By Ron Grossman and Margaret Ramirez

W. Deen Mohammed, one of the most prominent African-American Muslim leaders in the nation and the son of the late Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, died Monday, sources told the Chicago Tribune.

"Brother Imam," as he was affectionately known, was 74. There was no immediate confirmation of his death by his family. The Cook County medical examiner confirmed that a Wallace Mohammed was pronounced dead at his home in the 16100 block of Cambridge Drive in Markham, a spokesman said.

Muslim community leaders said Mohammed was scheduled to speak Tuesday in Chicago, and many grew concerned when he did not appear. His last speaking engagement was at Navy Pier on Saturday at an event sponsored by the Inner-City Muslim Action Network.

Mohammed inherited from his father the Nation of Islam, a religious movement crafted out of black nationalism and bits and pieces of Muslim practice. He immediately tried to move its followers toward mainstream Islam, eventually leading to a split between those who agreed with Mohammed's approach and those who joined a revived Nation of Islam under Louis Farrakhan.

Mohammed was a spiritual wanderer who was banished several times by his father for filial impiety--once for remaining close to Malcolm X, Muhammad's prized disciple who turned into a critical voice within the Nation of Islam before he was slain.

In 1961, Mohammed refused to serve in the U.S. military and went to prison in accordance with his father's teaching that African-Americans shouldn't defend a land of lynching and segregation.

While incarcerated, Mohammed studied the Quran and found its teachings at considerable variance with his father's. In 1976, a year after he succeeded his father, Mohammed made a public appearance carrying an American flag. He proclaimed the time had come for black Americans to celebrate America.

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By Niraj Warikoo

Thousands of African-American Muslims from across the United States are gathering in Detroit this weekend for an annual convention that's returning to Michigan for the first time in more than a decade.

 

They are followers of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, a Hamtramck native who now lives in Chicago. He is the son of Elijah Muhammad, the former leader of the Nation of Islam, founded in Detroit almost 80 years ago. Given metro Detroit's sizable Muslim and African-American communities, the convention has special significance for many locally.

After Elijah Muhammad's death in 1975, Mohammed took over and reformed the black nationalist organization into a group that preached a more orthodox Islam that opposed any racial or ethnic divisions. A few years later, Minister Louis Farrakhan broke off and formed a new Nation of Islam he felt was more in line with Elijah Muhammad's teachings.

While Farrakhan is the leader who gets more media attention and is most often associated with Islam among African Americans, Mohammed is thought to have more followers. In contrast to Farrakhan, Mohammed is low-key and speaks more like a scholar than a preacher.

"He's a superb leader," said Nadir Ahmad, 58, of Detroit. "He has a sober message of good morals, but also a commonsense approach to life and religion."

On Friday in the Cobo Center, the imam spoke to a packed crowd at the start of the three-day convention. He urged personal responsibility and praised Jesus and Muhammad, Islam's founder, saying both were great teachers.

He stood on the podium slightly hunched over, a compact man with glasses and a modest brown suit who spoke in measured tones.

"We all ... should be trying to be Christlike," he said.

Ahmad said Mohammed "has always called for cooperation between faiths."

Imam Gary Alkasib of Detroit was eager to hear his words and glad that the convention is in Detroit this year. "It's the return of a native son," he said.

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By Christopher Landau

Davis Mac-Iyalla is an Anglican from Nigeria - nothing unusual about that - but he is also gay and the death threats he has received since being open about his sexuality led him to seek asylum in the UK.

Now he is campaigning at the Lambeth Conference, hoping that bishops will face up to the existence of gay Christians in Africa.

I met him just before he began a demonstration at the conference venue on the Kent university campus, joined by lesbian and gay Anglicans from six African countries.

With dancing accompanied by traditional drumming, the campaigners held a banner proclaiming, "We're here!"

Many gay Anglicans around the world still feel that the church would prefer to deny their existence.

Mr Mac-Iyalla's message is simple.

