Religion Briefs: Episcopal leaders to meet on gay policy

Episcopal Church leaders will meet Sunday through Thursday to confront demands from overseas Anglican archbishops to roll back the church’s pro-gay policies and create a structure to oversee breakaway conservatives.

The church’s 40-member Executive Council, led by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, will convene in Parsippany, N.J. Under church rules, the panel has the ability to make key decisions between the church’s triennial General Conventions.

It is unclear, however, what - if any - action the Executive Council will take, according to church leaders.

“There’s a lot of debate about that,” Jefferts Schori said Thursday. “It’s really only General Convention that makes policy for the church.”

At a meeting in Tanzania in February, top archbishops from the worldwide Anglican Communion demanded that the Episcopal Church, its U.S. branch, promise to cease consecrating gay bishops and blessing same-sex unions by Sept. 30 or face “consequences.”

The Anglican archbishops also said that the 2.2-million member Episcopal Church should create an alternative structure for its conservative minority, some of whom do not accept the oversight of the church’s more liberal leadership.

In March, U.S. bishops flatly rejected the proposal to create an alternative structure and suggested that the church’s executive council do the same. The bishops will meet again in September to issue their final response.

At a time of controversy within their church, Episcopal leaders are debating just who has the power to speak for the church and answer the Anglican archbishops’ demands.

Jefferts Schori has said that “the incursion into the Episcopal Church from other members of the Anglican Communion” will be on the agenda, according to Episcopal News Service.

The Rev. Ian Douglas, a member of the council, said that the panel can execute decisions made by the General Convention, but under church rules it “can’t interpret and can’t initiate” policy on its own.
Pittsburgh-area church votes to join Evangelical Presbyterians

PITTSBURGH - In a move emblematic of mainline Protestant divisions over sexuality, members of the largest church in the Pittsburgh Presbytery voted to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) and join a smaller, more conservative denomination.

At a congregational meeting, 951 members of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in McCandless Township voted to be affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Fifty-two percent, or 761 members, of the 1,450-member congregation needed to approve the plan.

“We are saddened that Memorial Park members and leaders have elected to separate from the Presbyterian Church,” James Mead, pastor to the Pittsburgh Presbytery, said in a statement. “However, we believe that wrestling with such painful issues is part of God’s redemptive plan for the world.”

Memorial Park church officials said last month that they were concerned about the national denomination’s move away from traditional doctrines concerning the Holy Trinity and the authority of the Bible, and its increasingly liberal views on gay ordination.

Memorial Park church officials have said their issue isn’t with the presbytery, a regional body of churches, but the national church.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is among several Protestant denominations embroiled in a bitter debate between conservatives and liberals over what role gays should have in their churches. The national church’s highest court ruled in 2000 that Presbyterian churches may bless same-sex unions as long as they don’t equate the relationships with marriage.
Church’s gospel-music program in blackface called a ‘mockery’

GASTONIA, N.C. - Local black leaders are decrying a recent performance by three white men at a church who wore blackface while pantomiming traditional black hymns.

The performance at Pilgrim Baptist Church was meant to honor gospel-music history, and was not meant to offend anyone, according to the Rev. Thomas Holbrooks Jr., the pastor at the church.

“It was in no way making fun,” Holbrooks said. “Lord knows we love the old spirituals they sing. That’s why they did it.”

The church should have honored black music without the makeup, said David Moore, the president of the nonprofit Gaston County Organization for Community Concerns, which seeks to improve the quality of life for minorities.

“I have no problem with anyone that wants to sing black music, but to pretend that you’re a black person when you’re not a black person seems to be more of a mockery than a celebration,” Moore said. “It’s misguided at this time in our culture, in our society.”

Gaston County NAACP president Clyde Walker voiced similar concerns.

Church members were told to dress like Americans in the 19th century for the skit held at the church’s mother-daughter banquet on the weekend before Mother’s Day, said Teresa Holbrooks, the pastor’s wife. The black makeup was her idea, she said.
Boston cardinal invites pope to visit city on trip to U.S.

BOSTON - Cardinal Sean O’Malley of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has invited Pope Benedict XVI to visit the city during the pope’s planned U.S. trip next year, a gesture O’Malley says will help mend wounds from the clergy sexual-abuse crisis.

O’Malley said he has invited the pope to visit the heavily Catholic city next year, which marks the bicentennial of the Boston Archdiocese. The pope is already planning to make a trip to the United Nations in New York, and O’Malley says he hopes that the pope can stop in Boston during the same trip. O’Malley said that an appearance by the pope could help heal some of the lingering wounds for the city at the heart of the clergy sexual-abuse scandal.

“Given everything Boston has been through, having the Holy Father come, I think, would be a great joy and a sense of affirmation to us as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of our church,” O’Malley told the Boston Sunday Globe.

Boston is the fourth-largest diocese in the country, with an estimated 2 million Catholics. The Vatican has confirmed plans by the pope to visit the United Nations in 2008 but hasn’t set a date for the trip. Demand for the pope is great, with other areas in the country and Canada requesting that he make a visit.
Muslim girls in Minnesota have their own high-school prom

MINNEAPOLIS - It was a prom for girls only, where more than 100 Muslim teenagers could take off their headscarves, let loose and dance, experiencing an American rite of passage without violating Islamic culture and values.

The Saturday night PROM - Party foR Only Muslimahs, or Muslim girls - at the University of Minnesota’s Coffman Memorial Union provided a chance for the girls to participate in a significant high-school experience.

Many Muslim girls don’t attend their high-school prom because they aren’t allowed to dance with the opposite sex, and prom dresses can be too revealing for some Muslim girls to wear in public.

“I’d hate to miss this,” said Sabrina Wazwaz, 15, a freshman who goes to Twin Cities Academy in St. Paul, Minn. “I think it’s really nice how they thought of the Muslim girls who can’t go to the American prom, so they made this for us.”

“I thought it was an awesome idea,” said Sagirah Shahid, 18, one of the main organizers and president of the Muslim Youth of Minnesota.

Shahid is a senior at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis.