Vatican standoff with France tests pope’s ‘Who am I to judge?’ stance

Laurent Stefanini is seen at the Elysee Palace in Paris April 22, 2015. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer. *Editors: This photo can only be used with RNS-STEFANINI-VATICAN and RNS-FRANCE-VATICAN, transmitted April 24, 2015.

PARIS (RNS) Pope Francis has been hailed for his forward thinking, but — at least according to French news reports — the pontiff has put on the brakes when it comes to a gay French ambassador at the Vatican.

In January, French President Francois Hollande nominated his protocol chief Laurent Stefanini as Vatican envoy to replace outgoing ambassador Bruno Joubert. The pick seemed ideal: 55-year-old Stefanini is described as brilliant and a devout Roman Catholic, who secured support for his candidacy from Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, the archbishop of Paris. He is also a known quantity at the Vatican, having served as a top official at the French embassy to the Holy See a decade ago.

But so far, his nomination has gone nowhere. On Wednesday (April 22), France’s investigative weekly “Le Canard Enchaine” reported Pope Francis met with Stefanini last weekend. The message: The pontiff did not appreciate France’s 2013 same-sex marriage law, nor being pressured into accepting Stefanini’s candidacy.

French media report the standoff is due to Stefanini’s sexual orientation; France’s foreign ministry has only said his private life should be respected.

The pope’s reaction, as reported in the media, appears to contrast starkly with his remarks two years ago in which he said, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”

Another French media report said that the unusual meeting between Stefanini and Francis — a pope rarely gets directly involved in the appointment of an ambassador — was friendly and lasted 40 minutes, and ended with the two men praying together.

The French government has said little about the matter, except to confirm the meeting between the pope and the Vatican nominee took place.

“Nothing has changed,” government spokesman Stephane Le Foll told reporters. “France has proposed a candidate and for the time being we are waiting for the Vatican’s reply, after the usual discussions and review of his candidacy.”

Bernard Kouchner, France’s former foreign minister, has been more outspoken.

“The Vatican seems badly placed to refuse homosexuals,” Kouchner told RTL Radio this week, adding, “but apart from that, I adore Pope Francis.”

YS/AMB END BRYANT

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Activists demand Obama appoint envoy for persecuted Middle Eastern Christians

Men in orange jumpsuits purported to be Egyptian Christians held captive by the Islamic State kneel in front of armed men along a beach said to be near Tripoli, Libya, in this still image from an undated video made available on social media on Feb. 15, 2015. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Social media via Reuters TV
*Editors: This photo is not available for republication.

WASHINGTON (RNS) Beheadings, enslavement, kidnappings and rape plague minority religious communities across the Middle East, and it’s time for President Obama to fill a job created to address their plight, a group of prominent evangelicals, scholars and other religious leaders told the White House.

In the seven months since Congress created a “special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia,” the extreme violence against these groups has only escalated, the religious leaders wrote to Obama on Monday (April 20). Nominate someone, they implored.

“The persecution and even eradication of religious minorities in the Middle East right now is the biggest humanitarian and national security crisis that we face,” said Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore, who serves as president of the denomination’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “There is a moral imperative to do everything we can to advocate for imperiled religious minorities.”

Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore, right, leads a June 9, 2014, panel discussion as David Platt, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, listens. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

The letter, sent under the auspices of the Washington-based International Religious Freedom Roundtable, was signed by Moore and 22 other religious freedom activists, including National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson and the Rev. Joel Hunter of Northland Church in Central Florida. More than 30 groups also signed, including Coptic Solidarity, the Chaldean Community Foundation, International Christian Concern and the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society.

“The Islamic State’s murderous reach has extended beyond Iraq and Syria,” the letter reads, asking Obama to “swiftly” find a candidate for the envoy job. “Doing so would signal to beleaguered communities in the Middle East, and beyond, that America stands with them.”

Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, said violent rampages by the Islamic State, Boko Haram, al-Qaida, al-Shabab and other Muslim extremist groups amount to the ethnic cleansing of Christians. Other religious minorities in the Middle East and elsewhere, including the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan, Baha’is in Iran and Yazidis in Iraq, are also suffering grievously.

