CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—To many Americans, Sharia—or Islamic law—conjures up images of a vengeful legal system that punishes thievery with amputation and promises death by stoning for alleged adultery.

But as an attorney for those unfortunate enough to be sentenced to these punishments in the Sharia courts of northern Nigeria, Hauwa Ibrahim sees Sharia not as a sword, but a shield.

Ibrahim caught the world’s attention in 2002 as the human rights lawyer who rescued Amina Lawal, a poor and illiterate rural woman who bore a child out of wedlock, from a sentence of death by stoning. What’s less well known is that she did it using Sharia precepts.

Nigerian human rights lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim says Western critics of Sharia law often make it harder for her to defend those who face harsh sentences under the strict interpretation of Islamic law. (PHOTO/RNS/Omar Sacirbey)

ahim hopes lawyers tasked with defending clients in a Sharia system, as well as Westerners whose preconceptions about Sharia only antagonize the judges and public whom Ibrahim must convince, will use her writings.

Ibrahim, a 42-year-old observant Muslim, knows her clients well. In many ways, she was one of them, raised in a small rural village in Nigeria’s Muslim north, where patriarchy and poverty run rampant.

She also understands how overwhelmed and powerless they can feel. Ibrahim’s father was a mullah, and she was supposed to be married at age 12. But determined to stay in school, Ibrahim financed her own education by hawking roots and vegetables she picked on a nearby mountain.

As one of the few female lawyers in northern Nigeria, Ibrahim is admired by her colleagues but resented by the conservative religious establishment. Her most important work began in 2000 when 12 of Nigeria’s 19 provinces instituted Sharia law. Since then, she has defended more then 100 Sharia cases.

Inside the male-dominated Sharia courts, Ibrahim and her team often face a hostile environment, including accusations that she is trying to undermine Islam.

“The common accusation against us is that we are anti-Islam, anti-Sharia, and anti our culture and values,” said Ibrahim. “We are not anti-Islam. If anything, we are just trying to insure that there is justice, and that there is fairness in the administration of that justice.”

While Ibrahim appreciates the international outcry that such cases arouse—Oprah Winfrey’s advocacy on Lawal’s behalf generated 1.2 million e-mails sent to the Nigerian embassy in Washington—she also worries that some Western supporters may politicize the Sharia issue.

In Lawal’s case, rather than confronting the mullahs who were criticizing her, Ibrahim sought them out, wearing a headscarf, and asked their advice on how she could win her client’s freedom. While the mullahs did not take her side, her show of respect persuaded them to at least stay on the sidelines.

“She knows there are social forces in her community that she has to take into account, and she was willing to try anything to get the right result,” said Asifa Qureshi, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School who specializes in Islamic law.

In 2003, some 16 months after the case began, a Sharia appeals court overturned Lawal’s conviction. The court ruled that—contrary to Sharia law—Lawal’s confession was improperly obtained, that not enough judges were present at the original trial, and that she was not caught in the act of sex out of wedlock.

Ibrahim is exploring new strategies that she says give greater emphasis to the Quran and less to the Hadith, the collected sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. For example, while some Hadith may vaguely suggest stoning for adultery, the Quran clearly proscribes flogging.

“If the Quran is clear about whether you flog an adulterer, don’t complicate the matter,” she said. “Don’t introduce a Hadith to interpret what that section of the Quran says.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Anne Graham Lotz enunciates precisely and speaks in distinctive clipped cadences that are reminiscent of her famous father, evangelist Billy Graham.

She’s calling to talk about her new book, The Magnificent Obsession: Embracing the God-Filled Life, but of course is willing to give an update on how “Daddy Bill” is doing.

Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of evangelist Billy Graham, says too many people rely on Sundays-only spirituality and their church as the basis for their relationship with God. (RNS PHOTO/Courtesy of ANGeL Ministries)

“He’ll be 91 in November,” said Lotz, the second of the Grahams’ five children. “He has a hard time seeing and walking, but his mind is clear. He’s very affectionate and content. … He’s shifted gears. Most of his life he’s been concerned about reaching the world. Now he’s most concerned about the people immediately around him.”

The ailing evangelist still can regale people with great storytelling, his daughter said.

“All his life his mind has been super sharp, like a computer,” she said. “It’s just incredible what detail he can remember. He may have to pause and think, to recall, but he can tell stories in detail like you wouldn’t believe.”

Lotz and her children live about four hours away from the elder Graham’s home in western North Carolina, but she and her children go to visit frequently.

“They just love him,” Lotz said. “They’re so gentle with him. He has two dogs that stay with him and a big cat I gave him last year.”

Lotz, 61, has been staying busy as an evangelist and author in her own right. Her new book focuses on the biblical story of Abraham. She notes that Abraham, considered the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, did not have a religion, but a relationship, with God.

