Pick-and-Choose Piety Makes Enemies

Ed. Interesting article from Rabbi Daniel Lapin that touches on our ongoing discussion of poverty but from a Jewish perspective.

Toward Tradition Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Heading an organization whose entire purpose is to promote friendship and mutual respect between Jews and Christians, egregious assaults on this friendship really bother me. As I reported last week, it gives me little pleasure to admit that most of these assaults come from my side of the fence. Well, here we go again.

In Bellevue, Washington, just a few miles from my home, a Jewish Reform temple has been upsetting its neighbors by insisting on hosting an encampment of homeless people on its property. Fearful neighbors in this upper middle class enclave of young families point to countless offenses, ranging from assault and relieving in public to drug possession, perpetrated by this group of homeless during their earlier sojourn on the grounds of a church in a neighboring city.
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Christians Oppressed

Article available seven days only.

Wall Street Journal SAAD EDDIN IBRAHIM November 18, 2005

The Second International Coptic Conference, convening this week in Washington, comes amid Egypt’s parliamentary elections and heightened American and international attention to the democratic advances in the Arab world’s most populous country. Often overlooked is the fact that Egypt’s population of nearly 75 million includes the Middle East’s largest Christian minority, over seven million, the vast majority of whom are members of the Coptic Orthodox Church and have in the last half-century experienced institutionalized discrimination that renders them little more than second-class citizens.
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Lenin should be buried – Russian Orthodox Church

2005.11.15 Interfax:

Moscow, November 15, Interfax – The Russian Orthodox Church wants Vladimir Lenin’s remains buried.

“Lenin should be buried, because the idea of mummification is beyond the realm of Russian cultural and religious traditions,” Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad Kirill, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s foreign relations department, said at a press conference at Interfax on Tuesday in Moscow.

“This is an artificial phenomenon with a strange mysticism,” he said.

“Lenin’s burial need not set society ablaze, bring protesters out into the streets, create tensions between a part of population and the authorities or hamper the process of society consolidation, which – disregarding the radicals’ position – is underway with God’s help,” the metropolitan said.

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Alexy II warns clerics, believers against apocalyptic hysteria

MOSCOW, November 14 (Itar-Tass) – It is highly desirable for the Christian Church to avoid two extremities, one of which is succumbing to the laws of the secular world and the other is plunging into apocalyptic hysteria, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Alexy II said Monday in a speech at a
major international theological conference.

The title of the conference, Eschatological Teachings of the Church, indicates that it is entirely focused on eschatology, or the complex of Christian theories about “last things,” including the end of the world.

Teachings in that area of theology have always intensively attracted the minds of theologians and clerics, on the one hand, and secular scholars, on the other, sources at Moscow Patriarchate’ press center said.
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Is Paris Burning Yet?

Townhall.com Charles Colson

Commentators have been busily trying to explain the weeks of violence that have turned French cities into war zones. Some say it’s a result of high rates of unemployment among youth. Others suggested it is France’s fault for failing to assimilate the children of its mostly Islamic immigrants. Now, while true in part, these are only symptoms of a much deeper problem: France’s loss of moral and cultural vitality.

The unemployment rate among young immigrant men is 40 percent, as nearly every report notes. But no one asks why there is such joblessness. The answer is the economic system that, as writer Elizabeth Eaves puts it, “is eating [France’s] young.”
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NCC Places Emphasis on Orthodox Church during Assembly

Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2005 Posted: 5:20:31PM EST

Delegates to the 55th National Council of Churches (NCC) General Assembly nominated an Orthodox bishop as president-elect and reconfirmed the need to strengthen ties with Orthodox churches within the Council.

Bishop Vicken Aykazian, a Turkish-born priest who represents the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America in Washington, was nominated on Tuesday – the first day of the Nov. 8-10 General Assembly in Hunt Valley, Md. If confirmed, he will serve for two years as president-elect and be automatically confirmed as president for the next term.

Also on Tuesday, former NCC president Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky of the Orthodox Church in America encouraged members to become “better acquainted with one another to avoid misrepresentation and miscommunication.
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Liberal Coalition Is Making Plans to Take Fight Beyond Abortion

Ed. The “Borking” of Judge Alito takes shape.

New York Times DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 – A coalition of liberal groups is preparing a national television advertising campaign against the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. that seeks to move the debate over his selection beyond abortion rights and focus instead on subjects like police searches and employment discrimination, several leaders of the coalition said.

The possibility that Judge Alito could vote to narrow abortion rights has dominated discussion among both supporters and opponents of his nomination. But Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice and one of the leaders of the coalition, said a poll commissioned by her organization showed the potential to attack Judge Alito on aspects of his record that had received less attention.
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Religions target female foeticide

By Geeta Pandey
BBC News, Haryana

A caravan of 25 vehicles and 200 people has been criss-crossing five northern and western states of India for the past 10 days.

The travellers are on a mission. They are campaigning against female foeticide, which has resulted in a gender imbalance in some parts of the country.

The campaign is being led by well-known religious leader and social activist, Swami Agnivesh.

“There’s no other form of violence that’s more painful, more abhorrent, more shameful,” declares Swami Agnivesh.
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Conservative Episcopalians Warn Church That It Must Change Course or Face Split

New York Times NEELA BANERJEE November 12, 2005

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 11 – Conservative leaders of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. and their Anglican counterparts from overseas intensified their warnings Friday about the possibility of a schism in the Anglican Communion if the Episcopal Church did not renounce the consecration of gay bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions.

About 2,400 Episcopal Church and Anglican bishops, clergy members and lay leaders from around the world gathered here Thursday for a three-day show of solidarity in preparation for a general convention of the Episcopal Church next June in Columbus, Ohio.

While Episcopal and Anglican conservatives have warned before of the possibility of a split in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion over these issues, powerful primates of national and regional Anglican churches from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean said Friday that a break was all but inevitable if the Episcopal Church did not vote to change course at the Columbus meeting.
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