influence on American political and societal life.

Founding Fathers such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson went to Episcopal churches. In the 20th century, U.S. presidents Franklin Roosevelt, George Bush, the father of the current president, and Gerald Ford were Episcopalians.

Dioceses in Pittsburgh and Fort Worth, Texas, have also taken preliminary votes to leave, but their final decisions are a year away.

"They are going to be watching this quite closely to see what the Episcopal Church does," said Rev. Ian Douglas, a professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "I don't see this as suddenly becoming a landslide."

Schofield said he hoped others would follow San Joaquin's lead.

"This will give encouragement to dioceses that want to go but haven't had the courage to make that first step," the bishop said.

A few liberal parishes within the diocese are expected to stay with the church.

"It's a giant step toward the past," said the Rev. Charles Ramsden, a vice president of the church-owned Church Pension Group, who was a nonvoting observer. "It's about property, it's about millions of dollars and it's about power."

Both sides are prepared for a protracted and expensive legal battle over church assets and other issues.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

    Historic split for U.S. Episcopals, R, 9.12.2007,  http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0733994720071209

Op-Ed Contributor

Candle Power

December 8, 2007
The New York Times
By LUCETTE LAGNADO

MY family came to America from Egypt in 1963. We arrived during Hanukkah, and I remember being unable to take my eyes off the electric menorahs glowing in the windows of houses in Brooklyn, where we set out to hunt for our first apartment.

Even as a child I was struck by how open religious practice was in this country. Christmas decorations were everywhere — this was, after all, Bensonhurst. But what astonished me most was that Jews could be as affirmative and demonstrative as their Christian neighbors about their faith.

After we had settled upstairs in a “two-family,” I tried to persuade my parents to buy an electric menorah. I loved how the soft orange light could illuminate even the darkest winter nights. And having a public menorah was, well, American. After all, our Italian neighbors competed to set up ever more elaborate holiday displays — trees, Santas, elves, reindeer, sleighs, lights and crèches with figurines of Jesus and Mary. Our Jewish neighbors responded by prominently displaying their electric menorahs.

Despite what to me were obvious virtues, my parents steadfastly vetoed my holiday display plans. At our house, Hanukkah remained a low-key, intimate affair, observed behind closed doors — as it had been back in Egypt.

For a menorah, my mother would do what she had done in Cairo; she would take several ordinary juice glasses, fill them with water and oil and then insert a floating wick. Each night, we would light the wicks in the glasses, which we arranged in a semi-circle and placed on a tray. The flames were reflected in the oil and in the water.

My mother was always so delighted when one or two lasted through the night. “Nes,” she’d exclaim, Hebrew for “a miracle,” and cover her eyes with her hands to whisper a short prayer in the direction of the flames.

Not surprisingly, my parents, both of whom were raised in old Cairo, were overjoyed and bewildered by our new home. Jews were welcome here, and it was clearly so easy to be Jewish. Yet to them there seemed so little rigor, so little interest in the small details that defined their faith: when to pray, what foods to eat and not to eat.

My parents came to feel considerable despair at the secular society that surrounded them. The social worker assigned to help with our transition seemed particularly troubled by my dad, by his insistence on tradition and his refusal to assimilate. She disliked his habit of crying out “God is great,” a fact that she noted in her meticulous case file.

I imagine it was this ambivalence that led them to resist my menorah entreaties for so many years. In the end, however, they did relent. Perhaps it was because we were better off; perhaps it was because they wanted to feel more American. At any rate, I was overjoyed. My mother, though, continued to persist in lighting her glasses of oil.

It was only recently that I understood my parents’ insistence on observing the holiday as simply as possible. I was in the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, wandering around its gift shop, which was filled with dozens of the most dazzling menorahs imaginable, some costing hundreds of dollars. A few were sleek and modern; others were more modest and traditional, constructed by artisans. There were some electric models. Customers were milling about, trying to make their selections.

I left the shop and wandered upstairs. In a nearly deserted part of the museum, I came upon an exhibit on resistance during the Holocaust; one of the forms of resistance, it turned out, was prayer. There, behind glass, were frayed prayer shawls and yellowed synagogue tickets and Sabbath candle-lighting schedules and — this is what caught my eye — a couple of menorahs.

One, from the Lodz ghetto, was portable and minuscule, the kind you fold in your pocket so no one can find it. The other wasn’t even a menorah at all — just a photograph of one being lit in 1943 in a transit camp in the Netherlands. Like those glowing menorahs I remember from my first visit to Brooklyn, this one held my eyes. And not because it was ornate or dazzling, but because its very existence was simple and miraculous, like those glasses of oil and water my mother would light during the longest nights of the year.

Lucette Lagnado, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, is the author of “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World.”

    Candle Power, NYT, 8.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/opinion/08lagnado.html

Editorial

The Crisis of Faith

December 7, 2007
The New York Times

Mitt Romney obviously felt he had no choice but to give a speech yesterday on his Mormon faith. Even by the low standards of this campaign, it was a distressing moment and just what the nation’s founders wanted to head off with the immortal words of the First Amendment: A presidential candidate cowed into defending his way of worshiping God by a powerful minority determined to impose its religious tenets as a test for holding public office.

Mr. Romney spoke with an evident passion about the hunger for religious freedom that defined the birth of the nation. He said several times that his faith informs his life, but he would not impose it on the Oval Office.

Still, there was no escaping the reality of the moment. Mr. Romney was not there to defend freedom of religion, or to champion the indisputable notion that belief in God and religious observance are longstanding parts of American life. He was trying to persuade Christian fundamentalists in the Republican Party, who do want to impose their faith on the Oval Office, that he is sufficiently Christian for them to support his bid for the Republican nomination. No matter how dignified he looked, and how many times he quoted the founding fathers, he could not disguise that sad fact.

Mr. Romney tried to cloak himself in the memory of John F. Kennedy, who had to defend his Catholicism in the 1960 campaign. But Mr. Kennedy had the moral courage to do so in front of an audience of Southern Baptist leaders and to declare: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”

Mr. Romney did not even come close to that in his speech, at the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas, before a carefully selected crowd. And in his speech, he courted the most religiously intolerant sector of American political life by buying into the myths at the heart of the “cultural war,” so eagerly embraced by the extreme right.

Mr. Romney filled his speech with the first myth — that the nation’s founders, rather than seeking to protect all faiths, sought to imbue the United States with Christian orthodoxy. He cited the Declaration of Independence’s reference to “the creator” endowing all men with unalienable rights and the founders’ proclaiming not just their belief in God, but their belief that God’s hand guided the American revolutionaries.

Mr. Romney dragged out the old chestnuts about “In God We Trust” on the nation’s currency, and the inclusion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance — conveniently omitting that those weren’t the founders’ handiwork, but were adopted in the 1950s at the height of McCarthyism. He managed to find a few quotes from John Adams to support his argument about America’s Christian foundation, but overlooked George Washington’s letter of reassurance to the Jews in Newport, R.I., that they would be full members of the new nation.

He didn’t mention Thomas Jefferson, who said he wanted to be remembered for writing the Declaration of Independence, founding the University of Virginia and drafting the first American law — a Virginia statute — guaranteeing religious freedom. In his book, “American Gospel,” Jon Meacham quotes James Madison as saying that law was “meant to comprehend, with the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.”

The founders were indeed religious men, as Mr. Romney said. But they understood the difference between celebrating religious faith as a virtue, and imposing a particular doctrine, or even religion in general, on everyone. As Mr. Meacham put it, they knew that “many if not most believed, yet none must.”

The other myth permeating the debate over religion is that it is a dispute between those who believe religion has a place in public life and those who advocate, as Mr. Romney put it, “the elimination of religion from the public square.” That same nonsense is trotted out every time a court rules that the Ten Commandments may not be displayed in a government building.

We believe democracy cannot exist without separation of church and state, not that public displays of faith are anathema. We believe, as did the founding fathers, that no specific religion should be elevated above all others by the government.

The authors of the Constitution knew that requiring specific declarations of religious belief (like Mr. Romney saying he believes Jesus was the son of God) is a step toward imposing that belief on all Americans. That is why they wrote in Article VI that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

And yet, religious testing has gained strength in the last few elections. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, has made it the cornerstone of his campaign. John McCain, another Republican who struggles to win over the religious right, calls America “a Christian nation.”

CNN, shockingly, required the candidates at the recent Republican debate to answer a videotaped question from a voter holding a Christian edition of the Bible, who said: “How you answer this question will tell us everything we need to know about you. Do you believe every word of this book? Specifically, this book that I am holding in my hand, do you believe this book?”

The nation’s founders knew the answer to that question says nothing about a candidate’s fitness for office. It’s tragic to see it being asked at a time when Americans need a president who will tell the truth, lead with conviction and restore the nation’s moral standing, not one who happens to attend a particular church.

    The Crisis of Faith, NYT, 7.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/opinion/07fri1.html

The Long Run

Pulpit Was the Springboard for Huckabee’s Rise

December 6, 2007
The New York Times
By JODI KANTOR and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

In August 1980, as the conservative Christian movement was first transforming American politics, Ronald Reagan stood before a Dallas stadium full of 15,000 foot-stomping, hand-clapping evangelicals and pledged his fealty to the Bible. “All the complex and horrendous questions confronting us at home and worldwide have their answer in that single book,” said Mr. Reagan, the Republican presidential nominee.

Assisting with logistics for the event was a young seminary dropout named Mike Huckabee. “It was the genesis for the whole movement,” Mr. Huckabee recalled of those early days.

Now Mr. Huckabee is running for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, his campaign shaped by his two decades as an evangelical pastor and broadcaster. While he says he is running based on his career in the Arkansas governor’s mansion, not the pulpit, he has grounded his views on issues like abortion and immigration in Scripture, rallied members of the clergy for support, benefited from the anti-Mormon sentiment dogging a political rival and relied on the down-to-earth style he honed in the pulpit to help catapult him in the polls.

Mr. Huckabee risks scorn from secular voters for defending the biblical creation story against Darwin, but faces accusations from some fellow Christians that he is soft on a range of issues, including liberal thinking in his own denomination. His candidacy has renewed the debate over the place of religion in public life, an issue Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is also a Republican presidential contender, will take on in a speech on Thursday about his Mormonism.

As a preacher and a politician, Mr. Huckabee said in an interview, he has pursued the same goal: improving lives. “For me it was never an either or,” he said of his dual careers. “The realm you do it in is less important than that you do it.”

And winning souls trained him to win votes.

“There are four basic things to succeed in either politics or the pastorate,” Mr. Huckabee said. “You have to have a message. Secondly, you have to motivate volunteers. You have to be able to understand and work with all types of medium to get your message out,” he continued, “and you’ve got to raise money.”

