The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

RAY SUAREZ: Good evening. I'm Ray Suarez. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight, the news of the day, U.S. Marines at the ready in Liberia to assist in peacekeeping efforts, some historical efforts on the U.S.-Liberian relationship, the grim reality of the AIDS epidemic in India, and repercussions from the Episcopal Church's endorsement of an openly gay bishop.

NEWS SUMMARY

RAY SUAREZ: A small team of U.S. Marines landed in Liberia today. They were the first contingent from a force of 2,300 marines on warships offshore. We have a report narrated by Richard Vaughan of Associated Press Television News.

RICHARD VAUGHAN: It was a sight that many in Liberia have long been waiting for. Three U.S. helicopters swooped in from the Atlantic and landed in the American embassy compound. Onboard was a team of seven U.S. soldiers and three members of a U.S. humanitarian team. An American official said the team could grow as large as 20 in the coming days. The move came a day after President Bush promised to send a small team to Monrovia to provide logistical support for the West African peacekeepers. The Nigerian troops, which form the vanguard of this force, gathered to battalion strength at Liberia's main air terminal on the outskirts of the capital. More than 1,000 civilians have been killed as rebels trying to oust President Charles Taylor lay siege to the capital. But the atmosphere at Monrovia's old bridge seemed to indicate improving relations. The opposing sides waved white flags and saluted each other. Some journalists were allowed to cross over into the rebel-held side. There was evidence of life returning to some semblance of normality. Some businesses were being prepared to reopen. But destruction was also evident, with damaged buildings and vandalized and abandoned cars in the road.

RAY SUAREZ: In Crawford, Texas, today, President Bush said the marines would make arrangements to get humanitarian aid into Liberia. And the U.N. urged world governments today to donate $69 million dollars in aid. A U.N. official said the situation in Monrovia is "dire."

CAROLYN McASKIE: If we can collect $2 billion for Iraq of which $1 billion was direct voluntary contributions from the traditional donors, surely we can come up with 69-70 million dollars for Liberia. It's not often that our worst- case scenario actually comes to pass. Liberia is our worst-case scenario.

RAY SUAREZ: The Nigerian peacekeepers may deploy to Monrovia's port tomorrow, where some aid is already stored. Also today, there was word Liberian President Taylor will formally announce his plans to resign, tomorrow. The head of a group of West African states said he would go into exile, in Nigeria, on Monday. We'll have more on all this in just a moment. A militant Islamic group reportedly claimed responsibility today, for a deadly attack in Indonesia. Ten people died yesterday when a powerful car bomb exploded outside the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. Today, a newspaper in Singapore reported that Jemaah Islamiyah had claimed it was behind the attack. That same group is also blamed in a deadly nightclub bombing in Bali last year. U.S. Forces in Iraq captured at least 18 suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists today. They were rounded up in raids near Balad, in north-central Iraq. And in Tikrit, U.S. soldiers foiled a grenade attack. They spotted an armed man sneaking through an alley and opened fire on him. This was the 5th straight day with no U.S. combat deaths in Iraq. But the military reported one soldier was killed in an accidental fall. Israel released more than 300 Palestinian prisoners today, hoping to boost peace efforts. Palestinians welcomed home the prisoners, but said it wasn't enough. We have a report narrated by Lindsay Taylor of Independent Television News.

LINDSDAY TAYLOR: Several hundred relatives engulf the vehicles and their passengers. Some 340 Palestinian prisoners were freed today, all of them made to sign a document saying they would not take part in illegal activities against Israel in the future. Palestinians say with up to 6,000 people still in jails, today's releases are not enough.

GHASSAN AL-KHATIB: It is not up to the expectations and it's not up to the promises at all because on one hand, the number is very insignificant and on the other hand those are prisoners who are supposed to be released anyhow.

LINDSAY TAYLOR: For Israelis like this woman who lost a daughter and son-in-law in an attack seven years ago, any such releases is ill judged.

YEHUDIT DESBERG: Whether this person did have blood on their hands or not is minor to the fact that the sovereign state is letting its law breakers and the people that tried to kill but didn't succeed, they let them out of prison.

LINDSAY TAYLOR: But there's no doubting the feeling of good will in the air today, at least among those reunited.

RAY SUAREZ: Israel still plans to release another 100 detainees. Conservative Episcopalians protested today, against the church's first openly gay bishop. Reverend Gene Robinson of New Hampshire was approved last night at the church convention in Minneapolis. Today, some conservatives walked out. Their leaders had warned of a possible split, but they said it would not happen immediately.

REV. DAVID ANDERSON: It is important not to act precipitously or foolishly or emotionally but rather to take godly counsel with each other, to seek the direction of the lord and to take baby steps.

