wfn.org | Episcopalians: News Briefs

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

June 13, 2003

2003-139

Episcopalians: News Briefs

Treasurer Ralph O'Hara resigns

(ENS)  Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold announced June 13 that 
Ralph O'Hara will resign as treasurer and chief financial 
officer of the Episcopal Church, effective the end of June. 
Griswold expressed deep appreciation for O'Hara's work for the 
church as he returns to a position in the corporate world. 
"Ralph has been a clear voice in the midst of some very complex 
financial and logistical issues facing the church," said 
Griswold.

O'Hara said that it had been "a distinct pleasure to work with 
the presiding bishop and management team," and added that he 
valued the experience of interacting with the various governing 
bodies of the church, "who are consistently faithful and hard 
working." He also noted that he has "every confidence that 
operations are sound and in good hands as the church enters this 
transition period."

Griswold has asked Thomas Moore III to assume responsibilities 
as acting financial officer. Moore served previously as interim 
assistant treasurer for the Domestic and Foreign Missionary 
Society (DFMS) and is currently working with the Church Pension 
Group. He brings financial and consulting skills from long 
experience in the business world as well as the church.

WCC and African churches call for peacekeepers in Liberia

(ENI)  The World Council of Churches' (WCC) general secretary 
Dr. Konrad Raiser, in a letter to United Nations' 
secretary-general Kofi Annan, expressed serious concern over an 
escalation of fighting in Liberia between government forces and 
a rebel group, and urged support for peacekeeping forces in the 
region.

"Given the gravity of this near-anarchy situation that has 
developed, it is difficult to foresee a cease-fire holding out 
without the backing of a credible peace keeping force," said 
Raiser.

The WCC's call was backed up by one from the All Africa 
Conference of Churches (AACC) in Nairobi which called for the 
African Union and the UN to provide both peace-keeping and 
peace-enforcement forces. "Experience has shown that without 
them an armistice agreement will not hold," said the AACC in a 
statement.

Hopes of success in talks aimed at ending years of warfare in 
Liberia were dashed after Liberian President Charles Taylor said 
they would fail unless a UN court dropped war crimes charges 
against him, and at the same time rebels declared they would not 
negotiate with a "criminal."

In his letter, Raiser noted that fighting between the government 
forces and the rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation 
and Democracy (LURP), had added to the sufferings of the people 
of Liberia. Thousands of people, including people already 
displaced from neighboring countries, had once again been 
uprooted and were on the move in search of security.

"The WCC therefore calls on the United Nations to support the 
peace initiative of ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West 
African States) and ICGL (the International Contact Group for 
Liberia) and encourage the parties to the conflict to agree on 
the presence of peace keepers to prevent the situation from 
deteriorating into yet another major human tragedy," said 
Raiser.

Churches dismayed as Canadian province legalizes same-sex 
marriages

(ENI)  Several same-sex couples rushed to apply for marriage 
licenses -- and several church organizations were just as swift 
to respond--after a court ruling in the Canadian province of 
Ontario relaxed the definition of marriage, allowing gays to 
legally marry.

In a unanimous decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that 
the existing definition of marriage, which refers to the union 
of one man and one woman, violated the equality provisions of 
the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Canadian constitution. 
The court instead defined the couple getting married as "two 
persons."

"Exclusion perpetuates the view that same-sex relationships are 
less worthy of recognition than opposite sex relationships," the 
court said in its ruling. "In doing so, it offends the dignity 
of persons in same-sex relationships."

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, an association of 
evangelical Christians, expressed concern that the new 
definition of marriage could lead to "increasing discrimination 
against religious communities that cannot accept the legitimacy 
of same-sex marriage." In a prepared statement, the fellowship 
also pointed out that marriage "has strong religious roots, with 
over 90 per cent of marriages in Ontario being solemnized by 
clergy."

The evangelical fellowship is a member of the Interfaith 
Coalition on Marriage and the Family, which had intervened at 
the court hearings to argue that across all religions and 
cultures, marriage was understood as a union between a man and a 
woman. The interfaith coalition includes Roman Catholics, 
Muslims and Sikhs as well as evangelical Protestants.

The Ontario court ruled in the case of seven couples, ordering 
the provincial government to register the marriages. In Canada, 
the federal government is responsible for the definition of 
marriage, and the provinces make them official, including 
overseeing marriage registration.

Following the court decision in Ontario, the federal justice 
minister, Martin Cauchon, said: "We really need a national 
solution." Such an "important social issue," he said, should be 
dealt with by parliament, not left up to the courts.

In 1999, members of the House of Commons, the lower chamber of 
the parliament, had voted 216 to 55 to reaffirm the traditional 
definition of marriage.

Monsignor Peter Schonenbach, general secretary of the Canadian 
Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the Ontario court's 
reasoning "unconvincing and disappointing" and urged Cauchon to 
appeal the decision. "Marriage as a public commitment between a 
man and a woman has profound cultural, religious and social 
significance," he said in a letter to the justice minister. He 
said the state had "a fundamental interest" in the institution.

On the other side of the issue, Canada's biggest Protestant 
church, the United Church of Canada, has resolved to advocate 
"the civil recognition of same-sex partnerships." In 2000 the 
denomination affirmed "that human sexual orientations, whether 
heterosexual or homosexual, are from God and part of the 
marvelous diversity of creation."

