wfn.org | Episcopalians: News Briefs

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

April 16, 2003

2003-085

Episcopalians: News Briefs

Trinity Institute presents live webcast of Archbishop Williams

(Trinity News) A sold-out Trinity Institute Conference will be 
webcast live over the Internet at www.ECTN.org, April 28-29. 
Featured speaker Rowan Williams, the new archbishop of 
Canterbury, will be the star attraction for many who have never 
heard him. This will be his first speaking engagement at an 
American venue broadcast live to the global Internet community.

His sermon at the opening Eucharist of the conference on April 
28 and an address on April 29 will be among conference 
presentations webcast live by Trinity Television, the parish's 
television ministry.

The 104th archbishop is characterized as a radical and liberal 
on social issues--but theologically orthodox on a number of 
issues--as  well as a deeply spiritual leader with a great 
vision for the Anglican Church. He is scheduled to deliver a 
testament to Benedictine spirituality at Trinity's 34th National 
Conference, "Shaping Holy Lives", which also includes B. Joan 
Chittister, Kathleen Norris, and Laurence Freeman.

The webcast will be available at www.ECTN.org to anyone with 
Internet access. A detailed schedule is available at 
www.TrinInst.org along with complete bios of featured speakers. 
For more information contact: 1-800-559-3286.

Nigerian Christians urged to abandon Easter programs to vote  

(ENI) Nigerian Christians have been urged by their leaders to 
abandon Easter activities like church crusades and retreats in 
order to participate in the presidential and gubernatorial 
elections on Saturday.

The Rev. Sunday Mbang, president of the country's main 
ecumenical body, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), 
gave the directive to all churches in the country while on a 
pastoral visit to the city of Jos in central Nigeria.

"The leaders of the Christian Association of Nigeria are 
pleading for denominations and churches that have planned any 
event for that Saturday, to find a new date for it. All 
Christians in Nigeria are enjoined to go out en masse on that 
Saturday to vote for the candidates of their choice," he said.

Mbang, who is also the head of Nigeria's Methodist Church and 
the chairperson of the World Methodist Council, accused the 
electoral body responsible for the conduct of the elections of 
being insensitive to the religious beliefs of Christians in the 
country.

News agencies have reported that tension is mounting ahead of 
the election in Nigeria after opposition politicians rejected 
results of last weekend's parliamentary elections, which put 
President Olusegun Obasanjo's People's Democratic Party in a 
commanding lead.

There have been riots and clashes in several parts of the 
country with anger directed at the Independent National 
Electoral Commission which is facing criticism for chaos in the 
organisation of the vote, Nigeria's first since military rule 
ended four years ago. Military leaders have governed the former 
British colony for most of its 43 years of nationhood.

By having elections during the Easter period, Mbang said the 
commission was aiming to disenfranchise Nigerian Christian 
voters. Muslims make up about 50 percent of Nigeria's 130 
million population and Christians account for about 40 percent. 

Archbishop Peter Akinola, the head of Nigeria's Anglican church, 
said the situation called for a sacrifice on the part of 
Christians  and called on all Christians to "turn out en masse 
to exercise their voting rights where they are registered."

Sri Lanka's churches join campaign against death penalty 

(ENI) Churches in Sri Lanka have added their voices to a 
movement opposing calls for the reintroduction of the death 
penalty in the island nation where the last state execution took 
place in 1976.

"The death penalty is state homicide. We cannot support it under 
any circumstances," said Anglican Bishop Duleep de Chickera of 
Colombo, speaking as Sri Lanka's parliament prepares to debate 
after Easter the reintroduction of capital punishment.

Although the death penalty has not been abolished in the South 
Asian nation, Amnesty International, the human rights 
organization, says that Sri Lanka has an established practice of 
not carrying out executions. In  recent years, however, there 
have been calls for the application of the death penalty to deal 
with murder and drug trafficking.

Leaders of both the Roman Catholic Church and  Sri Lanka's 
National Council of Churches (NCC), which groups eight 
mainstream Protestant churches, have made appeals to the 
government not to heed the calls.

"This is a serious concern. We cannot keep quiet when efforts 
are on to restore it," the NCC's chairperson, Anglican bishop 
Kumara Illangasinghe, told ENI by telephone from his diocesan 
office at Kurunegale in central Sri Lanka. Illangasinghe said a 
strong lobby including government ministers and fundamentalist 
organizations was demanding the revival of capital punishment. 
Leaders of both the NCC and the Catholic Bishops Conference of 
Sri Lanka met in Kandy on April 3 to discuss the issue.

Following the meeting, Roman Catholic Archbishop Oswald Gomis of 
Colombo issued a strong statement reiterating Christian 
opposition to the death penalty. "This [the death penalty] is 
not a solution to reduce crime rate," said Gomis. Crime needed 
to be tackled, the archbishop said, "not with just punitive 
measures that embitter offenders but [with] corrective action to 
renew ruptured relations and restore human dignity." 

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