The new push echoes earlier calls for Obama to fill the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom position, which had sat vacant for months. Rabbi David Saperstein was confirmed for that post in December.

Even with Saperstein in place, the U.S. also needs a special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia, Shea said, noting the extreme and widespread violence these groups face.

Shea blamed U.S. political and religious leaders for failing to publicly recognize that victims of this violence are targeted because of their religion. Gunmen from al-Shabab hunted down Christian students when they killed 148 people at a Kenyan university on April 2, for example.

A Red Cross worker comforts a mourner as bodies of the students killed in an April 2, 2015, attack on a Kenyan university arrive at the Chiromo Mortuary in Nairobi. The assault by Somali militants killed 148 people.
REUTERS/Herman Kariuki
*Editors: This photo may only be republished with RNS-PERSECUTION-ENVOY, originally transmitted on April 23, 2015. courtesy Reuters This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Obama and other leaders shy away from relevant religious labels, Shea continued, as if “Christians are the oppressors and they can’t be victims.”

Moore said American Christians are trying to do something about violence against Christians and other minorities in the Mideast. “I see Christians praying for the persecuted church more than they ever have. I see Christians contacting their members of Congress and asking for actions on these issues more than I ever have before.”

But “Americans across the board aren’t as alarmed as they should be because I think they’ve grown callous to violence in the Middle East, and some Americans wrongly assume that violence in the Middle East is something we should just expect,” Moore added.

The White House did not have an immediate response to the letter.

KRE/MG END MARKOE

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On eve of anniversary, Turkey’s ‘cultural genocide’ of Armenian history is ongoing

The Armenian Church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar Island, Lake Van in Turkey. Religion News Service photo by Tania Karas This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

YUKARI BAKRACLI, Turkey (RNS) This tiny Kurdish village outside the city of Van in Turkey’s southeast is home to the ruins of a once-famous 11th-century Armenian Christian monastery.

Known to Armenians as Varagavank, it thrived as a place of worship until Turkish forces looted it and murdered parishioners in the mass killing sprees of 1915.

Today, the roof is collapsing. Toppled stone columns lie nearby. And with no signage, there is no acknowledgment it was once a celebrated church for Armenians.

Varagavank is one of hundreds of disappearing physical reminders of a community whose history in present-day Turkey goes back more than 2,000 years. Over the past century, the Turkish government, in writing its own narrative of what Armenians call genocide, has destroyed many Armenian churches, homes, schools and cemeteries or allowed them to fall into ruins. They are sites other countries might consider valuable antiquities.

“The term we use for this is ‘cultural genocide,’” said Vahram Ter-Matevosyan, a historian at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. “We consider what is happening to many churches a continuation of the genocide which started at the beginning of the 20th century. It is painful, utterly painful.”

Historians and visitors have noted holes in the ground of Armenian historical sites throughout Turkey, evidence of widespread rumors that Armenians buried their riches before fleeing.

A closer view of the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar Island, Lake Van. It is one of the only Armenian sites the Turkish government has restored and a major attraction for diaspora Armenians who visit Turkey searching for signs of their heritage. Religion News Service photo by Tania Karas This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Hermine Sayan, an Armenian who lives in Istanbul, said her heart was broken when she visited what remained of a destroyed church in Malatya, a city in eastern Turkey, a few years ago.

“We stood together saying our prayers, and we were crying,” said Sayan, whose grandparents survived the genocide.

On Friday (April 24), Armenians worldwide will commemorate 100 years since almost 1.5 million of their ancestors died in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, in massacres, by starvation or during forced death marches into the Syrian desert.

The date marks a century of fierce disagreement between Armenia and Turkey over what happened that spring. Armenians and their supporters — including many historians, Pope Francis and the European Parliament — say the murders constitute a systemic elimination of their population from eastern Anatolia in present-day Turkey.

But Turkey rejects the genocide label, saying hundreds of thousands of both Turks and Armenians died in battles between Ottoman and Russian forces in World War I. In a move that disappointed Armenians, the White House on Tuesday (April 21) announced that President Barack Obama would not use the word “genocide” to describe the deaths despite his 2008 presidential campaign promise to do so.