Mr. Huckabee was born in Hope, Ark., and from the start, he was hungry to try more than one career: politics (he participated in the same teenage civic program that had stoked the ambition of another native son, Bill Clinton, 10 years earlier), radio (he did his first broadcast at 11), and religion (he delivered his first sermon at 15 and pastored a church three years later).

After graduating from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., he enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas but dropped out after a year to work for James Robison, a fiery television evangelist. To make himself sound more knowledgeable, Mr. Huckabee later told his secretary, he crammed on issues of Reader’s Digest.

Mr. Huckabee served as Mr. Robison’s announcer, advance man and public relations representative, drumming up attendance and coverage for his prayer meetings and appearing on broadcasts. (The organization was based near Dallas, which is how Mr. Huckabee came to work on the 1980 Reagan rally). Mr. Robison could be harsh — he yelled in the pulpit and referred to gay people as perverts — but Mr. Huckabee was a genial ambassador; behind the scenes, he was known for his dead-on impersonations of Christian celebrities like Billy Graham.

Assembling a Flock

Mr. Huckabee wanted to return to his home state, and he wanted his own church. He had been filling in as pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church in Pine Bluff, a dwindling congregation in a small city stuffed with churches. When he signed on full time, members figured Immanuel would be able to hang on for another 5 or 10 years before disbanding.

“Everyone thought I was crazy” to take the job, Mr. Huckabee said.

He told the congregation that he planned to put the church — and himself — on television. Then he persuaded his incredulous flock to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to renovate the dingy, barnlike auditorium, putting in pews with comfortable padding and more leg room, a stained-glass window he designed himself and a sound system from the engineers who had wired the Houston Astrodome.

Drawn by the new space, a 26-year-old pastor who loved rock ’n’ roll and the advertisements he had placed on bus shelters, young families began to arrive. But Mr. Huckabee wanted a wider audience. Soon he had a low-power television station on the air, which made him the proprietor and star of not just the only Christian broadcast in town, but the only local broadcast, period. It made him pastor “for all of Pine Bluff,” said Garey Scott, then the youth minister.

In addition to worship services, the station offered community programs — Mr. Huckabee gave the local editorial page editor his own slot — and the show that would become Mr. Huckabee’s signature.

Sunday evenings were a depressing time for people, Mr. Huckabee had noticed. And Pine Bluff usually made the Little Rock news only for car accidents or crime. His antidote was “Positive Alternatives,” a Sunday-night talk show full of can-do community uplift. Mr. Huckabee interviewed local heroes, fellow pastors, leaders of charities, even accountants who offered advice on filling out tax forms.

After six years, he moved to Beech Street First Baptist Church in Texarkana, another city without its own television affiliate. He refurbished an old Winnebago with broadcast equipment and became the town’s all-purpose newscaster, covering local election returns, weather and high school football games, where he would intersperse his commentary with a word or two of Scripture. He also trademarked the name “Positive Alternatives” and took the show with him.

Mr. Huckabee fulfilled standard pastoral duties — preaching, visiting the sick, taking members to build restrooms for a church that still had outhouses. But as his status as a religious and civic celebrity grew, he conducted revivals all over the state and worked as a motivational speaker for businesses.

“He was speaking 23 nights a month,” recalled Bruce Rodntick, former music minister of Immanuel.

The First Election

The first statewide job Mr. Huckabee ran for was a church office. In 1989, while at the Beech Street Church, he was nominated for the presidency of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.

The election quickly became a battleground in a larger political and theological civil war over the future of the denomination. Southern Baptists had historically leaned Democratic in politics and celebrated local autonomy in theology. But in the 1980s, conservatives concerned that liberal ideas about the Bible and the family were creeping into the denomination’s institutions fought state-by-state to purge any unorthodox theology or liberal politics, ultimately transforming the Southern Baptist Convention into a mainstay of the Republican Party.

The race was “far more political than anything else I’ve ever been involved in,” Mr. Huckabee recalled. The leaders of the conservative takeover tapped the Rev. Ronnie Floyd, a stalwart of their movement, as their candidate.

“They were not sure Mike was committed enough,” Mr. Floyd said.

Mr. Huckabee, who won by a 2-to-1 ratio, carried the flag for the so-called moderates, arguing that the Arkansas Baptists were amply orthodox. Although Mr. Floyd and Mr. Huckabee both now say they shared the same conservative theological convictions, Mr. Huckabee’s emphasis on tolerance and inclusiveness rallied opponents of the turn to the right.

“Huckabee was on the wrong side,” said Paul M. Weyrich, a founding organizer of the conservative movement. “That has caused more people to get off of Huckabee than you can imagine. With me, it’s a deal breaker.” (Mr. Weyrich recently endorsed Mr. Romney, Mr. Huckabee’s leading rival in the Iowa Republican caucuses.)

The president’s post was largely ceremonial. But it gave Mr. Huckabee considerable exposure — a fifth of Arkansans are Baptists — and experience as a peacemaker in his denomination’s internal battles.

Mr. Huckabee was “true to his deeply felt principles without being abrasive or strident or confrontational,” said Hal Bass, a professor at Ouachita Baptist University, and a self-described moderate. “It’s not like he pulled his punches, but he didn’t pick fights either,” Mr. Bass said.

In the sermon he delivered as outgoing president, Mr. Huckabee showed some impatience with the smallness of church life, a yearning for a larger platform. “It’s an unhealthy sign when church people are more interested in how we spend $25 of church money than in where an 11-year-old spends eternity,” he said, deploring “ministerial minutia.” He also cautioned against evangelical isolationism: “We cannot change the world if we refuse to participate in the institutions of society that dictate its direction.”

But when he announced he was giving up his ministry for a 1992 Senate run, many of his confidants, as well as Baptists across the state, were shocked. He had not hinted about his ambitions. And while the Rev. Pat Robertson had run for president four years before, a local pastor running for Senate was something else entirely.

“Politics were worldly as opposed to Christian pursuits,” said Charles Barnette, a member of the Texarkana congregation, explaining the discomfort.

Some followers were surprised that he was running as a Republican. Mr. Huckabee told them the Republican Party was “just one vehicle to the goal of getting into office,” Mr. Barnette said.

In his recent book “From Hope to Higher Ground” (Center Street), Mr. Huckabee recounted the decision. Running for office was a childhood dream he had abandoned when he became a pastor, but he later felt pulled into political life, he said. “The purpose for being on earth is not our personal comfort but to strive to make the world better for our children,” he wrote.

At the same time, the Arkansas Republican Party, perpetually weak, “was very open and looking for nontraditional candidates,” said Jay Barth, a political science professor at Hendrix College in Conway, Ark. A pastor with a statewide network and polished communication skills was a perfect conscript.

Mr. Huckabee ran largely on social issues like abortion, portraying his opponent, Senator Dale Bumpers, a Democrat who was virtually an Arkansas institution, as a pornographer because he supported the National Endowment for the Arts. But attacking the popular veteran backfired; Mr. Huckabee was badly beaten. By the next year, when Mr. Huckabee ran for lieutenant governor in a special election, he sounded more like the conservative populist he is today, talking about caring for the elderly and other ways government could improve people’s lives.

Into Politics

In 1996, Mr. Huckabee inherited the governorship from Jim Guy Tucker, who resigned after a financial scandal. Mr. Huckabee said then, as he does now, that his ministry prepared him for office by showing him firsthand the toughest issues that citizens face, as varied as bankruptcy and teenage pregnancy.

As governor, he seemed like “a charitable Christian,” said Janine Parry, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas — not an antigovernment conservative, but one who felt that institutions could improve the lives of the underprivileged, especially when it came to immigration and health care.

Mr. Huckabee never abandoned his stances on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, but his efforts on these issues seemed more show than substance, some observers say.

“Typically in a legislative session he would put forward a primarily symbolic social issue for the session: a “choose life” license plate, for instance, Mr. Barth said. The bill would pass, social conservatives would be satisfied, and the governor would be free to do the health care and education work he was becoming increasingly passionate about.

Today, in the closing weeks before the Iowa caucus, Mr. Huckabee is energetically selling his religious credentials, saying voters should pick a candidate who speaks “the language of Zion” as a “mother tongue,” and running television commercials flashing the words “Christian Leader.” He talks eagerly about theology issues in political debates (displaying his TV-trained ability to speak in exact 45-second segments) and cites Scripture on the trail.

In Iowa, where he and Mr. Romney are locked in a tight race, Mr. Huckabee has capitalized on conservative Christian animosity toward Mormons, pointedly refusing to dispute the common evangelical characterization of Mormonism as a cult.

Some moderates balk at Mr. Huckabee’s repeated defense of creationism and suggestion that it should be taught along with evolution in public schools. “Huckabee will have to address his commitment to real science,” said Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics.

Some other Christian conservatives have accused Mr. Huckabee of encouraging lawbreaking by supporting government social services for illegal immigrants. Mr. Huckabee defends himself on religious terms. He talks of a Bible-based injunction to care for illegal immigrants, just as he points to biblical admonitions to minister to the sick and protect the environment.

He says his agenda reflects his own growth and that of fellow evangelicals since the era of the Dallas rally.

“There is a maturing of Christian involvement in politics in this generation,” he said. “Christians have been historically known as being associated with two issues: sanctity of life and traditional marriage,” he said, but are increasingly concerned with poverty, the environment and health.

The real difference between religious and political leadership, Mr. Huckabee said in the interview, is in the way others treat him. Both kinds of leaders must live on pedestals, he said. But “in a pastoral situation, they have you there and they want to keep you there. They don’t want you to fall because then you fall with them.”

In politics, he said, “They’re trying to knock you off every single day.”
 

Michael Luo contributed reporting and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

    Pulpit Was the Springboard for Huckabee’s Rise, NYT, 6.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/us/politics/06huckabee.html?hp

Court Bars State Effort Using Faith in Prisons

December 4, 2007
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

A federal appeals panel ruled yesterday that a state-financed evangelical Christian program to help prisoners re-enter civilian life fostered religious indoctrination and violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, was the latest in a series of rulings over the last year to reinforce laws that bar government money from promoting religion, said Robert Tuttle, a law professor at George Washington University who is an expert on religion-based initiatives.

“The main thing it does is reaffirm the obligation of government not to fund programs that intermingle secular and religious content,” Professor Tuttle said of the new ruling. “The federal government has come to terms with that over the last year. Even when it has won cases, there hasn’t been a single decision that would allow the government to intertwine secular and religious content.”

The current case was filed more than four years ago by Americans United for Separation of Church and State against the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, an organization affiliated with the Prison Fellowship Ministries and the Iowa Corrections Department. Prison Fellowship Ministries was founded by Charles W. Colson, an ally of President Bush and an influential evangelical who went to prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up in the Nixon administration.

