Church & Society
United Methodist joins other leaders to protest human cloning

WASHINGTON (UMNS) – Immediately following the announcement by a New England firm that it has cloned human life, a United Methodist national board joined a coalition of strange political bedfellows to call for a ban on human cloning.

Jaydee R. Hanson, a staff executive of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, supported the ban during a Capitol Hill press conference with representatives of seven other groups, ranging from progressive environmental and pro-choice organizations to the religious right and right-to-life councils. The press conference was sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., also a United Methodist, who said he will push for legislation to ban cloning before the Senate’s Christmas recess.

“It may be a surprise to some of the press that a denomination that supports a woman’s right to choose is here,” Hanson told 75 reporters and a dozen TV cameras gathered in the Russell Senate Office Building for the Nov. 26 press conference. Other religious groups participating were the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Christian Coalition.

Hanson said that the 2000 General Conference, the United Methodist Church’s top legislative assembly, adopted a resolution calling for “a complete and total ban” of the kind of activities being conducted by Advanced Cell Technologies, the Massachusetts firm that announced on Nov. 25 that it has begun to make cloned human embryos.

“The church called for a ban on all human cloning, including the cloning of human embryos,” Hanson told reporters. “It also called for a ban on therapeutic, medical, research and commercial procedures which generate waste embryos.”

Cloning and abortion are “very different” ethical issues, Hanson said during an interview following the press conference. “It is one thing for a woman and her family to make a really hard decision in a tragic situation,” he said.

“It is another thing for scientists in a lab to patent human embryos, to make a bank of human embryos, and the only way you can get to it is by paying them money.”

The church saw what was happening in the industry and didn’t want to support it, he said. “Do we really want an industry that depends on paying poor women for their eggs to do research?”

The resolution opposing human cloning passed by General Conference in 2000 was the result of a study done by the Board of Church and Society’s Genetic Science Task Force formed in 1988. “United Methodists were in the forefront of policy development on this,” Hanson said. “Our genetic science task force looked at the research that was being done and looked at what was likely to be done and said ‘no.’”

During the press conference, Hanson expressed concern that discussions about the work being done by Advanced Cell Technologies might result in confusion about the difference between cloning and stem cell research. “The creation of human embryos by cloning or other procedures is not necessary to pursue adult, placental or even embryonic stem cell research,” he said. “And it is stem cell research that may hold the promise for treatments – not the creation of human embryos.”

James Winkler, top staff executive of the Board of Church and Society, urged Congress to pass a ban on human cloning in a Nov. 27 statement. “The United Methodist Church has long understood that not everything that is currently legal is moral,” he said. “The General Conference of the United Methodist Church called for a ban on all forms of human cloning. Congress should promptly enact such a ban.”

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Reform Jewish leaders support cloning to cure diseases but oppose it for reproductive purposes, according to the Associated Press.

The religious leaders’ opposition to cloning agrees with that of President Bush, who called on Congress Nov. 26 to ban the cloning of human embryos. Bush is a United Methodist.

News Briefs
Gambling industry seeks to exploit September 11, clergyman says

WASHINGTON (UMNS) – A spokesman for an anti-gambling coalition is challenging the U.S. Senate to reject efforts by the gaming industry to obtain special tax breaks being developed in the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedies.

The gambling industry is trying to exploit the events of Sept. 11 for its own gain, said the Rev. Tom Grey, a United Methodist clergyman and director of the National Coalition Against Gambling Expansion.

New York’s state legislature passed a bill Oct. 25 that had been stalled for years due to lack of support, Grey said in a Nov.12 statement. Decisive for the bill’s passage was the projection of income for an economy badly hurt by the World Trade Center tragedy, he said.

Gambling proponents are using similar arguments of economic need to push legislation in other states, including Rhode Island, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Indiana, Ohio and Kansas, according to Grey. He called upon citizens to urge members of Congress, particularly their senators, to reject the proposed gambling subsidy.