Preservation and respect of Armenian history, culture and monuments in Turkey is a critical step toward Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, said George Aghjayan, an Armenian-American from Westminster, Mass., who studies Armenian demographics in Turkey and its environs.

“We have a right to our presence on this land,” said Aghjayan, who plans to visit former Armenian villages and ruined sites in Van this weekend. “It’s where our people were born, and it shouldn’t be devoid of any evidence of their presence.”

Van, located on Lake Van’s picturesque shores, was once the capital of Vaspurakan, the first and biggest kingdom of greater Armenia. Van was also  where, in 1915, Armenians saved thousands of their own when they held back the Ottoman army from city walls for a month. Resistance leaders who survived the siege founded the Armenian republic.

The Van Museum, however, offers a different take on regional history. One exhibit shows the “massacre (of Turks) undertaken by the Armenians during the occupation of Van in 1915 by the Russian troops,” according to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s website. (The museum was damaged in a 2011 earthquake and is being rebuilt.)

Faded frescoes inside the once-famous Armenian Christian Varagavank monastery, built in the 11th century. It is in a Kurdish village and now known as Yedi Kilise, Turkish for “seven churches,” because it used to be an enormous monastery complex. Religion News Service photo by Tania Karas This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Present-day Van is part of unofficial Turkish Kurdistan. No Armenians are left; Turkey’s 60,000 remaining Armenians mainly live in Istanbul. But Van and nearby villages contain what are known as Turkey’s “hidden Armenians,” descendants of women and children who converted to Islam after they were adopted by sympathetic neighbors or forced into marriage. Some are upfront about their origins, said Ferzan Demirtas, a tour guide in Van. But others stay silent, still fearful after a century of living as Kurds or Turks.

Cengiz Aktar, a scholar of Armenian-Turkish relations with the Istanbul Policy Center, argues that the Turkish attitude toward its Armenian minority is shifting. Aktar studies the politics of memory, or the influence of politics in how collective remembrances take shape.

“The real memories are undertaken by Turkish society,” Aktar said, adding that Turkish citizens are increasingly exploring the truth behind what they learned in school.

Turkey’s attempt to rewrite history is evident in Yemislik, another village outside Van, where Turkish officials replaced a former Armenian monastery with a mosque. But Van is perhaps best known for the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar Island in Lake Van. It is one of the only Armenian churches restored by the Turkish government, though it operates as a state museum.

On the eve of its reopening in 2007 after nearly a century of disuse, Turkish officials balked at placing a cross on the church’s dome. They relented after a few years.

So far, Turkish promises to restore other sites have gone unfulfilled, leaving some to ponder whether Armenians of the diaspora should pitch in. Aghjayan, however, questions the logic of asking Armenians to pay for restoration of churches and villages from which their ancestors were displaced.

“What kind of justice is that?” he asked.

YS/MG END KARAS

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Sifting through religious debris in ‘Dig,’ what’s fact and what’s fiction?

(RNS) Trapdoors, secret chambers and mysterious torch-lit beach rituals. The eighth episode of “Dig,” the Holy Land conspiracy thriller that aired Thursday (April 23) on the USA Network, serves up all these classic elements of suspense.

But that heady cocktail comes with a shot of religious history and biblical references that add context to what is already a complex plot involving cloned high priests, murderous rabbis and the cutest little red heifer ever genetically engineered on a Danish farm. Can you hear religion and popular culture go CRASH?

“It can’t all be crazy, though, can it?” Emma Wilson (Alison Sudol) asks the hot FBI agent on “Dig,” Peter Connelly (Jason Isaacs), as they look at end-of-the-world messages left behind by a crazed — and dead — archaeologist.

“The messenger, maybe,” Peter replies. “But not the message.”

Both the bad guys and the good guys descend on a nunnery belonging to a group called the Sisters of Dinah, in search of an antique plaque depicting “the revenge of Dinah.”

