(RNS) With the 2012 election less than six months away, congregations are getting the message that Americans want religion out of politics. But that doesn’t mean they plan to keep mum in the public square.

Instead, they’re revamping how congregations mobilize voters by focusing on a broader set of issues than in the past. Preachers are largely avoiding the political fray, and hot-button social issues are relegated to simmer in low-profile church study groups.

Members of St. Stephan's United Church of Christ in Newark, N.J., worship on a Sunday morning. Religion News Service photo by Jennifer Brown/The Star-Ledger of Newark

Why? For one, Americans are growing impatient with religious politicking: 54 percent want houses of worship to keep out of politics (up from 52 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 1996), according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Churches seem to be responding.

“The biggest change we see is a drop-off in the percentage of people saying they hear politics from the pulpit,” said David Campbell, a University of Notre Dame political scientist whose Faith Matters project tracked 3,100 people over five years.

“It’s been happening everywhere,” Campbell added. “People say they don’t want to hear about politics in church, and they’re actually hearing less of it.”

Still, that doesn’t mean the public is clamoring for a totally secularized public square. Some believe the backlash is against a particular type of religious activism that aligns closely with one party’s agenda or set of candidates.

“When people say they want religious organizations out of politics, they mean religious organizations telling people who to vote for,” said Gordon Whitman, director of public policy for PICO, a national network of more than 1,000 faith-based organizations. “We find … lots of consensus that our religious values should inform our positions on issues.”

In April, PICO launched a national campaign to enlist congregations in registering low-income voters and championing multiple issues of “economic justice.” Missouri pastors are now leading efforts to cap payday lending rates at 36 percent. Minnesota clergy are rallying parishioners and others to oppose a new voter ID initiative, which they say would disenfranchise low-income residents and others who lack state-issued ID cards.

For religious conservatives, social issues still matter in 2012, but they’re not always being billed as top priorities.

Hispanic evangelicals, for instance, criticized President Obama earlier this month for supporting same-sex marriage and remain opposed to abortion on demand. But those concerns won’t trump the more pressing matter of immigration reform, which could lead to endorsements for Obama and Democrats running for Congress.

That’s according to Miguel Rivera, chairman of the board for the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, whose membership includes leaders from 16,000 churches.

“We are very happy with the outcome of the referendum (banning gay marriage) in North Carolina,” Rivera said. “But we hope our politicians will understand that this type of agenda is no longer acceptable if we want our country to unite again and work for the betterment of our communities.”

The National Association of Evangelicals plans to use soft-sell techniques in mobilizing its 45,000 churches to impact votes. Churches won’t receive candidate scorecards, which “are often thinly disguised partisan devices,” according to Galen Carey, NAE’s vice president for government relations. Instead, they’ll be equipped with resources for studying what the Bible says about such issues as immigration and marriage.

“Churches are wary of becoming involved in a very partisan way, or campaigning on issues that might be controversial, because their mission is to reach their whole communities,” Carey said.

Religious involvement in partisan politics is driving Americans, especially those under 35, away from organized religion, according to Campbell. Some rising evangelical leaders see this young adult drift, documented in this year’s Millennial Values Survey, as a factor that makes nonpartisanship a practical necessity for churches seeking to grow and thrive.

“The last generation of Christians saw (the two major parties) as strategic allies in pushing their agendas,” said Jonathan Merritt, the 29-year-old evangelical author of “A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars.” “The next generation is reconsidering how that has blinded us and harmed us.”

Being nonpartisan is proving a tricky task in the political arena. Example: When Pastor Paul Slack of New Creation Church in Minneapolis makes a faith-based case against a voter ID initiative in Minnesota, he frames it as fighting against a GOP agenda.

“It’s politically motivated,” Slack said at an April press conference. “Voter ID is designed intentionally to make it harder for certain Minnesotans to vote. … We need to get more people at the polls so they can take part in sharing the common life together because that is indeed a value of our faith.”

Come October, however, all bets for nonpartisanship will be off, at least in churches participating in Pulpit Freedom Sunday. The Alliance Defense Fund is urging pastors to preach Oct. 7 on political issues and endorse specific candidates in defiance of Internal Revenue Service codes for tax-exempt institutions.  More than 250 pastors have already signed up, including Ron Johnson Jr., senior pastor of Living Stones Church in Crown Point, Ind.

