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World Help cancels plans for tsunami orphanage
Yesterday's Weblog on plans by Virginia-based missions agency World Help to raise 300 Muslim tsunami orphans in a Christian children's home was outdated before we were even able to post.

In fact, it was outdated a day before The Washington Post published its story, too.

As it turns out, World Help canceled its plans to build the orphanage on Wednesday, once it heard that the Indonesian government wouldn't allow it.

Today's Post notes that the legal hurdles were big: "Indonesia … had regulations in place even before the tsunami requiring orphans to be raised by people of their own religion. This rule was adopted in large part to ensure that Muslim children were not converted. In response to fears that Acehnese tsunami orphans would be trafficked, the Indonesian Department of Social Affairs adopted a further prohibition on people taking children out of the province."

It's interesting to note the different perspective between the Associated Press and Reuters reports on this story. For Reuters, it's all about the "proselytizing." At the center of the story is a quote from Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations: "This confirms some of our worst fears that certain missionary groups would exploit the tragedy and the earthquake to enter into these areas and convert people through use of a disproportionate power relationship. How many incidents of this type are taking place that we don't hear about?" (Other people are worried about the mounting death toll, massive hazards to public health, and how violent Islamic groups are pressuring relief groups. It's a bit surprising that a group wanting to take care of orphans rates among his "worst fears.")

The Associated Press, meanwhile, frames the story as "an example of tightening restrictions on foreigners in Indonesia's Muslim-dominated Banda Aceh province."

For World Help president Vernon Brewer, the "proselytizing" angle is a red herring. "We're really not trying to proselytize," he told Reuters. "It's no different than what Mother Theresa did by taking Hindu orphan children and placing them in a Roman Catholic children's home in Calcutta, and she won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing that."

Episcopal bishops fudge again
At first glance, the statement yesterday from bishops in the Episcopal Church USA looks pretty good. "We as the House of Bishops express our sincere regret for the pain, the hurt and the damage caused to our Anglican bonds of affection by certain actions of our church," they said. "We express this regret as a sign of our deep desire for and commitment to continuation of our partnership in the Anglican Communion."

Only one problem: They didn't really mean it, and said so.

"Utah Bishop Carolyn Tanner Irish said the statement was not an apology for consecrating New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who lives with his longtime male partner, but for the tensions that his election created within the Communion," the Associated Press reports.

Bishop Robert Duncan, Moderator of the conservative Anglican Communion Network (ACN) and Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, said "the Episcopal Church USA often uses graceful language but our behavior (the politics of power) contradicts the words." Duncan was one of 21 bishops to sign a separate statement explicitly submitting to last year's Windsor Report, which the ECUSA bishop's meeting implicitly declined to do when it decided not to put a moratorium on electing new homosexual bishops.

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January (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49