RAY SUAREZ: A group of conservative Episcopalians will meet in Texas in October to decide what to do. For his part, the Rev. Robinson said today there's no reason for a schism in the church.

BISHOP-ELECT GENE ROBINSON: The great gift that we bring, I think, to the world is that we are able to maintain a wide diversity of opinions on various issues while holding our faith in Jesus Christ as central and the thing that binds us together as the body of Christ. So I think there is no reason for us to come apart over this.

RAY SUAREZ: We'll have more on all this later in the program. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 25 points to close above 9061. The NASDAQ fell more than 20 points to close below 1653. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: U.S. Marines backing up peacekeepers in Liberia; some history on the U.S. Liberia partnership, India grapples with its AIDS crisis; and what the appointment of a gay bishop means for the Episcopal Church and for other denominations, too.

UPDATE - PEACE MISSION

RAY SUAREZ: The arrival of a handful of U.S. Marines and several hundred additional Nigerian peacekeepers could help bring stability to war torn Liberia, as could the departure of President Charles Taylor. For an update on the situation there, we turn to Somini Sengupta of the New York Times reporting from Monrovia. I spoke to her by phone earlier today.

RAY SUAREZ: Somini Sengupta, welcome. What's the latest word concerning the on-again/off- again resignation and departure of Charles Taylor from Liberia?

SOMINI SENGUPTA: The last update on that is that he will submit his resignation formally to the Liberian house of representatives tomorrow, and he will formally hand over the presidency on Monday, midday. And it is still unknown when Charles Taylor will actually leave the country, if he will leave the country.

RAY SUAREZ: One thing he's asked for is a dropping of the war crimes charges against him. Is there any indication from any party that that's a hard-and- fast thing and unless he gets that official word, he won't leave the country?

SOMINI SENGUPTA: He has never said that explicitly himself. His aides have suggested it. They have also... his attorneys have also filed a case in the international court of justice for the indictment against him to be dropped. This indictment is in connection with his alleged role in supporting a rebel group in neighboring Sierra Leone in that country's very brutal and devastating ten-year-long civil war. So it remains to be seen whether he will actually hold out for any movement on that indictment. The special court in Sierra Leone, which is an independent court backed by the United Nations, its prosecutor has made it very plain that he's not about to drop this indictment or make any amendments to this indictment anytime soon.

RAY SUAREZ: Let's move on to the American troops now present in the country. Exactly how many are there, and what are they supposed to be doing?

SOMINI SENGUPTA: That's a good question. About a half dozen of them landed today, about half a dozen marines. They went to meet with the West African troops; they went to meet with their commanders at the airport just outside the city. They have not been available to speak to us today, and so we really have no idea what half a dozen American marines are going to be able to do in restoring peace to Liberia. There's a ship somewhere off the coast, we think about 50 miles off the coast of Liberia, with some 3,000 American troops. Whether and when they will ever come ashore again remains a mystery. Those are decisions that Washington is evidently making, and we're still in the dark about that.

RAY SUAREZ: What do the Liberians make of this? They were said to be fairly impatient, at one point, waiting for the Americans to make some kind of arrival in the capital.

SOMINI SENGUPTA: I think Liberians that I've talked to on the streets have grown weary asking for, begging for American intervention. At this point what you will hear on the streets here is great anticipation; not yet quite a sense of relief, but certainly great anticipation that West African forces will start deploying very, very soon and will start securing the city so people can move around; so they can cross the bridges from one side of the city that's held by the government to the other side of the city, which is held by rebels;

RAY SUAREZ: Word reaching the United States about Monrovia, not the rest of the country, indicates that a lull in the fighting has accompanied the arrival of the small Nigerian contingent. Has that lull made it possible to get humanitarian supplies into a city that evidently needs them pretty badly?

SOMINI SENGUPTA: Well, the only way the humanitarian supplies can be brought in here right now is by plane, and that's obviously prohibitively expensive. You can only bring small amounts of things at a time. So some humanitarian supplies have been flown in by international aid agencies, but the port is really the vital... is a vital thing. If things come into the port, if goods come into the port now, they are only available to the side of the city, the half of the city that's controlled by the rebels. I crossed over onto the rebel- held side yesterday and got just a very stark, stark shot of this. They have a makeshift hospital in a brewery on that side. Surgeries are being done by local community nurses. They have no painkillers left; they have no antibiotics left, very few antibiotics left; they're low on sutures and bandages; and they've got wounded soldiers and civilians laying on the floor of this brewery. But food is in abundant supply over on that side. Rice is cheap. Fuel is cheap. Meanwhile, on this side, on the government side, fuel costs $30 a gallon on the government side of the city, and that just gives you some idea of how completely dysfunctional, I mean, how completely impossible it is for ordinary people to survive here.