"Homosexuality does exist in Africa - it's not a Western thing, as our African bishops would want people to believe," he says.

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The Bishop of Durham has attacked the Anglican traditionalists behind a new movement against what they consider liberal views on homosexuality.

Dr Wright says most traditionalist bishops do not support Gafcon

Dr Tom Wright, a traditionalist himself, said Gafcon's plans to let parishes break from liberal bishops were ridiculous and "deeply offensive".

"The idea they have a monopoly on Biblical truth won't do," he said.

It comes as the Church of England's ruling body, the General Synod, gathers for a five-day meeting.

The meeting, being held at the University of York, is set to be dominated by the issue of women bishops

'Global sledge hammer'

The Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) attracted about 300 bishops to a gathering held last month in Jerusalem.

It called for the creation of a council of primates and said the Archbishop of Canterbury's authority over the Communion should end.

Many of the 300 attendees plan to boycott this month's Lambeth Conference - a meeting of the Anglican Communion held every 10 years.

Speaking to the BBC's World at One programme the Bishop of Durham said Gafcon was "taking a global sledge hammer to crack the American nut".

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African American Muslims are a people that have faced discrimination and fear before and are equipped to play a significant role in pushing back against a new incarnation of cultural discrimination and misunderstanding – Islamophobia

By Faheem Shuaibe

Oakland, California - African American Muslims have a role to play when it comes to the widespread Islamophobia (an irrational fear of Islam) that is prevalent in the West. The unfortunate fact is that some Americans see Muslims as a disease to be rooted out. However, as is the case with immunisation, the "disease" can sometimes also be the source of a cure.

African Americans have faced derisive stereotyping before – including public name calling and a complete exclusion from basic human rights. Such behaviour created a marginalised cultural category and position in a pathological culture.  And African Americans have struggled for generations to overcome this categorisation.

So, when some in the United States negatively and aggressively stereotype Muslims as many people once did African-Americans, it provokes a latent hostility in the United States, conjured up by certain talk show hosts and others who use such labelling to garner support with their audiences, and reinforces an ethos of opposition or aggression.

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Ordination ban is overturned, but action must be ratified. Some fear more churches will defect from the national organization.

By Duke Helfand


Leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) overturned a long-standing ban on the ordination of gays and lesbians Friday, providing yet the latest example of a religious denomination struggling with how, and whether, to incorporate homosexuality into church life.

The Reverend Dr. Jane Spahr, center, a Presbyterian minister, performs a same-sex marriage for Sherrie Holmes, left, and Sara Taylor, right, at the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael, Calif., Friday, June 20, 2008.

At the same time, the church's national governing body, meeting in San Jose, refused to alter its definition of marriage, calling it a "covenant between a woman and a man." The actions by the General Assembly came the week after same-sex marriage became legal in California. They also follow the decision of a gathering of Methodists from Southern California and Hawaii, who went against their national church by voting to support same-sex couples who marry and the pastors who welcome them.

The Presbyterian Church is among many mainline Protestant denominations struggling to reconcile conflicting beliefs about biblical authority and the role of gays.

Some parishes have left the Episcopal Church, prompting predictions that the issue may tear the denomination apart. In the Presbyterian Church (USA) -- the nation's largest Presbyterian group, with 2.3 million members -- Friday's actions were likely to deepen theological fissures.

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Conservative Anglicans meeting in Jerusalem will create a global network to combat modern trends in the Church like the ordination of gay clergy.

The group has also decided to break its relationship with the liberal wings of the US and Canadian Churches.

It will operate independently of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but will stay inside the Anglican Communion.

Nigerian Anglican archbishop, Peter Akinola (l) leader of the conservative movement confers with the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams during happier times.

The traditionalists say they are fighting a "false Gospel" and the rift in the Church cannot be patched up.