“Religion is, I think, one of the biggest hindrances to finding God,” Lotz said. “God described Abraham as a friend. … I want to know God in a relationship that one day he will describe as a friendship. God loves you and wants to know you. He’s calling you to a personal relationship.”

Christians too often feel their faith is accomplished when they are saved and attend church, Lotz said.

“That’s such a shallow understanding,” she said. A relationship can begin at church, she said, but it can’t end there. “Being a Christian is a personal relationship with God, a thriving relationship, based on communication.”

The problem, she said, is that too many people are “too reliant” on the church, and too many Christians “have fallen into a convenient pattern of allowing their church experience to be their sum total of experiencing God.”

Growing up in the Graham house, she said she learned to keep Sunday as a day set apart. But people shouldn’t rely on a kind of Sundays-only spirituality, she said. “If something happened and you could no longer go to church, if you were homebound and lost your friends at church, how strong would your relationship with God be?”

Speaking of being homebound brings her back to her father.

“My daddy is that way now,” she said. “He’s homebound. His relationship with God is vibrant.”

Her mother, Ruth, too, provided an inspiring example of faith as she approached death two years ago, Lotz said.

“She finished so strong. Every day, her relationship with Christ was stronger than the day before. She would say she was like a mouse on glueboard, couldn’t lift a finger some days, but she was strong in her faith, filled with joy, alive in her relationship with the Lord. There was pain and difficulty involved. I saw her handle it with grace and inner strength and character.”

She learned other lessons about relationships from her mother, she said—from a woman whose husband was the world’s most famous Christian preacher.

“You can’t develop it through a pastor or spouse; you have to develop it firsthand,” she said. “Within the church, I feel people are just rocking along and afraid to say what they experience isn’t satisfying. … There are a lot of believers in exile. They’ve been so hurt by God’s people, they don’t go to church. They run away from God’s people, and they throw God out.”

It’s an experience Lotz knows all to well herself. She left church for a year, she said, because of how fellow parishioners treated her and her husband.

“Their behavior was despicable,” she said. “What they did was wicked.”

The problem, she said, is that “when the church does it, you feel God did it. You have to cling tighter and say, ‘God I want to be closer to you.”‘

The Lotz family later helped plant a new church, Southbridge Fellowship, which meets in a movie theater in Raleigh, N.C., led by Pastor Scott Lehr. Her falling out with church has sensitized her to how common an experience it is for many Christians.

“If they have been burned and hurt by God’s people,” she said, “we’re calling them into a personal relationship with God.”

HARTFORD, Conn. (ABP)—A congregation’s health depends less on theology than methodology, according to a national study by Hartford Seminary’s Institute for Religion Research .

Faith Communities Today 2008 paints an overall sobering picture of congregational life in America. Congregations in general are losing ground in attendance, financial health and overall vitality. At the same time, many are bucking the trend, reporting spiritual vitality and a sense of mission and purpose despite challenges like finances and conflict.

“Most discussions of congregational identity focus on (ideological) content,” lead researcher David Roozen wrote in the report. “But what most organizational theorists say is that strength of identity or distinctiveness of identity is equally, if not more, important.”

About one-third of church members—35 percent—surveyed strongly agreed with a statement describing their congregation as spiritually vital and alive.

Those churches are more likely to say they have a clear sense of mission and purpose that sets them apart from other congregations. They also are more likely to have grown in the last five years and less likely to face financial problems.

The researchers identified things that vital congregations do particularly well.

People who attend vital churches are more likely to invite a new person to a Sunday school class than people who attend other churches.

Vital churches tend to be better at inviting new people to take part in worship leadership by reading, singing or taking up an offering.

They also get new visitors or members involved in social ministry more quickly.

Other earmarks of vital churches include providing training for volunteers and regularly recognizing them for their service.

Clergy of vital churches promote a clear vision for the congregation, engage in evangelism and involve themselves in the training of lay leaders. Other clergy leadership areas like administration and representing the congregation in the community, on the other hand, showed “no significant relationship” to a church’s spiritual vitality.

Overall, fewer than half—48 percent—of congregations in the study reported more than a 2 percent growth in worship attendance over the last five years. That is 10 points below the 58 percent that reported growth in 2005.

Fewer than one in five—19 percent—described their church’s financial health as “excellent,” down from 24 percent in 2005 and 31 percent in 2000.

Three churches in four—74 percent—reported having conflict during the past five years over key issues like money, worship, leadership or program priorities.

Conflict in many cases saps vitality, Roozen observed, but if managed well, it can lead to positive change.

Churches that recently adopted a more contemporary worship style were more likely to have increased attendance by 2 percent or more between 2003 and 2008 than congregations that have always had traditional worship—64 percent versus 44 percent.

About half—53 percent—of congregations that have a contemporary service but haven’t changed it in the last five years report growth of 2 percent or more in worship attendance in that time frame.