RAY SUAREZ: From Monrovia, Somini Sengupta of the New York Times. Thanks a lot.

SOMINI SENGUPTA: Thank you.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, a longer view on the unique American ties to Liberia. We're joined by Edward Perkins, a former ambassador to Liberia. He's now the executive director of the International Programs Center at the University of Oklahoma. Elwood Dunn is Liberian, he taught at the University of Liberia and also served in the government. In 1980 he was the minister of state for presidential affairs. He now teaches political science at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Marie Tyler-McGraw is a historian who has written a great deal about the American colonization society, the 19th century group which spearheaded the early efforts by free American blacks to colonize Liberia.

And, Marie Tyler McGraw, we often hear it referred to in news reports as a historical relationship, a special relationship. What are the American roots of Liberia?

MARIE TYLER-McGRAW: The American roots of Liberia go back really to African-Americans in the United States. It's a surprise to a lot of Americans to learn that there were a good many, thousands of free blacks in the United States before the Civil War, before the Emancipation Proclamation. Many of them felt that their status was... that they could never be full citizens of the United States. Indeed their status was a lot like that in the Jim Crow America of the post Civil War era. Some considered that they might be better off to start a republic of their own somewhere else. Many were reluctant to abandon the United States and their hopes for full citizenship here. Others were receptive to the notion that they might be in charge only somewhere else, outside the United States. Enter: The American Colonization Society which was founded by white men, mostly politicians and ministers who believed that these free blacks could never attain full citizenship and set up a private benevolent organization to found this colony on the western coast of Africa.

RAY SUAREZ: So a country in effect founded by an NGO?

MARIE TYLER McGRAW: Right. Yes, with private money, donations, almost no federal aid. When they did get some federal aid, it was sneaky. It was a ruse. It was an amendment to the Slave Trade Act. It said, we need a colony on the western coast of Africa to receive the slave ships that we interdict and take slaves from and return to Africa. We need some place for them to go. So we'll spend money on this. That lasted for two administrations and when Andrew Jackson came in to the presidency and saw that line item, he said forget it. It was not a federal project. It was not a projectof which he approved so that's the only federal aid they ever got.

RAY SUAREZ: Elwood Dunn, Liberia is started. A country that's sort of a landed gentry is left off on boats. What happens after that? Do they get up and running without very much American help?

ELWOOD DUNN: Well, I like to suggest that there was a founding paradigm that I think is very important in terms of understanding the beginnings of Liberia and the relationship between the Liberians and the United States. That founding paradigm goes something like this: That is, the whole purpose of the enterprise was to create a state in order to advance civilization and Christianization, so the purpose was to create this entity in order to civilize and Christianize the peoples found in that part of Africa. I think it's important for us to keep this in mind because it's going to be very important in terms of understanding what follows.

RAY SUAREZ: So there's a strong missionary component to the enterprise of starting this country in the first place?

ELWOOD DUNN: Precisely. And a strong cultural component. I think it will be when the whole process of implementation of this paradigm begins that we begin to see conflicts, if you will, in the relationship between the repatriate community and the indigenous community -- conflict that is going to be very important in understanding the early part of the evolution of the Liberian state in society.

RAY SUAREZ: In the founding decades of the country, what was the relationship like between the people who were essentially Americans? They were detribalized. They didn't speak ethnic tongues from the African continent. They were people from Maryland and Virginia. How did they get along with Africans who were already living on the West Coast?

ELWOOD DUNN: That's precisely why I started with this founding paradigm. These people were people of a very different world view, very different outlook. They were westernized blacks, if you will, here, going to the continent of Africa where they found people that they considered to be heathens and uncivilized. I think this was very important in terms of establishing the nature of the relationship that existed between these two peoples. But that didn't remain that way. Over time things began to change. And intermarriage took place. They went to school together. So that as we move forward to where we are at the present time certainly that way of thinking about Liberia has undergone significant transformation.

RAY SUAREZ: Ambassador Perkins, after Liberia is started and underway, does the United States take very much of an interest in the country that in a way it helped create?

EDWARD PERKINS: Well, unfortunately that has been kind of an up-and-down situation. The United States on occasion has taken a great deal of interest in Liberia, and it lasts for some time. Then it goes off the radar screen. I think that the United States subconsciously believes that Liberia is a country that is sort of in its best interests in terms of having a relationship, but that relationship has not been altogether substantial for any great length of time. That's not to say that the United States has not been interested in Liberia because I think it has. Otherwise, it would not be responding as it is this day.

RAY SUAREZ: Marie Tyler-McGraw, even when the government of the United States isn't very interested in Liberia, do the same elements of American society-- black intellectuals, church groups, missionaries-- continue to have a cultural contact with this sort of American country on the African coast?