NCC adopts balanced budget

(UMNS) The adoption of a balanced 2001-2002 balance by the National Council of Churches (NCC) executive committee should pave the way for continued funding of the agency by the United Methodist Church.

Clare Chapman, an executive with United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, was part of a special financial task force presenting a revised budget to the executive committee, which met Nov. 13-15 in Oakland, Calif.

The new budget total, around $5.7 million, reflected “what the actual revenue was in the prior year,” Chapman told United Methodist News Service. The task force reduced projected spending for 2001-2002 from a previous total of more than $7 million.


Who said that?

“It’s time to know who you believe in and what you’re standing for. Our nation is up against a nation who’s got the wrong religion and they’re willing to die for it. Are you willing to die for what you believe?”

Church of God in Christ Presiding Bishop Gilbert E. Patterson, addressing the Holy Convocation of the Pentecostal denomination for the first time as its national leader. He was quoted by The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tennessee.

Finance agency experiences range of ‘firsts’

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. (UMNS) - The 2001 meeting of the United Methodist Church’s financial agency included a series of firsts.

During its Nov. 15-19 session, the General Council on Administration and Finance (GCFA) experienced its first mission service program, its first session with a representative from one of the Pan-Methodist denominations and – perhaps most unusual – its first situation in which non-GCFA staff representatives asked for a freeze on salary ranges for the highest level church agency executives.

Meeting prior to GCFA, the church’s Committee on Personnel Policies and Practices decided to hold the executive pay range at 2002 levels for 2003.

The committee is an interagency working group that includes a representative from each of the denomination’s churchwide agencies that receive general church funds. Not included are the United Methodist Publishing House and the Board of Pension and Health Benefits.

GCFA staff had recommended a 3.6 percent increase in salary ranges for 2003 based on an established formula tied to changes in the denominational average compensation for clergy. However, an agency representative suggested rejecting the upward movement and instead proposed freezing the 2003 executive salary ranges at 2002 levels. The proposal was unanimously accepted.

“I heard the committee say it wanted to make a statement to the church in the midst of the current economic conditions,” said Jay Brim, chairman of the committee and a member of GCFA. “The agency representatives unanimously felt it was important to demonstrate action reflecting good stewardship of the United Methodist denominational financial resources.”

GCFA subsequently approved the recommendation. As enacted, this limit only applies to the highest five salary levels of agency executives. And it only affects those people who are at the maximum in 2002 of the salary range that correlates with the churchwide factoring of their jobs.

“There are other executives below this range,” noted Sandra Kelley Lackore, GCFA general secretary, “and how the decision affects them is determined by each agency.”

She explained that each agency makes its own decisions about compensation within the parameters established by the committee and GCFA. The plan will not affect hourly wage employees, nor does it affect people in those highest levels who have not, in 2002, reached the top of their salary range.

For its first voluntary mission project, 16 GCFA members performed a variety of tasks at Wesley Center in Savannah, Ga. Together with seven spouses, three GCFA staff members and two people from a GCFA-affiliated organization, they spent a day helping at the 50-year-old mission center that provides day care for about 60 children. Family services include nutrition classes, a clothes closet and referrals to community agencies.

At its opening business session, GCFA took an offering among all its members, staff and guests that netted $1,200 for Wesley Center, which draws support from the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, the South Georgia Annual (regional) Conference of the church, United Way and other funding sources. In another first-time experience, the council welcomed Estelle Brooks from the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church as an official council observer. Brooks will have voice without vote.

Brooks was named by the Commission on Pan-Methodism Cooperation and Union in response to an invitation from GCFA, which decided that since other churchwide agencies were required to add representation from one or more of these sister denominations, GCFA would benefit from similar input.

The General Council on Ministries (GCOM) requested additional funds for the World Service Contingency Fund that GCOM administers, in light of the number and size of grant petitions the agency has already received. In addition to the $200,000 a year authorized for 2001 and 2002, GCFA voted to provide a one-time extra $100,000 in 2002, and it committed to $300,000 for 2003 and $100,000 for 2004.

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