Disney World cancels Christian services

Lake Buena Vista, Fla. — Walt Disney World is scaling back its Roman Catholic and Protestant services.

After Christmas Day worship this year, the theme park said it will no longer hold weekly services, although Christmas and Easter worship will continue.

Disney officials said space problems were partly to blame. But the resort’s executives also said it no longer seemed fair to hold services for only two faiths when religious diversity in America is increasing.

Houses of worship surrounding the resort can meet visitors’ religious needs, a Disney spokeswoman said.

Two Catholic Masses and one nondenominational Protestant service had been held at the resort each Sunday since 1975. No religious services are conducted at Disneyland in California or on Disney’s two cruise ships.

The Rev. Richard Land, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said Disney’s decision reflected “a lack of comprehension of how the real country lives and what’s important to them.”

Reform synagogue group to consider name change

New York– The Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations will consider changing its name to Union for Reform Judaism at its biennial meeting in November.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the union, proposed the change at a Dec. 14 meeting of the group’s board of trustees. The panel voted to put the issue on the conference agenda.

Yoffie said the use of the word Hebrew instead of Jewish in the current name was outdated. He also called the old name “clumsy” and “difficult to remember.” It was chosen in 1873 when the organization was founded.

“If we expect the union to be well-known and immediately recognized, we must change its name,” Yoffie said.

Denial of zoning waiver for mosque questioned

Marietta, Ga. — Some Cobb County residents are questioning a city panel’s decision barring construction of a 70-foot minaret atop a planned mosque.

The city Zoning Board denied a request from mosque leaders to build the minaret on the Islamic house of worship even though the city granted comparable variances for two taller church steeples in 1998. The 20,000-square-foot mosque, Masjid Al-Hedaya, still will be built.

The local zoning board denied that prejudice influenced the decision.

“We said no because of the height and the objection of neighbors,” Chairman James Mills said. Board member Roy Schultz said he visited the property and determined a 70-foot minaret in that area “would look like the Eiffel Tower.”

But another board member, William Wilkerson, believed religious differences were partly to blame for neighbors’ opposition. More than 100 residents packed a Dec. 16 board meeting on the minaret and many asked questions unrelated to the spire, he said.

“People did not object to the height of the tower, they objected to the mosque being there in the first place,” he said.

Zoning rules in the area bar structures over 35 feet high. But the board had allowed one church to build a 175-foot steeple and another to erect a 102-foot spire.