The "conservative case" for same-sex marriage collapses. by Stanley Kurtz 02/02/2004 MARRIAGE IS SLOWLY DYING IN SCANDINAVIA. A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood. The Nordic family pattern--including gay marriage--is spreading across Europe. And by looking closely at it we can answer the key empirical question underlying the gay marriage debate. Will same-sex marriage undermine the institution of marriage? It already has. More precisely, it has further undermined the institution. The separation of marriage from parenthood was increasing; gay marriage has widened the separation. Out-of-wedlock birthrates were rising; gay marriage has added to the factors pushing those rates higher. Instead of encouraging a society-wide return to marriage, Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable. This is not how the situation has been portrayed by prominent gay marriage advocates journalist Andrew Sullivan and Yale law professor William Eskridge Jr. Sullivan and Eskridge have made much of an unpublished study of Danish same-sex registered partnerships by Darren Spedale, an independent researcher with an undergraduate degree who visited Denmark in 1996 on a Fulbright scholarship. In 1989, Denmark had legalized de facto gay marriage (Norway followed in 1993 and Sweden in 1994). Drawing on Spedale, Sullivan and Eskridge cite evidence that since then, marriage has strengthened. Spedale reported that in the six years following the establishment of registered partnerships in Denmark (1990-1996), heterosexual marriage rates climbed by 10 percent, while heterosexual divorce rates declined by 12 percent. Writing in the McGeorge Law Review, Eskridge claimed that Spedale's study had exposed the "hysteria and irresponsibility" of those who predicted gay marriage would undermine marriage. Andrew Sullivan's Spedale-inspired piece was subtitled, "The case against same-sex marriage crumbles." Yet the half-page statistical analysis of heterosexual marriage in Darren Spedale's unpublished paper doesn't begin to get at the truth about the decline of marriage in Scandinavia during the nineties. Scandinavian marriage is now so weak that statistics on marriage and divorce no longer mean what they used to. Take divorce. It's true that in Denmark, as elsewhere in Scandinavia, divorce numbers looked better in the nineties. But that's because the pool of married people has been shrinking for some time. You can't divorce without first getting married. Moreover, a closer look at Danish divorce in the post-gay marriage decade reveals disturbing trends. Many Danes have stopped holding off divorce until their kids are grown. And Denmark in the nineties saw a 25 percent increase in cohabiting couples with children. With fewer parents marrying, what used to show up in statistical tables as early divorce is now the unrecorded breakup of a cohabiting couple with children. What about Spedale's report that the Danish marriage rate increased 10 percent from 1990 to 1996? Again, the news only appears to be good. First, there is no trend. Eurostat's just-released marriage rates for 2001 show declines in Sweden and Denmark (Norway hasn't reported). Second, marriage statistics in societies with very low rates (Sweden registered the lowest marriage rate in recorded history in 1997) must be carefully parsed. In his study of the Norwegian family in the nineties, for example, Christer Hyggen shows that a small increase in Norway's marriage rate over the past decade has more to do with the institution's decline than with any renaissance. Much of the increase in Norway's marriage rate is driven by older couples "catching up." These couples belong to the first generation that accepts rearing the first born child out of wedlock. As they bear second children, some finally get married. (And even this tendency to marry at the birth of a second child is weakening.) As for the rest of the increase in the Norwegian marriage rate, it is largely attributable to remarriage among the large number of divorced. Spedale's report of lower divorce rates and higher marriage rates in post-gay marriage Denmark is thus misleading. Marriage is now so weak in Scandinavia that shifts in these rates no longer mean what they would in America. In Scandinavian demography, what counts is the out-of-wedlock birthrate, and the family dissolution rate. The family dissolution rate is different from the divorce rate. Because so many Scandinavians now rear children outside of marriage, divorce rates are unreliable measures of family weakness. Instead, we need to know the rate at which parents (married or not) split up. Precise statistics on family dissolution are unfortunately rare. Yet the studies that have been done show that throughout Scandinavia (and the West) cohabiting couples with children break up at two to three times the rate of married parents. So rising rates of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birth stand as proxy for rising rates of family dissolution. By that measure, Scandinavian family dissolution has only been worsening. Between 1990 and 2000, Norway's out-of-wedlock birthrate rose from 39 to 50 percent, while Sweden's rose from 47 to 55 percent. In Denmark out-of-wedlock births stayed level during the nineties (beginning at 46 percent and ending at 45 percent). But the leveling off seems to be a function of a slight increase in fertility among older couples, who marry only after multiple births (if they don't break up first). That shift masks the 25 percent increase during the nineties in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood among Danish couples (many of them young). About 60 percent of first born children in Denmark now have unmarried parents. The rise of fragile families based on cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbearing means that during the nineties, the total rate of family dissolution in Scandinavia significantly increased. Scandinavia's out-of-wedlock birthrates may have risen more rapidly in the seventies, when marriage began its slide. But the push of that rate past the 50 percent mark during the nineties was in many ways more disturbing. Growth in the out-of-wedlock birthrate is limited by the tendency of parents to marry after a couple of births, and also by the persistence of relatively conservative and religious districts. So as out-of-wedlock childbearing pushes beyond 50 percent, it is reaching the toughest areas of cultural resistance. The most important trend of the post-gay marriage decade may be the erosion of the tendency to marry at the birth of a second child. Once even that marker disappears, the path to the complete disappearance of marriage is open. And now that married parenthood has become a minority phenomenon, it has lost the critical mass required to have socially normative force. As Danish sociologists Wehner, Kambskard, and Abrahamson describe it, in the wake of the changes of the nineties, "Marriage is no longer a precondition for settling a family--neither legally nor normatively. . . . What defines and makes the foundation of the Danish family can be said to have moved from marriage to parenthood." So the highly touted half-page of analysis from an unpublished paper that supposedly helps validate the "conservative case" for gay marriage--i.e., that it will encourage stable marriage for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike--does no such thing. Marriage in Scandinavia is in deep decline, with children shouldering the burden of rising rates of family dissolution. And the mainspring of the decline--an increasingly sharp separation between marriage and parenthood--can be linked to gay marriage. To see this, we need to understand why marriage is in trouble in Scandinavia to begin with. SCANDINAVIA has long been a bellwether of family change. Scholars take the Swedish experience as a prototype for family developments that will, or could, spread throughout the world. So let's have a look at the decline of Swedish marriage. In Sweden, as elsewhere, the sixties brought contraception, abortion, and growing individualism. Sex was separated from procreation, reducing the need for "shotgun weddings." These changes, along with the movement of women into the workforce, enabled and encouraged people to marry at later ages. With married couples putting off parenthood, early divorce had fewer consequences for children. That weakened the taboo against divorce. Since young couples were putting off children, the next step was to dispense with marriage and cohabit until children were desired. Americans have lived through this transformation. The Swedes have simply drawn the final conclusion: If we've come so far without marriage, why marry at all? Our love is what matters, not a piece of paper. Why should children change that? Two things prompted the Swedes to take this extra step--the welfare state and cultural attitudes. No Western economy has a higher percentage of public employees, public expenditures--or higher tax rates--than Sweden. The massive Swedish welfare state has largely displaced the family as provider. By guaranteeing jobs and income to every citizen (even children), the welfare state renders each individual independent. It's easier to divorce your spouse when the state will support you instead. The taxes necessary to support the welfare state have had an enormous impact on the family. With taxes so high, women must work. This reduces the time available for child rearing, thus encouraging the expansion of a day-care system that takes a large part in raising nearly all Swedish children over age one. Here is at least a partial realization of Simone de Beauvoir's dream of an enforced androgyny that pushes women from the home by turning children over to the state. Yet the Swedish welfare state may encourage traditionalism in one respect. The lone teen pregnancies common in the British and American underclass are rare