MARIE TYLER-McGRAW: For a long time after the dissolution of the American Colonization Society and even before, missionary contact, educational contact, especially missionaries engaged in educational and health programs were a main or perhaps "the" main contact. There was always interest in exchange students, any interest of African-Americans in Africa. They would be interested in Liberia. Of course there was a great deal of turmoil in the why '50s and '60s when African nations began to achieve their independence and actually at that point Liberia seemed to be not moving as fast. But yes, there has been informal interest. Our government has not been as involved as segments of the population.

RAY SUAREZ: So Elwood Dunn, for a long time was this Liberia population almost reflexively pro American?

ELWOOD DUNN: Well, the Liberia population has been a varied population. Elements of it have been pro American. Elements have been... tended to be pro African. I would like to come back to this question of paradigm that I talked about earlier on because I think a significant shift in paradigm took place in the late '50s going into the '60s as the process of decolonization got underway in Africa. That shift was away from the founding paradigm towards greater participation, a sort of democracy and the free-market economy, and movement towards more inclusion, if you will, of the vast majority of the population in the whole process of running the state and society. So I think it was a very different Liberia that we found as we move into the '50s and '60s and particularly the 1970s. And there I'd like to underscore that that was happening in the 1970s was a veritable attempt on the part of the Liberian people at transforming, reforming the society. And what happened in 1980 when the coup de at that time took place tended to arrest that process.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, let's remind people what form that coup de at that time took. A former vice president of Liberia had become president, President Tolbert. Indigenous Liberians in the army took control of the government.

ELWOOD DUNN: Yes, this is precisely what happened. But there's a background to this. And the background to this is that in the 1970s, you had a very lively reform movement, a series of movements and a large number of people were engaged in efforts at trying to reform the society. When the coup d'etat took place, some saw it as an attempt on the part of indigenous people to take power from the repatriate community. But I think the misunderstanding here comes from the fact that people don't appreciate the individuals who were involved in the reform movement. Those individuals came from all sectors of Liberian society, and I think it was a concerted effort on the part of all Liberians at addressing the problems in the society and seeking to go forward in a democratic way, away from the political autocracy that had been characteristic of the political order in Liberia.

RAY SUAREZ: So, Ambassador Perkins, what is the United States' posture towards Liberia during this period of turmoil after the '70s and '80s are underway?

EDWARD PERKINS: For a while it was I think a very positive one. The United States looked upon Liberia as a valuable ally with several demonstrations of resources in Liberia that helped the United States to carry on its own foreign policy within West Africa and also in certain parts perhaps of southern Europe. So it was a pretty positive relationship. The coup d'etat that took place, of course, caused a kind of change, a redefinition of how the United States looked at Liberia,but I don't think it ever looked on Liberia as a place to be abandoned during that time. There was a decided effort to try and make sure that the country itself remained viable through many different ways. And I think that lasted for some time. Unfortunately, the kind of turmoil that took place did not allow the... what I thought was a pretty good intent on the part of the United States to last very long after that.

RAY SUAREZ: And the turmoil that began in those days has not abated to this day. Guests, thanks a lot.

FOCUS - INDIA'S AIDS EPIDEMIC

RAY SUAREZ: Still to come on the NEWSHOUR tonight, AIDS awareness in India and the confirmation of a gay bishop brings praise and protest in the Episcopal Church and elsewhere. Fred de Sam Lazaro of Twin Cities Public Television reports on efforts to stem India's AIDS epidemic.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Reality TV may be the rage elsewhere, but in India, fantasy and escape reign supreme and the new detective series "Jasoos Vijay" is a big hit, not just to its audience of tens of millions, but also to public health workers. In each episode between sending off the bad guys, detective Vijay takes time to allow one of India's grimmest realities into the plot. It's a message about AIDS. ( Speaking Indian )

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: AIDS awareness messages are getting on Indian TV and public health advocates say it's about time, in the country with what is probably the world's largest HIV epidemic. Dr. Suniti Solomon diagnosed the first AIDS case in India in 1986 in the southern city of Chennai.

DR. SOLOMON: I used to roughly see one new patient a week at that time. Today, I see at least five to six new patients a day -- 40 to 50 patients coming in. So that will give you a range over ten years how the numbers have multiplied.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Solomon and other experts believe there are now about 10 million HIV-infected people in India, by far the highest in any nation. The Indian government's figure is less than half: About 4.5 million. Many public health workers complain it reflects widespread ambivalence about AIDS. For example, last year when Microsoft chairman Bill Gates offered $100 million to fight AIDS, there was both gratitude for the money and indignation at the assumption it was needed according to Bombay physician Dr. Ishwar Gilada.