After five years of trying unsuccessfully to get the American church expelled for its ordination of an openly gay bishop and blessing of same-sex relationships in church, the traditionalists say the international alliance will emphasise a more orthodox reading of the Bible.

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By Kara Becker

Imtiyaz Hussein says that coming out as a gay man who is also a Muslim was never a problem. But for Mohammed El-Khatib, whose parents hoped he would pass on the family name, it was. Saadia Toor, on the other hand, said she feels that gay Muslims face challenges similar to all religious followers — stereotypes, misunderstandings and resistance.

Muslims talk about being gay and religious at a forum at the MFA in Boston.

The three spoke on May 18 about what it means to be “Queer and Muslim” during a panel discussion at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that was hosted by the Massachusetts Area South Asian Lambda Association. The talk followed a screening of the documentary “A Jihad for Love,” a film about the hidden life of being Muslim and gay.

Hussein, who is the founder of the Massachusetts Area South Asian Lambda Association, said that he reconciled his faith and his sexual preference early on.

“I was always as certain of my faith as my sexuality,” said Hussein, a native of Tanzania who is of Indian descent.

“There were never really any negative messages growing up, I was kind of left alone to see if I could personally reconcile with having the two things as part of my identity simultaneously.”

After he came to terms with his identity, he said, being gay and Muslim was never a problem for him.

Toor, however, said that homosexual Muslims often deal with stereotypes and misunderstanding from others.

“Being a Muslim queer is always scary because you carry this burden of representation; you’re always in this position of worrying that whatever you say is being represented correctly — you always have to contextualize and qualify everything,” said Toor, who was Muslim but left the faith to become a communist. A native of Lahore, Toor is a member of the Pakistani political-action group Women’s Action Forum and teaches sociology and women’s studies at The College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She said that panel discussions, such as “Queer and Muslim” can overlook the fact that homosexual followers of Judeo-Christian religions can face challenges just like gay Muslims do.

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By Sue Fishkoff

Miguel Segura Aguilo's ancestors were executed as Jews five centuries ago in Spain, but he is not welcome in his local synagogue today.

Gershom Sizomu, who will be ordained this month in Los Angeles as a Conservative rabbi, dreams of setting up the first yeshiva for African Jews in his Abayudayan village in East Uganda.

Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of a largely African-American congregation in Chicago, is off to Nigeria to make connections with the Ibo, a community that claims Jewish heritage.

These men, and dozens of other representatives of far-flung communities seeking recognition by the Jewish mainstream, gathered earlier this month in San Francisco at a conference sponsored by Be'chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), a project of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research.

The Ibo, Lemba and Abayudaya of Africa, the anusim and xuetas of Spain and Latin America, Ethiopian Jews from Israel, Indian Jews from New York and Asian-American Jews-by-Choice spent three days networking and sharing information about their struggles to join the global Jewish family, a family that is not always eager to embrace them.

"The Jewish community keeps talking about the crisis of intermarriage and the crisis of declining numbers, but meanwhile you've got people with Jewish heritage, spiritual seekers, Jewish communities of historical significance, and the Jewish community is doing nothing to help them," says Gary Tobin, the institute's president and a longtime advocate of greater openness to those outside the Ashkenazi mainstream.

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Meeting with New Birth Missionary Baptist Church Will Happen on Sunday, June 1

(Atlanta, GA) Steve Parelli is a former Baptist minister. His partner, Jose Ortiz, also studied for the ministry and spent several months as a Southern Baptist lay minister. Since meeting and falling in love at an “ex-gay” support group in Manhattan, the couple has learned a thing or two about faith, family, rejection, and redemption. 

And that’s why Parelli and Ortiz are leading a group of gay and lesbian families and clergy who will meet with members of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church this Sunday, June 1. “At some point, at some place, constructive conversations must begin between the church and the gay son or gay daughter who grew up in that church,” explained Parelli, who was spurned by his family and lost his ministry upon coming out. Parelli has since found a new calling in supporting LGBT-affirming ministries around the world.