in Sweden, which has no underclass to speak of. Even when Swedish couples bear a child out of wedlock, they tend to reside together when the child is born. Strong state enforcement of child support is another factor discouraging single motherhood by teens. Whatever the causes, the discouragement of lone motherhood is a short-term effect. Ultimately, mothers and fathers can get along financially alone. So children born out of wedlock are raised, initially, by two cohabiting parents, many of whom later break up. There are also cultural-ideological causes of Swedish family decline. Even more than in the United States, radical feminist and socialist ideas pervade the universities and the media. Many Scandinavian social scientists see marriage as a barrier to full equality between the sexes, and would not be sorry to see marriage replaced by unmarried cohabitation. A related cultural-ideological agent of marital decline is secularism. Sweden is probably the most secular country in the world. Secular social scientists (most of them quite radical) have largely replaced clerics as arbiters of public morality. Swedes themselves link the decline of marriage to secularism. And many studies confirm that, throughout the West, religiosity is associated with institutionally strong marriage, while heightened secularism is correlated with a weakening of marriage. Scholars have long suggested that the relatively thin Christianization of the Nordic countries explains a lot about why the decline of marriage in Scandinavia is a decade ahead of the rest of the West. Are Scandinavians concerned about rising out-of-wedlock births, the decline of marriage, and ever-rising rates of family dissolution? No, and yes. For over 15 years, an American outsider, Rutgers University sociologist David Popenoe, has played Cassandra on these issues. Popenoe's 1988 book, "Disturbing the Nest," is still the definitive treatment of Scandinavian family change and its meaning for the Western world. Popenoe is no toe-the-line conservative. He has praise for the Swedish welfare state, and criticizes American opposition to some child welfare programs. Yet Popenoe has documented the slow motion collapse of the Swedish family, and emphasized the link between Swedish family decline and welfare policy. For years, Popenoe's was a lone voice. Yet by the end of the nineties, the problem was too obvious to ignore. In 2000, Danish sociologist Mai Heide Ottosen published a study, "Samboskab, Aegteskab og Foraeldrebrud" ("Cohabitation, Marriage and Parental Breakup"), which confirmed the increased risk of family dissolution to children of unmarried parents, and gently chided Scandinavian social scientists for ignoring the "quiet revolution" of out-of-wedlock parenting. Despite the reluctance of Scandinavian social scientists to study the consequences of family dissolution for children, we do have an excellent study that followed the life experiences of all children born in Stockholm in 1953. (Not coincidentally, the research was conducted by a British scholar, Duncan W.G. Timms.) That study found that regardless of income or social status, parental breakup had negative effects on children's mental health. Boys living with single, separated, or divorced mothers had particularly high rates of impairment in adolescence. An important 2003 study by Gunilla Ringbäck Weitoft, et al. found that children of single parents in Sweden have more than double the rates of mortality, severe morbidity, and injury of children in two parent households. This held true after controlling for a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic circumstances. THE DECLINE OF MARRIAGE and the rise of unstable cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbirth are not confined to Scandinavia. The Scandinavian welfare state aggravates these problems. Yet none of the forces weakening marriage there are unique to the region. Contraception, abortion, women in the workforce, spreading secularism, ascendant individualism, and a substantial welfare state are found in every Western country. That is why the Nordic pattern is spreading. Yet the pattern is spreading unevenly. And scholars agree that cultural tradition plays a central role in determining whether a given country moves toward the Nordic family system. Religion is a key variable. A 2002 study by the Max Planck Institute, for example, concluded that countries with the lowest rates of family dissolution and out-of-wedlock births are "strongly dominated by the Catholic confession." The same study found that in countries with high levels of family dissolution, religion in general, and Catholicism in particular, had little influence. British demographer Kathleen Kiernan, the acknowledged authority on the spread of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births across Europe, divides the continent into three zones. The Nordic countries are the leaders in cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births. They are followed by a middle group that includes the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, and Germany. Until recently, France was a member of this middle group, but France's rising out-of-wedlock birthrate has moved it into the Nordic category. North American rates of cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birth put the United States and Canada into this middle group. Most resistant to cohabitation, family dissolution, and out-of-wedlock births are the southern European countries of Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, and, until recently, Switzerland and Ireland. (Ireland's rising out-of-wedlock birthrate has just pushed it into the middle group.) These three groupings closely track the movement for gay marriage. In the early nineties, gay marriage came to the Nordic countries, where the out-of-wedlock birthrate was already high. Ten years later, out-of-wedlock birth rates have risen significantly in the middle group of nations. Not coincidentally, nearly every country in that middle group has recently either legalized some form of gay marriage, or is seriously considering doing so. Only in the group with low out-of-wedlock birthrates has the gay marriage movement achieved relatively little success. This suggests that gay marriage is both an effect and a cause of the increasing separation between marriage and parenthood. As rising out-of-wedlock birthrates disassociate heterosexual marriage from parenting, gay marriage becomes conceivable. If marriage is only about a relationship between two people, and is not intrinsically connected to parenthood, why shouldn't same-sex couples be allowed to marry? It follows that once marriage is redefined to accommodate same-sex couples, that change cannot help but lock in and reinforce the very cultural separation between marriage and parenthood that makes gay marriage conceivable to begin with. We see this process at work in the radical separation of marriage and parenthood that swept across Scandinavia in the nineties. If Scandinavian out-of-wedlock birthrates had not already been high in the late eighties, gay marriage would have been far more difficult to imagine. More than a decade into post-gay marriage Scandinavia, out-of-wedlock birthrates have passed 50 percent, and the effective end of marriage as a protective shield for children has become thinkable. Gay marriage hasn't blocked the separation of marriage and parenthood; it has advanced it. END

News Analysis By David W. Virtue From North to South and from East to West the great Episcopal shake-up is underway. Weekly, but increasingly several times a week a parish and/or its priest announces that they are leaving The Episcopal Church. They have had enough. Forty years of theological and moral erosion has finally caught up with the mostly revisionist but not a few orthodox bishops in the ECUSA, and a priest stands up in his or her pulpit and says something like this: "Dear friends, I as your shepherd can no longer abide by the new fangled theology of the church that we are in. We are a flock that has gone astray, we have erred and strayed like lost sheep and there is no health in the body known as The Episcopal Church. Forty years of theological and moral compromise finally culminating in the consecration of an avowed sodomite to the episcopacy, and we must now decide what we shall do. I, as your priest can no longer stay in the ECUSA and I must ask you to decide what you will do." There is a variation on this in which the vestry and congregation may tell the priest that they have had enough and want out. Whichever way it is, that parish has reached a crossroads and a decision will now have to be made as to where they will go. Several options present themselves. If it is merely the act of a priest and not his congregation, then he will announce that he is going to The Russian Orthodox Church, Antiochean Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformed Episcopal Church, the TAC, the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, The Charismatic Episcopal Church, and others. Smaller alternatives include one of the continuing vagante catholic groups like the Anglican Province of Christ the King. The priest voluntary renounces his or her orders and is out the door. The congregation stays put in the Episcopal Church. The second situation is if the priest and the congregation decide together to leave the ECUSA. Usually they will tell the bishop they are going, and after some back and forth, often with threats, the vast majority of the church walks away from the property leaving a small number behind with the keys, property and endowment intact. When a whole or partial group leaves the ECUSA they have, to date, gone as a group to the Anglican Mission in America. They have done this for three reasons. The first is that they still want to remain Anglican and the AMIA is recognized officially by two primates of the Anglican