“The decision casts a long, deep shadow over faith-based programs in states, and even at the federal level,” said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the church-state organization.

The group challenged the InnerChange program at a medium-security prison in Newton, Iowa, that has 104 inmates enrolled in it. In its decision, the appeals court quoted an InnerChange brochure describing the program as a “24-hour-a-day, Christ-centered, biblically based program that promotes personal transformation of prisoners through the power of the Gospel.”

No one is coerced to join the group, and sentences for prisoners who join are not reduced.

InnerChange Freedom Initiative is the lone so-called transformational program, religious or secular, at the prison. Its participants were allowed better privileges than other inmates, like more family visits and computer access, the appeals panel said. Anyone who wanted to participate had to be willing to accept a “Christian based” program.

As a result, the panel found that the program violated the Constitution, because “the indoctrination and definition criteria had the effect of advancing or endorsing religion.”

A lower court ruled against the program in June 2006.

That earlier ruling slowed the momentum of a broad movement to introduce religion-based programs in prisons, Professor Tuttle said.

The appeals court, however, reversed the part of the ruling that would have required the InnerChange program to repay the $1.5 million it had received from Iowa over the years that it has run the program.

Mark L. Earley, a former attorney general of Virginia who is president of Prison Fellowship Ministries, said that he did not see the ruling as a defeat for his group and that InnerChange did not plan to appeal.

InnerChange runs nine such programs around the country and all, including Iowa’s, are now privately financed, Mr. Earley said.

“This gives us some additional guidance and clarity to meet the constitutional test,” he said. “We’re still digesting how it might apply to other programs.”

Mr. Earley said he did not know whether Iowa would renew its contract with InnerChange next year. Officials at the Iowa attorney general’s office said they were reviewing the decision.

    Court Bars State Effort Using Faith in Prisons, NYT, 4.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/us/04evangelical.html

On Religion

Sunday Religion, Inspired by Saturday Nights

December 1, 2007
The New York Times
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

SAN FRANCISCO

Beside the altar of the storefront church on Fillmore Street stand an electric piano, two basses, a drum kit and three microphones. The hymnal, such as it is, consists of a music book, open to a piece titled “Blues For Bechet.” And on the side wall hangs an icon of the congregation’s patron saint, a golden corona circling his head, as he holds a tenor saxophone with flames in its bell.

This being a house of jazz as well as of God, the Sunday morning service starts on Sunday afternoon, early rising for any musician who played three sets on Saturday night. As the worshipers trickle in, whether regulars from the neighborhood or pilgrims from abroad, a call comes from behind the rear wall: “Let the procession be formed.”

Then the ministers and deacons and acolytes stride into view, led by a rangy man with a tenor sax dangling from a strap around his clerical collar. He is Archbishop Franzo Wayne King, founder and pastor of this faith community, the St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church.

For the next three hours, the service proceeds with an aesthetic that is half jam session and half revival meeting. A traditional Christian liturgy — including the Lord’s Prayer and readings from a Gospel and an Epistle — takes places amid a series of intense, almost incantatory performances of Coltrane compositions.

“The kind of music you listen to is the person you become,” Mr. King says in his sermon. “When you listen to John Coltrane, you become a disciple of the anointed of God.”

In the third row, Mikkel Holst understands. He has traveled from Copenhagen to San Francisco in no small part for this church.

“It must be one of the best jazz experiences of my life,” Mr. Holst says after the service. “The funniest thing about it is, I’m not religious. But when I put on John Coltrane, a chill goes down my spine. I was thinking, if I lived here, I could see myself belonging.”

So the Coltrane church is not a gimmick or a forced alloy of nightclub music and ethereal faith. Its message of deliverance through divine sound is actually quite consistent with Coltrane’s own experience and message.

During a fervently creative life of just 41 years, Coltrane produced a body of performances and compositions that have remained deeply influential among jazz musicians and listeners, as well as devotees of improvisational rock. By now, 40 years after his death, he rests firmly in the canon of American music.

In both implicit and explicit ways, Coltrane also functioned as a religious figure. Addicted to heroin in the 1950s, he quit cold turkey, and later explained that he had heard the voice of God during his anguishing withdrawal. In 1964, he recorded “A Love Supreme,” an album of original praise music in a free-jazz mode. Studying Eastern religions as well as Christianity, he went on to release more avant-garde devotional music on “Ascension,” “Om” and “Meditations.”

In 1966, an interviewer in Japan asked Coltrane what he hoped to be in five years, and Coltrane replied, “A saint.”

Franzo Wayne King, then, was simply the person who took Coltrane at his word. Growing up in Los Angeles, the son of a Pentecostal minister, he knew firsthand the importance of music in African-American Christianity. His own tastes, however, ran more to James Brown than jazz.

That started changing the day in the early 1960s when Mr. King’s older brother, Charles, played him the Coltrane recording of “My Favorite Things.” Mr. King began to explore and appreciate Coltrane’s earlier work with Miles Davis. Even so, when a friend showed him the album “A Love Supreme,” Mr. King read the very religious liner notes and decided the music could not be for him.

“I didn’t want to get on a God trip,” he recalled. “If I wanted that, I’d go to church. Because in my upbringing there was an erect divide between jazz and blues and the church. You had to choose one.”

Or so he believed until 1966, when he took his girlfriend, Marina, on her birthday to hear Coltrane at a San Francisco club, the Jazz Workshop. A buddy who was the doorman seated them up front, and there Coltrane’s trademark “sheets of sound” washed over them, almost literally.

“It was my sound baptism,” Mr. King recalled.

In the wake of Coltrane’s death and newly married to Marina, Mr. King created a small congregation called Yardbird Temple in reference to the nickname of another jazz great, Charlie Parker. At that point, the followers worshiped Coltrane as an earthly incarnation of God, while considering Parker a kind of John the Baptist equivalent.

Such a theology, of course, put Mr. King and his flock outside the boundaries of Christianity. He moved back inside them in the early 1980s, when he met George Duncan Hinkson, an archbishop in the African Orthodox Church. The denomination, founded in the late 19th century in South Africa, took root in America largely through Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa movement. Its adherents worship a black Christ.

Ordained by Archbishop Hinkson, Mr. King made the necessary concession to become a member congregation. “We demoted Coltrane from being God,” he put it. “But the agreement was that he could come into sainthood and be the patron of our church.”

As such, the St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane Church has operated for a quarter-century. Mr. King’s wife and several of their children participate in the services as “ministers of sound” and have played at several European jazz festivals. The visitors over the years have included Coltrane’s widow, Alice Coltrane, and the jazz-influenced rock guitarist Carlos Santana.

The church combines its unique hagiography and soundtrack with staples of black Christianity, from personal “witnessing” to various forms of social action. In its previous location, the congregation ran a vegetarian soup kitchen; its current place, which lacks a full kitchen, distributes clothing and nonperishable foods.

Mr. King’s daughter, Wanika King-Stephens, is the host of a weekly radio show of Coltrane music, “Uplift,” on a local station, KPOO-FM.

Francis Davis, an author who attended the church while researching a coming Coltrane biography, “Sheets of Sound,” said, “I kind of went there expecting, I don’t know, snake handlers or something crazy.”

Mr. Davis continued: “But it wasn’t like that at all. These are good people They’re doing what churches do. Which is feed the hungry, minister to people’s emotional and spiritual needs. And if you’re looking for free-jazz solos on a Sunday morning, this is the place.”

    Sunday Religion, Inspired by Saturday Nights, NYT, 1.12.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/us/01religion.html?hp

Challenging Tradition, Young Jews Worship on Their Terms

November 28, 2007
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 — There are no pews at Tikkun Leil Shabbat, no rabbis, no one with children or gray hair.

Instead, one rainy Friday night, the young worshipers sat in concentric circles in the basement of an office building, damp stragglers four deep against the walls. In the middle, Megan Brudney and Rob Levy played guitar, drums and sang, leading about 120 people through the full Shabbat liturgy in Hebrew.

Without a building and budget, Tikkun Leil Shabbat is one of the independent prayer groups, or minyanim, that Jews in their 20s and 30s have organized in the last five years in at least 27 cities around the country. They are challenging traditional Jewish notions of prayer, community and identity.

In places like Atlanta; Brookline, Mass.; Chico, Calif.; and Manhattan the minyanim have shrugged off what many participants see as the passive, rabbi-led worship of their parents’ generation to join services led by their peers, with music sung by all, and where the full Hebrew liturgy and full inclusion of men and women, gay or straight, seem to be equal priorities.

Members of the minyanim are looking for “redemptive, transformative experiences that give rhythm to their days and weeks and give meaning to their lives,” said Joelle Novey, 28, a founder of Tikkun Leil Shabbat, whose name alludes to the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, or repairing the world. It is an experience they are not finding in traditional Jewish institutions, she said.

Many synagogues feel threatened by the minyanim, and in some cases have tried to adopt their approach, but with only limited success.

“Established synagogues are worrying about how to attract and engage younger people, and younger people are looking for a sense of sacred community, and they are going elsewhere,” said J. Shawn Landres, director of research at Synagogue 3000, an institute for congregational leadership and synagogue studies. “For a lot of people, it’s like two ships passing in the night.”

Younger Jews have spearheaded changes before in American Jewish life, including forming small fellowship groups in the 1960s and 1970s called havurot. Havurot were lay-led communities like the minyanim, but they were more countercultural, said Sherry Israel, chairwoman of the board of the National Havurah Committee. The minyanim are largely urban. They range from the 200 people who show up at the 9 a.m. Saturday service at Kehilat Hadar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to the 30 or so who attend Na’aleh’s Friday night worship in Denver. Kehilat Hadar’s e-mail list, however, has about 2,800 addresses, a sign of the transience of the young Jewish population in the city and the high level of interest.

Couples have met at the minyanim, but their leaders say the worship services are not singles’ socials. Music permeates the services, everyone is encouraged to sing and the melodies change frequently to keep things fresh.

“I felt it was hard for me to find a Jewish community that has the spiritual and communal things I was looking for,” said Vicki Kaplan, 24, who was raised in a Conservative family in Los Angeles, explaining why she does not attend a synagogue. “There were no instruments, no young people. At Tikkun Leil Shabbat, there’s a joyfulness to the singing, the community, the breaking of bread together.”

Ms. Kaplan said seeing her peers lead worship made her faith seem more accessible. “My friends who I play football with and have beers with are leading service here. I feel like if I wanted to lead a service, I could, too.”

The fact that women at the minyanim can lead prayers and read the Torah is central to their popularity, including among those raised in the Orthodox tradition, which limits women’s participation in services.

