wfn.org | LWF Exectuive Addressed Women of the ELCA Convention

[ELCANEWS@ELCASCO.ELCA.ORG]

ELCA NEWS SERICE

July 13, 1996

WOLFORD: JOIN EFFORT TO BAN LAND MINES
96-WO-15-AH

        MINNEAPOLIS (ELCA) -- Kathryn Wolford, executive director of
Lutheran World Relief (LWR), challenged Lutheran women to gather
67,725 signatures on a petition to send to President Bill Clinton
asking for a ban on land mines and funding for mine clearance.  That
number would match the number of quilts LWR has sent to Angola for use
among displaced families.
        Wolford addressed the Third Triennial Convention of Women of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America here July 13.  LWR is the
relief and development arm of the ELCA and the Lutheran
Church-Missouri Synod.
        #What brightness and hope might that bring into the lives of
Angolan women and their children?# Wolford wondered.  #What if every
woman at this convention carried this petition back home and got more
signatures?  I am here to make that plea ... and ask each of you to
join in the international campaign to ban land mines.#
        Wolford thanked the women#s organization for its financial
support.  Through LWR, she said, the women#s gifts are #a ministry in
places of the world that are marked by brokenness and suffering.#
        She described #the paradox of mercy and justice which seem to
pull our response in different directions.  Mercy calls for
compassion, forgiveness and new beginnings; justice is the
acknowledgment of wrongs committed, or repentance and the
establishment of right and equitable relationships.#
        Wolford said, #We see the difficulty in a place like Rwanda
where our humanitarian imperative calls us to feed all in need even
with the knowledge that killers lurk within the refugee camps.  At the
same time, our justice mandate leads us to advocate for a war-crimes
tribunal and an end to impunity for human rights violations, in Rwanda
and Bosnia.#  She said, #It is difficult yet essential for a Christian
organization to uphold both mercy and justice.#
        LWR seeks to #create a safe space and facilitate conditions in
which painful truth can be told, in which repentance and forgiveness
go hand in hand,# and where fractured relationships can be restored
with a new respect for human dignity, Wolford said.
        By the end of that morning almost 300 people had signed the
land mines petition.

For information contact: Ann Hafften, Dir., ELCA News Service, (312)
380-2958; Frank Imhoff, Assoc. Dir., (312) 380-2955; Lia Christiansen,
Asst. Dir., (312) 380-2956