(RNS) Jewish and Mormon church leaders announced Wednesday (Sept. 1) that church policies preventing the posthumous baptizing of Holocaust victims have reduced tensions between them.

Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said they now require church members to have a family relationship with the people they baptize by proxy.

Mormons must also agree not to include Holocaust victims unless they are directly related to them, preventing the mass submissions of such names that had occurred.

The announcement by the church and the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants said the policies, which have been in the works for more than two years, will enhance future cooperation between Jews and Mormons.

The church teaches that Mormons can be baptized on behalf of their dead ancestors, who then choose whether to accept the baptism in the afterlife.

"Respect for the Jewish identity of Holocaust victims is naturally a highly sensitive matter, and we are glad to see new movement in resolving the problems of the past," said B'nai B'rith International President Dennis W. Glick.

But some Jewish leaders, including Jewish genealogist Gary Mokotoff, continue to question whether the church will be able to prevent Holocaust victims from being included in proxy baptisms. "It's on the books, but no one enforces it," he told The Salt Lake Tribune.

Church spokesman Michael Otterson said there could still be glitches, but the church and Jewish groups are ready to move on.

"We've resolved the issues to our mutual satisfaction," he said. "We all know that no system is ever going to be foolproof."

-- Adelle M. Banks

Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

OREGON CITY, Ore.

(RNS) Two members of an Oregon church that preaches faith-healing pleaded not guilty Monday (Aug. 30) to manslaughter charges for failing to provide medical care to their infant son, who died shortly after his premature birth.

Attorneys for Dale R. Hickman and Shannon M. Hickman entered the pleas. The Hickmans did not speak during the brief arraignment before Clackamas County Circuit Judge Jeffrey S. Jones.

Jones set a Nov. 19 trial date for the Hickmans, who are each charged with second-degree manslaughter. It is likely that the trial will be rescheduled for sometime next year.

The Hickmans, who attend the Followers of Christ church in Oregon City, posted 10 percent of their $500,000 bail and are out on bail. They requested that the bail amount be reduced. A separate hearing will be held on the request.

The Hickmans' son was born in September 2009, about six weeks premature. He weighed 3 pounds, 5 ounces and lived nine hours. No one with medical training attended the birth, and no one called a doctor or ambulance. An autopsy determined the infant died of staph pneumonia and complications from a premature birth, including underdeveloped lungs.

A jury or judge will determine whether the Hickmans were criminally negligent and that their neglect caused the child's death.

The death of the Hickman baby was the third faith-healing fatality involving children from the church in the past two and a half years.

-- Steve Mayes

Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

y Adelle M. Banks
c. 2010 Religion News Service WASHINGTON

(RNS) Southern Baptist executive Richard Land was pleased at how religious Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally turned out to be.

Bishop Harry Jackson, a black evangelical leader, was pleasantly surprised that the Fox News talk show host said things "some of my close friends could have written."

And Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. was among the faith leaders to enlist in Beck's new "Black Robe Regiment."

In the wake of the conservative commentator's rally on the National Mall last weekend (Aug. 28), some evangelical leaders say he sounded all the right religious notes.
But others say Beck's Mormon faith clouds the message.

"Glenn Beck's Mormon faith is irrelevant," said Falwell. "People of all faiths, all races and all creeds spoke and attended the event. Nobody was there to endorse anyone else's faith but we were all there to honor our armed forces and to call the people of America to restore honor."

But other conservative Christians say Beck's leadership at an event attended by evangelicals and other conservatives was nothing short of scandalous.

"The answer to this scandal ... includes local churches that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and disciple their congregations to know the difference between the kingdom of God and the latest political whim," Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote on his blog the day after the rally. "It's sad to see so many Christians confusing Mormon politics or American nationalism with the gospel of Jesus Christ."

At the rally, Beck paced before the Lincoln Memorial as he described the "240 men and women," from a range of faiths who had joined his regiment.

"We can disagree on politics," Beck said. "These men and women here don't agree on fundamentals. They don't agree on everything that every church teaches. What they do agree on is God is the answer."

There is no doubt that Beck has a following. Gallup has ranked him as the fourth most admired man -- just ahead of Pope Benedict XVI -- and millions tune in to his daily broadcasts.

But, as his religious rhetoric attests, Beck has gone fishing for a new audience recently.

Weeks before the rally, he gathered about 20 prominent religious leaders for a dinner at which he said God was leading him to talk about revival in America, Land said. The night before the rally, he held a "Divine Destiny" event that promised to leave participants with a "strong belief that faith can play an essential role in reuniting the country."

That kind of language has some evangelicals upset.

"I believe that Beck used his conservative veneer and doublespeak to co-opt leaders of the religious right," wrote Brannon Howse, founder of Worldview Weekend, which sponsors Christian worldview conferences.

Others, such as Lou Engle, founder of The Call rallies across the country, said Beck will get qualified support.

"I think evangelicals will see him as a moral voice, not necessarily a spiritual voice," he said.

Experts say Beck's ability to reach evangelicals will depend on whether he speaks a broad message or delves more narrowly into his Mormon beliefs.

"Most evangelicals are friendly toward the idea of American civil religion and I think Beck's call sort of fit into that stream of history," said Stan Guthrie, editor at large for Christianity Today. "I think that as long as he doesn't get too specific about his Mormon faith ... many people will be willing to get on board."

Added evangelical public relations executive Mark DeMoss, who advised Mormon Mitt Romney's presidential campaign: "If he were mobilizing some sort of theological movement, I think most evangelicals would not get behind it but I don't sense that that's what he's doing."