Changes in worship style do not automatically boost attendance, however. Churches that have adopted some changes but still consider their worship service traditional are least likely to grow, with 41 percent reaching the 2-percent-over-five-years benchmark in increased attendance.

The study is one in a series of national surveys examining 39 American denominations and faith groups.

The preview says demographics pose a particular challenge for some faith groups—primarily mainline Protestant denominations.

Churches with large percentages of participants who are 65 or older are less likely to grow or view themselves as spiritually alive. They also are more resistant to change and experience more conflict.

Some social analysts observe the United States in the past half-century has shifted from a Bedford Falls-like culture of small businesses and community-friendly savings and loan institutions to a Pottersville-style nightmare of predatory lenders and seedy businesses that target the poor. And for American society in general, the results is anything but “a wonderful life.”

“We have created a debt culture,” David Blankenhorn, executive director of the Institute for American Values told the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission’s statewide conference earlier this year.

Blankenhorn and some of his associates in related organizations insist churches can become instrumental in shaping a new culture built on an old virtue—thrift. But a Baptist ethicist insists churches need to examine themselves before they can begin to preach stewardship effectively to the larger culture.

In the formative years of United States history, prominent thinkers such as Ben Franklin promoted a “thrift ethic” that encouraged hard work, frugal spending on self and generous giving to charity, he asserted, maintaining “thrift” was simply the secular term for the religious stewardship principle. And institutions developed to support that ethic, he noted.

“Institutions that encouraged savings and thrift—mutual savings banks, savings and loans and credit unions—once were part of the American fabric. They were a way to build financial independence, provide for others and give back to the community,” Blankenhorn said.

But in recent decades, “anti-thrift institutions”—particularly payday lend-ers that encourage rollover loans from one paycheck to the next and state lotteries that draw disproportionately from low-income Americans—have proliferated, he observed.

“Instead of a nation of small savers, we’ve become a nation of small wasters,” Blankenhorn said.

Payday lenders target wage earners with incomes under $25,000, offering “fast cash” to people who live paycheck-to-paycheck, and charging the short-term equivalent of up to 400 annual percentage rate, according to “For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture,” a report by the Commission on Thrift.

Payday loans typically are structured in ways that make it difficult for the borrower to repay in the required two weeks, the study noted. For instance, the loan—plus a significant fee—generally must be paid in full, not incrementally.

“Instead, many consumers are likely to take the option of ‘rolling over’ their original loan into the next payday, a practice that can lead to chronic dependency on expensive credit. And the profitability of the payday business depends heavily on getting borrowers into multiple rollovers,” the report stated. “Over half (56 percent) of payday lending revenue is generated by customers who take out 13 or more loans per year.”

Lotteries claim to promote economic welfare in their states, but they effectively turn potential savers and givers into habitual gamblers, the study asserted. People with low incomes tend to spend more on the lottery per year and play more frequently than people with higher incomes, the report noted.

“State lotteries prey on people in the bottom half of the income distribution. This is a moral outrage and a social injustice,” said Barbara Whitehead, director of the Center on Thrift and Generosity.

But the dark clouds of tough economic times may have a silver lining. The positive side of the current recession is seen in the rise in individual savings during the last year, Whitehead said.

“The rapid increase in the savings rate is a grassroots response to the high level of personal debt and reflects a determination by individuals and families to put their own financial houses in order—no matter what Wall Street or Washington is doing,” Whitehead said.

But the positive signs of increased personal savings could be a relatively short-lived phenomenon unless character-shaping institutions actively promote the virtue of thrift, she observed.

“If we want to establish an enduring culture of thrift, then we will have to re-engage institutions in the civil society—churches, families, youth organizations—with a mission or tradition of teaching the virtue of thrift and stewardship,” she said. “Some of these institutions have retreated from this tradition in the boom years, but this is a moment when they can provide new leadership for thrift.”

However, ethicist Bill Tillman insists the root cause of the “debt culture” is the worship of wealth, and churches should conduct a serious self-examination before they could hope to shape society’s attitudes.

“There’s an archetypal drive—the pursuit of wealth and accumulation of possessions—that comes from trying to find fulfillment in created stuff when we should be worshipping the Creator,” said Tillman, the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary.

Churches easily can become guilty of following the dominant culture rather than the teachings of the New Testament, he noted.

“The real values that drive a congregation can be seen by looking at a church’s budget statement,” Tillman said.

Congregations need buildings, and church buildings need maintenance, he noted. But if a church spends nearly all its resources on itself rather than on community ministries and missions beyond its walls, that can “distort the witness” of the congregation, he said.

A 2,000-year-old incident continues to set the standard for what it means to be a generous church.

The New Testament records the need: “Our Jerusalem brothers and sisters need our help.” And in the face of difficult financial circumstances, the church at Macedonia responded. The Macedonian Christians were faithful stewards of the resources God provided, the Apostle Paul noted.