“The primary reason I am here is because of gender equality,” said Rebecca Israel, 25, who was raised in an Orthodox family. Ms. Israel attended D.C. Minyan and Tikkun Leil Shabbat, which she visited one recent Friday, until she moved a year ago to New York, where she goes to Kehilat Hadar. “If Judaism is central to my morality, then its practices needed to reflect the morality that I learned from it. In religious practices that limit women’s participation, Orthodox shuls were not living up to that equality that is important to me.”

The minyanim have attracted young people who are well schooled in Judaism. A flowering of Jewish day schools in the 1980s produced a generation with a strong Jewish education and “the cultural wherewithal to create their own institutions,” said Steven M. Cohen, a professor of sociology at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Many realized they could lead their own services after doing so through their college Hillel programs. Tikkun Leil Shabbat draws Reconstructionist Jews, Orthodox Jews and everyone in between, so it, like other minyanim, developed practices that respect people’s traditions.

For instance, its once-in-three-weeks services alternate between one with circular seating and a more traditional service, in which the chairs face east and the singing is a cappella.

The biggest challenge, minyanim leaders said, involves getting lots of people to participate, while ensuring that the liturgy is celebrated competently. Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, who co-founded Kehilat Hadar when he was a layman, started an intensive eight-week course this year in New York, Mechon Hadar, to train those who want to lead or better participate in minyanim. D.C. Minyan has undertaken a campaign to equip more people to be able to read the Torah at services. Many minyanim offer tutoring to those who want to learn to lead services.

The first time she led morning prayers at D.C. Minyan, Lilah Pomerance said, she shook like a leaf.

“There was this disbelief that I was actually doing this,” Ms. Pomerance said of leading worship, “and the other piece was very spiritual, that I was leading the community in prayer and in communication with God.”

A survey that Mr. Landres has undertaken with Mr. Cohen and Rabbi Kaunfer indicates that rather than taking young Jews out of the synagogue pews, they are taking them out of their beds on Saturday mornings.

Rabbi Edward Feinstein is one leader of a traditional synagogue who applauds the development of the minyanim.

“If we were to say, ‘We are sticking to one institutional form or go away,’ then we would die as a people,” said Rabbi Feinstein, who is at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Calif., a Conservative synagogue. “Is it going to take young Jews that synagogues are counting on? Yes, unless you offer something better. Or better yet, invite the emergents in and make common cause.”

Some synagogues have created programs to draw young people, but they are often poorly done, underfinanced and come across as big singles’ mixers, Mr. Landres said.

The minyanim are noticing that some of their worshipers are getting older, and it is unclear how they might evolve as participants have children and move to the suburbs, said members and experts on the movement.

The answer may be found in the likes of Shabbat in the Hood, a minyan that draws 55 to 70 worshipers to peoples’ homes once a month in Leawood, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, Mo. Worshipers belong to local synagogues. This is “the soccer mom set,” with lots of children around, many of them encouraged to lead prayers, said Marla Brockman, the lay coordinator of the minyan.

“It has been a spiritual hit for our families,” Ms. Brockman said. “We were all looking to go back to Jewish summer camp — the ease of community, this feeling of ‘go ahead and try it, try a reading’ — and we found it.”

    Challenging Tradition, Young Jews Worship on Their Terms, NYT, 29.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/us/28minyan.html?em&ex=1196485200&en=4d239e472d05d25e&ei=5087%0A

Christianity thrives at U.S. colleges

Mon Nov 26, 2007
7:03am EST
Reuters
By Andrea Hopkins

CINCINNATI (Reuters Life!) - The students piling into a house near the University of Cincinnati look like every other. In jeans and sweatshirts, about 70 kids laugh and roughhouse, send text messages, and line up for plates of pizza. Then they all bow their heads in prayer.

The weekly pizza lunch at Wesley House, a ministry of the United Methodist Church, is just one of a half-dozen Christian events Nick George, 19, will attend this week with friends from the Navigators, a thriving campus evangelical group.

"I'm absolutely more involved (in Christianity) than before I came to college," said George, 19, a second-year engineering student. Most of his friends are fellow believers who, like thousands of young Christians, have eschewed private religious colleges in favor of large secular U.S. universities.

While public colleges in America were once considered hostile territory for religious students, a revival among both evangelical and traditional churches on campus has made it safe -- and even cool -- to be a college Christian.

Eight of 10 college students attend religious services, 80 percent discuss religion or spirituality with friends and 69 percent pray, according to a 2004 University of California, Los Angeles, survey of 112,232 freshmen at 236 universities.

"The American university system is not so aggressively asking kids to question their religion as it might have been in past years, in the 60s," said Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor at the University of Texas.

That's not to say all students take a straight path to campus Christianity.

University of Cincinnati engineering student Brian Fiske grew up in church but strayed when he hit college. He made new friends, joined a fraternity, and generally had a good time.

"For I couple of years I partied it up, lived like a college kid," said Fiske, 22. "But a couple of years ago I decided I'm done with this."

He joined the Baptist college ministry, moved in with six other believers, and now spends 40 to 60 hours a week involved with Christian activities and friends.

"I'm just happier. It's a good environment," he said.

Jessica Hagen, 21, agreed.

"My friends in the Navigators are probably closer than other friends I've had, just because we have that common bond of Christianity," said Hagen, a third-year education student.

The most visible faith group on most campuses remain evangelical or conservative Christian organizations like the Navigators or Campus Crusade for Christ, founded in 1951.

Campus Crusade spokesman Tony Arnold said the group has grown from 18,000 students on 225 campuses in 1992 to 50,000 on 1,100 campuses -- growth he attributes to the uncertainty of modern life.

"Life in the 21st century seems increasingly fraught with danger, whether it's a crazy with a gun in a classroom or at the seat of a plane headed into a skyscraper," Arnold said. "This generation is hungry for community and connection."

While college Christianity is more popular in southern states than in the northeast, even that is changing.

In 2002, Matt Bennett founded the Christian Union to bring "honor and praise to Jesus Christ" at the eight Ivy League universities. Five years of hard work organizing small Bible classes and other outreach have started to pay off.

"There's an increasing acceptance that intellectualism and Christianity go hand in hand," said Bennett. He estimates that between 3 percent and 9 percent of Ivy League undergraduates now participate in various Christian activities on campus each week -- after being invisible for years.

Liberal believers have also found a place on campus.

United Methodist Deacon Jeanne Smith, 50, came to the University of Cincinnati to help the dying campus ministry "for three months." Nine years later she's in contact with about 700 students -- about 100 of whom regularly drop by the house.

While everyone is welcome, many of the students attracted to Wesley House are liberals working for social justice, from the inclusion of gays and lesbians to outreach with Muslim communities and organization of anti-war rallies.

That one student's view of homosexuality or abortion may differ from the view of another Christian -- eating pizza nearby -- doesn't faze graduate student Leland Spencer, 23.

"All people, from the far left to the far right are welcome to be here," Spencer said. "We have some good discussions."

    Christianity thrives at U.S. colleges, R, 26.11.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSN0934976220071126

President of Evangelical University Resigns

November 24, 2007
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TULSA, Okla., Nov. 23 (AP) — Facing accusations that he misspent university money to support a lavish lifestyle, the president of Oral Roberts University has resigned, officials said Friday.

The resignation by Richard Roberts was effective immediately, according to an e-mail statement from George Pearsons, the chairman of the university’s Board of Regents.

Mr. Roberts, the son of the televangelist and university founder Oral Roberts, came under fire with the university after three former professors filed a lawsuit last month that included accusations of a $39,000 shopping tab for Mr. Robert’s wife, Lindsay, at one store; a $29,411 senior trip to the Bahamas on the university jet for one of Mr. Roberts’s daughters; and a stable of horses for the Roberts children.

Mr. Roberts had been on temporary leave from the evangelical university, fighting the accusations. In a recent interview, he and his wife denied any wrongdoing.

Mr. Roberts, who took over as president in 1993, has said the lawsuit amounted to “intimidation, blackmail and extortion.”

On Friday, Mr. Roberts said in the statement: “I love O.R.U. with all my heart. I love the students, faculty, staff and administration, and I want to see God’s best for all of them.”

The professors also said in the lawsuit that Mr. Roberts had required students in a government class to work for the campaign of Randi Miller, a candidate in the 2006 Republican primary for mayor of Tulsa. Mr. Roberts has denied that.

Tim Brooker, one of the plaintiffs, accused the university of forcing him to quit after he had warned Mr. Roberts that requiring students to work on Ms. Miller’s campaign jeopardized the university’s tax-exempt status.

Mr. Roberts received a vote of no confidence last week from the university’s tenured faculty.

The regents will meet Monday and Tuesday to decide how to conduct a search for a new president, Mr. Pearsons said in the statement. Executive Regent Billy Joe Daugherty will temporarily assume the president’s administrative responsibilities.

    President of Evangelical University Resigns, NYT, 24.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/education/24oral.html

In God's Name

Megachurches Add Local Economy to Their Mission

November 23, 2007
The New York Times
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES and ANDREW W. LEHREN

In Anchorage early in October, the doors opened onto a soaring white canvas dome with room for a soccer field and a 400-meter track. Its prime-time hours are already rented well into 2011.

Nearby is a cold-storage facility leased to Sysco, a giant food-distribution corporation, and beside it is a warehouse serving a local contractor and another food service company.

The entrepreneur behind these businesses is the ChangePoint ministry, a 4,000-member nondenominational Christian congregation that helped develop and finance the sports dome. It has a partnership with Sysco’s landlord and owns the warehouse.

The church’s leaders say they hope to draw people to faith by publicly demonstrating their commitment to meeting their community’s economic needs.

“We want to turn people on to Jesus Christ through this process,” said Karl Clauson, who has led the church for more than eight years.

Among the nation’s so-called megachurches — those usually Protestant congregations with average weekly attendance of 2,000 or more — ChangePoint’s appetite for expansion into many kinds of businesses is hardly unique. An analysis by The New York Times of the online public records of just over 1,300 of these giant churches shows that their business interests are as varied as basketball schools, aviation subsidiaries, investment partnerships and a limousine service.

At least 10 own and operate shopping centers, and some financially formidable congregations are adding residential developments to their holdings. In one such elaborate project, LifeBridge Christian Church, near Longmont, Colo., plans a 313-acre development of upscale homes, retail and office space, a sports arena, housing for the elderly and church buildings.

Indeed, some huge churches, already politically influential, are becoming catalysts for local economic development, challenging a conventional view that churches drain a town financially by generating lower-paid jobs, taking land off the property-tax rolls and increasing traffic.

But the entrepreneurial activities of churches pose questions for their communities that do not arise with secular development.

These enterprises, whose sponsoring churches benefit from a variety of tax breaks and regulatory exemptions given to religious organizations in this country, sometimes provoke complaints from for-profit businesses with which they compete — as ChangePoint’s new sports center has in Anchorage.

