Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 15, 1992 TAG: 9202150055
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
FOOD DRIVE FOR RUSSIA STARTED BY METHODISTS
Food drive for Russia started by MethodistsUnited Methodists who live west of the New River in the Holston Conference are engaged in an emergency drive to send food to Russia.
On Thursday and again on March 19 in Wytheville, a truck will pick up boxes of 36 pounds of staple foods, which have been donated by church members. Some food already has reached Russia, according to a news release from conference headquarters in Johnson City, Tenn. After leaving several collection points from Chattanooga, Tenn., to Southwest Virginia, the boxes are trucked to a Maryland center to be shipped on to Moscow.
Food shipments will continue at least through March. People who wish to prepare a food box may call (615) 928-2156. - Staff
Magazine features Christian centers
Five Christian education resource centers in Western Virginia are featured in the current issues of "Bridges," a quarterly publication of the Virginia Council of Churches.
They are the Bishop Marmion Resource Center run by Episcopalians and the Peaks Presbytery Resource Center, both in Roanoke; offices in the Abingdon Presbytery headquarters; and the Disciples of Christ Regional Library and the Peaks Presbytery Center, both in Lynchburg.
Resource centers are libraries of books, videos and display materials adaptable for religious education of most faiths. Each center is staffed by a director who can provide programs on contemporary theological and ethical issues. - Staff
Coalition officials to lobby for inmates
Leaders of the new Interfaith Action for Humane Corrections project, an advocacy group supported by the Virginia Council of Churches, has announced its plans to lobby Virginia General Assembly members.
The coalition says that too many people in Virginia prisons receive no vocational training, drug abuse counseling or other help to allow them to go straight when released. Fear of violence from ex-inmates keeps Virginians from seeing any solution except long-term incarceration, a statement from the interfaith group in Richmond says. It adds that many non-violent law-breakers do not need costly years behind bars. - Staff
Seminar in Roanoke to focus on spirituality
A seminar to promote spirituality is scheduled Feb. 28-March 1 at Holiday Inn-Airport in Roanoke. Peter Leach-Lewis will be the leader of the program sponsored by the Foundation for Higher Spiritual Learning of Centreville. For more information, call 381-0840 or 631-1455.
- Staff
Bush gets plan to resolve Golan Heights dispute
NEW YORK - A novel proposal for resolving the seemingly unsolvable Israeli-Syrian dispute over the Golan Heights has been presented to President Bush's advisers by an elderly American Jewish leader-businessman, a spokesman says.
The Golan Heights plateau, about 40 miles long and 15 miles wide along Israel's northern border, was seized by Israel from Syria in the 1967 six-day war.
The plan, devised by Donald Flamm, 91-year-old real estate and broadcast executive, and board member of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, would turn the area over to a joint Syrian-Israel-U.N. corporation for development as a cultural-educational center.
"When people plan, work and play together, the very thought of antagonism" would vanish, says Flamm, now of Palm Beach, Fla. He also suggests including an airport and Disneyland-type amusement park, attracting income and visitors. - Associated Press
President criticized for Haitian repatriation
SAN DIEGO - Fifty national and regional executives of the United Church of Christ have telegraphed President Bush, condemning the forced repatriation of Haitians and suggesting racial discrimination is involved.
They said "many lives may be at stake."
In Washington, the Rev. Richard Ryscavage, head of the U.S. Catholic Conference Migration and Refugee service, termed the forced repatriation "morally reprehensible" and asked that the refugees be turned over to the church for resettlement in this country.
"Give us these people," he urged. "Don't force them back." - Associated Press
Religious leaders ask anti-pornography stand
VATICAN CITY - A group of 19 U.S. religious leaders and Vatican officials have appealed to "people of faith and good will throughout the world to stand against" the "pervasive evil" of pornography.
The group of U.S. Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Mormon church leaders, including officials of the National Council of Churches and National Association of Evangelicals, met with Pope John Paul II about the issue.
He commended religious leaders for standing together about "one of the great social ills of our time."
The group represented the Religious Alliance Against Pornography, co-chaired by the Rev. Jerry Kirk, a Presbyterian minister of Cincinnati, and Catholic Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.
Their joint declaration with Vatican officials emphasized "the degradation that all pornography inflicts" both on those who produce it and "on those who are desensitized or destroyed through its consumption."
- Associated Press
Briefly . . .
In Nashville, Tenn., Southern Baptist headquarters reports that membership rose 1.3 percent in 1991 to 15,238,283. The number of congregations increased by 247 to 38,221 . . . in New York, a research center of the Graduate School of the City University of New York is launching a nationwide project to analyze religion among Latin Americans in the United States . . . in Evanston, Ill., The United Methodist Church reports that its congregations gave $118.5 million for church programs in 1991, more than in any previous year despite the lingering recession. - Associated Press