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Life-Net Raw |
By Allie Martin, AgapePress
LEWISTON, Pennsylvania (12/17/2002)--A Pennsylvania county is being sued by a church that was denied a tax exemption for a building it owns which is used as a food distribution point.
Several years ago, the Grace Covenant Church in Lewiston began its "Hands of Grace" ministry. As part of that ministry, the church constructed a building on its property which is used to warehouse donated items and to distribute food to needy families. Every month the ministry distributes food to 500-600 needy families. Since 1999, the church has distributed 150 tons of food to the hungry.
The local taxing authority denied tax exemption to the church building because, in their view, the church's activities did not constitute "religious worship."
Eric Stanley with Liberty Counsel is providing legal assistance to the church.
"The taxing authorities believe that this building, which warehouses the foods and which is where people come to get food distributed, is not a place of religious worship," Stanley explains. "The church disagrees -- as a matter of fact, the pastor even quoted James 1:27, which says that religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after widows and orphans in their distress."
So the battle boils down to a disagreement over religious worship, he says. "The reason we filed the lawsuit was because we believe that the government has no right and no ability to decide a tax-exemption case based on a disagreement with a church over what is religious worship. That is the church's province to define."
Liberty Counsel is suing the county on the church's behalf claiming a violation of constitutional rights. Stanley says the legal battle has not hampered the church's food distribution efforts.
See also the original article at AgapePress.
By Nate Johnson, SojoMail
(12/12/2002)--The other day I read an editorial in the Brown University paper discouraging student activism on campus. The headline read, "Less student activism, more getting laid." The argument was that college is too short to spend wrapped up in a movement or cause that will never really change anything. "College isn't about being a soldier in a war for righteousness. It's about learning, stressing, and having too much to drink," the article noted, citing numerous examples of presumably "failed" student protests, sit-ins, and petitions. The closing word of wisdom was a call for student activists to, "relax, grab a beer, and see what's on TV."
I don't know what the answers are all the time. What I do know are countless stories of students making a difference in the world through activism. Here are a few:
· At Harvard University last May, 46 students staged a three- week occupation of the president's office and succeeded in training a national spotlight on the low wages the nation's wealthiest university pays its custodial and food-service workers. The protest - which stirred debate about the living-wage movement in media as diverse as Fox News, Business Week, and The Nation - ended when Harvard promised to pay food-service workers at least $10.32 an hour, although other employees will continue to make considerably less.
· As a result of student protests, the University of Michigan joined the Worker Rights Consortium, which polices the labor practices of university apparel licensees. The move initially prompted Nike to pull out of licensing negotiations with the school, but in January of this year, Nike agreed to reforms and signed a seven-year pact. Just weeks later, however, a consortium audit found Nike was continuing to do business with a Mexican factory that had fired striking workers. Thanks to student pressure, Nike agreed in February to push the factory owners to improve working conditions and reinstate the workers.
· Student protesters forced Yale University and its business partner Bristol-Meyers Squibb (BMS) to relax the patent on Zerit, an AIDS drug developed by Yale scientists that brought BMS $618 million in profits last year. The students collaborated with Doctors Without Borders in an attempt to shame the university into making the drug cheaply available in Africa. It worked: Yale and BMS announced in March that they would allow companies to produce a generic version of the drug, royalty-free.
See also the electronic newsletter in which this article appeared at SojoMail.
By Deborah Frazier, Rocky Mountain News
SAND CREEK, Colorado (11/30/2002)--The Cheyenne and Arapaho prayed Friday with historians and state lawmakers to mark the 138th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre and soothe the restless spirits of those killed.
"I look at the mountains today and I wonder what the Cheyenne and Arapaho were thinking 138 years ago on this day," said Robert Tabor, chairman of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. "There were probably a lot of tears. They were probably scared.
"Today, I hear our little children's laughter. Our people are still here."
More than 150 people listened as tribal elders told the story of Nov. 29, 1864, when Col. John Chivington led a dawn attack in southeastern Colorado on Chief Black Kettle's sleeping camp of about 500 women, children and elderly, killing about 163.
The ceremony dedicated a new plaque under a statue of a Civil War soldier in front of the state Capitol that's part of a monument to veterans of early battles, including the Civil War and the Indian wars.
An old plaque honors the 700 soldiers - mostly volunteer militia - for the Battle of Sand Creek and more than 20 other confrontations in the Indian wars waged after gold was discovered in the West.
The new plaque venerates the Cheyenne and Arapaho that were killed in the camp that flew an American flag given to tribal leaders by President Lincoln in 1863.
"Black Kettle was a chief and it was his duty to care for the widows, orphans and elderly parents of warriors who had been killed," said Laird Cometsevah, a Southern Cheyenne leader whose ancestors died at Sand Creek. "The Arapaho and Cheyenne were told to camp there. It was their land under the 1861 Fort Wise Treaty."
Soldiers tossed infants from bayonet to bayonet, unborn babies were cut from their mother's stomachs and scalped, and sexual organs were sliced off the dead and paraded through Denver, he said.
