POPE WARNS AGAINST WITHCRAFT IN ANGOLA

LUANDA — Pope Benedict XVI issued a warning against witchcraft Saturday during his visit to Angola, after calling on African leaders to battle corruption and drawing a tough line against abortion.
The pope celebrated a private Mass for Angola's clergy and laypeople in the modernist Sao Paulo church, which along with much of the surrounding neighbourhood has been freshly painted and upgraded for his visit.
He praised the work of activists within the Church, and called on them to work to convert people to Catholicism, saying evangelising remains as important today as it was when Catholics first arrived in this region of Africa 500 years ago.
"Today it is up to you, brothers and sisters, following in the footsteps of those heroic and holy heralds of God, to offer the risen Christ to your fellow citizens," he said to the invitation-only crowd.
"So many of them are living in fear of spirits, of malign and threatening powers. In their bewilderment they end up even condemning street children and the elderly as alleged sorcerers," he said.
The issue has particular resonance in Angola, where traditional and home-grown faiths are flourishing, even though some sects have been linked to child abuse and human sacrifice.
Benedict criticised the idea that seeking to convert people was an affront to believers of other faiths.
"We do no injustice to anyone if we present Christ to them and thus grant them the opportunity of finding their truest and most authentic selves, the joy of finding life," he added.
Sao Paulo claims the largest congregation in Luanda, with seating for 1,500 people. Next door is the headquarters of Radio Ecclesia, a Catholic radio station that is one of the few independent voices in Angolan media.
Local Church leaders hope the pope's visit will push Angola's government -- run by the formerly Marxist Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola -- to allow the station to broadcast nationwide, rather than only in the capital.
In a speech at President Jose Eduardo dos Santos's residence late Friday, Benedict urged African leaders to allow greater press freedom, as he made a stern call for the continent to do more to fight poverty and corruption.
Dos Santos has ruled Angola for 30 years, and the country is ranked among the most corrupt in the world by Transparency International.
But in a country still recovering from decades of war, two thirds of the population lives on less than two dollars a day, despite Angola's oil riches.
"The multitude of Angolans who live below the threshold of absolute poverty must not be forgotten. Do not disappoint their expectations," Benedict said Friday.
He called on Africa to show "a determination born from the conversion of hearts to excise corruption once and for all".
"Armed with integrity, magnanimity and compassion, you can transform this continent, freeing your people from the scourges of greed, violence and unrest," he said.
Benedict has also sought to reinforce Catholic teachings on social issues, taking aim at a part of the African Union's charter that guarantees women a right to an abortion in cases of rape, incest, or major health risks to the mother, saying abortion was not a health issue.
Those remarks followed his controversial denunciation of condoms as a tool to prevent AIDS, which has sparked an international uproar among activists and some governments.

PRESBYTERIAN LESBIAN MAKES THIRD ATTEMPT AT ORDINATION

An openly gay woman in San Francisco is attempting for a third time to become ordained within the Presbyterian Church (USA), the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States.

Lisa Larges, a deacon at Noe Valley Ministry Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, has been blocked from ordination for more than 20 years and may get blocked again should the Synod of the Pacific's Permanent Judicial Commission rule that the San Francisco Presbytery was wrong in deciding that Larges could move forward in the ordination process.
On Jan. 15, the San Francisco Presbytery deemed Larges ready for examination by a narrow 167 to 151 vote despite the PC(USA)’s ban on clergy that do not practice “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness.”
Under a controversial policy adopted by the PC(USA)’s 217th General Assembly in 2006, ordaining bodies were given greater leeway to ordain candidates who declare conscientious objections to specific Presbyterian teachings, as long as the ordaining body does not consider them “essentials” of church belief.
In her written objection, Larges stated that she would not concur with the church’s requirement that she be married to a man or be chaste in order to become a minister.
She called the provision a “mar upon the church and a stumbling block to its mission” and said it did not express essentials of Presbyterian faith, according to the PC(USA)’s news service.
On Friday, Larges, who was blind from birth, appeared during a meeting in Oakland of the Synod of the Pacific's Permanent Judicial Commission to ask church officials to let her application proceed.
A ruling is expected Tuesday.

NANCY EIESLAND WROTE OF A ' DISABLED GOD ' IS DEAD AT 44

By the time the theologian and sociologist Nancy Eiesland was 13 years old, she had had 11 operations for the congenital bone defect in her hips and realized pain was her lot in life. So why did she say she hoped that when she went to heaven she would still be disabled?