Atlanta-based minister Troy Sanders, founder of Preach2me.com, concurs:

“I have a personal investment in this visit, because my family is in New Birth. And when I say family, I mean both kinds.

“I have biological family who are still caught in the conflict between their theology and having an openly gay clergy person as kin, and I have lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender brothers and sisters who—for whatever reason—have chosen to make New Birth their church home,” Sanders explained.

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HARTFORD, Conn. - The Internal Revenue Service says the United Church of Christ did not violate rules when it hosted Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at its convention in Hartford last year.

The IRS says Obama's appearance at the UCC's national meeting in June 2007 did not violate federal rules governing the appearance of politicians at religious events.

Earlier this year, the IRS had said there were questions that the speech violated restrictions on political activity for tax-exempt organizations. The denomination has denied any wrongdoing.

However, in a letter to the national church the tax agency says it found the UCC had taken the necessary steps to avoid any appearance that Obama's appearance was of a political nature.

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In 2005, 1.2-million-member UCC became first, largest mainline denomination to support same-gender marriage equality

Cleveland, OH- United Church of Christ leaders are affirming today's decision by the California Supreme Court to overturn the state's same-gender marriage ban.

The Rev. John H. Thomas, the United Church of Christ's general minister and president, based in Cleveland, said he is pleased by the court's decision.

"I am gratified by the decision of the courts in California to reject discrimination and affirm the dignity of same gender couples," Thomas said. "As recent decisions in other states makes clear, until all couples are able to marry, their separate status will never be equal status."

Five UCC congregations in California -- Community UCC of Atascadero, Mt. Hollywood Congregational UCC, Parkside Community UCC in Sacramento, Pilgrim UCC in Carlsbad and United Church of Christ in Simi Valley - as well as UCC-related Pacific School of Religion, joined an interfaith amicus brief filed earlier this year in support of the ban's overturn.

After the court decision was announced, several UCC members in California responded positively to the news.

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PHILADELPHIA, PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The international focus of Equality Forum 2008 is Gays and Lesbians in the Muslim World. Equality Forum presents the largest annual national and international GLBT civil rights forum. Equality Forum 2008 (April 28-May 4) in Philadelphia has 34 panels, 14 parties and 15 special events.

On April 3, 2008, Equality Forum called on Presidential candidates Clinton, McCain and Obama to contact British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to revoke the deportation orders of gays and lesbians in the UK to Iran. There are no fewer than 12 gay and lesbian Iranians living in the UK who are at risk of deportation including 19-year-old Iranian Mehdi Kazemi, and Pegah Emambakhsh, a 40-year-old lesbian whose partner in Iran was arrested, tortured, and stoned to death. Kazemi's boyfriend, Parham, who was the same age as Kazemi, was arrested, tortured, and executed for being gay by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Equality Forum 2008 presents three programs, which explore the unique challenges faced by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens in Muslim nations.

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Two senior lack clergy in the United Methodist in the USA, who are also longtime civil-rights advocates, say there are striking parallels between the struggles of blacks in the 1960s and those of gays and lesbians working for full inclusion in the churches today.

At a 27 April rally held outside the Fort Worth Convention Center where the denomination's 2008 General Conference is meeting through to 2 May 2008, retired United Methodist ministers the Rev James Lawson and the Rev Gil Caldwell spoke of the connection between racism and "heterosexism."

The rally was organized by the national, pro-gay advocacy organization Soulforce to take place on the 40th anniversary of The United Methodist Church's dissolution of its Central Jurisdiction, which was defined not by geography, but race - effectively segregating black clergy and congregations.

Caldwell, former chairperson of Black Methodists for Church Renewal and former co-convener of United Methodists of Color for a Fully Inclusive Church, recalled how his Methodist pastor father came home "with a sense of despair" from the 1939 General Conference that established the Central Jurisdiction. He remembers his father telling him, "We are exchanging slavery for segregation."