Communion (though not the Archbishop of Canterbury) and unofficially by several more. Secondly, the AMIA is strongly evaneglical with a clear mission statement to grow the church, and thirdly they do not accept women to the priesthood though they can become Deacons. (This does not mean women do not have a place in the life of the church. Bishop Thad Barnum's wife has a vibrant mission among women called Ariel, that has had considerable influence in bringing women to Christ and strengthening families and marriages.) When an entire congregation departs suddenly, the local ECUSA bishop will almost immediately inhibit then depose the priest in question and the congregation goes off to the Anglican Mission in America or, as in a recent new development, come under the direct authority of an Anglican Primate in Africa or the Southern Cone. Note: the American Anglican Council (ACC) is not another Episcopal denomination to which one flees. This is a group that an orthodox parish may choose to affiliate or align themselves with as a statement about that they believe, but they are staying within the Episcopal church, not leaving it. The same can also be said for the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (NACDP). They are offering a "safe place" for estranged Episcopalians. For those fleeing, more often than not they are invited by a Baptist, Lutheran or local school to hold services there, then when enough capital has been accumulated they break ground, build a new property and announce that they are free at last to preach the gospel unhindered by the revisionism of ECUSA's bishops. They are still Anglicans, and have no intention of relinquishing that heritage. There are, of course, heartaches along the way, but once the deed has been done, recovery is fairly quick and they get on with job of doing mission and making the church grow. In some cases this proves so threatening that the ECUSAN Diocesan bishop will often send out a letter to his remaining flocks to steer clear of THAT group. But the new ship is under full sail and nothing seems to stop them. It is an ECUSA bishop's worst nightmare. He is usually left with a small congregation that now needs a priest he can't afford, because his budget doesn't have enough operating expenses to run yet another parish. He may already have 20 or 30 mission churches that need money. And he has just lost the highest assessment paying Episcopal parish in history, and all he can do is scream and shout into the wind while publicly whining about inclusion. The one thing an ECUSA bishop cannot do is depose a congregation. He will do it to a priest, but in the end he loses not only people he desperately needs to grow a church, but their continued offerings as well. On the surface he looks like a winner keeping the property and endowment, but it is an illusion. It is people that make a church and without them, a liberal priest appointee has no ability to make the parish grow, as he has no gospel to proclaim. Words like "inclusion," "diversity" and "comprehensiveness" falls on deaf ears. The largest Episcopal churches in ECUSA are solidly orthodox. They have millions of dollars invested in properties, endowments and usually raise anywhere from $1 to $4 million annually to operate the church, a significant portion of which goes to the local bishop. That is happening less nowadays, many of these large parishes are withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars much to the annoyance of the bishop. And here is where it gets nasty. Revisionist bishops are increasingly making threatening sounds that go along the lines, "we are not leaving the Episcopal church and if you are thinking of doing so I will depose you and sue you for your properties all the way to the Supreme Court with a little help from Frank Griswold's legal pit bull David Booth Beers and the Denis Canon." This effectively cowers the evangelical parish priest and he usually decides that to stay is politically wiser as not all his parish is necessarily behind him, and several congregants have dead relatives in the church graveyard…a compelling reason to stay apparently. Of course it is a lot easier for a wealthy parish like Christ Church, Plano to stay in the ECUSA when you have a biblically orthodox Bishop like James Stanton, than it is say for a parish like St. John the Divine in Houston, Texas with a more liberal bishop like Don Wimberly. The ante is raised along with the tension. The same can also be said for an orthodox congregation like the Church of the Good Samaritan in Paoli, PA, by far the biggest parish in the Diocese of PA with a generous budget. It is a nightmare situation having Charles E. Bennison as a bishop. Perhaps the worst case scenario is the Diocese of Virginia where there are three very large, very successful Evangelical parishes in the northern part of the diocese who now stand in opposition to their bishop Peter James Lee over sexuality issues. They are cutting their giving to the diocese and while Lee has remained calm on the surface, it will only be a matter of time before he erupts with threats and more, when he sees he can't pay all the bills. Then there are the anomalous cases like the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, PA and All Saints', Wynnewood in PA that have successfully stayed in the ECUSA while coming under the ecclesiastical authority of an African Primate and have managed to keep their churches, their priesthood intact (so far) from the marauding hands of Charles E. Bennison. The situation will undoubtedly grow more complicated with the passage of time. One can only hope that with a clear-cut word from the Eames Commission by September, that the last lines in the sand will be drawn and the Anglican Communion will redraw the lines to everyone's satisfaction. One can only hope and prayer. END

By Caryle Murphy Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 1, 2004 Episcopalians of Virginia voted yesterday to set up a year-long "reconciliation commission" to examine ways of maintaining their unity in the face of deep theological differences over what the church's stance on homosexuality should be. The vote, taken on the last day of the diocese's annual convention, had wide support among the 700 delegates gathered at a Reston hotel -- a sign, many said, of the desire not to let their differences lead to an open split. "What we're trying to figure out is how to stay together and proclaim the Gospel while we fight over what portions of the Gospel mean -- and it's just portions that we're fighting over," said the Rev. Lauren R. Stanley, associate rector of St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Annandale. The move effectively defers difficult decisions on how to resolve the diocese's simmering crisis ever since its bishop, Peter James Lee, voted with other bishops last summer to confirm the elevation of the denomination's first openly gay bishop, the Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Lee's action sparked fierce protest from several congregations in his diocese, which runs from Northern Virginia to Richmond. At least eight congregations refused to send their annual contributions to the diocese this year. Several also have been active in setting up a new national network of conservative parishes that is asking to be led by bishops who voted against Robinson's elevation. "The status quo prevailed," said the Rev. Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax City and a leader of the conservative faction, who has been active in forming the new network, the American Anglican Council. While the vote "showed a general desire to move forward without dividing," Minns added, resolving the crisis "may mean structural changes." Minns voted in favor of establishing the reconciliation commission. Like Lee, Bishop John Bryson Chane of the Diocese of Washington, which consists of the District and the Maryland suburbs, voted to confirm Robinson, but his decision did not spark as much protest as Lee's vote did in Virginia. Some Episcopal rectors expressed regret yesterday at how the vote would be perceived by gay members of their congregations. "I'm in pain about what happened this morning," said the Rev. James A. Papile, rector of St. Anne's in Reston. "We've asked people to wait before they can have full inclusion in the Episcopal Church." One clergywoman urged Lee to include gay men and lesbians when selecting members of the commission. "Our voices need to be heard," she said. "Otherwise, I can't see how reconciliation can be done." Speaking at a news conference after the vote, Lee said he was "very encouraged" by the wide support it garnered as well as by the willingness of his critics to let him choose the members of the commission, which is to report back to the diocese at next year's annual convention. "I want to make sure there are as many voices at the table as possible," Lee said, adding that the commission's work would be done in a "transparent manner." Lee, who was twice given standing ovations by delegates during the two-day conference, has taken a conciliatory approach to his opponents. He has, for instance, allowed the two other bishops who report to him to visit congregations opposed to his vote on Robinson rather than insist that the parishes receive him. Yesterday, Lee went a bit further at his news conference, saying he "would be willing to consider other possibilities" such as allowing these congregations' customary annual Episcopal visits done by "an overseas mission bishop." However, Lee added that this could happen only with his permission. "I would be the inviting bishop," he said. "I do not support the idea that a bishop can unilaterally come in and replace the duly consecrated bishop of Virginia." The delegates also compromised on proposals for dealing with the diocese's financial problems, caused by the decision of some conservative parishes to withhold their annual contributions. As a result, the diocese's 2004 budget took a nearly $900,000 hit. Some delegates expressed anger at the withholding, calling it "blackmail." Others said they disagreed with the parishes' decision but realized they were asking in good conscience. In the end, the delegates approved setting up a task force to study new rules for financial giving by churches to the diocese and referred for further study a proposal to let parishes designate how their contributions are spent. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