Churchgoers “have the opportunity to vote with their feet,” said Johnson, who preached in 2008 on why voting for Obama would be immoral. He’s now running for state representative.

“If they don’t like the messaging, then they don’t have to worship in our congregation.”

(RNS) More than two dozen faculty members have resigned from Shorter University, a Baptist school in Georgia, after it required them to sign a “personal lifestyle statement” that condemns homosexuality, premarital sex and public drinking.

An online campaign called “Save Our Shorter” says that the lifestyle pledge, adopted in the fall of 2011 along with a statement of faith, has led to dozens of resignations. University president Donald Dowless on Friday (May 18) confirmed that 36 faculty have resigned and at least 25 cited disagreement with either the personal lifestyle statement or the faith statement.

The school usually has about 100 full-time faculty.

“The Shorter Board of Trustees is slowly destroying the reputation of our beloved school and causing irreparable damage to the cause of Christ,” the Save Our Shorter website says.

Dowless said Friday that some of those who resigned did not state the reason for leaving.

In a Wednesday statement, Dowless said he and the university board recognized there are “strong feelings on both sides” about the new employment rules but the board decided to “reclaim our Christian roots” even if the consequence was a loss of faculty and staff.

“Our University was at a crossroads to either take steps to regain an authentic Christian identity in policy and practice or we would become a Christian University in name only,” he said.

The university, in Rome, Ga., now requires faculty to sign a personal lifestyle statement that says they will not engage in illegal drug use or drink alcohol in restaurants, stadiums and other public locations.

“I reject as acceptable all sexual activity not in agreement with the Bible, including, but not limited to, premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality,” the statement reads.

The Georgia Baptist Convention began appointing all trustees of the school’s board in 2005 after a ruling in the state convention’s favor by the Georgia Supreme Court.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) On on Tuesday the Vatican announced  it had settled a lawsuit against Italian clothing group Benetton for using an image of Pope Benedict XVI in one of its advertisement campaigns.

The Vatican announced on Tuesday (May 15) it had settled a lawsuit against Italian clothing group Benetton for using an image of Pope Benedict XVI in one of its advertisement campaigns. The ad featured Pope Benedict XVI kissing Egyptian cleric Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed El-Tayeb. RNS photo courtesy Benetton

The image had been modified to show Benedict kissing Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed El-Tayeb, imam of Cairo’s renowned al-Azhar Mosque.

The Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the image was “offensive” and stressed that the Benetton group had agreed to remove the pope’s images from its campaign, and to ask third parties to do the same.

The Benetton group “publicly recognized it had hurt the faithful’s sensitivity,” and that “the pope’s image must be respected and can only be used with the prior authorization of the Holy See,” he added.

Lombardi also stressed that the Vatican chose not to seek any economic compensation in the settlement but requested a “moral reparation” in the form of a “small but effective” donation to a Catholic charity.

Benetton launched its UNHATE campaign last November. It showed global leaders who are perceived as adversaries kissing each other on the mouth, including an image of President Obama kissing Chinese leader Hu Jintao.

The Holy See immediately protested and announced it would sue Benetton for its use of the pope’s image, despite the group’s promise that it would take down the ads.

The clothing group, which Tuesday reported decreasing earnings for the first quarter of 2012, had announced the settlement on Friday. In response to the pope’s image, Catholic activists had launched a “Boycott Benetton” campaign last November.

WASHINGTON (RNS) Prison Fellowship founder and former Nixon aide Chuck Colson was memorialized Wednesday (May 16) at Washington National Cathedral in a service steeped in Scripture and prayers about prison and redemption.

Colson, who died April 21 at the age of 80 after a brief illness, was known as Nixon’s “hatchet man” and served seven months in prison on Watergate-related charges. But at the 90-minute service, he was recalled as a transformed “friend of sinners.”

The choir sang “The King of Love My Shepherd Is”, composed and directed by Canon Michael McCarthy, director of music at the Cathedral. Approximately 1,200 people gathered on May 16, 2012 for Charles Colson's memorial service at Washington National Cathedral. RNS photo by Donovan Marks/courtesy Washington National Cathedral

“Chuck was not perfect, but he was forgiven,” said the Rev. Timothy George, the homilist and dean of Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School.