Mixed-use projects, like shopping centers that also include church buildings, can make it difficult to determine what constitutes tax-exempt ministry work, which is granted exemptions from property and unemployment taxes, and what is taxable commerce.

And when these ventures succeed — when local amenities like shops, sports centers, theaters and clinics are all provided in church-run settings and employ mostly church members — people of other faiths may feel shut out of a significant part of a town’s life, some religion scholars said.

Precedents in History

Churches have long played an economic role. Medieval monasteries in Europe and Japan were typically hubs of commerce. In the United States, many wealthy denominations have long had passive investments in real estate. And churches, like labor unions and other nonprofit groups, have been involved in serving immigrants, the elderly and the poor.

But the expanding economic life of today’s giant churches is distinctive. First, they are active in less expected places: in largely flourishing suburbs and barely developed acreage far beyond cities’ beltways and in communities far from the Southern Bible Belt with which they are traditionally associated. And in most cases — as at ChangePoint in Anchorage — these churches say their economic activities are not just an expression of community service but, more important, an opportunity to evangelize. The sports dome, for example, is a way to draw the attention of young families to the church’s religious programs.

“We don’t look at this as economics; we look at it as our mission,” Pastor Clauson said.

Scott L. Thumma, a pioneer in the study of megachurches at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, whose roster of churches was the basis for the Times analysis, said he has noticed churches that sponsor credit unions, issue credit cards and lend to small businesses.

Although community outreach is almost always cited as the primary motive, these economic initiatives may also indicate that giant churches are seeking sources of revenue beyond the collection plate to support their increasingly elaborate programs, suggested Mark A. Chaves, a religious sociologist at Duke University.

Investing Capital Assets

Also feeding this wave of economic activity is the growing supply of capital available to religious congregations.

The Evangelical Christian Credit Union in Brea, Calif., a pioneer in lending to churches and a proxy for this market shift, has seen its loan portfolio grow to $2.7 billion, from just $60 million in the early 1990s, said Mark A. Johnson, its executive vice president. Where bankers were once reluctant to lend to churches, the credit union now shares a market with some of the nation’s largest banks.

ChangePoint paid $1 million upfront and borrowed $23.5 million from a state economic development agency to buy a defunct seafood-packaging plant and warehouse out of foreclosure in July 2005. To do so, it formed a partnership with the for-profit owner of the cold-storage unit surrounded by the seafood plant’s land. An affiliated nonprofit is developing the sports dome with a gift of $4 million worth of church land. The church controls these entities directly or through board appointments, said Scott Merriner, executive pastor and a former McKinsey consultant.

Pastor Clauson acknowledged that a few local businessmen who own sports facilities have complained about the subsidized competition they face from The Dome, a nonprofit organization. It is an issue the church takes seriously, he said.

“We don’t want to be taking bread off of people’s tables,” the pastor said.

But the sports dome “is scratching such an enormous proverbial itch, there is no way we’re harming anyone,” he said, adding, “There is more than enough need to go around.”

Martin McGee, the Anchorage municipal assessor, acknowledged that the property poses an assessment challenge. Land and floor space used only by the church are exempt, he said, but the rest of the seafood plant site is taxable, and the tax treatment of the sports dome site is still under review.

The tax issues will be even more complex for a megachurch project in Charlotte, N.C. There, the University Park Baptist Church paid $11.5 million late last year to buy the Merchandise Mart, a half-million-square-foot office and exhibition space.

Some 57 percent of the space will ultimately be remodeled for church use, but the rest will bring new business activity to the neighborhood, said Claude R. Alexander Jr., the church’s lead pastor who also serves on the board of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce.

His church has left its economic mark on the neighborhood it will leave behind when it moves to the mart. With its traffic added to that of another megachurch a few miles away, a once-quiet intersection between the two churches has recently seen the construction of fast-food outlets and other businesses.

The traffic is unlikely to ease when University Park moves. The other nearby megachurch, the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, already has zoning approval for Friendship Village, a complex of shops, apartments, homes, offices and housing for the elderly on 108 acres off Charlotte’s beltway.

According to Tom Flynn, the economic development officer for Charlotte, University Park’s purchase of the Merchandise Mart already has prompted interest in older properties nearby.

A Complex Tax Challenge

The church, which formed a for-profit property management unit that also includes a small limousine service, envisions a mixture of commercial and religious uses at its new site — with its own share of the space beginning around 38 percent and rising over time.

What’s a poor tax assessor to do?

The entire site is currently taxable, said Alonzo Woods, the church’s director of operations. But when the church moves in, it will seek exemptions for areas used “strictly for church purposes.”

Churches are moving into residential development, as well. Windsor Village United Methodist Church, one of two churches that own shopping centers in Houston, is teaming up with a national home builder to develop more than 460 homes in the southwestern section of the city.

And in Dallas, The Potter’s House, a 30,000-member church established by Bishop T.D. Jakes, is the linchpin in an economic empire that includes Capella Park, a community of 266 homes.

Just how far-reaching the megachurch economy can become is clear at the First Assembly of God Church in Concord, a small community northeast of Charlotte. Under the umbrella of First Assembly Ministries are the church, with 2,500 in weekly attendance; a 180-bed assisted-living center; a private school for more than 800 students; a day-care center for 115 children; a 22-acre retreat center; and a food service — all nonprofit. In addition, there is WC Properties, a for-profit unit that manages the church’s shopping center, called Community at the Village, where a Subway outlet, an eye-care shop and other businesses share space with church programs that draw traffic to the mall.

Doug Rieder, the church business administrator, said WC Properties files a federal tax return and pays property taxes on the commercial space at the mall.

But Mr. Rieder acknowledged the difficulty of allocating space, staff time and expenses to the appropriate tax category. “We’re very intertwined — it gets tough day to day,” he said adding, “I have to constantly ask myself whether I am accurately allocating our costs.”

Concord was delighted to have First Assembly as the new landlord at the mall once anchored by Wal-Mart.

“That’s a very crucial crossroads for the city,” said W. Brian Hiatt, the city manager. “And the church has been a great partner.”

Another contribution the church makes to the city is a free daylong celebration it holds on Independence Day, complete with fireworks.

Mr. Hiatt said no one seemed to find it awkward for a church to conduct the community’s celebration marking the birth of a country committed to separation of church and state.

“It was a very positive event,” he said.

Mr. Rieder, the church business manager, paused when asked whether people of other faiths would have felt comfortable at the event.

“We try not to discriminate in doing community service,” he said. “There are Muslims and other non-Christians here, of course. And we do want to convert them, no doubt about it — that’s our mission. We don’t discriminate, but we do evangelize.”

The same quandary confronts Pastor Clauson in Anchorage. “There is nothing inherently alienating about what we’re doing economically,” he said. “An Orthodox Jewish youngster or a conservative Muslim child encountering our programs would find zero intimidation.”

Nor does he want his community to become divided along religious lines, he said. But at the same time, “we definitely want to use these efforts as an open door to the entity that we feel is the author and creator of abundant life — Jesus.”

He added, “It’s a tough balancing act.”

    Megachurches Add Local Economy to Their Mission, NYT, 23.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/23/business/23megachurch.html?hp

Polygamist Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison

November 21, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN DOUGHERTY

ST. GEORGE, Utah, Nov. 20 — The polygamous leader of a fundamentalist Mormon sect was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years to life in prison for forcing a 14-year-old girl to “spiritually” marry her 19-year-old cousin and commanding the naïve bride to submit to sexual relations against her will.

The defendant, Warren S. Jeffs, 51, was convicted by a jury in September of two counts of acting as an accomplice to a rape. Judge James L. Shumate of the Fifth District Court imposed two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison. The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole has the authority to parole Mr. Jeffs at any time, but a spokesman, Jack Ford, said it would be unlikely to do so before his first hearing in three to four years.

Mr. Jeffs remained seated, his face expressionless, as Judge Shumate announced the sentence. He declined the judge’s offer to address the court, and his defense lawyer, Walter Budgen, said Mr. Jeffs did not want to say anything publicly because he still faced criminal charges for arranging under-age marriages in Arizona. In Utah, Mr. Jeffs faces federal charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

Mr. Jeffs was convicted after a trial that included testimony by the victim, Elissa Wall, who is now 21, married and no longer a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon sect with an estimated 10,000 members. Ms. Wall testified that she told Mr. Jeffs she did not want to marry her cousin Allen G. Steed and later begged Mr. Jeffs to be released from the union because of unwanted sexual contact.

A day after Mr. Jeffs’s conviction on Sept. 25, Mr. Steed was charged with one count of rape, and is awaiting trial.

Ms. Wall declined Judge Shumate’s restitution offer of $5,000 for psychological counseling. Facing Mr. Jeffs in the courtroom Tuesday, she said that her restitution would be for the court “to give Warren Jeffs the sentence that he deserves and that perhaps some good will come from all of this.”

The sect’s teachings state that a man must have at least three wives to reach the highest realms of heaven. The sect split more than a century ago from the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which disavowed polygamy in 1890 in a political compromise to gain statehood for Utah. The mainstream church excommunicates anyone practicing polygamy.

Two weeks ago, Judge Shumate unsealed jailhouse videotapes, a mental health competency report and other documents describing a crisis of faith last winter by Mr. Jeffs and his deteriorating mental health.

Those records show that after a month of praying and fasting in his cell at the Purgatory Correctional Facility in Hurricane, Utah, Mr. Jeffs relinquished his role as sect leader in conversations with church members and family.

“I am not the prophet. I never was the prophet, and I have been deceived by the powers of evil,” Mr. Jeffs said to a brother in a conversation on Jan. 25 that was videotaped by jail officials. In another conversation, Mr. Jeffs said he had been “immoral” with a sister and a daughter 30 years ago, according to documents.

Three days later, Mr. Jeffs tried to hang himself in jail. In the days after the suicide attempt, he threw himself and slammed his head against a cell wall, according to the mental health competency report prepared last April. After he was treated for depression, Mr. Jeffs’s health improved in February, and defense documents state that he recanted his statements about not being the prophet and that he had been faced with a great spiritual test.

Mr. Jeffs assumed control of the church after the death of his predecessor, his father, Rulon.

Mr. Jeffs ruled with unquestioned authority and excommunicated scores of men who were forced to leave the community and their wives and children. Mr. Jeffs then reassigned the women and children to other men that he considered more spiritually worthy.

    Polygamist Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison, NYT, 21.11.2007,http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/us/21jeffs.html

The Long Run

Romney, Searching and Earnest, Set His Path in ’60s

November 15, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 — In December 1968, Mitt Romney returned home from a Mormon mission in France to find a changed country.

While assassinations, race riots, sit-ins and marches transformed his generation, Mr. Romney spent more than two years cloistered in a strict regimen of prayer and proselytizing.