The fictional religious order and its equally fictional plaque are derived from the story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah. The Book of Genesis tells how Dinah is kidnapped and raped by Shechem, a rival tribesman. Shechem then asks for Dinah’s hand and says her family can ask any “bride-price” they like from his family.

Jacob’s sons ask for their foreskins.

Shechem and his tribe are circumcised, Dinah is handed over — and three days later, while Shechem and his men are recuperating from the “surgery,” Dinah’s brothers kill them, plunder their loot and steal their sister away. The brothers tell their angry father, “Should he treat our sister as a harlot?”

There is no Catholic order of nuns called the Sisters of Dinah, but there are — as described by evil “Dig” archaeologist Ian Margrove (Richard E. Grant) — religious orders in Jerusalem that date back to the Crusades.

Peter and Golan (Ori Pfeffer), the two supersleuths on “Dig,” visit a university professor who tells them of his delusional colleague who wrote about a treasure hidden under the Temple Mount.

“This was 1988,” the professor says. “His paper fed into the Intifada.”

The professor is referring to the first Palestinian uprising against Israel, which started in 1987 and lasted until the early 1990s. “Intifada” is Arabic for “shaking off” and describes armed resistance by Palestinians who believe Israel wrongfully occupies their land.

During the first Intifada, a group called the Temple Mount Faithful tried to lay a cornerstone atop the Temple Mount, the home of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s most sacred sites. Jews believe that the Temple Mount was where their temple once stood. Muslims believe it is the site where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Temple Mount Faithful resembles the fictional Jerusalem Heritage Center in “Dig” in that both groups want to see the Temple Mount under Jewish control so they can rebuild the Jewish Temple.

Golan goes into the desert to a site called Qumran. What, he wonders, are Rabbi Lev and his accomplices doing there?

Qumran is a real place, a series of caves on the shore of the Dead Sea. It is famously the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a jar by a couple of Bedouin shepherds in 1947.

As Emma Wilson says on “Dig,” Qumran has been inhabited several times. The oldest things found at the site date from the Iron Age — about the eighth century B.C. The Romans are believed to have destroyed the settlement there during the Jewish War of 70 A.D. — the same war chronicled by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish-Roman historian referenced in an earlier episode of “Dig.”

And who lived at Qumran? The Essenes — just as they apparently do in “Dig.” Described in the show as protectors — they are awfully handy with an automatic weapon —  the real Essenes were a monastic sect. Real archaeological digs at Qumran suggest they probably numbered about 200, built a fortress-style tower and likely slept in a ring of caves around it — the same caves where the climax of this episode occurs.

But more relevant to “Dig,” Essene theology divided the world into two camps — the “sons of darkness” and the “sons of light.” Guess which one they were! And the leaders of these two camps were the “angel of darkness” and the “prince of light.” Could the “Dig” character known only as “The Essene” be this prince?

Alert the Essenes — there are only two hours of “Dig” left to find out.

YS/MG END WINSTON

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In Boston, engaging both sides of the church’s debate on gays (ANALYSIS)

At Q conference in Boston, a panel discusses same-sex issues (from he left: Gabe Lyons, Debra Hirsch, Matthew vines, Julie Rodgers, David Gushee, Dan Kimball). – Image credit: Parker Young Photography This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

BOSTON (RNS) Only a few dozen worshippers attend Boston’s Tremont Temple Baptist Church on a typical Sunday, but the historic church was once so prominent that legendary preacher Dwight L. Moody called it “America’s pulpit.”

This week, Tremont’s massive auditorium played host to influence once again when 1,300 Christian leaders gathered for the Q conference to discuss the most pressing issues facing their faith. There was no official theme, but one strand wove its way through multiple presentations and conversations: America’s — and many Christians’ — debate over sexuality.

While at least three other Christian conferences during the past year focused on same-sex debates, this is the only one to bring together both pro-gay speakers and those who oppose gay marriage and same-sex relationships.

“The aim of Q is to create space for learning and conversation, and we think the best way to do that is exposure,” said Q founder Gabe Lyons. “These are conversations that most of America is having, and they are not going away.”

Which is not to say Lyons’ decision was without controversy.