Colson, a former Marine captain, was buried with full military honors at a private service at Quantico National Cemetery on April 28.

The cathedral service drew about 1,200 people, from members of Congress to evangelical luminaries such as GOP strategist Ralph Reed, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman.

His daughter, Emily Colson, recalled how her father’s faith transformed both him and his family and how he cleared his schedule to spend time with her autistic son.

“Today is a celebration of my father’s life but today is also about us,” she said. “I encourage you to continue the work God has begun through my father’s life. Do the right thing, seek the truth, defend the weak, live courageous lives.”

The service included prayers for Colson’s family and for prisoners across the globe.

George noted that Colson, who became a Christian shortly before heading to prison, clung to the same Scriptures that were read amid the hymns inside the storied gothic cathedral.

“He never forgot Jesus’ words, ‘I was in prison and you visited me,’’’ said George.

Charles Colson’s daughter Emily Colson (left) and wife Patty Colson (right) attend Colson’s memorial service at Washington National Cathedral on May 16, 2012. RNS photo by Donovan Marks/Courtesy Washington National Cathedral

Chaplain Danny Croce, an ex-convict who came to lead a prison ministry after receiving a scholarship in Colson’s name, spoke of his fellow ex-con’s tradition of preaching at prisons on Easter Sunday and sending thousands of volunteers into prisons across the world.

“Though they don’t give you a Bible in school, Chuck made sure you had one in jail,” said Croce, founder of New Hope Correctional Ministry in Plymouth, Mass.

Speakers recalled how Colson, a Southern Baptist, reached out to people of other denominations in the Evangelicals and Catholics Together initiative, as well as the movement that sprung up from the Manhattan Declaration, a 2009 manifesto opposing same-sex marriage and abortion and affirming religious liberty.

He was also remembered for his ability to ask for forgiveness and forgive others.

“I had known no one who could forgive so completely as Chuck does,” said former Minnesota Gov. Albert Quie, who was Prison Fellowship’s acting CEO in the late 1980s.

In her tribute, Emily Colson said her father left instructions that the service should be joyful because he expected to be enjoying the presence of God.

“I don’t want people to be sad,” her father instructed, “because I believe with every ounce of conviction in my body that death is but a homecoming.”

(RNS) When the Supreme Court ruled that a Christian student group could only be recognized at a small public law school if it accepted non-Christians and gays as potential leaders, some lawyers and campus advocates grew nervous.

While the 5-4 decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez was primarily aimed at public colleges and universities, some conservatives say the decision has upended university religious life, with both public and private schools reconsidering nondiscrimination rules.

Now, nearly two years after the decision involving the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, the case is causing strife across U.S. college campuses:

– InterVarsity Christian Fellowship says 41 of its campus chapters have faced challenges since the Supreme Court decision. Many have been resolved, but the IVCF chapter at the State University of New York at Buffalo plans to appeal its loss of official recognition for asking a gay student leader to resign when he would not accept its belief statement.

– In one of the most visible debates, private Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., has said some religious groups won’t be officially recognized if they require certain beliefs or do not allow all members to compete for leadership roles. On the website about its nondiscrimination policy, the school cited the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in defending the constitutionality of the rules.

– Lawmakers in Ohio and Arizona passed bills to ensure that public colleges and universities didn’t go down the same road as Hastings. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, said he would veto similar legislation only because it also included private universities that receive more than $24 million in state funds — namely, Vanderbilt.

David French, senior counsel with the American Center for Law and Justice, said there’s been an uptick in challenges to religious campus activity since the 2010 case, but he expects Vanderbilt to be the exception rather than rule. He argues the so-called “all-comers policies” for religious groups, such as Vanderbilt’s, are unfair as long as sororities or all-male glee clubs can discriminate based on gender.

“Very few universities have tried to implement all-comers policies in the aftermath of CLS v. Martinez,’’ said French, who has defended student religious groups for more than a decade. “They recognize the fundamental absurdity of an all-comers policy.’’