[ACNS source: Anglican Church of Canada] 2 FEBRUARY 2004 Archbishop Michael Peers' 18-year primacy of the Anglican Church of Canada officially ended with his retirement last weekend. As of Sunday 1 February, the church is under an acting primate until Archbishop Peers' successor is elected at General Synod on May 31. Candidates for this election will be nominated by members of the House of Bishops when it meets in Regina in April. Under church law, the acting primate is the senior metropolitan by election, in this case Archbishop David Crawley, Metropolitan of British Columbia and Yukon and Bishop of Kootenay. Archbishop Crawley, 66, has said that he does not wish to allow his name to stand in the primatial election. As acting primate, he becomes "chief executive officer" of the Anglican Church. He will preside over this spring's gathering of the House of Bishops and chair the start of General Synod - until a new primate is elected - when it convenes in St Catharines, Ontario, on 28 May. General Synod will be bidding an official farewell to Archbishop Peers at a dinner in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on 30 May. A native of Manitoba, Archbishop Crawley was elected Bishop of Kootenay in 1990 and Archbishop of British Columbia and Yukon in 1994. In recent years, he has also overseen the Anglican Parishes of the Central Interior (formerly the diocese of Cariboo) and was a member of the team that negotiated an agreement with the federal government limiting the church's liability in lawsuits for physical and sexual abuse at native residential schools. Archbishop Crawley lives in Kelowna, BC, and has said that he plans to do as little commuting between his home and Toronto as possible while he is acting primate. He has three daughters and is married to Joan Bubbs. http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/37/50/acns3761.cfm

BY DAVE MUNDAY Of The Post and Courier Staff PAWLEYS ISLAND--It's unsettling to George Townsend to be considered "a visitor" at All Saints Parish Waccamaw, the church she has attended for 40 years. But the retired real estate office manager is just that, after the congregation took steps to separate itself from the Episcopal diocese. Townsend said the label doesn't seem to fit, since the cemetery in the old church where she attends services contains the graves of several ancestors, and she has a plot there herself. Relatives buried in the old cemetery include George Pawley, one of the two men who bought the land in 1745 for use as a church. The "visitor" label started to sting when Townsend learned she can no longer serve on the church's archives committee, a duty she performed for 10 years. The position is open only to members, church leaders told her Friday. "It's just absolutely ridiculous," Townsend said. Guerry Green, senior warden of a new vestry that represents the congregation still affiliated with the Episcopal Church, also finds his downgraded status unsettling. "To be told all of a sudden that you're a visitor, when your family helped keep that church going during its leaner years, it's hurt a lot of people," he said. The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina will continue to fight the congregation that wants to turn a $50 million church complex into a Rwandan missionary outpost. Most of the parishioners have been transferring their membership to Rwanda. Those who want to remain Episcopalians can continue to attend services, but they're considered visitors now. The legal fallout is ruining chances for a compromise that could allow members who want to remain Episcopalians to hold services on the property, the congregation's leaders say. About 450 members at All Saints Parish Waccamaw voted last month to sever ties with the diocese and join the Anglican Mission in America, a network under the oversight of Anglican leaders in Rwanda and South East Asia. All Saints is mission headquarters, under the leadership of the Most Rev. Chuck Murphy, a former rector at All Saints who became a missionary bishop of Rwanda. The majority at All Saints considers the Episcopal Church too liberal, especially since the denomination accepted an openly gay bishop and same-sex blessings last year. S.C. Bishop Edward L. Salmon Jr. also believes the Episcopal Church took a wrong turn last year, but he has been urging members to stay and try to reform the denomination. About 45 members at All Saints say they will remain Episcopalians. They want to continue to hold services with an Episcopal priest in the old church where many have attended for years, across from the main campus that draws a younger, more contemporary crowd. The vestry in control denied the request Friday. It's not possible because of an ongoing lawsuit between All Saints and the diocese, Senior Warden Russ Campbell said. "The bishop has the power to resolve this by dropping the appeal," Campbell said. The diocese appealed a Georgetown County judge's ruling that said the denomination has no claim on the church property because of the wording of the 1745 deed that set up the trust for the parish. "If the bishop would withdraw his appeal, we would sit down and talk about it," Campbell said. "As long as there is a legal matter in front of us, there's nothing to talk about." In a meeting last week with those who want to remain loyal to the diocese, Salmon defended his decision to wait for a court ruling. It wouldn't make sense to drop the appeal now that the diocese has already spent $250,000 defending itself, he said. "The diocese didn't sue anybody," Salmon said. "... We are in it because we were sued, not because we sued somebody." All Saints sued the diocese after the diocese filed a public notice stating that churches hold property in trust for the diocese. Salmon said he filed the notice after hearing All Saints planned to leave the diocese. An appeals court panel heard arguments from the lawyers in September 2003. Nobody can predict when the court might issue a ruling, said attorney E.N. Zeigler of Florence, the diocese's chancellor, or legal adviser. The meeting with those who want to remain a part of the diocese was held at Litchfield Plantation after the vestry in control said Salmon couldn't meet on church property with the lawsuit going on. At the meeting, Salmon referred to a letter he sent last month to members of All Saints. Part of the letter explains why he could not allow a parish simply to declare its independence from the diocese. "The basic issues on the table are those of lawlessness and the stability of the diocese itself," Salmon said in the letter. "If any parish in the diocese can unilaterally decide to not be under the Canons, appoint vicars, do what they want to when they want to, our strength as a diocese is soon destroyed. There is no authority, only individual choice. That is exactly why the Episcopal Church is in the mess it is in. Bishops have individually acted without accountability, believe or not believe as they choose. That is lawlessness. It is my duty to oppose it." END

PAUL NOWELL Associated Press HIGH POINT – Episcopalians from North Carolina's largest diocese Friday rejected resolutions asking their leader to rescind his vote ratifying the election of the denomination's first openly gay bishop. Discussion of the actions taken last summer at the denomination's General Convention – specifically the election of Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire – dominated conversation and debate as Episcopalians gathered in High Point. "I think the Episcopalian Church is very strong and we have many more things in common than we have differences," delegate John Lansche of Charlotte said of Friday's actions. "To me, this says the delegates are behind the bishop." The Diocese of North Carolina is one of three Episcopal dioceses in the state and includes most of the state's largest congregations, in Charlotte, the Piedmont Triad and the Triangle. Of the 18 resolutions before the 188th annual convention, at least 11 dealt with issues raised in the wake of Robinson's election. One resolution asked that churches not be penalized for limiting their giving to the diocese. Another sought a change in canon law that would make congregations the sole owners of their church buildings. If a congregation leaves the denomination over theological differences, its property now reverts to the diocese. Several resolutions were defeated in committee before the entire convention could vote on them. Bishop Michael Curry did not ignore the crisis in an address to the convention Thursday night. "This summer ... some of the very real differences among us have emerged starkly," he said. "Specifically with regard to concerns and perspectives on homosexuality and the Christian faith, we are committed to this being a diocese in which honestly held faith positions will be honored and respected." He also issued a warning. "Efforts at division and destruction of the established order of this diocese are quite another thing," Curry said. "Such divisive efforts are not acceptable and will not be tolerated in this diocese." The Rev. Don Goodheart of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Winston-Salem attended last year's General Convention as a delegate and said he voted against the affirmation of Robinson. Still, he said the authors of the resolutions were wrong to ask Curry to rescind his vote.

