Wednesday 8 April 2009

CHRISTIAN SUPPORTERS IN ISRAEL TO FILL THE PHILANTHROPIC VOID



"We are in what I believe is a unique situation," IFCJ founder and president Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein told the Post this week. "Not only have our donations not been hurt [by the economic crisis], we are actually up by 39.8 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to last year. The bottom line is that we are one of the few organizations where our giving has increased."
Last year the IFCJ raised a total of $90 million, which it in turn donated to a wide range of social welfare programs for young children, needy families and the elderly both here and in the FSU.
Officials with the American arms of both the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Joint Distribution Committee told the Post last week they were concerned about possible cuts in funding from federations across North America under budget proposals being considered by the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization that channels donations to both JAFI and JDC.
Members of the UJC's finance committee met Monday in New York and agreed to shrink its budget to $30m., down from $37m., by cutting 31 full-time staff in its operations.
A final decision will be made in June.

The status of another proposal that would potentially reduce funds to both JDC and JAFI by up to another $7m. was not clear Tuesday.
Eckstein, who sits on the board of both JAFI and JDC, said the financial crisis was taking its toll on both organizations, and that in the current economic climate "they will have to crunch down and realize their core missions."
"The JDC is in much better shape than JAFI, not just fiscally but also in terms of brand and direction, but there is no doubt that both organizations will take a serious hit with this cut," he said. "The fellowship will try to make up for it, and we have already stepped in to provide funding for Holocaust survivors in the FSU."
Just this week, the IFCJ launched a NIS 7m. initiative aimed at supplying needy families both here and in the FSU with basic staples for Pessah. Roughly half, or some NIS 3.2m., went to humanitarian aid organization Latet to distribute 20,000 food aid packages to needy families in Israel, and a further NIS 4m. was given to various programs run by the JDC, JAFI and Chabad for distressed Jewish families and individuals in the FSU.
"These are difficult times," observed Eckstein. "Unemployment and poverty are on the rise and the need for help is growing. At the same time, Jewish communities and philanthropies have been hit hard by the decreased value of the dollar and the subsequent economic turmoil. Last year was a devastating one for Jewish organizations and foundations."

OBAMA'S CHRISTIAN APPOINTEE TO FAITH BASED PROGRAMME ( HARY KNOX ) SAYS NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING ON HOMOSEXUALITY IS ' NOT TRUE "


"Harry Knox, a professed gay Christian who is director of the religion and faith program at the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual rights group, was named to President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships on Monday. The advisory council gives federal grants to faith-based organizations. The appointment came after Knox criticized Obama prior to the Inauguration for selecting Warren, a California megachurch pastor and best-selling author, to deliver the invocation.
Writing in The Huffington Post blog, Knox said to Obama, “We don’t feel hopeful anticipation of a new day in our country, and we don’t feel optimism. We feel betrayed.”Knox said in the December article that Warren’s invocation would make the Jan. 20 Inauguration a “tainted” event because Warren supported the ballot initiative in California to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.


On the PBS News Hour in December, Knox said that Warren “has in fact leveraged homophobia to get ahead in his career. … This is the worst possible choice the president could have made. This is a divisive choice. … We said to the president-elect today in very strong language, the strongest we can think of and be respectful of the office, you have really slapped us. And we want you to think about that and think very hard what your actions will be going forward because this very symbolic, early decision has sent the exact wrong message.”

