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BOP to open redesigned annuity T


he ELCA Board of Pensions plans to reopen its Participating Annu- ity Fund to new entrants this year. John G. Kapanke, president of the pension board, made the announce- ment during its trustees meeting March 10-13 in Chicago. In 2009, the Board of Pensions


closed its Participating Annuity and Bridge Fund to new entrants because of the plunge in global financial markets. The bridge component of the fund won’t be reopened, Kapanke said.


The pension board also plans to


carry out “a review of the design objectives of a new internal annu- ity fund option,” and implement an additional annuity fund option in 2012, he added.


The funded ratio (assets divided by the benefit obligation) improved significantly, which “lowered the fund’s funding gap to about $46 million [in February 2011], down from a funding gap of nearly $1 billion in March 2009,” Kapanke wrote in a report to the trustees. “This improvement has come from strong market performance and the annuity adjustments we have imple- mented for 2010 and 2011.”


 9 Statue honors Borlaug


Iowa is honoring the late Norman E. Borlaug with a statue in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Borlaug, a prominent agricultural scientist at Texas A&M University, College Station, and an ELCA member, won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize. Known to many as the “Father of the Green Revolution,” he is credited with sav- ing an estimated 1 billion lives with his advances in wheat science. He also founded the World Food Prize, which has been called the “Nobel


10 The Lutheran • www.thelutheran.org


Prize for Food and Agriculture” and aims to inspire additional achieve- ments in improving the quality, quan- tity and availability of food.


No nukes


U.S. and European ecumenical groups urged NATO to remove all U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. In March 17 joint letters, the groups called some 200 nuclear weapons still based in Germany, Netherlands, Bel- gium, Italy and Turkey “remnants of Cold War strategies,” and reminded


While 2010 payments for 12,500 members in the Participating Annu- ity and Bridge Fund were reduced by 9 percent, the trustees approved a smaller-than-anticipated additional reduction of 6 percent for 2011. Trustees heard an update about a one-time payment opportunity for members most adversely affected by the reductions in annuity pay- ments. In November 2010, the ELCA Church Council authorized release of $1.4 million for those one-time payments from the ELCA Special Needs Retirement Fund. Applications for those payments were to have been sent to the pen- sion board by Feb. 28. Of 491 applications the board received, 344 were eligible, said Robert D. Berg, the board’s assis- tant to the president for church rela- tions. Of 18 members who returned the applications and acknowledged they weren’t eligible, many thanked the board for making one-time pay- ments available, he said. Those not eligible were being informed by phone call and letter, Berg added. Those eligible would be sent a letter after the payment amount has been determined.


NATO of its commitment to cre- ate “conditions for a world without nuclear weapons.” Removing the weapons would reduce the number of countries with nuclear arms to nine, the churches said.


ELCA aid for Ivory Coast More than 70,000 people fled the Ivory Coast, taking refuge in Liberia after the December 2010 presidential election. Clashes between support- ers of the declared presidential vic- tor Alassane Ouattara and incumbent Laurent Gbagbo were prevalent, and many fear civil war. The ELCA is helping refugees through Lutheran Development Services in Liberia, as well as partners in the ACT Alliance. Efforts include providing clean water, mosquito nets, farming supplies, counseling and more. You can pray and give at www.elca.org/disaster; 800-638-3522; or by mail to ELCA International Disaster Response, 39330 Treasury Center, Chicago, IL 60694-9300.


Experts split on divorce Bradley Wright, author of Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites ... and Other Lies You’ve Been Told (Bethany House, 2010), says it’s a myth that Christians divorce as much as every- one else in America. He’s critical of the Barna Group, evangelical pollsters whose statistics he said are tied to highly specific definitions of born-again Chris- tians and evangelicals. Wright said a demographic study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago indicates that Christians, like adherents of other religions, have a divorce rate of about 42 percent. The rate among religiously unaffiliated Americans is 50 percent.


Peace in the Mideast ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark S. Han- son was among U.S. Christian lead- ers who wrote to President Barack


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