The missionaries were discouraged from indulging in newspapers, radio, television or phone calls home. They spent twelve hours a day knocking on doors, often ending up defending the Vietnam War or American race relations against tirades by the French. Mr. Romney was so removed from the tumult at home that he was surprised to learn that his father, George Romney, had turned against the war while campaigning for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.

“There had been this whole revolution while we were gone,” recalled Dane McBride, a close friend from the mission. “While we had gone from being adolescents to grown-ups with a lot of responsibility, our peers — from our perspective — were just tearing down the country, becoming dangerously childish.” He added, “It just seemed deplorable.”

It was the midpoint in a six-year immersion in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — first as a missionary and then at the church’s Brigham Young University — that set the conservative course Mr. Romney would follow as a businessman, politician and now a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

He left for France a 19-year-old freshman at Stanford, a sheltered child of privilege full of ideas about how to shake up the French mission. He could be goofy, quoting Sylvester the Cat this way — “Sutherickin Schatash! It’s humiliatin’!” — in letters to friends. He was considered the free spirit of his crowd, the one who sneaked off to movies (discouraged for missionaries) and ate coq au vin (controversial because of his church’s prohibition on alcohol). He was a half-hearted Mormon whose beliefs, as he recalled recently, were “based on pretty thin tissue.”

His sojourn through Paris and Provo, Utah, redoubled both his faith and his ambition. Missionary work gave him his first taste of power and responsibility, eventually overseeing the work of 175 peers. As president of the premier social club at Brigham Young, he first displayed a knack for fund-raising, bringing the university more than $1 million.

While eager to discuss national politics, he hung back from the ferment of the day, recoiling against the student unrest he saw in France and staying on the sidelines when protests broke out over Brigham Young’s all-white sports teams.

Instead, he settled comfortably into his studies on a campus so conservative that it banned most rock ’n’ roll bands, left-leaning speakers or student groups, long hair on men or bare shoulders or knees on women. By the time he graduated, headed for Harvard’s law and business schools, he was already a husband and a father.

“It was growing up fast,” Mr. Romney recalled, crediting his mission with inculcating the values and skills he displayed at Brigham Young.

“On a mission, your faith in Jesus Christ either evaporates or it becomes much deeper,” he said. “For me it became much deeper.”

His experiences “gave me a great appreciation of the value of liberty and the value of the free-enterprise system,” he added. “It brings home that these things are not ubiquitous, that what we enjoy here is actually quite unique and therefore is fragile.”

The Iraq war debate has given new relevance to the question of where presidential candidates stood during the Vietnam conflict — whether they were demonstrating on campus, tortured in a prison camp or trying to convert the French. For Mr. Romney, that chapter of his biography is also at the crux of the challenges facing his campaign. It helps explain the origins of the conservative convictions he has sometimes struggled to convey to Republican voters, and it underscores the formative role in his life played by a religion that remains mysterious to many Americans.

“He talks about it all the time,” said Tagg Romney, Mitt Romney’s eldest son. That period, more than any other, “helped him become who he is now.”

A Mission Flourishes

France was a humbling experience for Mr. Romney, who recalled it as the only time in his life when “most of what I was trying to do was rejected.”

Missionary work is a rite of passage for Mormon men, who are encouraged to volunteer when they turn 19. Mitt Romney’s grandfather, father and older brother had all served in Britain, so his assignment to France “came as a surprise,” he recalled.

His letters from the period are snapshots of his late adolescence, by turns earnest and silly. In one letter, he quoted Snoopy, referred to himself as “a lonely duck” and signed off, “Love & Kisses, Daffy.” He closed another with “May the Lord keep you until we meet again,” adding 17 exclamation points. In a mock news release, he called himself “His Holiness Monsignor Willard Mitt Romney.”

The son of a car company chief executive who later became governor of Michigan, Mitt Romney called his mission an “instructive” first experience of deprivation. He lived on about $100 a month, sleeping on cast-off mattresses and crowding into small apartments in groups of four. The only toilet was often down the hall and the only shower in a public bathhouse.

The 175 missionaries in France all rose at 6 a.m. each day, rang doorbells from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and turned in by 10. Each was assigned a “companion,” parting company only to go to the bathroom. Superiors would quiz each partner separately about the conduct of the other, to ensure they stayed in line.

Mr. Romney quickly stood out. His father was perhaps the best known Mormon public official of his day, and Mitt’s three years of French at the exclusive Cranbrook school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., had made him more fluent than his peers. He knew the names of French perfumes and could afford to hand over a pair of his shoes to a missionary whose soles had worn thin. He used his father’s friendship with Sargent Shriver, then ambassador to France, to arrange a meal at the American Embassy.

Like most missionaries, he did not win many converts. After reading Mitt’s demoralized letters, his father sent back a favorite motto: “Despair not, but if you despair, work on in your despair.”

Mr. Romney’s companions, though, recall only his zeal. In newsletters, he often led the lists recording contacts made or tracts distributed. He chafed at the door-to-door entreaties, pushing for new ways to market their creed, like an exhibition baseball game or staging an “American night” in a youth center.

And he was eager to move up. After a promotion in early 1968, Mr. Romney complained that he was still subordinate to a fellow missionary.

“I went into the president’s office and said: look president, ‘ith eitha you orh me that is goin to run thith place,’” he wrote to a friend, again imitating a cartoon character. He said he got nowhere, adding: “Really, it’s not that bad — it’s just that I feel like I’ve been broken.”

Mr. Romney’s counterpart, Joel McKinnon, now president of a mission in Montreal, recalled: “He just had a million ideas a minute and couldn’t wait to try something new all the time.” When his suggestions were rebuffed, “He was a little frustrated, like he was working with a garden slug,” Mr. McKinnon said.

Just a few weeks later, though, Mr. Romney and Mr. McKinnon were thrust into new roles. Mr. Romney was at the wheel of car involved in a head-on collision on a country road, killing the wife of the mission president. Mr. Romney, who was not at fault in the accident, was knocked out — even mistakenly pronounced dead at the scene — but quickly recovered. When the president went back to the United States, Mr. Romney and Mr. McKinnon were left in charge of the other missionaries for three months.

Mr. Romney quickly threw himself into firing them up. During their training, church officials had urged the young men to remember the “eight W’s” (“Work Will Win When Wishy Washy Wishing Won’t.”) They soon delivered similar exhortations, churning out bulletins with headlines like “The Key to Dynamic Leadership,” “Can You See It Happening?” and “It’s Yours!”

The War Reverberates

Their efforts were interrupted when France erupted into chaos in May 1968. Student uprisings and a general strike — fueled in part by anger over the Vietnam War — shut down the telephones, trains and mail. Trash piled up in the streets, while store shelves and gas stations sat empty. Mr. Romney, then a leader for the region around Bordeaux, carried empty soap containers of borrowed fuel on his moped, then drove to an American bank in Paris for food money. He saw student demonstrators turning over cars, setting fires, hurling cobblestones and battling the police.

Mr. Romney described it as “a very interesting firsthand view of a very volatile setting.” But his friends say the strikes were terrifying and reinforced their respect for authority. “The social system failed. The country came to a stop,” said Byron Hansen, another missionary and now a car dealer in Brigham City, Utah. “It affected me and I am sure it affected Mitt.”

The missionaries had often met with hostility over the Vietnam War. “Are you an American?” was a common greeting, Mr. Romney recalled, followed by, “‘Get out of Vietnam! Bang!’ The door would slam.” But such opposition only hardened their hawkish views. “We felt the French were pretty weak-kneed,” Mr. Hansen said.

Most of the missionaries, though, were also relieved that their service meant a draft deferment. “I am sorry, but no one was excited to go and get killed in Vietnam,” Mr. Hansen said, acknowledging, “In hindsight, it is easy to be for the war when you don’t have to worry about going to Vietnam.”

Mr. Romney, though, said that he sometimes had wished he were in Vietnam instead of France. “There were surely times on my mission when I was having a particularly difficult time accomplishing very little when I would have longed for the chance to be serving in the military,” he said in an interview, “but that was not to be.”

While many Mormons — and eventually, some of his fellow missionaries — enlisted, Mr. Romney got a student deferment after returning from France. When the draft lottery was introduced in December 1969, he drew a high enough number — 300 — that he would never be called up.

Many church leaders considered the war a godly cause, and Mr. Romney said at the time he thought that it was essential to holding back Communism.

“I was surprised,” Mr. Romney recalled, “when I heard my father, then running for president, say that we were wrong, that we had been told lies by our military, that the course of the war was not going as well as we thought it was and that we had been mistaken when we had entered the war. It obviously caused me to reconsider what I had previously thought.”

He added, “Ultimately, I came to believe that he was right.”

‘Glory Days’

Mr. Romney switched to Brigham Young from Stanford to be near his high school girlfriend, now wife, Ann. But the move also continued his isolation from the upheaval of the era. Brigham Young was one of the few places where students had demonstrated in support of the war in the mid-1960s. When Mr. Romney attended, the university president enlisted students to spy on supposedly liberal professors, and the handful of students who displayed peace signs in their windows were told to remove them. Although liberal groups were banned, a chapter of George Wallace’s American Independent Party flourished.

Mr. Romney describes the time as “his glory days,” Tagg Romney said. Mitt and Ann settled into a $75-a-month basement apartment. Studying with new discipline, he graduated at the top of the humanities college. He built wading pools for his wife and son out of rocks in a nearby river.

Mr. Romney had an avid interest in national politics, often fielding questions about his father’s perspective on events. But student government seemed small to him, his friend Dane McBride, now a physician, said.

Instead, Mr. Romney devoted himself to the Cougar Club, an exclusive all-male social club known for its sharp blue blazers. The group usually held Hawaiian luaus and other events to raise a few thousand dollars a year for the university’s sports teams. Elected its president his senior year, Mr. Romney applied the motivational skills he learned in France to lead a telethon that raised $1 million. “Mitt told us, ‘Guys, we can do better,’” Dr. McBride recalled. “He energized it.”

Eventually, the great debates of the day intruded even at Brigham Young. In the fall of 1970, the student government president and others distributed a pamphlet encouraging opposition to the Vietnam conflict by quoting past Mormon leaders on the evils of war, stirring a predictable campus fury.

Mr. Romney wanted no part of such things. “If we had asked Mitt to sign that pamphlet, he would have had a heart attack,” said Terrell E. Hunt, a fellow Cougar who signed it.