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Two leading experts share their diverging views

By Jay Tolson

The recent comments of Rev. Jeremiah Wright have not only complicated the presidential campaign of Senator Barack Obama, who for more than 20 years has been a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ that Wright once pastored. Some of Wright's remarks—particularly his claim that criticism of his more provocative sermons "is not an on attack on Jeremiah Wright" but instead "an attack on the black church"—have also sparked wide a debate on whether Wright typifies the beliefs of millions of African-American churchgoers and their ministers. U. S. News approached two leading experts on the African-American church figures with a single question: "How well does Rev. Jeremiah Wright represent the black church in America?"

Here are their answers:

Dwight Hopkins is a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and the author of Heart and Head: Black Theology Past, Present, and Future and many other books.

"I think his theology and his religious perspective are both very representative, especially linking the personal salvation with social justice critique. In fact, those two focii have been the hallmark of the black church in America since the black church was founded in the period of slavery. But unfortunately what has happened, particularly in the past seven and a half years, is that President Bush has promoted a small group of black clergy to represent all of black Christianity. He's promoted a theological trend called "prosperity gospel" which is basically that individuals should use Jesus Christ plus capitalism to get personally rich.

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Rev Wright - Bill Moyers 1 of 4

By Neela Banerjee

Just as Senator Barack Obama has spent this week trying to stem the damage to his campaign from statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the small, theologically liberal Protestant denomination both men belong to, the United Church of Christ, has been grappling with the impact of the controversy upon its members.

On Thursday, the Rev. John H. Thomas, the denomination’s president, posted an open letter on the United Church of Christ’s Web site acknowledging that members have been dealing with “the same broad set of emotions and frustrations that have been expressed nationwide in recent days and weeks.”

Mr. Thomas said he had heard concern from members about the well-being of the church and its congregations.

“While there is high regard for Reverend Wright’s ministry and leadership at Trinity U.C.C. in Chicago during the past 36 years, and for his prophetic, scriptural preaching,” Mr. Thomas wrote, “many of us today are troubled by some of his controversial comments and the substance and manner in which they have been communicated, both by him and as characterized by the media.”

The letter responds, in part, to e-mail and calls to the denomination’s main office in Cleveland about Mr. Wright’s comments, a flow that has picked up since his talk at the National Press Club on Monday, said the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, a spokesman for the denomination.

Other United Church of Christ ministers said Mr. Thomas, who is in South America, had no choice but to issue a statement, given how the continuing controversy has thrust the denomination of 1.4 million members into the spotlight.

“His statement indicates there is a high level of anxiety,” said the Rev. Madison Shockley, pastor of Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad, Calif., “and it’s important for the body of the church to know that the leadership hears them.”

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Rev Wright's Speech to the Detroit NAACP 1 of 4

 

 

Archbishop Benjamin Kwashi, of the Jos province, (Anglican Communion), has denied allegations that the leader of a group representing "Anglican" homosexuals in the country was attacked.

In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) yesterday in Abuja, Kwashi rebuffed a statement credited to the Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC) on the alleged attack.

Kwashi was reacting to an allegation by Mr Davis Mac-Iyalla, leader of Changing Attitude Nigeria, that homosexuals were being physically assaulted in the country.

Iyalla had requested the intervention of the ABC as the 'spiritual leader' of the global Anglican Communion.

According to Kwashi, the ABC criticised the alleged assaults on gay Anglicans in Nigeria , describing it as " latest round of unchristian bullying ."

However, the Jos archbishop said: "I have personally tried to discover the place or nature of the attacks and threats without success.

"It is wrong for Canterbury and a group of English Bishops to accuse the Church of Nigeria of being the perpetrator of a physical attack on the streets.

"If a Nigerian Bishop or church leader was mugged in England would the Archbishop of Canterbury or even the Church of England in general be blamed for this?"

He maintained that "the Church of Nigeria would not be bullied and was committed to the human rights of all people".