Stewardship often is seen as an individual act—giving a tithe, with generosity gauged by contributions in addition to the basic 10 percent. But is the corporate body also a steward, and how or can that stewardship be measured?

“I don’t think you can separate the church and individual members’ response,” explained David Waganer, resource coordinator for Stewardship Development Association.

Ruben Swint agrees. “Stewardship is all we do with all we have to carry out our God-given mission,” said Swint, an independent consultant for Generis, a firm that assists educational and faith-based entities with stewardship and fund raising. “That’s true for individual Christians and churches or communities of faith.”

And he believes, stewardship and generosity are synonymous. Christians need to “unlearn what we think we know” about stewardship, he said. Following the rise of corporate America in the 1950s, churches perceived the need to raise money. “The church has used ‘stewardship’ as the term for fund raising,” Swint said.

Rather than fund raising, the focus must shift to vision and mission. “I see the stewardship angle in everything,” Waganer said. “We’ve got to look at a holistic view of stewardship” that includes “money, time, talent and everything that we are.”

“We try to begin with a church’s vision, what God has called them to do,” noted Terry Austin, founder of The Austin Group. “To be a good steward, the church needs to be utilizing their money to reach that vision. A church may have money in the bank. But if they are not doing what God has called them to do, they aren’t good stewards. So much of what we have to do has little to do with money itself. … Money is the tool.”

Swint believes stewardship language must broaden from the church’s 1950s understanding to better communicate the concept today.

“Nowadays, when we use the word ‘stewardship,’ we mean it in two ways,” he said. “First, we’re only doing it one time in the year. And second, everyone understands we are about to launch a campaign for ‘Green October’ to catch up from the summer slump and to pledge for giving through the next calendar year.

“Stewardship is a rich word. … We don’t need to get away from it, but we need to redefine it so that people don’t think, ‘They just want my money,’” he explained.

The word “generosity” can express the concepts in a way that is more understandable and palatable today.

“We don’t find the word as often as stewardship in the Bible, but we see the actions of God and people that reflect generosity and abundance,” Swint said.

“If we are made in the image of God, we should have received the generosity gene in our spiritual DNA. We don’t necessarily want to be labeled a good steward, but we want to be seen as generous.”

Generosity can be expressed with different terminology. “Be anti-budget,” Swint declared. Promote an “annual ministry plan” instead. “Don’t talk about income; talk about contributions. … Don’t talk about expenses; talk about costs. It’s costly to follow God and costly to carry out our mission.”

And be sure to include the stewardship’s other aspects—hours and talents given—in the church’s annual reports.

Pastors often feel reluctant to bring up stewardship issues. Pastor Chuck Arney of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Lee’s Summit, Mo., admits he rarely preaches on the topic.

“Our culture is permeated with the attitude that growth is success,” he said. “I don’t want people to go away measuring Sunday in terms of the amount of offering and the numbers of people.”

The church has “never been flush,” and current economic conditions have hit a number of members with salary reductions or job loss. But members are committed to growing as a missional congregation, focusing on ministering to their neighborhood.

Financial issues forced them to redefine how to give. “We established an operating budget—what we have to do, and then created another giving option, The Revolution, that springs from our missional initiatives,” Arney explained.

“I had talked about how Jesus revolutionizes life and gives us passions. I asked the people to think about their passions. They tithe to Cornerstone, and out of their passion they give to The Revolution. When people get excited, they put their resources behind it.”

Those passions currently are expressed through food pantry and clothes closet ministries, but will soon blossom into additional opportunities, including apartment outreach. “We are on the cusp of starting a nonprofit organization designed to go into the community rather than wait for people to come,” he said.

Cornerstone’s approach stems from Jesus’ commissioning of the 12 disciples in Matthew 10. “He tells them they don’t need to do fund raising, and that they must depend upon the generosity of the people they reach,” Arney said. “Trust God, and he will give us what we need to do the ministry.”

If Americans had followed biblical financial principles, they could have lessened—or completely avoided—the worst recession in decades, two prominent Christian money management specialists said.

“Debt may not be a sin, but it is certainly a curse,” said Randy Rowechamp of Crown Financial Ministries.

Dave Ramsey, author of Total Money Makeover and other money management books, agrees.

“Debt may not be a sin, but it is certainly a curse,” according to Randy Rowechamp of Crown Financial Ministries.

“There has been a common myth spread across America that debt is a tool and should be used to create prosperity, but God tells us something different. According to Proverbs 22:7, ‘The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.’ God shows us his obvious disdain for debt,” Ramsey said.

And debt is something American families understand. According to Federal Reserve estimates, household debt stands at 124 percent of after-tax annual income, down from a peak of 133 percent in 2007, but up sharply from the 60 percent prior to 1986. Greater debt and smaller incomes yield predictable results. Bank loan defaults have increased steadily from 0.76 percent in 2006 to 3.77 percent currently.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently announced, “From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over.” But from a practical perspective, Bernanke conceded, economic recovery will be slow.