DR. ISHWAR GILADA: One of our central ministers says that we don't need this kind of money and bill gates is overdoing it. Then the question was put to him, what is he overdoing?...

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He is overdoing?

DR. ISHWAR GILADA: Overdoing!

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Exaggerating, you mean?

DR. ISHWAR GILADA: Exaggerating. So, on one hand, you want this money. On the other hand, you don't want to acknowledge what he's saying.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The sore point was a Gates' prediction that HIV Infections here could more than double to 20 million by 2010. The prediction came from a U.S. Government source but it's disputed by Meenakshi Datta Ghosh, head of the government's anti-AIDS effort.

MEENAKSHI DATTA GHOSH: We are ourselves concerned that our figures should be robust, and that the methodologies adopted should be those which have been tried and tested.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So you think it's by a half, by 100 percent How exaggerated, even in a ballpark sense, are those figures do you think?

MEENAKSHI DATTA GHOSH: Difficult to say. Difficult. I wouldn't like to hazard a guess, no, until we get more substantial data.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Ghosh says a comprehensive survey is now underway to measure HIV prevalence and design a response accordingly. But critics say the argument over numbers is irrelevant since they're high either way, and could soar without prompt action.

DR. ISHWAR GILADA: From top to bottom, there's no ownership. The government of India has not spent one rupee or one dollar from its coffers on HIV Programs.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He says India's entire AIDS budget has come from international loans and grants. It all traces back to the origin of this disease, stigmatized in a conservative, class-conscious nation.

MEENAKSHI DATTA GHOSH: Because the first six infections which we detected in Chennai for the whole country were in prostitutes. So the message which went out that it is a disease of the prostitute, just like in the U.S., It was the disease of the gay community. So I always tell people, if HIV was first detected in a baby, we would never have had the stigma today, or if it was through blood transfusion.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The AIDS epidemic did begin in the red-light district of Bombay or Mumbai, India's commercial capital. And it garnered lots of public attention thanks to Dr. Gilada, seen here in a 1994 NewsHour profile delivering a safe-sex sermon. He says such measures have helped stabilize infection rates in urban areas, but they are growing in areas of low prevalence, including the vast rural hinterland.

DR. ISHWAR GILADA: That is a dangerous sign, because 70 percent of the country's population is rural population. There's a lot of migration between urban and rural. Most of the people in Bombay have access to information, access to tools like condoms, access to going to doctors for S.T.D. Check-ups and also get HIV Test done, which is not so in rural areas.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And awareness about AIDS is frequently sketchy at best. The disease is also growing among women.

MEENAKSHI DATTA GHOSH: 80 percent of the women who come to us who are infected have a single partner, and that's their husband.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Bhagya Lakshmi is 38, HIV-Positive and a widow. She's raising two young girls and supporting her elderly mother. Her husband died four years ago of AIDS, which he contracted from a sex worker.

BHAGYA LAKSHMI ( Translated ): Soon after our marriage, we had a lot of problems. He stopped working. He was drinking. He used to hit me. But the one thing I'm really happy about is that when he told me the truth, when he took the HIV test, that has helped me prepare to deal with it.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The truth about sexual mores that many men visit sex workers is rarely discussed not even in India's influential movie industry. It's made it hard to craft media campaigns. This television spot was commissioned by the Charitable Trust of the BBC World Service. A father must confront the reality of his son's sex life, but the commercial was quickly scrapped. The health ministry deemed it, "too condom-centric."

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Such actions reflect widespread denial and fear that access to condoms promotes promiscuity, says Nafisa Ali. She runs an AIDS care center in New Delhi. A former movie star, Ali is one of few who have gotten publicly involved with AIDS issue.

NAFISA ALI: In the land of the Kama Sutra, the land of a billion, a land where every man can do what he wants, it's very macho to go and have a relationship out of your family-based relationships. Don't the parents think that this is a problem for young people, too? I work in the red-light area. I work and I have seen school kids there.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: For her part, the government's Ghosh admits this country has been slow to tackle AIDS, but she insists that has changed, pointing to the Vijay series-- one that gets the message across effectively without grating on community sensibilities about condoms.

MEENAKSHI DATTA GHOSH: Subtle messages on HIV/AIDS and the dangers of high-risk behavior and the need to practice safe, you know, social and sexual behavior is being talked about at prime time. So it is definitely beginning to change, and, you know, in a meaningful way, not just, you know, a flash-in-the-pan kind of change.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Still, like the "Vijay" series, also funded by the BBC Trust, most AIDS campaigns have come with external prodding and funding, like the Gates grant. Recently, the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria also announced a $100 million grant. For the first time, many experts say there's hope and some money for a coherent anti-AIDS program. Among the recipients is Dr. Solomon, who will start an enterprise to distribute anti- retro viral drugs, drugs that greatly prolong the lives of patients with AIDS.

