In Brief

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Uneasy Time for Troops In Iraq, Chaplain Says

Military chaplains in Iraq are preparing for Christmas holiday services, although it won't be a holiday for the troops.

Army Col. Michael Hoyt, command chaplain for U.S. and allied forces in Iraq, said there is some added anxiety this Christmas season as President Bush considers a change in strategy in the war. He said the troops are wondering how it will affect them.

Hoyt said that troops who arrive in Iraq as believers generally leave with a deepened faith. Others seek a relationship with God for the first time, he said, although others remain indifferent.

-- Associated Press

Posthumous Baptism Dropped for Nazi Hunter

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints removed the name of Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal from a list of those to be posthumously baptized, after the organization bearing his name issued a statement calling for the removal.

On Monday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, issued a statement asking the church to remove Wiesenthal's name from its list of those to receive posthumous ordinances, which include baptism. Later in the day, the church said his name had been removed.

"In response to a request by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and in accordance with the commitments the church made in 1995, no church ordinance was performed for Simon Wiesenthal, and his name was immediately removed from the International Genealogical Index," said Bruce Olsen, a spokesman for the church.

In 1995, the Mormon Church agreed to remove the names of Holocaust victims and Jews from the list of those to be posthumously baptized, unless they were direct ancestors of current church members or there was written permission from all living members of the deceased's family. Wiesenthal died last year at the age of 96.

"It was astonishing to us that they went against the agreement," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal center. "We understand that from their point of view, they think they're doing Simon Wiesenthal a good deed. From the Jewish point of view, it's rather an insult because it suggests that there's no other way to get to heaven except through the Mormon Church. We believe that Simon Wiesenthal, who lived a full life with great deeds on behalf of mankind, can get to heaven on his own and doesn't need any assistance."

-- Religion News Service

Indonesia to Protect Churches Over Holidays

Indonesian officials said police will guard Christian churches across the world's most populous Muslim country during the Christmas holidays.

The announcement came as the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, warned that terrorists might target Americans during the holidays.

On Christmas Eve in 2000, coordinated blasts killed 19 people, and a strike on a Christian market last New Year's Eve left seven dead. An Indonesian police spokesman said more than 18,000 officers will be posted at thousands of churches and other religious sites in Jakarta.

-- Associated Press

U.S. Decries Ruling On Bahais in Egypt

The State Department has condemned an Egyptian court ruling that denies Bahais the right to have their faith recognized on official identification documents.

Rejecting a lower court decision favorable to Bahais, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the Egyptian constitution recognizes only Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

"It is certainly a ruling that flies in the face of stated Egyptian commitments to freedom of expression, freedom of religion," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Monday. "We would hope that the Egyptian government would take steps that would allow people of the Bahai faith to obtain these identification cards."

The cards of Bahais have a line through the section for the person's religion.

The dispute directly affects only the country's Bahais, 2,000 or so of the more than 72 million Egyptians. Civil rights advocates in Egypt, however, said it's evidence that the court ignores existing protections of religious freedom.

The Bahai faith is a monotheistic religion founded in the 1860s by Baha' Allah, a Persian nobleman who the Bahais consider a prophet. Baha' Allah taught that all religions represent progressive stages in the revelation of God's will, leading to the unity of all peoples and faiths.

-- Associated Press