Christian finance involves more than financial recovery. “In all economic times, Christians should be good stewards,” Rowechamp said. “The way we do that is to learn what God has to say about all of our financial resources.”

Unfortunately, churches have taught inadequate financial principles. “Many churches focus only on giving when they teach congregations about honoring God with their finances,” Ramsey said.

“But handling money and thinking about money in a godly way is much more than a tithe check. The Bible tells us that we are stewards of God’s resources. By definition, a steward is not an owner, but a manager; someone who takes care of the possessions of someone else. Handling your resources God’s way not only includes giving, but also budgeting, saving, sacrificing, and making wise decisions with your money.”

Rowechamp agrees churches have not taught money management principles. “One problem is that pastors were not taught about money management in seminary,” he said. “And the second problem is that many pastors are, themselves, as much in debt as any other family.”

By engaging in common-sense biblical principles, even families with significant debt can become financially free. “Financial freedom, for Christians, is when they can choose to quit working and pursue a ministry they feel led to, or when they can choose to keep working and support ministries they feel passionate about,” he added.

Just because Christians understand good money-management principles doesn’t necessarily mean they put them into practice, Ramsey observed.

“What to do isn’t the problem. Doing it is. Winning at money is 80 percent behavior and 20 percent head knowledge. Most of us know what to do, but we just don’t do it,” he said. “If you can control the person in the mirror, you can win with money. But some people are so immature that they are unwilling to delay pleasure for a greater result. If you will make the sacrifices now that most people aren’t willing to make, later on you will be able to live as those folks will never be able to live.”

To become financially independent, families first must total their indebtedness. Second, say the experts, they must establish a $1,000.00 emergency savings fund and use credit cards only if they can repay in the same month.

Next, families should begin paying off loans. According to Ramsey, the goal is changed behavior. People should repay smaller loans first, regardless of the interest rates, because success reinforces good behaviors.

Ramsey cautions against debt consolidation. “Debt consolidation is nothing more than a con because you think you’ve done something about the debt problem, but all you’ve done is move it,” he said.

“A friend of mine who works for a debt consolidation firm estimates that 78 percent of the time, after someone consolidates his credit-card debt, the debt grows back. This happens because the debt is still there, as are the habits that caused it. You can’t borrow your way out of debt.”

As they retire debt, families should commit more to savings, Ramsey suggested. Then, they should pay off their mortgages early.

Families whose debts have been submitted to collectors should secure a financial adviser. “You should set your payment priorities, not let collectors set it,” Ramsey said.

“It is their job to make you angry or scared, and they do that job well. They know that if they can get you all worked up that you will act on that emotion and do something stupid like pay them instead of buying groceries. Take care of necessities first—food, clothing, shelter, utilities, and transportation. After these, figure out how much you can pay on each of your debts.

“Tell the collectors you are going to send them payments of what you can each pay period. If they say that’s not good enough, tell them that is all you can give them right now. Trust me, they will cash the check for that amount.”

That church budgets have suffered during the recession comes as no surprise. “The disturbing thing is, when you look at the statistics, the spending inside the church is no different than outside the church,” Rowechamp said. “There is a difference between God’s economy and man’s economy. People who spend more than they make are focusing on worldly things. When the church is hurting financially, it is not a good role model to the community.”

Ramsey suggests, “Debt … prevents our churches from realizing their full potential and maximizing their impact. It is important for the church to lead by example and learn how to successfully manage church finances so that they can build their church debt-free.  This will encourage church members to learn how to live a debt-free life so that they give like never before and help the church grow.”

Ramsey and Rowechamp agreed that when churches teach biblical stewardship and engage in the money management principles they teach, congregations, families and communities will reap positive rewards.

Number of female senior pastors doubles in 10 years. One in 10 U.S. churches employs a woman as senior pastor, double the percentage from a decade ago, according to a new survey by the Barna Group . Most of the women—58 percent—work in mainline Protestant churches, such as the United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Episcopal Church. Only 23 percent of male senior pastors are affiliated with mainline churches, the survey said. Barna’s survey found female pastors tend to be more highly educated than their male counterparts, with 77 percent earning a seminary degree, compared to 63 percent of male pastors. But male pastors still rake in larger incomes. The average compensation package for female pastors in 2009 is $45,300, Barna says, while males earn $48,600. Barna conducted the study by interviewing 609 senior pastors and balancing the sample according to the distribution of Protestant churches in the continental United States. The range of sampling error was between 1.8 and 4.1 percentage points, according to Barna.

