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The Student News Site of Northern Illinois University

Northern Star

The Student News Site of Northern Illinois University

Northern Star

Mormon-owned BYU eases rules on ‘homosexual behavior’

By BRADY McCOMBS | February 19, 2020

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Brigham Young University in Utah has revised its strict code of conduct to strip a rule that banned any behavior that reflected “homosexual feelings," which LGBTQ students and their allies felt created an unfair double standard...

Another Catholic diocese seeks bankruptcy after abuse deals

By MARK SCOLFORO | February 19, 2020

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, six months after disclosing it had paid millions of dollars to people sexually abused as children by its clerics.The diocese joins at least...

Abuse victims look to Vatican after UN meetings in Geneva

By JAMEY KEATEN | February 19, 2020

GENEVA (AP) — Three deaf victims of sexual abuse by priests in Argentina wrapped up a string of meetings with United Nations human rights officials in Geneva on Wednesday, hoping to build pressure on the Vatican — and Pope Francis himself — to come...

Pope tenderly kissed on forehead by man in front-row seat

February 19, 2020

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Well-wishers at Pope Francis' weekly audience have thrust soccer T-shirts, flowers and many a wailing baby into his arms. And on New Year's Eve, one admirer, trying to pull him closer, yanked his arm so hard he slapped her hand to...

Christian sues US Postal Service over Sunday work shifts

February 19, 2020

LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — A former Pennsylvania mail carrier says the U.S. Postal Service violated his rights by requiring him to work Sundays.Gerald Groff, who says he is an evangelical Christian, filed a lawsuit Friday against the federal agency, claiming...

Utah lawmakers get tough on porn, ease up on polygamy

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST | February 18, 2020

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah lawmakers voted Tuesday to put new regulations on pornography and remove some on polygamy in separate proposals moving quickly through the Legislature in the deeply conservative state.Senators voted unanimously to change state...

Boy Scouts seek bankruptcy, urge victims to step forward

By DAVID CRARY and BRADY McCOMBS | February 18, 2020

The Boy Scouts of America urged victims to come forward Tuesday as the historic, 110-year-old organization filed for bankruptcy protection in the first step toward creating a huge compensation fund for potentially thousands of men who were molested as...

New leader of Philadelphia Catholic archdiocese installed

February 18, 2020

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The 1.3 million parishioners of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia have a new spiritual leader.Nelson Perez, 58, who spent most of his early pastoral career in the Philadelphia area, assumed the post of archbishop in...

Democrats diverge on outreach to anti-abortion swing voters

By ELANA SCHOR | February 18, 2020

NEW YORK (AP) — In a party that’s shifted leftward on abortion rights, Democratic presidential hopefuls are offering different approaches to a central challenge: how to talk to voters without a clear home in the polarizing debate over the government’s...

Stresses multiply for many US clergy: ‘We need help too’

By DAVID CRARY | February 18, 2020

NEW YORK (AP) — Greg Laurie is among America’s most successful clergymen -- senior pastor at a California megachurch, prolific author, host of a global radio program. Yet after a youthful colleague’s suicide, his view of his vocation is unsparing.

“Pastors are people, just like everyone else,” Laurie said by email. “We are broken people who live in a broken world. Sometimes, we need help too.”

Laurie’s 15,000-member Harvest Christian Fellowship, based in Riverside, California, was jolted in September by the death of 30-year-old associate pastor Jarrid Wilson. He and his wife had founded an outreach group to help people coping with depression and suicidal thoughts.

"People may think that as pastors or spiritual leaders we are somehow above the pain and struggles of everyday people," Laurie wrote after Wilson’s death. "We are the ones who are supposed to have all the answers. But we do not."

There is similar introspection among clergy of many faiths across the United States as the age-old challenges of their ministries are deepened by many newly evolving stresses. Rabbis worry about protecting their congregations from anti-Semitic violence. Islamic chaplains counsel college students unnerved by anti-Muslim sentiments. A shortage of Catholic priests creates burdens for those who remain, even as their church’s sex-abuse crisis lowers morale. Worries for Protestant pastors range from crime and drug addiction in their communities to financial insecurity for their own families to social media invective that targets them personally.

Adam Hertzman, who works for the Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh, witnessed the emotional toll on local rabbis after the October 2018 massacre that killed 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue.

“Somehow in the U.S. we expect our clergy to be superhuman when it comes to these things,” he said. “They’re human beings who are going to feel the same kind of fear and numbness and depression that other people do.”

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It’s difficult to quantify the extent of clergy stress, nationwide or denominationally. But a 2018 Gallup poll bears out a common impression that clergy no longer enjoy the same public esteem as in the past. Only 37% of American rate members of the clergy highly for honesty and ethics, the lowest rating in the 40 years Gallup has asked that question.

“Not very long ago, they were seen as one of the pillars of the community,” said Carl Weisner, senior director of Duke Divinity School’s Clergy Health Initiative. “There has been some loss of status... and that does add to stress.”

Stress — and rewards — come in many forms for Rodney McNeal, 54, an Army veteran and social worker who has pastored Second Bethlehem Baptist Church in Alexandria, Louisiana, for nearly eight years.

