to award the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo of China. Bondevik was prime minister from 1997 to 2000 and again from 2001 to 2005.
Who is welcome? Should it be illegal to offer com- munion (bread and grape juice) and a fellowship hour (with coffee and pastries) to homeless people? No, said Violet Little, pastor of Welcome Church, where the majority of wor- shipers are homeless men and women. Little and three other faith groups are part of a federal lawsuit claiming that Philadelphia’s feeding ban for home- less people violates freedom of speech and religion. The Welcome Church offers prayer meetings, Bible study, a choir, tea and conversation, employ- ment help and computer classes.
Friars back nuns
Leaders from seven Franciscan prov- inces said June 7 that the Vatican’s April crackdown on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious was “excessive, given the evidence.” The Vatican accused the LCWR, which represents the majority of the 57,000 U.S. Roman Catholic nuns, of not adequately advocating against gay marriage, abortion and women’s ordination. “Rather than excessive oversight of LCWR, perhaps a better service to the people of God might be a renewed effort to articulate the nuances of our complex moral tradi- tion,” the friars said.
Philippines criticized
While at a May 30 public hearing in Geneva, church activists from the Philippines criticized the government of President Benigno S. Aquino III for not doing more to improve human rights in their country. The hearing was organized by the World Coun- cil of Church’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs. It included such groups as the National
COURTESY OF EMMANUEL GRANTSON
Lutherans celebrate Juneteenth Dancers and drummers from St. Michael’s Truth Lutheran, Mitchellville, Md., per-
form at the congregation’s Juneteenth celebration. Across the U.S., Juneteenth events commemorate June 19, 1865, the day enslaved African-Americans in Texas first heard they were free—two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation became official. At its Juneteenth celebration, the congregation offers worship, a community meal, free health-screenings, prayer, poetry and more for the wider community.
Council of Churches in the Philip- pines and the Philippine Universal Periodic Review Watch. Speakers said multiple religious figures have been murdered and that the govern- ment exaggerated reports of a decline in killings and forced disappearances.
SBC continues slide
For the fifth year in a row, the South- ern Baptist Convention has seen a drop in its total membership. The figure in 2011 was 15,978,112, a drop of nearly 1 percent from the 2010 figure of 16.1 million, the denomination’s Life- Way Christian Resources reported in June. Southern Baptists, who remain the nation’s largest Protestant body, reported slight increases in total num- ber of churches and baptisms last year.
LWF condemns struggle During an annual Lutheran World Federation Council meeting June 15-20 in Bogota, Colombia, several speakers criticized the state’s role in the longtime conflict between the
military, paramilitary and guerilla groups. Sociologist Diego Perez Guzman said that in recent years many international corporations have imposed their will without the thought of human rights. “They pay guerillas, the military or the paramil- itary to assert their interests,” Guz- man said. “That is the new economic war in Colombia.”
U.N. presence sought
The Lutheran World Federation appealed to the U.N. High Commis- sioner for Human Rights to estab- lish an office in Honduras and to strengthen its presence throughout Central America. The action was announced at the LWF’s gathering June 15-20 in Bogota, Colombia. Members also discussed the need to end violence in El Salvador, Guate- mala and Honduras, and called for creation of an ecumenical accom- paniment program to protect human rights defenders, especially in Guate- mala and Honduras.
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