wfn.org | ROUNDUP: 1998 LWF Council approves justification document

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

LWF COUNCIL
Press Release No. 09/98

ROUNDUP: 1998 LWF Council
Council approves justification document

GENEVA, 17 June 1998 (lwi) - In what some council members termed a
"historic moment," the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Council unanimously
approved the "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification" with the
Roman Catholic Church. The document, when approved by the Roman Catholic
Church, would remove the condemnations made by both Lutherans and Catholics
concerning the doctrine of justification during the Reformation period in
the 16th century.

"This is what we ve been praying for and hoping for after 30 years of
dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church," LWF General Secretary Ishmael
Noko told a press conference after the vote at 10:37 a.m. on 16 June. "It
should be celebrated as a historic moment for our two churches and also as
an important moment for unity within Lutheranism."

Swedish Archbishop K.-G. Hammar, who chaired the LWF s Standing Committee
for Ecumenical Affairs, called it a "big day for the Lutheran world."

By the time of the Council vote on the Joint Declaration, 89 of the 124 LWF
member churches had weighed in with their opinions on the document. Of
those churches responding, 80 (91 percent) said "yes" to the document. The
churches that said "yes" have 54.7 million members, or 95 percent of the
Lutherans in LWF member churches. Five churches said "no," with four
difficult to categorize.

In other action during its meeting here 8-17 June, the LWF Council:

+    urged the general secretariat and LWF member churches to encourage
and support the involvement in the Jubilee 2000 campaign. The campaign
seeks to provide debt relief for the world s poorest countries by the year
2000.

+    noted increasing reports of human rights violations in Ethiopia and
called upon Ethiopian authorities to halt arbitrary detention.

+    encouraged the General Secretary s efforts to express to the Eritrean
government the federation s concerns regarding termination of its
operations in that country and asked him to explore ways LWF assets in
Eritrea might continue to be used, such as supporting the diaconal work of
the LWF member church there.

+    asked parties to the Middle East peace process and its sponsors "to
take extraordinary steps to resume active negotiations and implementation
of the commitments previously made" and "deplored" the recent acceleration
of Israeli settlements in Arab territory and, for the sake of the peace
process, asked Israeli authorities to prevent further activities of this
type.

+    approved a plan for LWF Communication Services to reduce the
frequency of Lutheran World Information (LWI) from fortnightly to monthly
as a test, beginning in 1999, while increasing the frequency of electronic
and FAX transmission of news.

+    broadened the function of the LWF s Special Fund for Peacemaking to
make it global instead of just the Middle East and Central America.

+    reported a balanced budget for 1997 and for the LWF Assembly in Hong
Kong and adopted a USD 70 million "summary of needs" budget for 1999.

+    heard that the Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem, which created
financial concern at the Ninth Assembly, is on track to finish 1998 without
an operational deficit, something it has not done since the 1980s.

+    approved a new study program on the "Structures of the Reformation
Churches in Today s Global Society."

The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) is a global communion of Lutheran
churches. Founded in Lund, Sweden, in 1947, the LWF now has 124 member
churches in 69 countries representing over 57 million of the world s 61
million Lutherans. The LWF headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland.

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Lutheran World Information
Editorial Assistant: Janet Bond-Nash
E-mail: jbn@lutheranworld.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/