Letters written by two Army officers who pulled their troops back from the massacre, a congressional inquiry and other historical documents corroborate the long-ignored stories told by Sand Creek survivors disputing the claim that there was a battle.
"History is not a static thing. It teaches us to recognize our mistakes," said Steve Johnson, chairman of the Capitol Building Advisory Committee. "If we fail to recognize our mistakes we repeat our past."
Former state Sen. Bob Martinez, who championed a bill to replace the plaque honoring the soldiers, said that the tribes and David Halaas of the Colorado Historical Society asked him to leave the plaque as evidence of how the massacre was misrepresented, and instead install a new bronze sign that tells the truth.
The new plaque, located under the old tribute, was covered with braided sweet grass used for purification rituals. The inscription describes the massacre and said: "The monument mischaracterized the actual events."
Eugene Black Bear Jr., the liaison between the Cheyenne and Arapaho, said that to the tribes, the massacre on their homeland was akin to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"We are trying to heal. We hope that things will get a lot better in the next 100 years," he said.
The original plaque also praises territorial Gov. John Evans, who ordered the attack. Evans was forced from office after Congress determined the attack was a massacre. Chivington, who was forced to resign from the military, also is honored on the old Sand Creek Memorial.
In 2000, President Clinton created the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. The 1,465-acre ranch where the Indians were killed will be sold on Monday and turned over to the tribes as permanent trust lands.
You can e-mail writer Deborah Frazier or call at (303) 892-5308. See the original article with photo and related story link at Rocky Mountain News. More related links can be seen with the same article at My Two Beads Worth.
By Louise Harbach, Philadelphia Inquirer suburban staff
CAMDEN, New Jersey (11/24/2002)--When a German volunteer group assigned the Rev. Wolfgang Herz-Lane to Camden in 1975, he had a hard time finding the city on the map.
"All I knew about Camden is that it was close to Philadelphia and that I'd be working with children from poor neighborhoods," said Pastor Herz-Lane, dispatched to the city by Action Reconciliation Services for Peace. Then 21, he figured he'd be in Camden with a Lutheran social-services group for only 18 months before returning home to Rottweil, in the Black Forest.
But something unexpected happened: He fell in love with the city. And more than 25 years later, he is still there.
"Camden is unfairly maligned," said Pastor Herz-Lane, Lutheran pastor of the Bridge of Peace Community Church, which he founded two years ago next to the Newton Creek Bridge. The bridge connects Camden's Fairview section, with many white residents, and Morgan Village, which is predominantly African-American-and so the name Bridge of Peace.
"Yes," he said, "there are a lot of negative things about Camden, and that's what most people hear. What they don't hear about is Camden's other face. It's a city of neighborhoods with lots of friendly, caring people."
In another effort to bring those people together, Pastor Herz-lane last month launched a jazz vespers service, to be held the first Sunday of each month.
"It's a new musical adventure in worship and another way to serve a diverse population with a wide variety of musical tastes," said Pastor Herz-Lane, 48. "And I promise not to preach because people are coming to hear music, not to hear me give a sermon."
Next Sunday, keyboardist Jeremy Grenhart of Haddon Heights will perform.
"Wolfgang makes everyone feel welcome," said Grenhart, who likes to play in churches because "it is my way of thanking God for my musical gifts."
Before founding Bridge of Peace, Pastor Herz-Lane was a social worker for a coalition of Lutheran churches providing various services to Camden residents.
After finishing his volunteer work as a young man, he had needed a visa to return to the city he loved. So, after working a year for a Rottweil newspaper, he returned to this country as a student at Rutgers-Camden, studying social work.
Pastor Herz-Lane converted to Lutheranism and worked as a social worker with Lutheran churches in Camden. He went on to become mission director in New Jersey for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America before deciding, in the mid-1990s, to enroll at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and become a Lutheran minister.
"I had grown up as a Catholic, but left the church because it didn't mean much to me anymore," Pastor Herz-Lane said. "When I arrived in Camden, I saw that the churches ... provided the leadership and were involved in people's lives, and I wanted to be a part of that."
Pastor Herz-Lane, who was ordained as a Lutheran minister in 2001, is not the only minister in the family. His wife, Margaret Herz-Lane, is the pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Camden.
His years as a mission coordinator for the Evangelical Lutheran Church prompted Pastor Herz-Lane to start his own church. Bridge of Peace, a mission church supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church, now has more than 100 members. The church had been home to Christ Lutheran Church, which merged with Bethany Lutheran in Gloucester City and Advent Lutheran in Mount Ephraim.
"In many ways, we are at the fault lines of racial separation and cultural division," said Pastor Herz-Lane of Bridge of Peace, which he envisioned as multicultural, straddling the border between Fairview and Morgan Village.
"Here, we lift up the idea that there isn't a black heaven or a white heaven. We want to reflect inclusion that Jesus espoused, something that needs to be taught again."
This article first appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Pastor Herz-Lane and members of his congregation have appeared or starred in several episodes of Life-Net Radio. Apparently the experience inspired them, because now they're broadcasting a radio series of their own, called Bridge Of Peace On Air, which airs Wednesdays at 9pm on WTMR-AM 800. See also the Bridge of Peace Web site.
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