By BRIAN LEWIS Staff Writer The Tennessean The annual convention of the Episcopalians Diocese of Tennessee adjourned here yesterday afternoon without voting on several controversial resolutions. The motion to adjourn was based on a complicated point involving the legality of proxy votes for clergy who were not in attendance at the meeting at Christ Church Cathedral at Ninth Avenue North and Broadway. However, another consideration for many was that the bulk of the convention's required business was finished, and there was concern about the tone of the meeting. "There was a lot of tension in the air," said the Rev. Freddy Richardson of the Church of the Holy Cross in Murfreesboro, who made the motion to adjourn. "I felt that legal decisions were being made on the fly and we needed time." The motion to adjourn passed 105-93, more than 2½ hours before most delegates had expected to leave. Heated debate was expected surrounding how the convention would respond to last summer's General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Minneapolis. At that meeting, the Episcopal Church ratified the election of the first openly gay bishop in church history, Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, and acknowledged that some bishops in the church were allowing blessings of same-sex unions. "We've come to an interesting point in our common life," Bishop Bertram Herlong of the Diocese of Tennessee said after the vote to adjourn. "It's sort of interesting that we continue to have surprises." The Diocese of Tennessee covers Middle Tennessee. Herlong said he would call another special meeting of the convention to take care of business that the church is required to do. However, he later added that it is possible that the special convention could be as short as five minutes and be held on the day of the 2005 annual convention. It would be necessary for him to confer with diocesan lawyers before a final decision could be made, he said. A resolution that would have allowed churches to designate that their money not go to the national Episcopal Church was on the floor when the motion to adjourn was introduced. Before the adjournment, the convention passed the budget while defeating a resolution that would have greatly reduced the amount of money sent to the national church. Some delegates said that indicated the directed giving resolution likely would not pass. "I can't come to any conclusion except that they thought they would lose the vote," said Brad Reed, a delegate from Christ Church Cathedral. However, votes on the motion to adjourn were not cast along strictly liberal or conservative lines, and some saw other reasons for the success of the motion to adjourn. The Rev. Ken Swanson, dean of Christ Church Cathedral, said the vast majority of delegates were against proxy voting, including many liberals and moderates. "That unified us," said Swanson, who is a moderate. Although yesterday's early adjournment was unconventional, many delegates were pleased that the passionate, personal, vitriolic debate that many anticipated did not happen. "It prevents a lot of rancor that the other resolutions may have caused," said the Rev. Peter Whalen of St. Philip's Church in Nashville. "It gives us time to reflect on what we're about. Sometimes you lose perspective and forget that we're here to bring Christ to others and not to win our petty little battles." In his closing remarks to the convention, Herlong charged the delegates to return to their churches refocused on their mission, to pray longer and to give more of themselves to their congregations, both financially and spiritually. "I really believe in my heart that we have a common goal and we are all working toward that goal," he said. "To go forward separately is not going to do anything at all. Problems are opportunities. When we get caught up in these things and let them dominate us, we lose our focus. God can fix things up better than we can mess them up. God can forgive better than we can sin. And our faith is in God, isn't it?" ALBANY NY: Bishop acts to avert 'internal warfare' June meeting will confront issue of joining a new network opposing gay clergy By BRIAN NEARING, Staff writer Times Union January 31, 2004 Albany Episcopal Bishop Daniel Herzog is confident that clergy and church members will support his work to bring the diocese into a new national Episcopal group opposed to gay clergy. The bishop, under fire from some who say the move could split the church, also predicted victory on that step in a vote by diocesan clergy and lay leaders at the annual convention scheduled for June. "We are not leaving the church. This step will help avert internal warfare" over the issue of homosexuality and the Episcopal faith, said Herzog in an interview this week at the diocese's offices on South Swan Street across from the Cathedral of All Saints. "It's a way of reducing the steam in the pressure cooker." The issue of gay clergy has been rocking the Episcopal Church since August, when American Episcopal bishops voted to ordain openly gay Bishop Eugene Robinson of New Hampshire. Herzog and other opponents see homosexuality as biblically unacceptable, while supporters call that view outdated and prejudiced. "I do not have any problem with gay parishioners. I have had gay parishioners," the bishop said. But he said the Bible limited sexual relations to those between men and women in the context of marriage. Herzog said the "vast majority" of the 12,000-member Albany diocese sides with him and will vote accordingly this summer on the question of joining the new network, which is headed by Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan. "People say I may be getting beaten up over this, but they are proud of me," Herzog said. A local opponent to Herzog conceded that defeat in June on the network was likely, adding some churches in the diocese were exploring whether members will travel to other dioceses for rituals. Earlier this month, Herzog joined with Duncan and 10 other bishops in Plano, Texas, to create a network of dioceses that will defy the national church over Robinson's ordination. Herzog said the network, which hopes to offer oversight to like-minded conservative parishes in outside dioceses, is not an attempt to split the church. Together, the 12 dioceses in the network represent churches with a membership of 235,000, or about 10 percent of the 2.3 million American Episcopalians. Herzog already had won a local vote on the issue of homosexual clergy when about 70 percent of delegates from the 19 counties at a special diocesan convention in September 2003 in Speculator, Hamilton County, voted to disavow Robinson's ordination. Herzog said Tuesday he expects similar voting results on the network issue when the church holds its next annual convention in the diocese's Camp of the Woods in Speculator. The convention will include about 400 clergy and elected lay delegates from about 130 churches in the diocese. A local opponent to the new network conceded that Herzog's predictions are likely correct, although the vote may be closer this time than in October as some lay delegates will be newly elected since then. "The vote among the clergy probably won't change, but we have been trying to educate the laity on this issue," said the Rev. James Brooks-McDonald, rector of St. Stephen's Church in Schenectady. In the diocese as a whole, "We are definitely the minority," but he said he believes his own congregation supports him. Brooks-McDonald is co-president of Albany Via Media, a group of clergy and lay people from Albany, Schenectady, Lake George and Plattsburgh who oppose the network. Albany Via Media has taken no position on the issue of gay clergy or same-sex unions. At the September convention, the Albany diocese vote was 161 to 65 to disavow Robinson's ordination, said Brooks-McDonald. Clergy voted 93-33, while the lay leaders' vote was 68-32, he said. Some churches are exploring whether members can visit other dioceses in Syracuse and Burlington, Vt., if they want to avoid confirmations and other services headed by Herzog, said Brooks-McDonald. Albany Via Media is also exploring ways for congregations opposed to Herzog to send donations to the Episcopal Church USA, bypassing the bishop's control.