Winners named to American Jewish Hall of Fame. After more than 209,000 votes from around the world, 18 men and women have been chosen for the new National Museum of American Jewish History’s Hall of Fame. Based on the poll results and input from historians, the winners ranged from celebrities, such as Barbra Streisand and Steven Spielberg, to more Judaism-specific figures, including Rabbis Mordecai Kaplan and Isaac Mayer Wise, who founded the Reconstructionist and Reform movements, respectively. The other honorees include musicians Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein; Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis; physicist Albert Einstein; baseball pitcher Sandy Koufax; cosmetics entrepreneur and philanthropist Estee Lauder; activist poet Emma Lazarus; Bible translator Rabbi Isaac Leeser; Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir; polio vaccine inventor Jonas Salk; labor leader Rose Schneiderman; Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer; Hasidic Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson; and Zionist women’s leader Henrietta Szold. Finalists who didn’t make the initial cut included poet Allen Ginsberg; Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; entertainer Bette Midler; choreographer Jerome Robbins; and The Three Stooges.

Meatpackers erred in firing Muslims, commission says. A meatpacking company was wrong to fire more than 200 Muslim employees who walked off the job to protest insufficient breaks during Ramadan last year, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Workers at the JBS Swift & Co. plants in Greeley, Colo., and Grand Island, Neb., had wanted their breaks rescheduled to sunset during the Islamic month of daytime fasting, in order to pray and eat. JBS Swift officials said the company amended its policies to accommodate its Muslim employees—mostly Somali immigrants—during this year’s Ramadan observance. The EEOC ruling may result in the commission or the fired workers suing JBS Swift if a settlement is not reached.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A new report confirmed long-held assumptions about religious activists from the left and right. The only thing both sides seem to have in common: faith is a more important part of their lives than among the general public.

But beyond that, the two poles differ dramatically on political priorities and biblical interpretation.

If you’re a conservative religious activist, you’re likely a male evangelical who reads the Bible literally and views fighting abortion and same-sex marriage as the top political priorities.

On the other hand, if you’re a woman who attends a mainline Protestant church, hold an expansive view of Scripture and think health care and poverty are top priorities, you’re more likely to be labeled a progressive religious activist.

John C. Green, one of the co-authors of Faithful, Engaged and Divergent, said the surveys depict two groups that aren’t just “at loggerheads” with each other, but rather take wildly different views of hot-button political issues.

“What this suggests is that these groups are talking past each other,” said Green, director of the Bliss Institute for Applied Politics in Akron, Ohio. “They have, really, very different priorities. … A lot of what’s going on is an argument about what the political agenda ought to be.”

Robert P. Jones, another author of the report, said the surveys also indicate differences in the ways the two groups mobilize their activism.

For example, progressive religious activists are more wired, engaging in online activism, while conservative religious activists are more involved in state campaigns and ballot initiatives. But no matter what their rate of activity, religious activists on both ends of the ideological spectrum said their faith was an important driver of their work.

“Both religious activist groups cite faith as an important factor in their voting decision,” said Jones, president of Public Religion Research. “But conservative activists were more likely to say that their faith was the most important factor in their voting decision.”

Although the findings clearly delineated differences between the groups, the authors said it showed at least one challenge for both groups—the age of activists. Close to 50 percent of both groups—49 percent of conservatives and 43 percent of progressives—were older than 65.

Researchers mailed surveys to random samples of participants of major activist organizations. The margin of error for the 1,886 usable responses from the progressive organizations was plus or minus 2.3 percentage points and the margin of error for the 1,123 usable responses from conservative organizations was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Some participating groups chose to remain anonymous, but progressive groups included Interfaith Alliance and Sojourners, and conservative groups included Concerned Women for America and the National Right to Life Committee.

The report is significant, in part, because it reflects dramatic changes in the nation’s faith-based activism, said E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was invited to comment on the findings.

“I don’t think this project would have occurred to anyone 10 years ago because I don’t think people took the idea of progressive religious activism seriously 10 years ago,” said Dionne, a Washington Post columnist.

Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics & Public Policy Center, said the report answers questions about whether Democrats could succeed in narrowing the so-called “God gap” that had seen religious voters flocking to the GOP.

“Clearly, from this data, it’s not only closing,” he said. “It’s closed.”

VENTURA, Calif. (ABP) — The percentage of churches in the United States employing a woman as senior pastor has doubled during the past decade, according to a new survey by the Barna Group.

The evangelical pollster said one church in 10 now employs a female pastor. From the early 1990s through 1999, just 5 percent of pastors of Protestant churches were women. Barna called it a "substantial" gain.

The majority of women in the pastorate — 58 percent — are affiliated with a mainline Protestant denomination such as the American Baptist Churches USA, United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist Church or Presbyterian Church.

Pam Durso, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry, said she would not describe gains by women in moderate Baptist churches during the past 15 as "substantial," but "steady."

In 1993, Durso said, 51 women were serving as pastors of Baptist churches in the South. Now 115 women have been identified as pastors or co-pastors of churches affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists, Baptist General Association of Virginia, Baptist General Convention of Texas or Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

"While the overall percentages of women pastors remain lower than that of mainline Protestants, the number of Baptist women pastoring has slowly but steadily increased," Durso said.