More than a dozen religious groups have determined they cannot or will not comply with Vanderbilt’s stance, which prompted members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus to complain to school officials that religious student groups are being targeted. They cited a now-unrecognized campus group that was told it must remove a requirement that its leaders have a personal commitment to Jesus.

“Belief-based or status-based requirements are inconsistent with our nondiscrimination policy,” said Vanderbilt spokeswoman Beth Fortune when asked about that group. She also said the policy “does not target specific student groups.”

Jim Lundgren, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s  senior vice president, said his organization is currently helping several chapters beyond Vanderbilt and Buffalo that are facing questions about their policies. IVCF officials argue that allowing chapters to determine how to pick their leaders helps maintain their values.

“We just want to have a place on college campuses and allow our perspective to be there in the kind of mix of ideas and beliefs,” said Lundgren. “We think that’s part of what a great college education is about.”

Robert Shibley, senior vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), said the Vanderbilt controversy confirms what his organization cautioned against after the Hastings case when it wrote 271 schools to say the decision did not require a policy change on their campuses.

“This is along the lines of what I feared, that Vanderbilt is effectively establishing that some religions are acceptable on its campus,” he said, “and others are now beyond the pale at Vanderbilt.”

Although there have not been wholesale changes across academia, there has been substantial debate over potential or actual policy changes on some campuses.

Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, sees the Martinez decision “lurking in the background” of other cases. He filed suit in February on behalf of the Christian anti-abortion group Make Up Your Own Mind at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. The school, which does not have an all-comers policy like Hastings, was not going to formally recognize the group because officials deemed it nonreligious.

“We don’t want the government determining whether a group is or is not religious,” he said.

The school has since officially recognized Make Up Your Own Mind; Tedesco said the ADF is working on a settlement.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which last fall permitted the Christian singing group Psalm 100 to retain its recognition after a dispute over its exclusion of a gay member, is now reviewing its nondiscrimination policy.

The Christian Legal Society chapter at the center of the Supreme Court case became so small when it lost recognition that it no longer exists, said Kim Colby, senior counsel with the CLS’ Center for Law and Religious Freedom. Other chapters have been questioned without losing their status.

“If you can give a broad exemption to the fraternities and sororities, you can’t give a narrow exemption to the religious groups,” she said.

PORTLAND, Ore. (RNS) After almost a year as chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives, which The New York Times called “one of the most reviled congregations in the country,” the Rev. Patrick Conroy was back in Portland, Ore., for a few days to meet with his Jesuit counterparts.

Conroy, 61, was a theology teacher at Jesuit High School here when the opportunity to be House chaplain arose. He was sworn in May 25 as the chamber’s 60th chaplain. In a recent interview, he talked about the challenges of his job and issued a challenge of his own to American citizens. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Is the House the most reviled congregation in the country?

A: Well, I was a chaplain at San Quentin (prison, California), too — and I’m not making a comparison there.

But there is not a member of the House of Representatives who didn’t make a conscious choice to be a member of the House of Representatives. They knew what they were getting into. I don’t feel like I’m in a room full of people with an approval rating of 12 to 15 percent. That’s not part of my consciousness at all.

Q: What does it feel like?

A: I am chaplain to a room full of true believers, who are invested in what they stand for and what they are trying to do. A lot of members are quite faith-filled. Some are convicted, and they don’t have crises of faith. Others hope they are being faithful. It’s fascinating to watch.

Q: How do you advise someone in that situation?

A: Thomas Aquinas tells us to follow our consciences, to be honest with ourselves. If you can’t do that, then we have a crisis.

Q: What’s it like to be well-schooled in Catholic social teaching as Congress grapples with the budget?

A: There is a strong theology at play: people who believe that taking care of the poor is what churches do, not what government does, that maybe government is overreaching. But my position is to observe — not to engage in that argument.

I can hear social justice Catholic voices saying that I’m selling out the Gospel by not being that moral voice. But if I were to do that, I would not be in this position.

I’ve studied political science and my early ambition was to be in Congress. But I have prayed, do pray for serenity. I can’t have an opinion. In order to be chaplain I have to let go of this stuff.

Q: What has the past year taught you about yourself?

A: I’ve always had a soft spot for underdogs. I never rooted for Notre Dame or Georgetown because they always won. But when I was a campus chaplain, I was drawn to the students who didn’t fit the mold. I liked them.