DOCTOR: This is lamudivir, the drugs here...

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The drugs are made in India and are much cheaper than in the West, but they're still beyond most poor patients. Under the new plan, 1,000 patients from different income levels will get the medicines at sliding scale prices.

DR. SUNITI SOLOMON: So the money which comes from this would be circulated and over a period of five years, it becomes sustainable.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: If successful, the self-sustaining program could greatly expand access to the drugs. And when an HIV diagnosis is no longer a death sentence, Dr. Solomon says it's less visible and less stigmatized and more people will come in earlier to be tested. Bhagya Lakshmi will likely be an early beneficiary.

BHAGYA LAKSHMI ( Translated ): Any person who is born cannot live forever. We all have to die sometime. Some of us will die from HIV. Now that my husband has died, I am determined to live long enough to see that the girls are educated well and that they are married.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Global fund dollars will also help women less fortunate than she, with drugs to prevent HIV transmission to newborns. The government estimates that some 92,000 HIV-positive women deliver babies each year in India-- another figure that it admits could be grossly underreported.

FOCUS - TESTS OF FAITH

RAY SUAREZ: Now, the Episcopal Church, and the wider religious debate over homosexuality. Margaret Warner has that.

MARGARET WARNER: It was a dramatic and divisive vote last night, that will make Gene Robinson the first openly gay bishop in the 2.3 million member Episcopal Church. The decision was greeted with joy and a call for conciliation in some quarters, anger and threats of a split in others. Here's some of what Bishop Robinson and a leading opponent, Bishop Robert Duncan, had to say:

BISHOP-ELECT GENE ROBINSON: I believe god is doing a new thing. It's popping up all over in England and Canada, in this country, certainly with the Supreme Court decision of late and now this election. I think we're seeing the moving into a kind of mature adulthood of the full inclusion of gay and lesbian folk in the culture and certainly in the church. I'm proud to be a tiny, tiny part of that. I think we are learning God's will through this. The spirit did not stop acting on the Church when they closed scripture. We worship a living God. That living God leads us into truth. This is the only thing that makes this not a completely joyous day for me: The fact of my consent going through causing pain and difficulty for a goodnumber of people in our communion and in our churches.

BISHOP ROBERT DUNCAN: The bishops who stand before you are filled with sorrow - this body willfully confirming the election of a person sexually active outside of holy matrimony has departed from the historic faith and order of the Church of Jesus Christ. This body has denied a plain teaching of scripture and the moral consensus of the Church throughout the ages. This body has divided itself from millions of Anglican Christians around the world, brothers and sisters who have pleaded with us to maintain the church's traditional teaching on marriage and sexuality.

MARGARET WARNER: The Episcopal Church isn't the only one struggling with how to deal with homosexuality in its ranks and its sacraments. Last week, Pope John Paul II issued a directive urging Roman Catholics everywhere to oppose same-sex unions, saying: "Marriage is holy while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law." Among mainline Protestant denominations in the U.S, united Methodist Church leaders in 2000 banned the ordination of homosexuals and the blessing of same-sex unions. Presbyterian Church leaders voted in 2000 to bar clergy from conducting same-sex union ceremonies. But in 2001, they voted to lift a ban on ordaining gays.

This June, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution urging its 42,000 churches to oppose same-sex unions. It also launched an initiative to reach out to gays with the message that Christianity can save them. And the Evangelical Lutheran Church has a task force now studying whether to ordain gays or bless same-sex unions. Its report is due in 2005.

Joining me now to explore all this are: Harvey Cox, professor of divinity at Harvard University. He is also an ordained minister in the American Baptist Church. Michael Cromartie, director of the Evangelical Studies Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington think tank. He's an Episcopalian. James Hudnut Beumler is dean of the divinity school at Vanderbilt University. He's an ordained Presbyterian minister. And Edward Wheeler is a Baptist minister and president of the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis.

Welcome to you all.

Professor Cox, beginning with you. Why has this issue of how to cope with homosexuality come front and center in so many churches at roughly the same period of time?

HARVEY COX: Well, I think part of it is because it's an issue which can no longer be overlooked or ignored, and the churches are struggling with it in their own way depending on what the organizational polity of that church is or other factors. I think that it's... the move that the Episcopal Church has made just these last few days will clear the way now to move beyond this controversy, which has really paralyzed the churches a lot and allow them to move on to more important issues, issues of dealing with war and racism and hunger and famine, and to put this behind. I think it's a good move, and I think it's an important symbol for the other churches who are wrangling over this issue as well.