By the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe Archbishops Emmanuel Kolini and Yong Ping Chung decided to proceed on their own in consecrating Chuck Murphy and John Rogers. There had been a very carefully orchestrated conversation for several years, with a large number of primates CONSIDERING the possibility of consecrating "missionary bishops." But their timetable was quite different. Had Kolini and Yong Ping waited it is probable there would have been a much more significant number of supporters for creating an AMiA type of effort. One that might have been irresistible to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Instead, they acted on their own, and ended up isolating themselves from the rest of the primates, with an endeavor that is at BEST tangentially related to the Anglican Communion, and specifically NOT recognized by either the former or the present Archbishop of Canterbury. In the sharpest contrast to that, the newly formed Network has already been recognized by a dozen primates as being in "full communion" with the rest of the Anglican Communion, and it has the explicit encouragement of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Network is wholly committed to "upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as this Church has received them" (i.e., it is totally opposed to the innovations of the last six months regarding human sexuality), but unlike the AMiA, it is working within the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church, and with the full backing of a numerical majority of the world's Anglicans, and - we believe - shortly with a majority of the primates of the Anglican Communion. Those who choose to leave the Diocese of Central Florida are leaving a bishop and a diocese that are as committed as they are to remaining orthodox. They are leaving not because of a quarrel with the bishop or the diocese, but because they cannot stand being part of a larger community (ECUSA) that accepts in some of its dioceses practices and teaching they find abhorrent. However, they say they want to remain Anglicans. To the extent they ARE Anglicans (which is open to question; see #1 above), they are still part of a larger community (the Anglican Communion) that accepts in some of its provinces practices and teaching they find abhorrent. A somewhat strange parallel, I think. Ironically, the key, essential element in being Anglican is being in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The AMiA is not in communion with the ABC, AND the present ABC personally favors the very things these folks find so objectionable (although, thankfully, he has pledged not to further that agenda). So: in order to be "out from under" the compromise of ECUSA, those who would leave either a) abandon their property, leaving both themselves and the diocese greatly impoverished - themselves for having to start over with new facilities, and the diocese because it does not have the resources to maintain the properties once they leave, OR b) as we have seen in several places, they enter into a terrible lawsuit against brothers and sisters who believe the same things they believe - one that impoverishes everyone but the lawyers, and one that flies directly in the face of Biblical teaching, and makes the Church's witness a laughingstock to the outside world. This diocese has not only joined the Network, but it passed, by a super-majority, a Canonical change that makes same-sex blessings illegal. We are in a stronger position than we have ever been. The Archbishop's Commission has not even met for the first time yet, and Archbishop Drexel Gomez has indicated that he believes it will not be a paper tiger. The Global South primates published a schedule for the Episcopal Church to mend its ways. Their key date was Easter. No one expects there to be any change in the posture of ECUSA by Easter, but wouldn't it be prudent to see what the next steps are on the parts of the primates? Every time an orthodox priest, deacon, family, vestry or congregation leaves an orthodox diocese, that diocese is greatly weakened, and the cause of the other side is strengthened. The Rt. Rev. John Howe is Bishop of Central Florida

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM The Times-Union Jacksonville Bishop John Howard opened the annual convention of his Jacksonville-area Diocese of Florida on Friday with a call to act as "a family in which disagreement does not lead to divorce." Clarifying his own place in the disagreement after months of silence, the newly installed bishop said he would not ordain active homosexuals or allow their unions to be celebrated, but promised to oppose any limits on the diocese's participation in the national Episcopal Church. By the end of the day, the success of Howard's supporters in upholding that agenda had endangered his hopes for unity. Representatives from several of the most biblically orthodox churches said they stood on the brink of divorce from the diocese because the diocese would not divorce the Episcopal Church. After a majority of delegates voted to continue contributing to the national church, representatives from 12 of those churches, comprising about 16 percent of the diocese, withdrew their annual contributions to the diocese. Six of those were from Jacksonville, and two from Orange Park. Most of the dissidents said they simply wished to reconsider their contributions in the wake of the decisions by the convention. But some said their very membership in the diocese was in question. "Our next step as a church will be to decide whether to stay or not," said Dennis Ackerson, pastor of Church of the Holy Spirit in Tallahassee. Ackerson left the convention Friday to discuss the question with his congregation. The convention ends today. The retracted pledges totalled more than $400,000, opening a considerable shortfall in a $2.1 million diocesan budget already circumscribed by diminished giving. 12 hold back funds Churches withdrawing their annual pledges from the Diocese of Florida: Jacksonville: All Souls, Calvary, Epiphany, Nativity, Redeemer, Resurrection Orange Park: Good Samaritan, Grace Church Tallahassee: Advent, Holy Spirit Gainesville: St. Michael's High Springs: St. Bartholomew's. Two of the largest churches in the diocese pledged to increase their contributions but did not specify an amount. "The bishop remains confident that we will meet our budgetary goals," said Thomas Mantz, a spokesman for the diocese. "We will work with everyone in the diocese to try to meet the needs of our ministry." The meeting might have taken as its theme the national church's approval of an active homosexual as the next bishop of New Hampshire. While much of the local diocese is united in opposition to that decision, made in August, delegates are deeply divided over how to respond. In his address, Howard attempted to move the diocese past its disagreements by calling on the delegates to focus on their shared obligation to help the needy and to bring people to the church. He warned that theological disagreement was an inadequate reason to hamstring the good works of the church. And he wished for a time when a person introduced as an Episcopalian would be asked not about "The Issue," but about his or her participation in a church best known for good works. But such a time lies solidly in the future, and most delegates remained fixed on their disagreements over the proper financial and legal relationship between the diocese and the national church. For the most part, Howard's supporters prevailed. The most significant accommodation allows churches to decide whether their funds will go to the national church or to another charity. In the fall, the sum of those decisions sent 46 percent of total contributions to the national church and 54 percent to other charities. But a resolution to declare the diocese autonomous failed. Delegates also delivered a temporary setback to supporters of the orthodox Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, declining to mandate that Howard decide on membership by March 1. Howard said Thursday he intended to explore membership irrespective of the vote. Some orthodox delegates who did not withdraw their funding Friday said a decision not to join could push them from the diocese as well. Finally, in the most contentious hearing of the day, delegates voted for contributions from churches to pass through the diocese along the way to either the national church or another charity. A substantial minority said it could not tolerate an arrangement in which the diocese forwarded money to the national church from the pool that included their money, too. The minority had proposed allowing churches to bypass the diocese instead. When the vote went against that, they came to the microphone one by one, to give the name of their churches and the amount of money they said they could no longer provide. Sam Pascoe, rector of Grace Church in Orange Park, the largest dissident church, retracted a pledge of $75,000 for reconsideration. Pascoe said the church was not talking about leaving yet, even if it sent the money somewhere else. "The relationship to the diocese is not defined purely in terms of money," he said. "It's defined in terms of believing the same things and working toward the same goals." That, he acknowledged, was a diminishing piece of common ground.