She said Baptist Women in Ministry, which was founded in 1983 but just recently hired a full-time executive director, "is now in a pro-active position and is seeking to assist Baptist women in their search for ministry positions and to assist churches."

The Barna study found that women pastors tend to be older than their male counterparts — the median age for women is 55 compared to 52 for males. They are also better educated. More than three-fourths of women pastors have a seminary degree (77 percent) compared to less than two-thirds (62 percent) of males.

Despite their educational achievement, female pastors typically earn less money than men. The average compensation package for female pastors is $45,300, compared to $48,600 for males. Barna said that may be due in part to the size of their congregations. Male pastors lead churches that average 103 adults in attendance on a typical weekend, compared to 81 in the average church led by a female pastor.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — About one-fourth of the largest and one-third of the fastest-growing churches in America are Baptist, according to an annual listing compiled by LifeWay Research for Outreach Magazine.

Nearly half of the nation's largest and fastest-growing churches are non-denominational. With attendance averaging 43,500, the largest congregation, Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston, has nearly twice as many members as the next-largest, LifeChurch.tv in Edmond, Okla., attended by 26,776.

"There is little question that more of the larger and fastest-growing churches are non-denominational," said LifeWay Research President Ed Stezer, who compiled the lists. "And, in many of the cases, even those that were denominational, they often did not say so in their name."

Stetzer's group is part of LifeWay Christian Resources, the Southern Baptist Convention's publishing arm.

Forty-six of the nation's largest churches (which the study defined as having more than 5,600 members) and 47 of the fastest-growing (1,000-plus-member congregations posting an annual numerical gain of 300 or more, and a percentage increase of at least 5 percent) are non-denominational.

"It is tough to know why," Stetzer said. "We just know that it is happening."

Twenty-four of the largest churches, meanwhile, are Baptist, and 17 of those are Southern Baptist. By comparison, three Presbyterian, one United Methodist and one Evangelical Lutheran churches crack the list of the 100 largest churches. Even a growing denomination like the Assemblies of God claims only five of the largest churches.

The largest Baptist congregation, Second Baptist Church in Houston, ranks No. 5 overall. Led by former Southern Baptist Convention president Ed Young, the church reported an average weekly attendance of 22,723.

Second Baptist comes in just behind North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga. Though non-denominational, North Point was started by former Southern Baptist minister Andy Stanley in 1995 and is now America's fourth-largest church with attendance of 23,377.

Thirty-one of the fastest-growing churches are Baptist. Out of those, 21 are Southern Baptist. The fastest-growing Baptist church is Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn., reporting a growth rate of 40 percent.

Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., is one of six churches showing up as both one of the largest (No. 6) and fastest-growing (No. 23) churches. The congregation is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Stetzer said the high profile of Southern Baptists on both the largest and fastest-growing lists doesn't change his earlier observations that the SBC, as a whole, is starting to decline.

LifeWay Research projected recently unless the aging and predominantly white denomination reverses a 50-year trend of declining evangelism, its membership will decline by nearly half — from 16.2 million to 8.7 million — by 2050.

"There are a good number of SBC megachurches on the list, but their growth does not offset the membership decline of the denomination as a whole," Stetzer explained. "There are growing SBC churches in every size — small, medium and large. However, the net membership has dropped for two years in a row."

That would apply even to some of the churches on the largest-churches list. For instance, Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, Tenn., was ranked the 80th-largest church, with attendance averaging 6,567. But eight years ago the church, under previous pastor Adrian Rogers, consistently averaged more than 7,500. On Sept. 13 the congregation, now led by Steve Gaines, introduced a new contemporary worship service aimed at turning around the decline.

To prepare the report, the magazine invited participation from more than 8,000 churches. The listings are based on February and March weekend attendance averages, excluding Easter.

While not a comprehensive and exhaustive list, the magazine said it went to great lengths to confirm data self-reported by pastors, staff or church officers.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

VENTURA, Calif. (ABP) — Prominent evangelical pollster George Barna weighed in on the health-care debate with a Sept. 20 editorial saying that Jesus would support universal coverage — although not necessarily through the government.

The founder of the Barna Research Group said that the Gospel of Luke, which tradition says was authored by a physician, contains 26 passages describing how Jesus responded to people's physical and medical needs.

"Jesus healed everyone who presented a medical need because he saw no reason to screen some out as unqualified," Barna wrote. He said Jesus also healed every kind of illness he encountered, and that no malady was either too simple or too complex for his concern.

Barna used four words to describe Jesus' health-care strategy: whoever, whatever, whenever, wherever.

"Whoever needed to be healed received his healing touch," he wrote. "Whatever affliction they suffered from, he addressed it. Whenever the opportunity to heal arose, he seized it. Wherever they happened to be, he took care of it."