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By Suzette Hackney

In many ways, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright could be viewed as a representation of quintessential Detroit: brutally honest, gritty and provocative, battered but resilient, and unapologetically black and proud.

It's no wonder then that Wright, 66, the embattled former pastor of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, agreed to make Detroit the place where he will emerge from a self-induced hibernation to address the 10,000-person crowd expected Sunday at the annual Freedom Fund dinner of the Detroit Branch NAACP.

Wright, a retired United Church of Christ pastor, has been under fire because sound bites of past sermons -- containing language some consider divisive and inflammatory -- have surfaced in recent months. Obama, who has attended Wright's church since the early 1990s, condemned most of Wright's comments in a speech about race March 18, but said he still supports the man.

Others say the hullabaloo isn't about the man, but about a misunderstood black church, which has, since its existence, used preaching to address social issues.

"I don't believe all the controversy is about Jeremiah Wright -- I think it's about the racism in our own culture," said the Rev. Kent Ulery, president of the Michigan conference of the United Church of Christ and president-elect of the nation's third-oldest seminary, Bangor Theological Seminary in Maine.

"I think it's about an America that doesn't understand the black experience, and certainly what is normative in black worship."

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Much has been said about the United Church of Christ in recent weeks, much of it hurtful for many in our country, including members of Trinity UCC in Chicago. That is why we are eager to share the broad and diverse story of the United Church of Christ, one that we celebrate. With all Christians, we rest in God’s amazing grace and hear God’s voice in the words of Scripture.

Yet, the UCC is unique to some because we do not require uniformity of belief. We are a church of open ideas, extravagant welcome and evangelical courage. Our passion for democracy extends to both government and church, where decision-making rests within each congregation. We support liberty in our pulpits, just as we affirm the individual conscience of our 1.2-million members to agree, disagreeand wrestle with life’s biggest questions in a spirit of love.

Our story is this nation’s story. We are the people of the Mayflower. More than 600 of our 5,700 congregations were formed before 1776. Eleven signers of the Declaration of Independence were members of UCC predecessor bodies.

As early abolitionists, we came to the aid of the Amistad captives and founded hundreds of schools across the South after the Civil War. We were the first mainline church to ordain an African-American (1785), a woman (1853) and an openly gay pastor (1972). We were also the first to form a foreign mission society (1810). Our multi-ethnic membership includes persons from every immigrant group, as well as native peoples and descendants of freed slaves.

Our unity is not dependent upon uniform agreement, but in our shared allegiance to Jesus Christ. Ours is a risk-taking church, because ours is a risk-taking God.

God is still speaking,

UCC Rev. John Thomas on Anderson Cooper 360

 

By Gromer Jeffers Jr. and Jeffrey Weiss

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's fiery commentary about America went beyond the usual political discourse but reflected long-held frustrations that African-Americans often release at churches and other social settings, local black pastors say.

It's those stark observations, created by generations of oppression and racism, that Barack Obama attempted to put into context Tuesday for Americans troubled by sound bites of Mr. Wright's sermons that "damned" the United States and blamed the nation's own actions for the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Many black Dallas pastors view Mr. Wright as a longtime hero and mentor, defending his message and bridling at what they call media misrepresentation of it.

"I have preached at Trinity [Mr. Wright's church in Chicago] and he has preached here," said the Rev. Tyrone Gordon, pastor at St. Luke Community United Methodist Church in Dallas. "One thing I said to the church on this past Sunday is that a lot of us are taking it personally because it is an attack on the whole black prophetic experience."

But for whites who have never been in a black church, Mr. Wright's words could have seemed extremist and even bizarre.

Mr. Obama tried to shed light on Tuesday.

"Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear," Mr. Obama said Tuesday. "The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America."

Supporters acknowledge that the Wright controversy could be difficult for Mr. Obama to overcome, but they say he made a good first step by introducing Americans to the black church experience.

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