By Julia Duin THE WASHINGTON TIMES Heresy is better than schism, the Episcopal bishop of Virginia said yesterday in a speech that gently chided church conservatives for imperiling the unity of the country's largest diocese over the consecration of the denomination's first homosexual bishop last November. "If you must make a choice between heresy and schism, always choose heresy," said the Rt. Rev. Peter J. Lee to 500 Episcopalians meeting for the annual diocesan council at the Hyatt Regency in Reston. "For as a heretic, you are only guilty of a wrong opinion," Bishop Lee said, quoting Presbyterian scholar James McCord. "As a schismatic, you have torn and divided the body of Christ. Choose heresy every time." After delegates applauded him, he added, "I hope we will avoid both heresy and schism." Since V. Gene Robinson was elected bishop-designate of New Hampshire on Aug. 5 at the Episcopal General Convention in Minneapolis, 24 parishes in the huge Virginia diocese partially or totally cut off funding to the diocese, resulting in an immediate $257,554 drop in funds. The diocese's 2004 budget now shows a $900,000 drop in income from 2003 because it was discovered that 64 parishes in all would be contributing less money, diocesan treasurer Mike Kerr said. Hearings were held yesterday afternoon on ways to bring the budget up to $3.9 million, cutting the deficit back to $845,203. Bishop Lee made it clear that the spiritual heads of churches strongly disagree with him. "I am aware that some of our congregations are so unhappy with my decisions at General Convention that they will not welcome my visits to them," he said. "I remind you that Christian communities often consist of solidarities not of our choosing. Our faith teaches that people with who we differ often have important truths to teach us." The bishop, who will have led the diocese for 20 years on Feb. 11, also announced he will allow a theologically orthodox bishop to enter his diocese to minister to several thousand conservatives who fill his largest parishes. That was a key demand by the American Anglican Council (AAC), the lead Episcopal group opposing the Robinson consecration as bishop of New Hampshire. The AAC recently demonstrated its strength in the Virginia diocese by attracting 3,000 Episcopalians to a Jan. 16-17 conference in Woodbridge. But the Rev. Martyn Minns, director of the Virginia branch of the AAC, said Bishop Lee's promise to allow a conservative prelate into the diocese carries little weight if the bishop maintains legal jurisdiction over conservative churches. As for the comment on heresy, that was "doubly condescending," Mr. Minns said. "It made light of the true pain we are experiencing." Bishop Lee also alluded to "the pain and grief expressed by those angered by the election and Nov. 2 consecration of Bishop Robinson of New Hampshire and by my role in that," referring to his vote in favor of the consecration. "And I hear the pain and disappointment of gay and lesbian members of our diocese who are frustrated at the lack of availability to them of rites of blessing," he added. No churches in the Diocese of Virginia have performed same-sex blessings, said Melinda Artman, chairwoman of Virginia Integrity, the Episcopal Church's homosexual caucus. She said there was a "blessing" of two men at a location outside one of the diocesan parishes. Bishop Lee, she said, "is listening to people who feel profound pain at this convention." However, there appeared to be pain on both sides of the theological divide yesterday afternoon as church conservatives and liberals hashed out resolutions ranging from blessing same-sex unions to condemning the pro-Robinson votes cast by diocesan representatives in Minneapolis. Final votes will be this morning. Many argued that church unity is more important than theological uniformity. "The national media has staked out a death watch for the Episcopal Church," said delegate Jay Litten from Harrisonburg. "I think we should disappoint them." An Episcopal monk from Mount Vernon countered by saying, "If we take no action on [these resolutions] this year, there'll be less people to hear that death knell." Julia Duin is Culture Editor for the Washington TIMES.

Misunderstanding al Qaeda What you weren't told about their targets in Saudi Arabia. By Paul Marshall AMERICAN REACTIONS to the recent bombing of a foreign workers' compound in Riyadh reveal multiple misreadings of the Arab world and--more dangerously--of both al Qaeda and the Saudis. The media seem to equate Arab with Muslim and, along with some in the administration, think that al Qaeda's war is against Americans and Westerners per se, rather than against all "infidels," a group al Qaeda defines idiosyncratically and expansively as anyone who is not a strictly observant Muslim. Both mistakes are compounded by reliance on the Saudis' distorted account of the attack. The November 8 bombing took place in a Lebanese Christian neighborhood of Riyadh, and of the seven publicly identified Lebanese victims, six were Christian. Lebanon's newspapers are replete with photographs of Maronite Catholic and Greek Orthodox victims. Daleel al Mojahid, an al Qaeda-linked webpage, praised the killing of "non-Muslims." The Middle East Media Research Institute quotes Abu Salma al Hijazi, reputed to be an al Qaeda commander, as saying that Saudi characterizations of the victims as Muslims were "merely media deceit." If so, the media fell for it. Reuters described the bombing as against "fellow Muslims," the Los Angeles Times as "against Muslims," the Washington Times called the victims "innocent Muslims," the San Francisco Chronicle "Muslim civilians who happened to be in the wrong place," and the New York Times "expatriates from other Muslim countries." Others used vaguer terms. The BBC said the "bombing killed Arabs and Muslims," as did the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. In the Wall Street Journal, David Pryce-Jones pronounced the dead "exclusively Arabs and Muslims." While perhaps strictly correct, this circumlocution hides the fact that the victims included Arab non-Muslims and Muslim non-Arabs. The effect of this mischaracterization is to link Arab to Muslim, ignoring the large numbers of Christian Arabs from Egypt, Lebanon, and elsewhere who work in Saudi Arabia (and Israel) and have long been targeted by Islamic extremists, including by the Saudi government. (At the time of the bombing, two Egyptian Christians, Sabry Gayed and Guirguis Eskander, were in a Riyadh prison for holding a worship service, even though Prince Sultan had ordered them released.) Similarly, media coverage of the October 4 suicide attack on Maxim, a restaurant in Haifa, noted that one co-owner was Jewish, but described the other simply as "Arab." Commentators wondered why Palestinian terrorists were killing "Arabs." But the second co-owner was actually a Lebanese Catholic, as were many of those killed. The term "Arab," while playing into America's obsession with ethnicity, hides the religious dimension that is central to the worldview of al Qaeda, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Similar puzzlement over attacks in Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia, as well as over the targeting of the U.N. and Red Cross in Iraq, reflects a focus on nationality and ethnicity that misses the terrorists' own obsession with "infidels" and once again ties the attacks exclusively to anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism. The New York Times associated the bombed compound in Riyadh with "Western lifestyles and foreign influence." The BBC speculated that the attackers "thought that among the residents were Americans." Pryce-Jones wondered whether, finally, "somebody is evidently even more eager to destabilize Saudi Arabia than to kill Americans or Westerners." However, every day in every way, al Qaeda reiterates that its target is "infidels," wherever they live, including Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and the vast majority of the world's Muslims, who reject the extremists' vision of a restored caliphate under a reactionary version of Islamic law. Bin Laden's October tape, aimed at Muslims, described his enemy as "the Romans . . . gathered under the banner of the cross," but it also denounced Muslim "infidels and heretics." (At the same time, of course, al Qaeda is happy to form tactical alliances with others who do not share its vision, whether Shiites in Iran or secularists like Saddam Hussein.) For years, one of al Qaeda's major components, Egypt's Islamic Jihad, led by bin Laden deputy Zawahiri, massacred Christians and moderate Muslims in Egypt. The Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, which has openly declared itself a bin Laden ally, has killed over 100,000 Muslims, often by disemboweling them. The Sudanese National Islamic Front, formerly known as the Muslim Brotherhood, has killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Nuba mountains and elsewhere, as well as nearly 2 million non-Muslims. In the Riyadh bombing, al Qaeda once again targeted "infidels." Al Hijazi claimed that the compound had contained Americans and "Lebanese Christians who had tortured Muslims . . . during the civil war." The bombing killed Christians, and also Muslims, who--because they lived in a gated compound with swimming