Q: And you’ve found people like that in the House?

A: I have.

Q: What do you say to Americans who have lost their patience with Congress?

A: Communicate what is important to you to your congressional representative. Even if your (candidate) lost the election, the rep is still representing you.

I pray that all members in Congress will hear the minority voice and that the American people will be prayerfully supportive of Congress and the president, who represent all of us. If we see this as a zero sum battle, it’s going to get ugly.

(Nancy Haught writes for The Oregonian in Portland, Ore.)

(RNS) When the Vatican last month announced a doctrinal crackdown on the leadership organization representing most of the 57,000 nuns in the U.S., the sisters said they were “stunned” by the move. Many American Catholics, meanwhile, were angry at what they saw as Rome bullying women whose lives of service have endeared them to the public.

Vatican watchers also were perplexed since a broader, parallel investigation of women’s religious orders in the U.S. was resolved amicably after an initial clash. That seemed to augur a more diplomatic approach by the Vatican to concerns that American nuns were not sufficiently orthodox.

Now it turns out that conservative American churchmen living in Rome — including disgraced former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law — were key players in pushing the hostile takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, or LCWR, which they have long viewed with suspicion for emphasizing social justice work over loyalty to the hierarchy and issues like abortion and gay marriage.

Disgraced former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law. RNS file photo.

Vatican observers in Rome and church sources in the U.S. say Law was “the person in Rome most forcefully supporting” the LCWR investigation, as Rome correspondent Robert Mickens wrote in The Tablet, a London-based Catholic weekly. Law was the “prime instigator,” in the words of one American churchman, of the investigation that began in 2009 and ended in 2011. The actual crackdown was only launched in April.

Law was joined by a former archbishop of St. Louis, Cardinal Raymond Burke, who was named to a top Vatican judicial post in 2008 – a move that was seen as a case of being “kicked upstairs” because Burke’s hard-line views made him so controversial in the U.S. Also reportedly backing the probe was Cardinal James Stafford, a former Denver archbishop who has held jobs in the Roman curia since 1996.

The investigation itself was conducted by Cardinal William Levada, a former archbishop of San Francisco who succeeded Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal watchdog, when Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

The fact that prelates like Burke and Law, who was given a Roman refuge in 2002 after the sexual abuse scandal exploded in Boston, played such a key role in the investigation of the American women has been like salt in the wound for those who support the nuns.

“American Catholics have not forgotten how long it took bishops to wake up to the sexual-abuse crisis they created. And now they see that the Vatican took just three years to determine that it had no other option but to put 80 percent of U.S. nuns — whose average age is 74 — into receivership, an effort led in part by Cardinal Bernard Law,” Grant Gallicho, an associate editor of Commonweal, a liberal Catholic periodical, wrote on the magazine’s blog.

“That decision has unified a good deal of Catholics all right — against Rome,” Gallicho concluded.

The decision also shone some light on the Byzantine maneuvering that can characterize Vatican politics – and hurt the Vatican’s public relations.

A case in point: in 2008, a year before Levada’s office started investigating the LCWR, the Vatican department that oversees nuns and brothers worldwide began a broad investigation, or “visitation,” of all women’s religious orders in the U.S. That was prompted as usual by complaints that the orders were too liberal and so had few recruits.

The nuns pushed back against what was seen as a heavy Roman hand, and in 2010 an American, Archbishop William Tobin, was appointed to head the probe for the Vatican. A few months later, a well-regarded Brazilian, Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, was promoted to lead the curial department that oversees religious orders.

Tobin and Braz de Aviz took a much more conciliatory approach, and the visitation concluded without fireworks. In addition, Sister Nicla Spezzati joined the two men at the religious orders office. Spezzati does not regularly wear a habit – the kind of thing that galls conservative churchmen about so many sisters in the U.S.

“This changing of the guard at the top of the congregation for religious was not at all to the liking of the cardinals from the United States residing in Rome at the time,” wrote Sandro Magister, a longtime Italian Vaticanologist.

The Americans in Rome moved to ensure that Levada’s rival investigation of the LCWR would follow a different path, according to church experts and insiders. The result was that one probe ended with an accommodation and another seemed like an ambush. It was no surprise which one generated more media coverage.