Barna contrasted that with the "preferred American model," which he described as "deciding to throw some money at the problem — but not too much — so that somebody else can do what needs to be done, for those who qualify, in a manner that does not inconvenience us."

Barna said he doubted that Jesus, who included care for the sick in the marching orders he gave to his disciples, would be content to see his followers wait for the government to provide for the poor.

"Government clearly has a role in people's lives; the Bible supports its existence and circumscribed functions," he said. But he went on to say that does not mean that churches should fail to exhibit compassion and service and allow the government to act as a national safety net.

"In a society that has become increasingly self-centered and self-indulgent, we simply expand our reliance upon the government to provide solutions and services that are the responsibility of Christ followers," he said.

On Sept. 21, meanwhile, America's largest Hispanic Christian organization issued a statement condemning "anti-immigration rhetoric" in the current health-care debate. The statement cited comments from both Democratic and Republican leaders supporting a proof-of-citizenship requirement in the various reform bills and denying access to coverage to undocumented immigrants and their families.

"We find it to be both morally and politically disadvantageous not to include coverage for all those currently residing in our nation," Nick Garza, chief operating officer of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said in a press release.

Garza said requiring immigrants to prove citizenship in order to purchase health-care coverage "stands as a de facto endorsement of racial profiling and continues to exacerbate the anti-immigrant sentiment currently embedded within the immigration-reform debate."

Garza said the proposal would deny the right to health-care coverage to 12 million homes and suggested labeling it as "Xenophobic Health Care Reform."

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

Human beings are fragile creatures needing health care to flourish and—in many cases—survive, said David Gushee, distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. And that universal need for health care makes it a human right, he insists.

“Rights are tied to needs,” he said.

Other industrialized nations already provide basic health care, and consider it a human right rather than a commercial commodity, said Terry Rosell, professor of pastoral theology in ethics and ministry praxis at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Shawnee, Kan., and program associate for disparities in health and health care at the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Mo. “They consider us to be barbarians for leaving out millions of our most vulnerable citizens—and non-citizens. They consider us immoral to allow some to grow rich off the sufferings of others.”

Rosell and Gushee—along with Bill Tillman, the T.B. Maston chair of ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary, and Michael Pontious, director of family practice residency for the University of Oklahoma/Garfield Country Medical Society Rural Program and editor of the Journal of the Oklahoma State Medical Association—agree Christians have a clear calling to care for the vulnerable, including people without access to affordable health care.

Most of Jesus’ miracles were health-related, Tillman said. If one adds up the accounts of healing, almost the entire body is included.

If we are to be like Christ, we “should be looking out for the well-being of others,” he said.

Pontious views the social responsibility of Christians differently than many others in the medical profession, he acknowledged. “During a conversation with colleagues … the consensus was that physicians had no social responsibility for the greater good; they rather see this as a business and therefore work under a business ethic,” he said.

He believes there is a problem when the rules of a free market system are applied to health care access. “You end up with the morass that we call American health care—the most expensive for less-than-stellar outcomes.”

Gushee compared a basic health care system to the public school system. With the use of tax dollars, society provides a basic education through high school. Some choose to opt out of the public system and pay for what they feel is a better education—but everyone still pays taxes to fund the schools, he said.

The same could be done with health care, he added. Christians need not call for either a public or a private option, but support both.

Instead of an either/or mentality, allowing both public and private options allows the two to correct the mistakes of the other.

“If we believe the Bible, we should be interested in health care and health care delivery,” Tillman said. The Bible emphasizes justice, which Tillman described as the balance of God. “Those that had were accountable to care for those who did not. It goes right in the face of American capitalism.”

He referenced the Preamble to the United States Constitution, which sets up the nation in order to “establish justice” and “promote the general welfare.”

“If we say that’s what we believe, that’s what we’re about, then those words call us to task,” he said.

But while Christians should support health care options for the vulnerable, they shouldn’t step blindly into any proposal. Christians need to engage the process, Gushee and Tillman agreed.

Questions to ask include:

• Will this legislation cover every American?

• Will it be affordable—both to individuals and to society as a whole?

• How do we protect basic human values—such as the sanctity of all life—in the process of reform?

• How quickly will a person gain access to the system?

• How individualized will the system be?

• Will people still have the choice to visit their own physician?

“This is an interesting test case in caring for those not as fortunate,” Gushee said. Eighty-five percent of people have health insurance, while only 15 percent do not, he said. “Ruthless logic would be for the 85 percent to say ‘don’t mess with this.’ But that’s sub-Christian thinking. We have to care about the 15 percent.”

He appealed to the biblical call to love one’s neighbor. “The New Testament gives hundreds of ways to answer, ‘Why should I care about my neighbor?’” he said.

He fears, however, that in the midst of a politically polarized nation, many on both sides of the fence are making ideological, not biblical decisions. “We have to do better than that.”