wfn.org | Episcopalians helping Kosovo crisis

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

Episcopal News Service
Kathryn McCormick
kmccormick@dfms.org
212/922-5383
http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/ens

99-038
Episcopalians join other churches in campaign for compassion in Kosovo
by James Solheim
(ENS) Episcopalians in the United States have joined Christians around
the world in an outpouring of compassion for victims of the conflict in
Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians are systematically being slaughtered or
driven from their villages.

"Our church members are watching the images on their television screens
and they are responding to this tragedy with heartfelt generosity," said
Sandra Swan, director of the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief.
"We sympathize with all victims of this tragedy and will do what we can
to help in rebuilding their lives."

A brief report sent throughout the church said that the Presiding
Bishop's Fund for World Relief has been receiving contributions and
channeling emergency assistance through Action by Churches Together.
Parishes received bulletin inserts urging them to contribute generously
to the Fund to support further assistance to the refugees-including
support for their longer-term resettlement and rehabilitation (see text
in News Features).

Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM), the church's refugee resettlement
and advocacy program, has been working with partner agencies to urge the
U.S. government to increase humanitarian assistance to those countries
which suddenly find themselves hosting thousands of refugees. The
agencies also underscored the importance of returning the Kosovar
refugees to their homes. 

In the meantime, the church's Office of Government Relations in
Washington, D.C., monitors the response of Congress and the
Administration, working with ecumenical partners to press for an early
and peaceful solution to the crisis in the Balkans.
Griswold deplores failure
In a March 26 statement, Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold said that
"the acts of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo are deeply repugnant and stir up
memories of ethnic hatreds that have marred the course of history."
While the use of "overwhelming military power" by NATO forces "will be
widely debated," Griswold said that he was "personally torn by this
decision because its purpose is noble while the means are so violent.
Christ calls us into relationship and the present course leads us to
further alienation from one another," he said. "Yet for us to stand by
and allow the genocide to continue is also intolerable."

Griswold deplored the failure to resolve the conflict through diplomacy
represents "a profound failure of the human spirit and will. It also
reveals the insidious way in which religious perspectives, grounded in
God's all-embracing compassion and love for humankind, can be subverted
and made to serve the idol of ethnic or national self-justification," he
said. And he appealed to President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia "to
reconsider his options and pursue the path of peace through
negotiation."
Others add their voices
"Each day of bombing makes the solution more distant, and increases the
risk of regionalization of the conflict," said the general secretaries
of the World Council of Churches, the Conference of European Churches,
the Lutheran World Federation and the Reformed Alliance in a letter to
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. They appealed for "an immediate
moratorium on the NATO military intervention, in order to allow for a
renewal of the political process" under UN leadership because it alone
could offer a "framework for new initiative which can break the present
deadlock."

Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle issued a strong appeal for peace,
calling for an end to the bombardments so that "the just solution for
the exit of the actual crisis may be found through negotiation."

In a letter to Pavle, Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia said
that "the rude pragmatism of the NATO military politicians prevailed
over the responsible good sense and patient and painstaking diplomatic
work for the peaceful solution of the Kosovo problem." He emphasized
that Kosovo is for Serbs "the sacred place of their forefathers and the
land of old churches and monasteries which have intransient spiritual
and cultural importance."

In his Easter sermon Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey blamed the
"evil of ethnic cleansing" for what he called the "crucifixion of
Kosovo." While military action was a sign that "the civilized world
cannot stand idly by and accept that evil should triumph," he asserted
that "skills and energy of similar intensity" should be used to save and
protect the lives of "helpless and vulnerable people."

Archbishop Michael Peers, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada,  in
his March 30 statement warned of "the dangers inherent in becoming
entangled in a complex political situation with roots going back several
centuries in a way that exacerbates the underlying tensions that are the
cause of the conflict." Too often, he suggested, "we have failed to
become adequately informed as to the underlying causes, or how those
causes are shaped and amplified by centuries-old ethnic and religious
divisions in the region.." He concluded that military action "even
though motivated by high humanitarian ideals, fails to meet the tests
provided in the Christian tradition... for a morally justifiable
military engagement."
--James Solheim is director of the Office of News and Information for
the Episcopal Church.