Officially, the African American church has 300 members but only about 130 attend a typical service, he said.

“They don’t understand that I get tired like they get tired,” he said. ”They want you to be at their constant beck and call.”

He has attended five seminaries but never completed them. The courses, he said, didn’t cover all he sees on the job.

“The preaching part is the easy part,” he said. “Had I known the ugly side of ministry -- the hospital visits, burying the dead, being in the room when someone is dying and trying to comfort their family... Had I known all that, I don’t think I would have accepted being a pastor.”

What keeps him going?

“I will be out in the community and somebody will say ‘Hey man, you changed my life,”’ he said.

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Episcopal Bishop Chilton Knudsen, from the vantage of a nearly 40-year career, cites several factors affecting the clergy’s morale -- including sex-abuse scandals that have rocked several Protestant denominations as well as the Catholic church.

“As the scandals became public, the public trust of clergy has dropped a little notch with each revelation,” said Knudsen, 73. “Even if you never had a scandal, there’s still a taint by association.”

“At the same time, the clergy has more complicated situations come across their doorstep,” she said. “There’s a wearing-down effect... they’re thinking, ‘I’ve spent all these hours with people trying to do good things, and I’m just getting nowhere.’”

Another challenge, she said, is the willingness of some churchgoers to engage in “clergy bashing.”

“Sometimes your congregation is polarized -- a group who wants you gone and believes another priest will be so much better, and a group who are supportive,” she said. “People are acting out, circulating rumors about you in email chains -- it’s traumatic.”

The National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 45,000 churches in the U.S., published research in 2016 detailing pervasive financial stress among its pastors. Of more than 4,200 pastors surveyed, half earned less than $50,000 a year; 90% worried about insufficient retirement savings.

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For Muslim clergy in America, the stresses of their jobs are often magnified by awareness that their communities face prejudice and suspicion.

“We’re framed in this idea that somehow we’re a fifth column trying to take the country down,” said James Jones, a Manhattan College religion professor and vice chair of the board of the Islamic Seminary of America. “We’re asked to prove ourselves -- that we are patriotic -- in ways that other people aren’t.”

Adeel Zeb encountered anti-Muslim sentiment head-on as Islamic chaplain at Duke University in 2015. The school invited Muslim students to give their call to prayer from the bell tower of the campus chapel, only to withdraw the invitation -- citing safety concerns -- amid a backlash that included death threats and outraged criticism from prominent Christian figures such as evangelist Franklin Graham.

Zeb, now chaplain at the five-college Claremont Colleges network in California, described Duke’s backtracking as “a hard call.”

“Students’ and staff’s lives were being threatened,” he said. “You don’t want to live with that on your conscience -- one of your students getting shot and killed.”

At Claremont, Zeb ministers to about 300 Muslim students. Most grew up in the post-9/11 era that kindled anti-Muslim sentiment among some Americans.

“Many of the students here haven’t seen much of the blessing or sweetness of being a Muslim in the U.S.,” he said. “They usually see the curse of it.”

———

In September 2017, on the first day of Rosh Hoshana -- the Jewish new year -- a security guard found a hateful anti-Semitic message scrawled outside Temple Sinai -- home to the oldest Jewish congregation in Oakland, California.

Rabbi Jacqueline Mates-Muchin rushed to the synagogue and devised a plan before worshippers gathered for morning services. As they arrived, she encouraged them to write positive messages on sheets of butcher paper, which then covered the graffiti until workers could paint over it.

“Love Not Hate” and “Stronger Together” were among the multi-colored messages.

Mates-Muchin says her congregation was heartened by an outpouring of support from civic and religious leaders. But the incident -- and the subsequent deadly attacks on synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, California -- took a toll.

Since the Pittsburgh massacre, she said, “I don’t begin a service without having a rough plan of where I’d direct people if someone came in with a gun.”

During that span, her synagogue has beefed up security measures -- more lighting, security cameras and guards. For the most recent High Holy Days, synagogue leaders deployed armed off-duty police officers.

Rabbi Amy Bardack, director of Jewish Life and Learning at the Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh, helped coordinate support for local rabbis after the Tree of Life massacre.

“No one learns about this in rabbinical school,” she said.

Faced with such deliberate anti-Semitic attacks, Bardack said, the rabbis “are both the wounded and the healers.”

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Associated Press religion editor Gary Fields contributed.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Gunmen kill 24 in attack near church in Burkina Faso

By SAM MEDNICK and ARSENE KABORE | February 17, 2020

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — Gunmen killed 24 civilians, including a church pastor, and kidnapped three others on Sunday in Burkina Faso, an official said. It was the latest attack against a religious leader in the increasingly unstable West African...

Priests of disgraced Legion face trial for obstruction claim

By NICOLE WINFIELD and MARIA VERZA | February 17, 2020

MILAN (AP) — The Vatican effort to reform the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order is coming under new scrutiny, with four Legion priests and a Legion lawyer due to stand trial on charges they tried to obstruct justice and extort the family of...