Not that it had to wind up that way. John Allen, Vatican expert for the National Catholic Reporter, reported that a senior Vatican diplomat warned his colleagues earlier this year that launching a crackdown from Rome now would play into the “war on women” theme that has been associated with the American hierarchy’s campaign against the Obama administration’s contraception coverage mandate.

The response from officials in Levada’s office, Allen wrote, was that such concerns were “exaggerated.”

(RNS) As nearly 1,000 delegates from across the world gather in Tampa, Fla., for the United Methodist Church’s General Conference, gay and lesbian activists have printed pamphlets promoting their cause in five languages, including Portuguese and Swahili.

The UMC’s global reach, stretching from the Philippines to Philadelphia, compels the multilingual lobbying. Nearly 40 percent of the delegates, who meet through May 4, live outside the United States, according to church leaders.

“We see it as a challenge to deal with the cultural differences,” said Bishop Rosemarie Wenner of Germany, who will be installed in Tampa as president of the UMC’s Council of Bishops. “But we also see it as a gift.”

Convened every four years, General Conference legislates decisions on everything from pensions to prayer books. But few debates garner as much attention and acrimony as the role of gays and lesbians in the UMC.

The homosexuality debate dates to 1972, when a phrase calling homosexual activity “incompatible with Christian teaching” was added to the Book of Discipline, which contains the denomination’s laws and doctrines. The UMC also bans noncelibate gay clergy and same-sex marriage.

The UMC’s long and painful membership decline in the U.S. looms over the debate, as church leaders search for ways to reverse the decades-long drop.

Gay rights activists argue that the UMC must become more inclusive to attract young Americans who view the sexuality prohibitions as hypocritical. Conservatives counter that only churches that hold fast to traditional doctrines are growing.

United Methodists who support gay rights have proposed about 100 resolutions this year that would lift the bans and excise the “incompatible” phrase from the Book of Discipline. Leading up to General Conference, they argued that momentum is on their side.

For example, last year a UMC court barely punished a Wisconsin minister who sanctioned a same-sex marriage; more than 1,200 retired and active UMC clergy have pledged to perform gay marriages; surveys show young Christians generally support gay rights; and other mainline Protestants — including Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians — have adopted gay-friendly policies in recent years.

Conservatives counter that all of those churches have subsequently split, with traditionalist congregations packing up and starting new denominations.

Gay and lesbian Methodists acknowledge that their church’s complexity presents unique challenges. For example, their General Conference includes delegates from states where gay marriage is legal, but also from countries like Liberia, where “voluntary sodomy” is a crime.

“Our structure is different, so that has impacted how we move on these concerns,” said Ann Craig, a United Methodist and gay activist who witnessed votes by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Presbyterian Church (USA) to allow partnered gay clergy.

“We’re going to move together when we move,” Craig said of her own UMC.

But others argue that trends favor traditionalists.

For example, the UMC’s membership in the United States has fallen to 7.8 million, while it has grown to 4.4 million abroad, mainly in Africa and the Philippines, where homosexuality is denounced. As those numbers shift, so does the balance of power, since delegates to General Conference — the only church body that can change the homosexuality bans — are apportioned based on membership.

Compared to the 2008 General Conference, this year there are 100 fewer delegates from the U.S. and 100 more from abroad, according to Mark Tooley, a United Methodist and president of the conservative Institute on Religion & Democracy. “With that lineup, a major shift would be unlikely,” said Tooley.

In addition, UMC growth is stronger in the Bible Belt than in the relatively liberal West and Northeast, said Russell Richey, co-author of a two-volume history of Methodism in the United States and former dean of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

Some United Methodists argue that policy should be set by regional conferences and reflect local mores.

For example, pastors who live where gay marriage is legal should be permitted to wed same-sex couples in their congregations, said the Rev. Dean Snyder, senior pastor of Washington’s Foundry United Methodist Church.

Foundry proposed a resolution that would allow churches in six states and the District of Columbia to celebrate same-sex marriage, and sent 50 volunteers to Tampa to lobby for it.

Snyder said his church has celebrated about 10 same-sex weddings since 2010, when D.C. legalized gay marriage. That admission could place the longtime pastor’s career in jeopardy if UMC policy is not changed at General Conference.

