Religion News Briefs

Rector induction at Christ Church

The Rev. Kate Alexander will be inducted as the 26th rector of Christ Episcopal Church, 509 Scott St. in Little Rock, at 7 p.m. on Thursday.

Episcopal Bishop of Arkansas Larry Benfield will lead the ceremony making Alexander the first woman rector in the church's 179-year history. Christ Episcopal, Arkansas' oldest Episcopal church, was established in 1839.

Alexander joined the church staff in 2007 and was appointed interim rector last year after the Rev. Scott Walters, the church's previous rector, left to become rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Memphis, Tenn. According to the Christ Episcopal website, she has a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate in systematic theology from Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., and is the author of Saving Beauty: A Theological Aesthetics of Nature.

The Rev. David Freeman, senior pastor at Little Rock's First United Methodist Church, will give the homily.

-- Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Francis overrules German bishops

ROME -- Pope Francis has told German bishops they can't publish guidelines on whether non-Catholic spouses may receive Communion, saying the issue concerns the broader Catholic church and is too important to be dealt with at the regional level.

The decision appeared in a letter from the Vatican's doctrine office that was published by the L'Espresso blog and was confirmed Tuesday in a report on the Vatican's news portal.

A two-thirds majority of the German bishops' conference adopted a proposal in February to allow Protestant spouses of Catholics to receive Communion under certain circumstances.

The bishops' conference approved it in part as a gesture of ecumenical outreach to Protestants in a country where mixed-faith marriages are common.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, head of the German bishops' conference, said he was surprised by the letter given the Vatican's previous request for dialogue.

Marx said in a statement issued by his spokesman he still "sees further need for discussion" within the bishops conference as well as with the Vatican and the pope. He is due to be in Rome starting Monday for the regular meeting of the pope's top cardinal advisers.

-- The Associated Press

Muslim 'wakers': Israelis arrest us

JERUSALEM -- The Palestinian men who chant and beat drums to wake up the faithful during Ramadan in Jerusalem's Old City say they are being unfairly targeted by Israeli police over their early-morning tradition.

The public wakers, known as musaharati, walk through parts of the Old City from 2 a.m., waking up Muslims for the "suhoor" meal ahead of the daily dawn-to-dusk fast during the holy month, which ends next week.

But since residents began filing complaints with police about the noise, they say they have been arrested and fined for doing what they say is a part of Palestinian heritage.

-- The Associated Press

Buddhist clergy being 'retrained'

BEIJING -- Chinese authorities are ramping up political indoctrination among Tibetan Buddhist clergy and officials in charge of religious affairs as part of a campaign to strengthen the ruling Communist Party's grip on religion.

A Tibet government website reported this week that 35 officials and an unidentified number of monks and nuns traveled to the eastern city of Suzhou last month for training. It said they were instructed to be "reliable in politics and take a clear-cut and firm stance."

The officials and clergy were from the Tibet Autonomous Region and ethnically Tibetan areas of Yunnan province.

Such indoctrination, along with compulsory political study in monasteries, aims to reduce the appeal of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader. Christians and Muslims have also come under increased pressure in recent months.

-- The Associated Press

Religion on 06/09/2018

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