The reason, which seems clear enough to many disabled people, was that her identity and character were formed by the mental, physical and societal challenges of her disability. She felt that without her disability, she would “be absolutely unknown to myself and perhaps to God.”
By the time of her death at 44 on March 10, Ms. Eiesland had come to believe that God was in fact disabled, a view she articulated in her influential 1994 book, “The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability.” She pointed to the scene described in Luke 24:36-39 in which the risen Jesus invites his disciples to touch his wounds.
“In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God,” she wrote. God remains a God the disabled can identify with, she argued — he is not cured and made whole; his injury is part of him, neither a divine punishment nor an opportunity for healing.
Ms. Eiesland (pronounced EES-lund), who was an associate professor at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, died not of her congenital bone condition, nor of the spinal scoliosis that necessitated still more surgery in 2002, but of a possibly genetic lung cancer, said her husband, Terry.
Ms. Eiesland’s insights added a religious angle to a new consciousness among the disabled that emerged in the 1960s in the fight for access to public facilities later guaranteed by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The movement progressed into cultural realms as disabled poets, writers and dramatists embraced disability as both cause and identity.
Pointing out that anyone can become disabled at any time, the disabled called those without disabilities “the temporarily able-bodied.” They ventured into humor, calling nondisabled people bowling pins because they were easy prey for wheelchairs.
Ms. Eiesland’s contribution was to articulate a coherent theology of disability. Deborah Beth Creamer, in her book “Disability and Christian Theology” (2009), called Ms. Eiesland’s work the “most powerful discussion of God to arise from disability studies.”
In an e-mail message, Rebecca S. Chopp, the president of Colgate University, who is known for her feminist theological interpretations, characterized Ms. Eiesland as “a, if not the, leader of disability studies and Christianity and disability studies in religion.”
In four books and scores of articles, Ms. Eiesland’s scholarship also included a much-cited book on the dynamics of churches in an Atlanta suburb. Groups like the World Council of Churches asked her to speak on disability.
For 10 years, she consulted with the United Nations, helping develop its Convention on the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities, which was enacted last year. The convention describes the disabled as “subjects” with rights, rather than “objects” of charity. It explicitly endorses spiritual rights for the disabled.
Nancy Lynn Arnold was born in Cando, N.D., and grew up on a farm nearby. Operations to remedy her birth defect began when she was a toddler. Her parents also took her to faith healers. She wrote that she was a poster child for the March of Dimes, a charity that some advocates for the disabled criticize for its appeals to pity.
After she was fitted with a full-leg brace at age 7, her father told her: “You’re going to need to get a job that keeps you off your feet. You’ll never be a checkout clerk.”
In high school, she won a national contest with an essay on the inaccessibility of rural courthouses in North Dakota. She organized a letter-writing campaign on the issue.
She enrolled at the University of North Dakota, where she campaigned for ramps into the library and accessible parking spots. She dropped out after her beloved older sister was killed in an automobile accident.
Nancy and her stricken family joined the Assemblies of God and moved to Springfield, Mo., where the church has its headquarters. She enrolled in Central Bible College, which trained ministers, and graduated as valedictorian in 1986. She became an Assemblies of God minister, but gradually drifted away from the denomination.
She became a student at Candler, where she studied theology under Ms. Chopp. Ms. Chopp remembered Ms. Eiesland’s complaining that for all Christianity’s professed concern for the poor and oppressed, the disabled were ignored.
“I looked at her and said, ‘That is your work,’ ” Ms. Chopp said.
After a stunned silence, Ms. Eiesland accepted the challenge as fodder for a master’s thesis, which evolved into “The Disabled God.” She earned her master’s degree in 1991 and her Ph.D. in 1995, both from Emory.
Ms. Eiesland is survived by her husband; their daughter, Marie; her parents, Dean and Carol Arnold; two brothers, Neal and Victor Arnold; and two sisters, Katherine Arnold and Jocelyn Gracza.
As she strove to define new religious symbols, Ms. Eiesland’s metaphors were startlingly incisive. She envisioned God puttering about in a “puff” wheelchair, the kind quadriplegics drive with their breath.

PARISHIONER AND PASTOR CITED FOR FIRING AN ARROW IN THE CHURCH FOR A SERMON ILLUSTRATION

A Sheboygan Falls pastor and parishioner were issued municipal citations Thursday for firing an arrow during Sunday's service as part of a sermon illustration.

About 120 people were attending the evening service at Pentecostals of Sheboygan County, 621 Broadway, when the Rev. John Putnam had Jason Wilke, 26, draw and fire a steel-tipped practice arrow across the front of the church.
Putnam called it a "teaching tool."
Police call it illegal.
Wilke, of Sheboygan Falls, was cited for using a missile indoors, and Putnam was cited for aiding and abetting that ordinance violation. Both will be fined $109.
But Kohler Police Chief Bill Rutten said no criminal charges will be filed.
"Our department did not feel that it rose to the level of endangering safety," Rutten said. "Anytime with bows and arrows or firearms, there's always that chance for a malfunction to happen, but nothing did happen aside from the firing into the target, so we're thinking that an ordinance violation is appropriate in this case."
Rutten said Wilke, at Putnam's direction, stood on the far left side of the occupied front row and fired at a foam target on the right side of the stage, shooting the arrow across the congregation but slightly away from them.
"Even if their had been a malfunction, the likelihood of something bad happening (is slim)," Rutten said.
Putnam, 30, defended the illustration when contacted at his office on Thursday.
"We use props all the time for messages," he said. "It was a completely controlled, choreographed demonstration."
Not all churchgoers agreed.
One man stood up and objected as Wilke drew the compound bow, telling Putnam firing the arrow was unsafe and illegal, according to two parishioners. Putnam told the man to be quiet and sit down, which he did until Wilke drew the bow again.
The man objected a second time, after which Putnam said he asked the man to leave. Putnam said the church will seek a restraining order against the man, who he said was yelling and "causing a disruption."
The man then reported the incident to Sheboygan Falls police, who responded to the church and spoke with the pastor. The incident was turned over to the Kohler Police Department on Monday since Putnam is the former chaplain of the Sheboygan Falls Police Department.
One woman in attendance described the scene differently from Putnam, saying the man's objection was "very gentle and very respectful."
The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said church leaders closed the rear doors of the church after the man left, and Wilke then fired the arrow.
"Our family was a little scared," she said. "They can easily ricochet and kill a person. That's happened."
Putnam said he was challenging churchgoers to be active in sharing their testimonies with others. He was elaborating on a passage that details spiritual "equipment" given to Christians, such as the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit and the belt of truth.
"I used the practice arrow just as the fact that an arrow by itself — your testimony by itself — is no good, so you have to have a bow, and the bow is that equipment," Putnam said. "And you have to have a target, and still with all that if you never pull it back and release it then it still does not accomplish its objective."
He said the illustration — which was practiced in the church basement before the service — endangered no one.
"Was it completely safe? Absolutely — it was completely safe," Putnam said. "If I knew it would cause this kind of problem, I certainly would have reconsidered."