“We are really praying that General Conference makes some movement,” Snyder said. “It’s going to be very disappointing if there is no movement at all.”

(RNS) A New Jersey appeals court has ruled that a man who alleges he endured anti-Semitic slurs can sue his former supervisors — even though he is not Jewish.

Myron Cowher, a former truck driver for Carson & Roberts Site Construction & Engineering Inc., in Lafayette, N.J., sued the company and three supervisors after he allegedly was the target of anti-Semitic remarks for more than a year.

Cowher, of Dingmans Ferry, Pa., produced DVDs that appear to show supervisors Jay Unangst and Nick Gingerelli making such comments in his presence as “Only a Jew would argue over his hours” and “If you were a German, we would burn you in the oven,” according to a state appeals court ruling handed down April 18.

The appeals court did not consider the merits of Cowher’s case, only whether he has standing to pursue it. The suit, alleging discrimination that created a hostile work environment, had been dismissed by a Superior Court judge who ruled that because Cowher was not a Jew, he could not sue.

However, the appeals court reversed the judge in its 3-0 decision, saying that if Cowher can prove the discrimination “would not have occurred but for the perception that he was Jewish,” his claim is covered by New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination.

The “proper question” in this case, the court said, is what effect the supervisors’ allegedly derogatory comments would have on “a reasonable Jew,” rather than on a person of Cowher’s actual background, which is German-Irish and Lutheran.

Employment attorneys say the ruling is significant in that it expands the scope of who can bring discrimination suits under the state law by allowing a person who is not actually a member of a protected class to pursue a claim.

The law has typically been used to protect people based on their actual age, race, religion or sexuality. Judges, like the one who initially ruled on the validity of Cowher’s suit, have sometimes dismissed cases when there’s a discrepancy between the alleged remarks and a person’s actual characteristics.

The alleged slurs occurred from January 2007 until May 2008, when Cowher left the company due to an unrelated disability, according to his attorney, Robert Scirocco.

Gingerelli, who still works for the company, and Unangst, who does not, could not be reached for comment. Both men denied that they perceived Cowher to be Jewish, the court said.

Unangst also said that “perhaps” he had commented to Cowher about “Jew money,” that he had called him a “bagel meister” and that he had used the Hebrew folk song “Hava Nagila” as the ring tone for calls on his cell phone from Cowher, the appeals court said.

Cowher testified he had told both men to stop the comments, but they had not, the court said. Cowher’s attorney said Cowher is pleased with the ruling and intends to go forward with the case.

Cowher stayed on the job for more than a year after the alleged comments began because “he needed the work,” Scirocco said. He added that Cowher is now working as a truck driver for another company.

(Stacy Jones and Ben Horowitz write for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

KRE/AMB END JONES

MORRISTOWN, N.J. (RNS) After more than an hour of dramatic testimony from those who knew and loved a longtime Catholic priest, a judge on Friday ordered that troubled church janitor Jose Feliciano, 66, spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole in the priest’s murder.

Judith Ann Conk, who knew the Rev. Edward Hinds for 40 years, found no solace in the life sentence.

“Who will share our sorrows, triumphs and tragedies?” Conk said, addressing the court. “This terrible loss will not go away.”

Feliciano worked at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Chatham, N.J., for 20 years. He admitted to stabbing the priest 44 times inside the St. Patrick rectory Oct. 22, 2009, shortly after the priest fired him.

Prosecutors said the 61-year-old pastor had discovered Feliciano had an arrest warrant in Philadelphia from the 1980s for sexually touching a child and had used aliases and fake identification over the years to hide his past.

Feliciano claimed the killing was provoked, alleging that Hinds had been blackmailing him for four years by forcing him to perform sex acts in exchange for keeping the criminal charges quiet.

In December, after just five hours of deliberation, a jury rejected that defense, convicting Feliciano of murder, felony murder, robbery, hindering and weapons charges.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Manahan told Feliciano he was required to impose life without parole because of the jury’s verdict, but that it gave him no pause.

“It has nothing to do with the fact Father Hinds was a Catholic priest,” the judge said. “This crime was heinous. His conduct deceitful. The court would most certainly have sentenced him the same.”

(Alexi Friedman writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)