MARGARET WARNER: Michael Cromartie, what do you think is driving this because it's not just churches that are thought of as more liberal or progressive but also conservative churches like the Baptists who have still had to take votes, had to deal with it. Why?

MICHAEL CROMARTIE: About 40 years the world council of churches had a motto which was the world sets the agenda for the Church. I think that was a mistaken motto. Here's a situation where the world is dealing with this question apart from the Church in so many, so many ways. And now I think we see in various denominations both Catholic and Protestant people with this orientation saying I want to be a part of the church. Most of these churches say you can definitely be a part of these churches. The issue we're talking about today is not whether you can be a member of it but be a bishop in a denomination like the Episcopal Church. That's what's the controversy.

MARGARET WARNER: Has that been a movement just from being accepted as an openly gay member to now the issue is can you be ordained or blessing of the same sex union?

MICHAEL CROMARTIE: Now, that is exactly the issue. The issue is here: What are the requirements to be a bishop? And as it says in the New Testament, one of the requirements is that the man be married to a single woman. We have a situation here where people are not upset about orientation. They're concerned about behavior. In this situation, we have the behavior of a newly ordained bishop that's in question.

MARGARET WARNER: Dean Hudnut-Beumler, do you agree with this, that really society is driving these churches? In other words that the churches, whether they're conservative or more liberal or wherever they fit on the cultural spectrum, to some degree all have to respond to the culture at large?

JAMES HUDNUT-BEUMLER: Well, I think they do but I think it's also true that churches sometimes give the values... give the best values to a culture and then the culture throws them back at the Church. Churches are very conservative institutions, but possess radical ideas. I had a colleague at a southern seminary once that told me segregationists taught me the bible and the bible taught me that segregation was wrong. So what we have going on here is a back-and-forth between the Christian churches and the culture that surrounds them, and the churches that want to live faithfully in the present are going to have a struggle whenever the present culture changes. And the present culture has changed in a way that pushes the question of who can lead the church back upon the churches.

MARGARET WARNER: Rev. Wheeler, how do you see this debate that we're seeing played out and what's driving it?

EDWARD WHEELER: Well, I think the church itself is not immune from the culture. To speak of the Church as not even being a part of the culture I think is misrepresentation of the Church. The Church is in the world but not of the world. But in order to be in the world, you have to be able to know what the world is talking about. The issue of gay and lesbianism has been on the agenda for a long time. It is coming more to the forefront. And I think what the church has to begin to do is to not deal with this issue from a sociological or anthropological point of view but to begin to look again at scripture, to wrestle with scripture, and to also begin to wrestle with its theological understanding. One of the concerns I have is that I think the moderates and liberals have often allowed the bible to be put aside and used only by the fundamentalists or the conservatives, and we turn away from the bible as if it doesn't speak to the situation. And this is where I think theological education, for example, has a major contribution to make where theologians and biblical scholars ought to be looking again at what scripture says in light of its own context but also in light of the context in which we live now.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Cox, let's talk about this question of scripture because this came up a lot at the convention. Pick up on what Rev. Wheeler said. Do you think we're seeing a tension between people who have different readings of scripture or is there a tension between people who think scripture is a fixed document with fixed truths versus those who think, as I think Bishop Robinson sounded as if he believed, that we have an evolving understanding of what scripture or the bible or God's word really means.

HARVEY COX: Well, yeah, I think all Christians realize that we have an evolving understanding of what scripture says. We study it in different situations. We study it in different eras. I think it's important to point out that the people who pick out particular verses from the bible to refute gay and lesbian participation in the Church, for example, are being very, very selective in the very same chapter, for example, in the Old Testament where homosexuality is condemned, eating ham is also condemned, and lending money at interest. But we've learned how to live with those prohibitions. Even in recent years people have quoted St. Paul saying that women should be silent in the churches. That was used a lot when the whole women's order nation battle was with us. We've moved ahead. We now have women priests in the Episcopal Church. We have women bishops. A split was threatened but no real split came. We learned to live with this as the... as our understanding of the nature of the biblical authority evolves over the years. I think we have to be very attentive to the bible but also to the history of its interpretation as the spirit continues to lead.

MICHAEL CROMARTIE: The question is, Margaret, how attentive do we need to be? I think Bishop Robinson said something very important at that press conference when he said just simply to say that it goes against tradition and the teachings of the church and scripture does not necessarily make it wrong. We worship a living God and that living God leads us into new truths. Now, the question is, do the norms of scripture and tradition dictate what we say to the world today or does my subjective experience and my feelings toward what my definition of love is dictate what we then take back to the scriptures? And so the debate here really is, is what the bonding authority? Scripture and tradition and our need to wrestle with what the text says, or do we say subjectively I think the text is confused here and I want to say that my feeling and my subjective opinion and my subjective morality is what should dictate how I read scripture? And that's what's really at stake here.

