wfn.org | Section One report raises up Anglican peacemaking role

["Lambeth98" <storm@indigo.ie>]

ACNS LC082 - 3 August 1998

Section One report raises up Anglican peacemaking role

by Nan Cobbey
Lambeth Conference Communications

In a draft report both horrifying and compelling, the sub-section
of Section One focussed on human rights challenges the Anglican
Communion to continue its heritage as a church of peacemakers and
prophets. 

In their seven-page report, the 46 bishops in the subsection tell
chilling tales of abuses around the world-women raped, children
sold into slavery, mass killings in churches, whole communities
driven off their land. They include graphic descriptions of
inhumanity, such as the story one bishop told of young people who
traveled to Sudan from Uganda for his consecration. 

"On their return they were arrested and their left ears cut off
because they were not 'listening to the words of the Koran,'" he
said. "Before they were released they were forced to eat their
own ears."

Women and children victimized

In the 50th anniversary year of the United Nations Declaration on
Human Rights, the bishops express shock about how war and
violence, racism and abuse of economic and political power
continue to severely victimize women and children.	

^From Sudan, Uganda, South East Asia, Sri Lanka "and across the
countries of the 'South' [came] accounts of the sexual torture
and genital mutilation of women, and the inability or
unwillingness of people to fight for its elimination . . . .
These abuses of basic rights and dignity of people loved by God
and created in God's image, brings shame on the whole human
community," the report said.

The report mentions the widening gap between rich and poor,
indigenous people and their need for advocacy, the downside of
the global economy, the devastating effect of war-arms trade,
landmines, displaced and uprooted peoples. It also asserts the
"urgent need" to preserve the rights of all people to freedom of
belief and conscience. 

In addition, the report spells out the "sinful consequences" of
racist and cultural divisions: genocide in Rwanda, communities
threatened with annihilation, and Sri Lankans who "disappear." It
names racism a "heretical ideology," a "false religion" and a
threat to peace, and it reminds Anglicans of their history as
peacemakers and witnesses who accepted no such injustice.

"Anglicans . . . have been and are being martyred," the report
states. "We think of the martyrdom of the late Ugandan Archbishop
Janani Luwum . . . the faithful witness of Archbishop George
Browne at the height of the civil war in Liberia . . . the
prophetic witness of Desmond Tutu in oppostion to apartheid in
south Africa . . . the peace efforts of the Anglican bishops in
Jerusalem . . . Bishop Dinis Sengulane in Mozambique."

Finally, the report calls the Communion to go beyond living and
preaching the gospel to protect human rights by monitoring
activities of governments and by providing the prophetic witness
only the "Church as moral community" can.

Resolutions follow report

Seven resolutions, included on the "agreed list," which means
they will not be debated unless 50 bishops request it before the
section's plenary session starts, accompany the report. The first
calls on members of Lambeth Conference to urge compliance with
the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
extension of its provisions to "refugees, uprooted and displaced
persons." Other resolutions call for religious freedom and
tolerance, justice for women and children, "a faithful response
to aggression and war," and a revitalization of the Anglican
Communion International Migrant and Refugee Network. 

The bishops also ask the Communion to "provide technology,
equipment, vehicles and administrative support" in response to
the urgent situation in Sudan and Rwanda.

For further information, contact:

   Lambeth Conference Communications
   Canterbury Business School
   University of Kent at Canterbury
   Telephone: 01227 827348/9
   Fax: 01227 828085
   Mobile: 0374 800212

   http://www.lambethconference.org