Civil rights became an even more insistent issue, when boycotts and violent protests over the university’s virtually all-white sports teams broke out at away games. The Mormon Church at the time excluded blacks from full membership, considering them spiritually unfit as results of a biblical curse on the descendants of Noah’s son Ham. (During their training, a fellow missionary of Mr. Romney took notes that read: “All men were created equal — No,” followed by “Sons of Ham. ”)

A handful of students and prominent Mormons — including the Arizona congressman Morris K. Udall and his brother Stewart, then secretary of the interior — called for an end to the doctrine. Some Mormons hoped the pressure would persuade the church to abandon its exclusion of blacks, just as it had stopped endorsing polygamy.

Mitt Romney had walked in civil rights marches with his father and said he shared his concern for racial equality. But neither publicly questioned the church’s teachings.

“I hoped that the time would come when the leaders of the church would receive the inspiration to change the policy,” Mr. Romney said. When he heard over a car radio in 1978 that the church would offer blacks full membership, he said, he pulled over and cried.

But until then, he deferred to church leaders, he said. “The way things are achieved in my church, as I believe in other great faiths, is through inspiration from God and not through protests and letters to the editor.”

Ben Werschkul contributed reporting.

    Romney, Searching and Earnest, Set His Path in ’60s, NYT, 15.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/politics/15romney.html?hp

Catholic Bishops Instruct Voters

November 14, 2007
Filed at 10:54 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Roman Catholics voting in the 2008 elections must heed church teaching when deciding which candidates and policies to support, U.S. bishops said Wednesday.

And while the church recognizes the importance of a wide range of issues -- from war to immigration to poverty -- fighting abortion should be a priority, the bishops said.

''The direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life is always wrong and is not just one issue among many,'' the bishops said.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops overwhelmingly adopted the statement, ''Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,'' as they ended the public sessions of their fall meeting.

The document does not recommend specific laws or candidates, and it emphasizes that ''principled debate'' is needed to decide which policies best promote the common good.

But ''that does not make (moral issues) optional concerns or permit Catholics to dismiss or ignore church teaching,'' the bishops said.

American bishops have been releasing similar recommendations for Catholics before every presidential election since 1976. However, in recent years, some independent Catholics groups have been distributing their own voter booklets.

Among them are Priests for Life and California-based Catholic Answers, which distributed material on five ''nonnegotiable'' issues: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and same-sex marriage. Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which formed last year, issued a guide emphasizing church teachings on war, poverty and social justice.

But the bishops urged Catholics to only use voter resources approved by the church.

The document makes clear the broad concerns in Catholic teaching that make it difficult for parishioners to feel fully comfortable with either the Democrats or Republicans.

The bishops say helping the poor should be a top priority in government, providing health care, taking in refugees and protecting the rights of workers, and the bishops highlight the need for environmental protection.

However, they also oppose same-sex marriage, euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research, in addition to their staunch anti-abortion position.

The prelates say torture is ''always wrong'' and they express ''serious moral concerns'' about ''preventive use of military force.'' But at the last minute Wednesday, they added a sentence acknowledging ''the continuing threat of fanatical extremism and global terror.''

    Catholic Bishops Instruct Voters, NYT, 14.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Catholic-Bishops.html

Pope to Make First Visit to US

November 12, 2007
Filed at 11:06 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI will make his first visit to the United States as pontiff next year, and plans to visit the White House, ground zero and speak at the United Nations, Archbishop Pietro Sambi told the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Monday.

Benedict will travel to Washington and New York from April 15-20, speak at the United Nations on April 18 and visit ground zero on the final day of his trip.

The pope will visit the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York to show ''solidarity with those who have died, with their families and with all those who wish an end of violence and in the search of peace,'' said Sambi, the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S.

The visit will take place on the third anniversary of Benedict's election to succeed Pope John Paul II, who died in April 2005.

An official welcome reception for Benedict will be held at the White House on April 16, Sambi said. The pontiff will celebrate two public Masses, first at the new National Stadium in Washington on April 17, and again at Yankee Stadium on April 20.

He will also hold meetings with priests, Catholic university presidents, diocesan educators and young people.

''The pope will not travel much, but he will address himself to the people of the United States and the whole Catholic Church,'' Sambi said.

    Pope to Make First Visit to US, NYT, 12.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Catholic-Bishops.html

Congregation Writes Torah, With Help From a Scribe

November 12, 2007
The New York Times
By GLENN COLLINS

Thousands of years old though it may be, the Torah began anew on a recent Sunday with Helen Margalith, 92 years old. She faced the congregation, then stared at the seeming immensity of a blank white sheet of unblemished parchment. A sofer, or scribe, sat by her side, holding a feather quill. She tentatively grasped it an inch above his hand.

“Hold it gently,” said the scribe, Neil H. Yerman, coaching her to write the first letter as they both held the quill. “Now down, toward me.” The ritually blessed black gall ink marked the page as she exerted pressure. “And again.”

It was done, then: the first letter of the Bible, Bet, in Hebrew. “Beautiful!” Mr. Yerman exclaimed. She beamed. Wild applause erupted from the 300 congregants who had gathered in witness.

Soon — after five other members of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue had also written letters — there appeared the six-letter Hebrew word often translated as “In the beginning”: the first word of the Torah.

Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of the synagogue, on West 68th Street in Manhattan, told the congregation that “our expectation is that every single one of us will participate in some way in drafting this Torah,” honoring the 613th and final commandment, in Deuteronomy, interpreted to mean that Jews must write a Torah.

The effort is rare in that Rabbi Hirsch hopes that as many as possible of the Reform temple’s 700 families — some 2,000 people, from children to the venerable Mrs. Margalith — will participate in the writing over the next year.

In a single stroke, those who join in the ambitious project are both honoring tradition and testing its bounds. Typically, the writing of a Torah has been left to a highly trained sofer, collaborating perhaps with a chosen few in the temple. For many centuries, the process has been a journey into an arcane and proscribed world of recondite rules and spiritual imperatives that are a mystery even to many devout Jews.

“We could just have hired a scribe to work on it in a studio, and present it to us, but that wouldn’t allow the community to participate in the values of Torah,” Rabbi Hirsch said.

William B. Helmreich, professor of sociology and Judaic studies at the City University Graduate Center in Manhattan, said, “It is unusual for an entire congregation to do that, though often people pay to have a letter or word inscribed.” Generally letters are left blank, or outlined, at the end of a new Torah. Honored persons, including donors, are helped by the scribe to fill them in.

The Torah scroll — which must be handwritten, and contains the books of Moses, the first five books of the Old Testament, from Genesis to Deuteronomy — is regarded by many not only as the word of God given to the Jewish people from Moses, but also as a living being, which is buried when it can no longer be used.

A new Torah must be copied letter by letter from a Torah template, called the Tikkun. There must be 304,805 letters, Mr. Yerman said, “not 304,806, or 304,804, and there can be no mistakes.”

For Orthodox Jews, allowing the congregation to participate in this way “would not be kosher, and would not have the sanctity of a Torah,” said Rabbi David L. Greenfield, founder of Vaad Mishmeret STaM, a rabbinical council in Brooklyn that has certified 7,000 scribes, including some 200 in New York City.

It is preferable that Torah writers not be children, women, or those who do not cover their heads or don’t honor the Sabbath, he said, adding, “A layman is not advised to touch it.”

But Prof. Lawrence H. Schiffman, chairman of the Hebrew and Judaic studies department at New York University, said that “from the point of view of the Free Synagogue, it would be a legitimate Torah.” He added, “They regard it as kosher, so to them it is.”

And Arthur Green, rector of the Hebrew College Rabbinical School in Newton, Mass., said that “the perfection of having everyone participate is a kind of perfection that shouldn’t be ignored.”

Controversy is nothing new for a synagogue legendary for the independence of its founder, Rabbi Stephen Wise, who created a new congregation free of what he considered the censorship of synagogue boards, set up a congress to compete with the dominant American Jewish Committee, and created a competitor to the premier Reform seminary, the Hebrew Union College. (Hebrew Union merged with Rabbi Wise’s seminary after he died in 1949.)

“As the Talmud said, you have to be like a reed in the water,” said the 48-year-old Rabbi Hirsch, “flexible enough to move with the times, but not so flexible that you wind up floating down the river.”

The new Torah is being written in celebration of the congregation’s centennial this year. “We totally reject the idea that this is not valid and wonderful,” said Roberta Karp, co-chairwoman of the synagogue’s Torah committee. “People are entitled to their opinions, but I would invite critics to come to a session, to see how carefully we are doing this.”

The writing is being supervised in the Stephen Wise sanctuary by Mr. Yerman, who has written Torahs for Reform congregations, some of which have encouraged lay participation.

Singing the letters to himself (“the commandment says write the song, not the Torah,” Mr. Yerman said), he inscribes letters using a pen made from a turkey feather that he has cut to a calligraphic point with a surgical scalpel. The blessed oak-gall ink flows brilliantly onto the prepared white calfskin (ritually clean goats, sheep or deer are also used).

“You write it with every aspect of your being,” Mr. Yerman said. “There must be a spiritual intention. It is an act of love, the love of God.”

Mr. Yerman, 59, describes himself as a liberal sofer, adding, “I am here to be a guide and educator.” A scribe for two decades after a career on Wall Street, he said he observed tradition in writing the Torah, and wears a skullcap and a tallit, or prayer shawl.

Before he helps congregants write the letters, “I like to have a conversation with them about Torah,” he said. When they hold the quill, “I am not writing it, I am only holding it steady,” he added. “If you move it in the wrong direction, I am holding it, so you are not moving it that way.”

There are hundreds of written and oral traditions that govern the writing of a Torah. It takes painstaking, maniacally precise labor to produce perfectly shaped letters and their minuscule embellishments of ascending and descending lines; the aim is to separate the letters by no more than a hair’s breadth.

Scrolls are reviewed for correctness by rabbis and students, and, increasingly, vetted with computer programs that use optical character recognition for spell-checking. Minor mistakes can be scraped and patched; major mistakes can require the rewriting of whole pages.

Mr. Yerman was also enlisted to inscribe a new Torah for Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue in 1995, in which a few hundred of the synagogue’s several thousand congregants participated, according to Mark H. Heutlinger, the temple’s administrator. “We were criticized for having written an unkosher Torah, since women and children participated,” he said. “That is their feeling, and we are entitled to our feeling.”

Even if all 2,000 members of the Stephen Wise synagogue participate, Mr. Yerman will still write most of the letters himself. As he proceeds in the work, Mr. Yerman leaves the sacred names of God blank in the manuscript until he has a chance to visit a mikvah, or ritual bath, to cleanse himself before filling them in.

New Torahs can cost $18,000 to $70,000 and more. To pay for the project — which is expected to cost more than $100,000, including the scroll and the cost of a yearlong schedule of educational Torah programs — participants are asked to pay for the letter they write: $18 for children, and a minimum of $36 for adults.

Given the synagogue’s honored tradition of argumentativeness, Rabbi Hirsch said, “I am almost embarrassed to say that no one in the congregation is against it, that I’ve heard.”