Knox could not be reached for comment Tuesday.Knox is one of 25 members of the advisory board of the White House Office Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Obama announced the formation of the office in early February, a continuation of a similar office started by President George W. Bush to issue federal grants to faith-based, non-profit charitable organizations.Other members include Bishop Charles Blake of the Church of God in Christ in Chicago; the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, president-elect of the National Council of Churches USA; Dr. Frank Page, president emeritus of the Southern Baptist Convention; the Rev. Jim Wallis, president of the liberal Christian group Sojourners; and the Rev. Joel C. Hunter of Northland Church in Longwood, Fla.Knox has been a long-time gay activist focusing on the faith community.
He previously worked for the New York-based Freedom to Marry group, for Georgia Equality and Equality Florida. He has won awards from liberal religious organizations.In a debate with the Rev. Gino Jennings recorded Nov. 28, 2004 at the First Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Philadelphia, the two men sparred over various biblical verses references homosexual behavior.This included the Book of Romans, in which St. Paul wrote, “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.” After reading the scripture, Jennings asked, “Do you believe that? That if a man lie with a man or a woman with a woman it is against nature?” “I do not believe it,” answered Knox, who at the time was the program director for the group Freedom to Marry. Jennings responded, “So this is a lie?” Knox affirmed, “That is not true.” “Paul did not have any idea of the kind of love that I feel for a partner when I am partnered. He didn’t know what that was about,” Knox said. “The straight man, the heterosexual man who got the privilege of writing the book, the educated, rich, heterosexual man, Paul, who got to write the book, didn’t think it was natural because for him it must not have been.” Jennings later responded that Paul was not the sole author of the writings. “So you are saying Paul was just closed-minded. I totally disagree because the book says this, the book tells us that all scripture, all of the scripture, not some of it, but all scripture are given by the inspiration of God,” said Jennings.
Before starting at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in 2005, Knox also worked as development director of Equality Florida and was the executive director of Georgia Equality. While in Georgia, his groups successfully lobbied corporations such as Coca-Cola, Bell South, Delta, and Cingular to extend same-sex benefits to employees.At the HRC, Knox established a weekly preaching resource that provides scriptural commentary to pastors interested in homosexual perspectives on the Bible. He also helped create a network of 22 “progressive state clergy coalitions” around the country, according to the HRC Web site. Knox has the potential to be a polarizing figure, said the Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the conservative Traditional Values Coalition. “Everything he says will be front-page news,” Sheldon told CNSNews.com. “He will be a political liability to the president.
All the good that the faith-based office does will get buried by a loose cannon that fires over the bow. But that’s what Obama wants.” Last month, Knox was quoted in a gay newspaper criticizing the pope and the Catholic group Knights of Columbus, mainly because the Knights supported the traditional marriage amendment to the California constitution. Knox told the San Francisco-based gay newspaper the Bay Area Reporter, “The Knights of Columbus do a great deal of good in the name of Jesus Christ, but in this particular case, they were foot soldiers of a discredited army of oppression.” In the newspaper, he included among the “discredited leaders” Catholic bishops and Pope Benedict XVI, as “A pope who literally today said condoms don't help in control of AIDS."In a brief interview Monday with CNSNews.com, Knox stood by his comments on the pope.“The pope needs to start telling the truth about condom use,” Knox told CNSNews.com. “We are eager to help him do that. Until he is willing to do that and able, he’s doing a great deal more harm than good--not just in Africa but around the world. It is endangering people’s lives.”The pope’s comments were mischaracterized by Knox, said Catholic League President Bill Donohue. “When Pope Benedict XVI recently said that condoms are not the answer to HIV/AIDS, he was simply voicing common sense: the promiscuous distribution of condoms has coincided with a precipitous increase in HIV/AIDS,” Donohue said in a statement Tuesday. “But to gay activists like Knox, the pope is a liar. Indeed, he instructed the pope to ‘start telling the truth about condom use,’ holding the Holy Father accountable for ‘endangering people’s lives.’ He never explained how calls for abstinence could possibly jeopardize anyone’s life.”In 2000, Knox won the Cordle Award for Promoting God’s Diversity, and the Lancaster Theological Seminary’s 2005 Robert V. Moss Medal for Excellence in Ministry.

FOUR SHOT, ONE DEAD AT THE KOREAN CHRISTIAN RETREAT CENTRE IN CALIFORNIA



But investigators were still trying to learn the circumstances of the shootings, and were hindered by a language barrier in trying to sort out the facts, Riverside County Sheriff's spokesman Dennis Gutierrez said. "We have some nuns that are very distraught," he said.

The name and age of the suspected shooter was not released and the identity of the dead victim was being withheld until relatives were notified. At least two of the victims were critically injured. The gunman was also believed to be among the wounded at the Kkottongnae Retreat Camp, located in Temecula about 85 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

A nursing supervisor at the Inland Valley Regional Medical Center near the retreat said she had no information on any of the victims. Officers began interviewing people at what appeared to be a triage center for injured victims, Gutierrez said, but most of them spoke Korean. "That language barrier, that's the key to figuring out what happened," Gutierrez said. The retreat is one of four U.S. branches of the Kkottongnae Brothers and Sisters of Jesus, a Roman Catholic organization dedicated to serving the poor and homeless. It was founded in the city of Cheongju, South Korea, by Father Oh Woong Jin in 1976.

The campground, previously used as a summer camp before the group bought it, was marked by a single white sign in English and Korean on the side of a rural winding road in remote southeast Riverside County. The retreat was a mile up a narrow road into the hills. Kkottongnae means "flower village," according to the organization's Web site. A woman who answered the phone at the group's Lynwood branch on Tuesday night said she did not speak English well and declined to discuss the shooting. Deputies had evacuated the campground and blocked off access. Nothing could be seen from the main road. Several women from the retreat sat wrapped in blankets outside the law enforcement lines. "This is the last place this is supposed to happen," Gutierrez said. "A lot of people are shaken up." Chang Kim of Los Angeles stood at the scene, saying his 88-year-old mother lives up the road that was blocked off. Kim said he was concerned because he could not reach her. "My mother lives up there," he said. "I can't go there. I can't get in. I'm stuck."

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