News from the North American Scene: November 08, 1993

ABORTION

Bishop Threatens Tax Protest

A Roman Catholic bishop says he will not “voluntarily pay taxes to this government if it uses tax money to subsidize abortions” through national health care. “Better for us … to obey God than men and women when they try to force us to pay for killing human life in the womb.” Bishop Victor Balke of Crookston, Minnesota, wrote in his diocesan newspaper.

“If the President’s health care plan … is so passed that it forces you and me to pay for abortions,” Balke wrote, “I hope there’s a widespread refusal to cooperate.” Balke also withheld taxes to protest the Vietnam War, though the government simply took the money from his bank account.

HOMOSEXUALITY

Adoption Plans Upset Mother

An Oregon judge has rejected a mother’s attempt to stop the adoption of her three-year-old son. Megan Lucas gave up her son a year ago but reconsidered after learning that a homosexual couple may adopt him.

Lucas had a year to change her mind about the adoption, but missed the deadline by a day. She says state officials coerced her into giving up her son, and in September a judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the adoption by two homosexuals who are licensed to give foster care. Eleven days later, the court refused to renew the injunction. Lucas, unmarried when the boy was born, now is married to another man. She says she and her husband can provide a stable home, and she claims she is not trying to stop the adoption just because homosexuals are involved.

WHITE HOUSE

SBC Leaders Meet Clinton

Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore met with four Southern Baptist ministers in September in the first meeting between the President and Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders since the denomination publicly opposed the President’s domestic policies in June. The White House meeting, which participants say was frank and cordial, included discussion on abortion, the environment, and homosexuality.

Clinton, a Southern Baptist, explained his positions, and the pastors related their views on biblical authority. SBC president Ed Young, one of the ministers, says the meeting was a “wonderful time of praying together, sharing together” with the discussion perhaps laying the groundwork for future communication. Young, who went jogging with the President the next morning, also presented Bibles to Clinton and his family.

CHURCH ATTENDANCE

Study Disputes Accepted Figures

A new study challenges the long-standing view that 40 percent of Americans are devoted churchgoers. Americans attend church half as often as they have been telling Gallup Poll researchers, according to a controversial new study to be published in the December issue of the American Sociological Review.

“What the Polls Don’t Show: A Closer Look at U.S. Church Attendance” measures attendance for Protestants in Ashtabula County, Ohio, and for Catholics in 18 dioceses across the country. The researchers found only 19.6 percent of Protestants and about 28 percent of Catholics attended church during an average week.

The researchers went beyond the Gallup practice of asking people if they attended church; instead, they attempted to count the actual numbers of people in the pews. The authors of the report say that further study is needed to determine if their results are credible. In the meantime, the Gallup organization is examining the new results, but stands by its own findings.

SALVATION ARMY

Collection Boxes Trashed, Retired

In a triumph of the selfish over the selfless, years of collection-box abuses have caused the Salvation Army to remove 450 boxes from shopping-center parking lots in ten Midwestern states.

Maj. Israel Velazquez says more than $1 million was spent last year to remove junk from the bins. “I don’t think people understand how much of it was trash,” says Velazquez. In Detroit, up to two-thirds of the daily pickup consisted of garbage.

The charitable organization also had to contend with people taking choice items out of the boxes, sometimes leaving the less desirable goods strewn across parking lots. The Salvation Army will continue to provide home pickups to make up for the loss of the accessible donation boxes. The organization also is experimenting with drop-offs at their thrift stores and attended trailers in selected parking lots. The Salvation Army had already removed donation bins in the South and West.

SOUTHERN BAPTISTS

‘Unsaved’ Tally Draws Criticism

As many as 180 million Americans may be unsaved, according to the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board Evangelism Index. The study, based on 1990 population and church membership data, highlights areas with concentrations of non-Christians—whether churched or unchurched—for evangelism. However, the report created a controversy in the media, which accused Baptists of being judgmental.

“I’m not surprised that people are upset, because it flies in the face of political correctness and universalism,” says Martin King, public relations director for the Home Mission Board in Atlanta. He says the controversy was also a blessing, creating a national discussion on the meaning of salvation.

King says the areas of greatest evangelism potential appear to be the West Coast—particularly Southern California—and the Northeast, areas that have large cities, many people unaffiliated with any church, and relatively few Southern Baptists.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

In Brief

The culture wars continue in Georgia. In August, Cobb County commissioners passed a law declaring homosexuality incompatible with community standards and cut off $120,000 in arts funding (CT, Oct. 4, 1993, p. 46). Homosexual groups responded by launching a boycott to persuade businesses not to locate in the county or hold conventions there. The latest salvo has been fired by a primarily conservative Christian group, Consumers for Cobb, which is on a nationwide “buycott” campaign to drum up support for hotels, restaurants, and other businesses.

• Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson is appealing a ruling by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) that he must repay nearly $400,000 in connection with his 1988 presidential campaign. The FEC ordered the broadcaster to pay $280,794 to the U.S. Treasury for exceeding spending limits and using public money for unqualified expenses. He also has been told to repay $105,635 to news organizations because of overbilling for air travel.

• The New York Public Library is sponsoring an exhibit of a dozen major Dead Sea Scrolls fragments and related artifacts, on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority through January 8. Nearly 200 items are part of the free display, which depicts the world in which the scrolls were created, examines the scrolls as texts, and tells details of their discovery, interpretation, access, and preservation.

• Officially sanctioned papal merchandising in connection with Pope John Paul II’s August trip to Denver included coffee mugs, T-shirts, and even “pope soap on a rope.” But one of the most enterprising entrepreneurs is Dennis Bylina, 46, of Albuquerque, who bought the white carpet on which John Paul stood to say Mass at Cherry Creek State Park. Bylina is selling pieces for $3 per square inch.

• A cult deprogrammer who abducted the wrong woman has received a seven-year, three-month prison term. Federal Judge T. S. Ellis sentenced Galen Kelly of Alexandria, Virginia, saying, “It is never okay to kidnap an adult child.” Kelly mistakenly abducted Debra Dobkowski of Washington, D.C. He had intended to take her roommate, who belonged to a group called Circle of Friends.

• Lutheran Bishop Lyle Miller, who calls his Northern California-Nevada district “the most polarized in the country on the gay-lesbian issue,” will leave his post next spring, a year early. Miller, 57, has felt pressure since he disciplined two San Francisco congregations that hired homosexual pastors in 1989.

• The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has filed suit against the state’s Division of Taxation, claiming that a state law providing a sales-tax exemption for Bibles violates the First Amendment ban on government endorsement of religion. After a state supreme court ruling last year declaring the exemption illegal, the tax division urged bookstores to start taxing Bibles. Some bookstores are taxing Bibles; others are not. However, a state law remains on the books exempting “canonized Scripture” from taxation.

• Muriel B. Dennis, 79, cofounder of Good News Publishers and Crossway Books in Wheaton, Illinois, died September 30 following complications from surgery. She and her husband, Clyde, who died in 1962, founded Good News in 1938 with $20. She became president in 1963 and board chairman in 1987.

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