Eric Teetsel, executive director of the Manhattan Declaration project that aims to rally resistance to same-sex marriage, urged Lyons to rescind his invitations to pro-gay panelists, whom he called false prophets professing to be Christians. Owen Strachan, president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, echoed the sentiment and tweeted that he was “shocked that @QIdeas features pro-‘gay-Christianity’ speakers.”

Lyons did not respond publicly to the criticism, but said such positions were rooted in fear.

“Some people are afraid that if those who are theologically progressive are invited, it suggests they hold an equally valid idea,” Lyons said. “We still believe the historic view of sexuality is true, but we are also confident that the trueness of that view can carry its own weight.”

By committing to this sort of dialogue, the Q conference is a microcosm of the larger debate on same-sex issues happening around many kitchen tables in Christian America. These conversations have moved beyond outmoded questions such as “Is homosexuality a choice?” and “Can gay people be made straight through prayer and counseling?” and instead wrestle with biblical interpretation and questions of how LGBT people of faith should live.

But more importantly, the shift in this year’s Q conference reflects the reality that those conversations do not occur in echo chambers of monologue, isolated from those who disagree. They happen between gay and straight people, between traditionalists and progressives, between young and old. Some are maintaining their long-held views, others have changed their minds, and still others aren’t really sure what they believe.

Richard Stearns, president of the humanitarian group World Vision U.S., discussed his organization’s controversial decision to hire people in same-sex relationships and the agency’s abrupt reversal. “World Vision never changed our view of biblical marriages,” he said, but was merely trying to find common ground on a divisive issue.

Even when the speakers weren’t discussing sexuality, they seemed to be discussing sexuality. Andrew Sullivan, a gay writer who formerly blogged at “The Dish,” spoke on how intellectual diversity makes us better people. Gordon College President Michael Lindsay, who sparked controversy when he reaffirmed his school’s conservative stance on homosexuality, delivered a talk titled, “Do We Have to Agree?”

A pre-conference survey found that almost half of those in attendance were church leaders, and 53 percent held graduate degrees. Thirty-one percent self-identified as “conservative,” 8 percent as “liberal,” and 59 percent as either “independent” or “moderate.”

Tension rose during two discussions moderated by Lyons that pitted one side against the other. One explored whether the church’s historical teaching on sexuality was reliable. For this, California pastor Dan Kimball argued that pro-gay Christians were elevating their personal experiences with LGBT friends and family over the clear teaching of Scripture.

On the other side, David Gushee, a prominent evangelical ethicist who recently announced he had changed his mind to become LGBT-affirming, countered that traditional interpretations of relevant passages of Scripture were flawed and amounted to a “toxic body of tradition that bears bad fruit.”

Another panel on “The Church’s Gay Dilemma” featured two Christians who identify as LGBT. Julie Rodgers, a leader among the increasingly visible movement of celibate gay Christians, argued from the right, and Matthew Vines, author of “God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships,” took the opposing side.

While they differed on whether the Bible allows for committed same-sex relationships, they both emphasized the need for Christians to make amends for their historically poor treatment of LGBT persons. Vines said straight people should acknowledge their “history of oppression,” and Rodgers said Christians should “repent of our treatment of gay and lesbian people.”

And on that point, the divided crowd was united, erupting in multiple rounds of applause.

Lyons, whose 2007 best-selling book “unChristian” included research indicating that Christians were perceived as “too political” and “anti-gay,” said he personally believes the Bible prohibits homosexual activity. At Stanford University in 2013, he debated the matter with openly gay Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson.

Lyons said his debate with Robinson taught him about the importance of listening to those on the other side, and inspired his decision to include a range of voices at the Boston conference.

The conversations at Q — both onstage and off — do not mirror the raging debates common on cable news networks, but they more closely resemble the national conversation as it occurs in many homes, workplaces, and churches. And in this way, it may be a model for other Christian organizations who are seeking to engage the same-sex debate.

As Lyons said from the same stage where Frederick Douglass first read the Emancipation Proclamation, “What starts in Boston tends to work its way around the country.”

KRE/AMB END MERRITT

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