    Congregation Writes Torah, With Help From a Scribe, NYT, 12.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/nyregion/12torah.html

Televangelist Robertson Backs Giuliani

November 8, 2007
Filed at 2:12 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Televangelist Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, endorsed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday.

''It is my pleasure to announce my support for America's Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, a proven leader who is not afraid of what lies ahead and who will cast a hopeful vision for all Americans,'' Robertson said during a news conference with Giuliani in Washington.

The former New York mayor backs abortion rights and gay rights, positions that put him in conflict with conservative GOP orthodoxy, and has been trying to persuade evangelical conservatives like Robertson to overlook their differences on those issues.

Evangelicals have split in their support for the leading Republican candidates. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a favorite of Christian conservatives who dropped out of the race last month, on Wednesday endorsed fellow Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney recently announced that Paul Weyrich and Bob Jones III were on board with his candidacy.

Asked about the Robertson endorsement, McCain, at a news conference with Brownback in Dubuque, Iowa, said: ''Every once in a while, I'm left speechless. This is one of those times.''

Giuliani is best known for leading New York in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Shortly after 9/11, Robertson released a statement in which he said the attacks occurred because Americans had insulted God and lost the protection of heaven by allowing abortion and ''rampant Internet pornography.''

Robertson made no mention of his differences with Giuliani on social issues in Wednesday's statement.

''Rudy Giuliani took a city that was in decline and considered ungovernable and reduced its violent crime, revitalized its core, dramatically lowered its taxes, cut through a welter of bureaucratic regulations, and did so in the spirit of bipartisanship which is so urgently needed in Washington today,'' Robertson said.

Robertson, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1988, founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Christian Coalition and Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va.

Giuliani said Wednesday he got to know Robertson well on a flight from Israel.

''I came away from it with a better understanding of Pat, what he's all about, what he's trying to accomplish,'' he said. ''And I think he came away with a different impression of me, as well. We see the world, in many ways, the same way. Doesn't mean we agree on everything.''

Also Wednesday, Giuliani said he asked two GOP friends in Congress, Reps. Peter King of New York and Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, to introduce bills to keep states from giving driver's licenses or similar identification to illegal immigrants.

The Democratic front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was criticized after a televised debate last week when she hedged an answer on whether she supported New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's effort to grant licenses to illegal immigrants. Her aides say she generally supports the idea in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform.

------

Associated Press Writer Amy Lorentzen in Dubuque, Iowa, contributed to this report.

    Televangelist Robertson Backs Giuliani, NYT, 8.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Giuliani-Robertson.html

Religious Leaders

Act on Climate Change

November 1, 2007
Filed at 12:41 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A coalition of religious leaders urged Congress on Wednesday to ensure that the poor and most vulnerable are protected from the effects of climate change.

The appeals comes as lawmakers in the coming months plan to consider legislation that would combat global warming.

The representatives from groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Association of Evangelicals, National Council of Churches and the Union for Reform Judaism said Congress should require a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

A compromise bill proposed by Sens. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and John Warner, R-Va., was expected to advance from a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee on Thursday.

The religious leaders planned to press the bill's sponsors ''to strengthen and improve protections for the poor and vulnerable as (the) legislation moves forward,'' said Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.

The church leaders, in a conference call with reporters, outlined their priorities for the legislation. They include helping low-income families deal with the impact of higher energy prices that result from new climate policies and making sure that vulnerable people are shielded from the environmental effects of global warming.

The group said it will seek to have 40 percent of the emissions-related revenues from climate change legislation directed to help such people. The Lieberman-Warner bill calls for a 5 percent allocation for such purposes.

''While not all of us agree on much,'' said the Rev. Michael Livingston, president of the National Council of Churches, ''we do agree on the need to protect God's creation. It has become clear that global warming will have devastating impact on those in poverty around the world.''

The Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, said 84 percent of evangelicals support mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. He said it is not a matter of political persuasion but ''of moral leadership.''

Added Bishop Thomas Wenksi of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: ''Those who contribute least to the problem are likely to suffer the most.''

    Religious Leaders Act on Climate Change, NYT, 1.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Global-Warming-Churches.html

Pagan Holidays

Added to Excused Absences

November 1, 2007
Filed at 3:49 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- When George Fain visits a grave to mark a pagan holiday, she won't have to worry about the work she's missing in her classes at Marshall University.

That's because her absence Thursday on the Samhain holiday has been approved by the Huntington school, which for the first time is recognizing pagan students' desire to be excused from class for religious holidays and festivals.

The university with an enrollment of about 14,000 may be the only school in the country to formally protect pagan students from being penalized for missing work that falls on religious holidays, although others have catchall policies they say protect students of every religious faith.

But as members of the eclectic group of faiths gathered under the term ''pagan'' become more willing to publicly assert their beliefs, other schools may follow Marshall's example, Fain said.

''I think we may have opened a door,'' she said. ''Now that we know we can be protected, that the government will stand behind us and we feel safe, it's going to be more prevalent.''

The decision to allow pagan students to make up missed work from classes on holidays was simply an extension of existing university policy toward members of other religious groups, said Steve Hensley, Marshall's dean of student affairs.

''I don't think there are a lot of students here who have those beliefs, but we want to respect them,'' he said. ''It was really just a matter of looking into it, and deciding what was the right thing.''

Students are responsible for establishing that they are religious believers and that the holiday in question is important to their respective tradition by filing a written request with Hensley. The university is aware of the potential for some students to falsely claim to be pagan, he said.

Paganism experts say they aren't aware of any other university with such a policy. A call to the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers was not returned Wednesday.

Some schools have blanket policies that allow students to be excused for any religious holiday. Lehigh University in Pennsylvania has had such a policy for about eight years, said Lloyd Steffen, a religion professor and the university's chaplain.

Such an accommodation for pagan students is rare in Britain, the birthplace of modern paganism.

''Nobody yet gets any holiday for pagan festivals in the United Kingdom. It seems to be an American original,'' said Ronald Hutton, a history professor at the University of Bristol in England.

By specifically including pagans, Marshall is taking an important step toward recognizing the validity of their beliefs, said Jason Pitzl-Waters, an authority on paganism who edits the Wild Hunt Web site, a blog about religion, politics and culture.

''That's part of the struggle for modern pagans,'' said Pitzl-Waters, a pagan. ''Even though modern paganism has been in public since the 1950s, a lot of people still see it as a rebellious teenage activity, not necessarily something you do as a religious observance.''

That's starting to change, according to Helen Berger, a sociology professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.

She cited the recent decision by the Department of Defense to agree to pagan requests that the five-pointed star -- sometimes called the pentacle -- be allowed on the gravestones of veterans in national cemeteries.

''That was a major win, and it's encouraged them to start looking for areas where they can gain the rights and recognition that other religions have,'' Berger said.

The term ''pagan'' encompasses a diverse array of faiths that can include Celtic, Druid, Native American and various earth-centered and nature-based beliefs.

''What binds us together isn't our theology, necessarily,'' Pitzl-Waters said. ''What binds us together is a sense of communal practice and togetherness.''

Marty Laubach, a sociology professor at Marshall and adviser to a group of pagan students, said he's seen fliers advertising pagan meetings ripped down by others.

But actions like the university's decision on absences encourage pagans to be more vocal, he said.

''You'll have more people now who are willing to say, `These are my beliefs,''' he said. ''The American neopagan movement is a lot stronger than you think.''

------

On the Net:

Marshall University: http://www.marshall.edu

Wild Hunt blog: http://www.wildhunt.org/blog.html

    Pagan Holidays Added to Excused Absences, NYT, 1.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marshall-Pagans.html

$11M Verdict

in Funeral Protesters Case

November 1, 2007
Filed at 4:53 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Members of a fundamentalist Kansas church ordered to pay nearly $11 million in damages to a grieving father smiled as they walked out of the courtroom, vowing that the verdict would not deter them from protesting at military funerals.

''Absolutely, don't you understand this was an act in futility?'' said Shirley Phelps-Roper, whose father founded the Westboro Baptist Church.

Members promised to picket future funerals with placards bearing such slogans as ''Thank God for dead soldiers'' and ''God hates fags.''

They believe that U.S. deaths in the Iraq war are punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality. They say they are entitled to protest at funerals under the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and religion.

Albert Snyder sued the Topeka, Kan., church after a protest last year at the funeral of his son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq. He claimed the protests intruded upon what should have been a private ceremony and sullied his memory of the event.

A jury agreed. On Wednesday, the church and three of its leaders -- Fred Phelps and his two daughters, Phelps-Roper and Rebekah Phelps-Davis -- were found liable for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.

Jurors awarded Snyder $2.9 million in compensatory damages and $8 million in punitive damages.

It's unclear whether Snyder will be able to collect the damages.

The assets of the church and the defendants are less than a million dollars, mainly in homes, cars and retirement accounts, defense attorney Jonathan Katz said. The church has about 75 members and is funded by tithing.

Craig Trebilcock, one of Snyder's lawyers, had asked jurors to question the truthfulness of the defendants' financial documents, one of which show Phelps-Davis having only $306 in the bank. He noted that Phelps-Davis is a practicing attorney, who could afford to travel to spread the church's message.

''Rebekah Phelps-Davis has $306? She must be using Priceline.com. It doesn't make any sense,'' Trebilcock said.

The attorney had urged jurors to award damages that would send a message to the church: ''Do not bring your circus of hate to Maryland again.''

Trebilcock later called the verdict ''Judgment Day for the Westboro Baptist Church.''

''They're always talking about other people's Judgment Day. Well, this is theirs,'' he said.

Snyder sobbed when he heard the verdict, while members of the church greeted the news with tightlipped smiles.

They are confident the award will be overturned on appeal, Phelps said.

''Oh, it will take about five minutes to get that thing reversed,'' he said.

Another of Snyder's attorneys, Sean Summers, said he would tirelessly seek payment of the award.

''We will chase them forever if it takes that long,'' he said.

A number of states have passed laws regarding funeral protests, and Congress has passed a law prohibiting such protests at federal cemeteries. Snyder's lawsuit is believed to be the first filed by the family of a fallen serviceman.

Snyder, of York, Pa., said he hoped other families would consider suing.

''The goal wasn't about the money, it was to set a precedent so other people could do the same thing,'' he said.

Earlier in the day, church members staged a demonstration outside the federal courthouse, while passing motorists honked and shouted insults.

Phelps held a sign emblazoned with ''God is your enemy,'' while Phelps-Roper stood on an American flag as she carried a sign that proclaimed ''God hates fag enablers.'' Members of the group also sang ''God Hates America,'' to the tune of ''God Bless America.''

$11M Verdict in Funeral Protesters Case, NYT, 1.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Funeral-Protests.html