MARGARET WARNER: Dean Hudnut-Beumler, weigh in on this question of scripture. I won't try to paraphrase what our two previous guests just said. But what do you think the tension is here?

JAMES HUDNUT-BEUMLER: Well, the tension is what part of scripture and what is the whole movement of the big story about what God is doing in the world? I think really it comes down in recent years to an awareness, first of all, that gay and lesbian people exist. Forty years ago, gays and lesbians were hidden in the Church to an extent that people could say, I don't know any; now people in the workplace do. Secular psychologists and medical doctors have said it's not a pathology; it's the way people are. Then we ask theologically, well, if God made all of these people this way, what is supposed to... what are we supposed to infer from that act of creation and then how does scripture apply to all of those of us who live in various conditions of human life?

MARGARET WARNER: Are you saying....

JAMES HUDNUT-BEUMLER: And so....

MARGARET WARNER: I'm sorry. Are you saying though that you believe as, I think Rev. Wheeler was saying, that these churches still feel-- whatever side you're on-- that the scripture remains very important and that you're still wrestling with ways to make it compatible with evolving mores? I don't know if I'm expressing that right.

JAMES HUDNUT-BEUMLER: As a Christian and as a Christian minister, I believe that there is no point in being in this tradition and orienting my life toward God through the teachings of Jesus and life and example and resurrection if I don't take the narratives seriously. But situations that I have to bring back to the scriptures or bring the scriptures to bear on situations that we didn't imagine were possible 40 years ago are the fact of contemporary church life in this culture. Just as questions about, could a slave owning bishop be ordained or be confirmed back in the 19th century? The scriptures don't speak exactly to this with some kind of legal index in the back. They speak to us as stories that we have to apply in the given situation as best and as faithfully as we can.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Rev. Wheeler, where do you think all this is heading now?

EDWARD WHEELER: Well, as a church historian I'm always real nervous about talking about where it's heading. A Church historian is also much better at looking at where we've come from.

MARGARET WARNER: What does history suggest to you?

EDWARD WHEELER: I would hope that Harvey Cox is right. I would hope that there is not a major split within the Anglican Church or the Episcopal Church in America. I would hope that people who have different points of view would wrestle with those ideas from a biblical and theological understanding. I think the dean has made a very good point. Scripture is in a sense the document that keeps us altogether and keeps us sane. To take seriously the narrative that we have is to take seriously the word of God in a real, very real way. But it's also true that it has to be taken in context. You have to take new understandings and bring those to the table. One of the statements that Bishop Robinson made that may be able to provide us with a key of the direction we might move in to is when he said God is doing a new thing. Well, those of us who are Christian, who believe in prayer, believe in the movement of the Holy Spirit, believe that God still speaks, have to take those kinds of statements seriously. That's why I believe that we need to look seriously at scripture. There have been some efforts in last ten to fifteen years by some very capable theologians who have wrestled with the issue of homosexuality and the bible and have looked at the traditional understandings that we've had. And they have raised some questions as to whether the traditional understandings that we have garnered and used and held up are really what the bible says at that point. That's where I think we ought to continue to have the discussion, and my prayer is that the Church will not be divided but that the Church will once again find a way to be real and alive in a world that needs the witness of the Church.

MARGARET WARNER: Michael Cromartie.

MICHAEL CROMARTIE: Dr. Cox said that at the beginning of our segment that we would be moving on now to new issues. We will not be moving on to new issues. This issue is really going to explode in the Episcopal Church. The Anglican communion of Africa is 18 million strong. It could well be that the conservatives in this country will break with the Episcopal Church in the United States and join the Anglican community of Africa, which is the fastest growing Anglican communion in the world. I just think thatthe important thing to remember here is the new bishop of New Hampshire has said tradition and scripture may have taught this, but that doesn't make it wrong. That's the real issue here is: what are the normative, binding issues that keep Christians in distinction from the world and their sexual ethics.

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Cox, a brief final word from you on where this is all heading.

HARVEY COX: I don't think there's going to be a split in the Anglican Episcopal Church. Maybe Michael Cromartie and I could make a little bet on this. Anglicans love their church. They will stick with it. They'll see their way through this. I'm not an Anglican or an Episcopalian but I'm grateful that they've shown a way to argue this out, think about it, work on it, pray on it. I hope other denominations will do the same.

MARGARET WARNER: All four of you, thanks so much.

RECAP

RAY SUAREZ: Again, the other major developments of the day. A small team of U.S. Marines landed in Liberia to make arrangements for humanitarian aid. And Israel released more than 300 Palestinian prisoners. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening, I'm Ray Suarez, thanks and good night.