pools and alcohol, mixed with infidels, and allowed women to go unveiled--were seen by the terrorists as infidels and apostates therefore deserving to die. Why have the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the BBC, the Associated Press, Reuters, and Arab News, among many others, published false or misleading information on this important subject? The answer lies in their sources. Saudi Arabia does not allow freedom for investigative reporting. It restricted journalists' access to the bombing site, and quickly demolished the area with bulldozers, before any forensic examination or in-depth investigation could take place. Consequently, the controlled Saudi media, and the government itself, are the source of most information. The Saudi authorities' own statements have been studiously vague about the target of the bombing. While avoiding outright falsehood, their careful phrases hide the true nature of the attack and instead try to portray themselves as the real victims. Saleh bin Abdul-Aziz, the Islamic affairs minister, described the attack as "flagrant aggression . . . against Islam, the people of Islam, in the land of Islam." Ubiquitous Saudi spokesman Adel al-Jubeir, when asked in three different CNN interviews about the targets of the bombing, each time switched the topic to a bomb factory uncovered in Mecca, complete with booby-trapped Korans, saying, "These Korans were intended for Muslims." He described an enemy who attacks "everyone," "humanity," "regardless of the target," and added, "They're killing anyone they can get their hands on." Since state-supported Saudi imams preach hatred of infidels, especially Christians and Jews, and the kingdom spends billions to export these ideas, the regime has good reason to hide the fact that someone acted on their teaching. Despite this dissembling, there is little possibility that the Saudi government did not know what went on in the compound and who the targets were. Three months before the bombing, the Muttawa religious police, also known as the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, had raided the compound, and scuffled with its security guards, because they had heard of an "un-Islamic" party in progress. Once inside, not for the first time, they knew exactly which buildings they wanted to check. The head of the Muttawa is a Saudi cabinet minister. The fact that the Saudi authorities did not reveal that this was largely a Lebanese Christian area, that they rapidly demolished the remains and stayed silent while the media misreported the identity of the victims, suggests a deliberate attempt to mask what is going on in the kingdom. (Meanwhile, a debate is taking place in the Saudi press over whether a woman named Saban Abu Lisam, who was herself injured in the blast but nevertheless drove seven other injured victims to the hospital, should be praised for her courage or punished for violating the ban on women driving.) In the Riyadh bombing, al Qaeda did what it has always done, and, as usual, it explained why its targets were chosen. Nevertheless, much of the U.S. administration seems to share the media's bafflement. U.S. deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, in Saudi Arabia at the time of the blast, opined that the bombers had attacked "the government and people of Saudi Arabia." The Los Angeles Times describes "senior administration officials," puzzled at this latest choice of targets, as "grasping, saying this doesn't fit the box we expected." If this is true, the administration, like the media, needs a new box. It would be a good place to dump Saudi prevarications, and also to store the al Qaeda videos, tapes, books, and fatwas that for the last ten years have been laying out the organization's goals in explicit detail. To repeat: Al Qaeda and its allies aim to kill or subdue all "infidels," Muslim or non-Muslim, who stand in the way of their goal of restoring a worldwide caliphate governed, Taliban-style, by the strictest, narrowest interpretation of Islamic law. Until this fact is finally assimilated, we will continue to have a military that fights superbly against an enemy whose strategic aims we refuse to understand. Copyright 2003, The Weekly Standard Paul Marshall is a senior fellow at Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom and the author of "Islam at the Crossroads."

Ethics & Religion by Michael J. McManus The leading conservative in the Presbyterian Church (USA) may be stripped of his ordination in a vote this weekend by the Western North Carolina Presbytery because he dared suggest that churches withhold their funds from denominational headquarters. Rev. Parker Williamson, executive director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee (PLC), edits its newspaper, "The Layman" that reaches 450,000 homes. Last November it issued a "Declaration of Conscience" that described a "spiritual schism" in the denomination: "We are two faiths within one denomination..." "It is unconscionable to remain passive while some groups train their followers to subvert the Constitution and denominational officials undermine it by their refusal to require compliance." Therefore, PLC urged Presbyterians to consider prayerfully diverting contributions from the national church to ministries "at home and abroad that are demonstrably faithful to the gospel." Why? "We believe that God has called us individually to be faithful stewards of all that he has entrusted to us....to ensure that offerings are consistently used to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ and to carry out his Great Commission. "We no longer believe that either the General Assembly per-capita budget or the unrestricted mission budget of the PCUSA is worthy of support." Speaking at the National Presbyterian Church this month, Williamson was more blunt: "There are those occupying positions of controlling authority in this denomination who do not believe in the Gospel." Some examples: PCUSA leaders invited Rev. Dirk Ficca to speak at a Peacemaker event where he asked, "What's the big deal about Jesus?" He asserted to promote peace, Christians need to make room for other faiths as legitimate paths to God. An Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy envisioned a banquet at which Jesus sits with Buddha, Mohammad and Gaia, the earth mother. Seminary Prof. Deloris Williams argued, "We don't need any bloody crosses." Seminary Prof. Douglas Ottati denied the bodily Resurrection: "Jesus lived on in the minds of the disciples," he said. What do they and their students preach on Easter? The denomination fought for partial birth abortion, killing a child whose body emerges from the womb - though Congress passed and the President signed a law calling it medically unnecessary and morally wrong. A "committed relationship" not marriage is the cornerstone of family life, said a key committee report last year: "It is in committed relationships that sexual intimacy is best expressed." That elevated cohabitation and gay marriage to a par with marriage. The Presbyterian Lay Committee persuaded the 2003 General Assembly to shelve that idea. In fact, PLC has been more successful than any other orthodox caucus in fighting similar battles among Episcopalians, United Methodists and the United Church of Christ. For example, in 1996 PLC persuaded the denomination to put into its Constitution that clergy should remain chaste if unmarried or faithful within marriage. Gay activists persuaded the church's General Assembly to remove the phrase, but that had to be ratified by a majority of regional presbyteries. Instead, the PLC persuaded presbyteries to vote it down by a 2-1 margin in 1997. The gay lobby again convinced the 2000 General Assembly to yank the Constitution's chastity/fidelity plank, but Presbyteries voted no by a huge 3-1 margin. However, in defiance of the Constitution there have been numerous gay ordinations. Yet Clifton Kirkpatrick, the Stated Clerk, or chief executive of PCUSA, who took an oath to "preserve and defend" Constitution has declared it is not his responsibility to enforce church law. This leadership has led to a massive hemorrhaging of church members, a decline from 4.2 million members in 1965 to 2.4 million in 2002. On the other hand, 1,300 Presbyterian churches with 450,000 members have created a "Confessing Church Movement" within the denomination declaring "Jesus Christ is Lord, the only Savior of humankind; that Scripture is God's Holy Word to be revered and obeyed; and that God calls us to a holy life that includes lifting up the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman." What the Western N.C. Presbytery found "deeply troubling" was "The Layman's" assertion that budget of the denomination is not "worthy of support," which it found inconsistent "with this presbytery's involvement in mission with the larger church." It also objected to the newspaper's "tone" which "furthers hostility, suspicion and division," though it cited no errors. PLC Board Members will argue that the presbytery is retaliating against Williamson for "our Declaration of Conscience." They will cite cases before the highest Presbyterian court that "a church may neither be compelled to pay nor punished for failure to pay" contributions. Some conservatives are calling for a "gracious separation" from PCUSA. Copyright 2004 Michael J. McManus