In 2007, more than a third of Republican white evangelical Protestants said they would be reluctant to vote for a Mormon president, and 39 percent of white evangelical Protestants viewed Mormons unfavorably, according to a poll conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

John Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron, said doctrinal differences between evangelicals and Mormons have historically made it difficult for them to form alliances.

Some prominent evangelicals have distanced themselves in the past from Beck because of his Mormonism. In 2008, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson abruptly pulled an interview with Beck after viewers voiced concern about "theological compromise."

Green said much of the squeamishness is due to the additional sacred scripture and tenets that Mormons revere along with the Bible.

But despite those differences, he said there has been a growing sense of pragmatism among religious leaders who have worked together.

For example, evangelical leaders defended the Mormon Church when gay activists criticized it during the contentious debate over gay marriage in California.

Randall Balmer, professor of religious history at Barnard College, said Beck may be showing Romney a "better way to the heart of evangelicals" by being more forthright about his Mormon faith. He even speculated that perhaps Beck is a "stalking horse for Mitt Romney in 2012."

Whether or not Beck has such political aspirations, Balmer said his efforts to draw evangelical attention could end up creating exactly what Falwell's father envisioned -- a powerful coalition of politically conservative evangelicals, Catholics and Mormons.

"If Beck truly emerges as a leader for that movement, he will have fulfilled Jerry Falwell's dream," said Balmer. "I think Beck is working awfully hard to ingratiate himself to that population."

Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.

By Bruce Nolan
c. 2010 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS (RNS) With prayers and the tolling of bells, but also with second-line parades and Mardi Gras Indians, New Orleanians on Sunday (Aug. 29)took stock of their rebuilt lives in the five years since the worst event in the region's history and promised to keep the recovery going.

Observances of the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its levee failures entailed a complicated daylong inventory conducted as a light, steady rain drenched the landscape. The day was filled with gratitude, mourning, frustration and hope in the face of a mammoth rebuilding job not yet complete.

"We are not rebuilding the city that was; we are rebuilding the city that is to be," Mayor Mitch Landrieu told the audience at the city's official event at the Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts, where the anniversary commemoration turned into a fiercely joyous celebration of New Orleans culture.

It opened with drumming and the arrival of a dozen Mardi Gras Indian chiefs in full regalia, with Big Chief Bo Dollis of the Wild Magnolias leading the audience in the traditional "My Indian Red" and other chants.

The explicit message: New Orleans' cultural heart still beats.

The anniversary drew to New Orleans President Barack Obama and his family as well as actress Sandra Bullock, who helped open a health clinic at Warren Easton Charter High School.

At Xavier University, Obama quoted from the Book of Job, and
promised: "My administration is going to stand with you, and fight alongside you, until the job is done, until New Orleans is all the way back."

Later, in Metairie, Gov. Bobby Jindal told more than 1,000 people at Celebration Church that "sometimes it takes a tragedy like Katrina to remind you of what's really important -- to treasure the people in our lives, to make the most of our time on this earth."

In St. Bernard Parish, residents at Shell Beach cast a wreath onto the waters of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, which five years ago shotgunned a wall of water into the parish and the Lower 9th Ward, destroying everything in its path.

But after five years of hard work, that ceremony saw more than loss.
Pastor Ben Alderman of Harvest Time Ministries noted the unity that Katrina forged in hardship.

"We have unity here in our parish. That's what makes us so proud and so powerful, that we can love one another, we can go through these storms, we can go through that oil slick, we can go through things that come upon us."

At St. Louis Cathedral, representatives of eight world religions and hundreds of participants prayed in gratitude, grief and hope.

Lutheran Bishop Michael Rinehart told hundreds at the interfaith service that "suffering is the crucible of greatness" and that New Orleans has emerged from its near-death experience with a clearer vision of what it wants to become.

"We will never be the same," said Rinehart. "Thank God, we will never be the same."

But recovery has been uneven from storm that killed 1,464 in Louisiana, wrecked 182,000 homes and drove 125,000 in continuing exile.

Post-Katrina data indicate widening disparities among rich and poor around New Orleans. In the Lower 9th Ward, where a handful of trophy homes stand sentinel over a still-ruined neighborhood, more than 1,000 residents gathered to protest their plight and renew their loyalty to their neighborhood, come what may.

Some, like Monique Atkinson, wore T-shirts memorializing loved ones killed in the storm -- in her case, her aunt, Margie Lewis, 75, who was torn from her son's grasp and swept away by the floodwaters coursing through Gentilly.

Her body has never been found, Atkinson said.

And others repeated a common theme: They are determined to stay in the Lower 9th, but that flaws in the Road Home program and other public assistance programs systematically discriminated against the historic blue-collar neighborhood that was one of the most severely damaged in
the storm.

The ceremonies just a few blocks from the Industrial Canal floodwall that disastrously failed unfolded in a landscape where three-fourths of the neighborhood's residents have been unable to return.

While the neighborhood is a showcase for some well-documented homes, erected by actor Brad Pitt's Make It Right foundation, vast stretches remain vacant and weed-choked. And it was this condition that residents sought to emphasize at the memorial, which began with a second-line up North Claiborne Avenue to the top of the bridge over the Industrial Canal, where a wreath was laid.

Calandthia Randall, who has rebuilt her home in the 7th Ward, said she nonetheless feels the recovery is incomplete.

"I'll be fully recovered when I see the city recovered," she said.

(Bruce Nolan writes for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. Staff writers Chris Kirkham, Kari Dequine, John Pope contributed to this
report.)

Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of
this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written
permission.