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Cincinnati looks to other cities (and Eugene Rivers) for answers
Following April's rioting along racial fault lines in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, the city is looking for remedies to the underlying tensions. Currently, a team of experts is on tour to various cities evaluating programs, community policing and other efforts put into effect.

The first stop for the group was Boston where the church community has played a major, active role in improving a once-volatile environment similar to Cincinnati's. Since a public gang-related execution in a church, religious leaders joined to fix their city.

The outspoken Eugene Rivers, founder of the Azusa Christian Community and the Ten-Point Coalition, has been one minister at the forefront of those changes. NPR reported that he was among the Boston leaders who met with Cincinnati officials this week. Christianity Today profiled Rivers and his efforts in a 1996 cover story, Separate and Equal. The New Republic recently profiled Rivers saying that at a time when America is "open to ideological alternatives. … Rivers's are the most compelling around."

Was an earlier prototype the Pinto of Communion machines?

A retired engineer parishioner at the Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, has made a better mousetrap, or at least a machine to speed up Communion cup preparation. Religion News Service reported that after seeing how long it took church workers to fill Communion cups for the church, Wil Greenlee spent three years and several prototypes developing the Greenlee Communion Dispensing System.

"I call this the Rolls Royce of Communion prep machines," Greenlee says proudly, standing in one of three designated Communion prep rooms at Southeast Christian Church, where he is a member.

For Southeast Christian — a church so large it has 400 toilets and its own newspaper — Greenlee's machine is something of a godsend. Before his invention, crews would start on Thursday night siphoning 39 gallons of grape juice into 20,000 tiny cups for three weekend services.

Now, that preparation is reduced to just a few hours — down from five minutes to just two seconds for each 40-cup tray.

Sexuality:

• Homosexuality among issues that Lutherans may address | The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) will meet Aug. 8-13 for biennial Churchwide Assembly. (Religion News Service)
• Changing Times | Protestant church doors starting to open for gay clergy. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Faith-based role is seen for gay churches | Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches moderator tells congregations to get ready to seek funding (The Washington Times)

Church and state:

• Creationism fight looms | The Board of Education has to decide whether to teach the biblical version in science classes (The Star Bulletin)
• Also: Educators: Creation theory not scientific | Creationism can be taught, but not in science class, teachers and scientists say (The Star Bulletin)
• Also: Bible gains ground at BOE | A committee instigates changes to standards that now require students to know about 'multiple theories' of origin, not just evolution (The Star Bulletin)
• Carey: State should stay out of church affairs | Opposes Israel's decision to exclude five candidates from elections for the Greek Orthodox patriarchate. (Ha'aretz)
• Pennridge graduate sues over creationism | He says the district violated his free-speech rights by expecting to review flyers challenging evolution. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

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August (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45