Marriage between same-sex couples has been legal in the 
Netherlands since 2001 and in Belgium since earlier this year.

Protests follow Catholic priest's punishment for defying Pope on 
Eucharist

(ENI)  A Roman Catholic priest from Bavaria has been prohibited 
from performing his normal priestly duties or celebrating mass 
for defying Vatican orders by receiving Eucharist from the hands 
of a Protestant pastor.

The priest, the Rev. Bernhard Kroll, received the punishment, 
which is for an undefined period, following a service organized 
in Berlin at the end of May, to challenge official Vatican rules 
preventing Protestants and Roman Catholics from sharing the 
Eucharist, or Holy Communion.

Kroll preached at the service, which included a Protestant 
Eucharist, and received communion from a Protestant pastor. He 
has been sent on retreat with a spiritual mentor.

The sanction announced on June 4 led to protests in his parish 
in Grosshabersdorf, with the church choir and the organist 
boycotting services and 1000 people forming a kilometer-long 
human chain, after the following Sunday services, between the 
village's Catholic and Lutheran churches.

Bishop Walter Mixa of Eichstaett said that Kroll had defied 
church rules on the Eucharist most recently set down by Pope 
John Paul II in an encyclical published in April. "These 
measures are intended to give Father Kroll the opportunity to 
reflect and think about how he understands his priesthood," said 
Mixa in a statement.

Wir sind Kirche (We are Church), one of the groups that 
organized the service in Berlin, called on Bishop Mixa to 
reinstate Kroll. "Imposing ecclesiastical punishment for 
accepting eucharistic hospitality in a Protestant service ... is 
a heavy affront to the ecumenical movement and the Protestant 
church," Wir sind Kirche said in a statement.

It is not the first time that a Catholic priest in Germany has 
faced sanctions because of the Eucharist. In 2000, the Rev. 
Hermann Munzel was removed from office after celebrating 
communion with clergy from other denominations during a Catholic 
congress in Hamburg.

African traditions help Catholic church grow in South Africa

(ENI)  "You'll be surprised at how little of Rome there is in 
the Roman Catholic Church in South Africa," says Cardinal 
Wilfrid Napier, one of the world's youngest cardinals and head 
of the Roman Catholic Church in South Africa.

The church is growing fast with new places of worship being 
built every year. Part of the reason for this, say Napier and 
his colleagues, is the "Africanization" of the church--the 
incorporation of African culture and style into a formerly very 
European style of liturgy.

"We have a lot more dancing and singing in our church than most 
other Catholic churches, and we've brought in a lot of new 
music," says Buti Tlhagale, the newly appointed archbishop of 
Johannesburg. "Our people have also adopted new robes and 
dresses and headgear with an African feel. But non-African 
Catholics shouldn't fear this development; it's not exclusive 
and we're not becoming a sect."

The process of adapting indigenous traditions, called 
"inculturation" by the Catholic church, received official 
encouragement at a 1994 Synod for Africa held at the Vatican in 
Rome.

Napier says, "The Gospel would become irrelevant if we didn't 
take into account the way people understand it from their own 
cultural point of view and express their religiosity through the 
rituals of the church." But Napier stresses that the essence of 
the Catholic faith is not affected by the process of 
inculturation, merely the way people express themselves.

An estimated 3 million of South Africa's 43 million people are 
Roman Catholic.

George Daniel, archbishop of Pretoria, suggests one important 
reason why Africans feel at home in the Catholic church are 
similarities between the Catholic tradition of saints and the 
African veneration of ancestors. "We find in some of our 
liturgies that people kneel down at the beginning of mass and 
invite the ancestors to be present," Daniel says. "I have even, 
on occasion, invited the ancestors of the Catholic church in 
Pretoria, the former bishops and archbishops, to be present at a 
ceremony. It's a close link with African culture, and since we 
allowed that, people have been flocking to mass."

Moreover, the popular understanding of the Virgin Mary as 
interceding with God is very compatible with African views, says 
Dr. Madge Karecki, a Franciscan nun and senior lecturer in 
missiology (study of mission) at the University of South Africa. 
"A child would not often speak directly to his father, but go 
through his mother," she notes. In ordinary African family life, 
says Napier, "the mother is someone you particularly relate to 
in time of need or when you want something done, or if there's 
something very deep and personal you need to discuss.

"I've carried a lot of this into my understanding of where Mary 
fits into my religion. Almost like asking Mary to say a good 
word to God on your behalf, because she is closer to him." For 
Karecki, the Catholic church's rich culture of ritual fits in 
closely with African culture and its ancient traditions for 
every occasion. "Rituals speak to the whole person, not only to 
the intellect," she says. "We need tangible signs." 

African religious leaders to address AIDS and armed conflict

(ENI)  Senior religious leaders from 20 African countries, 
meeting this week in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, are expected 
to address ways to collaborate in the fight against HIV/AIDS and 
in resolving conflicts on the continent.

Opened June 11 by Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, the 
three-day meeting organized by the African Council of Religious 
Leaders is also intended to create links between the various 
religious communities in Africa.

"The main purpose of the forum is to ensure that the positive 
resources of respective religious faith and communities are put 
to maximum benefit for the overall good and service of the 
continent," Roman Catholic Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja 
told journalists.

The tasks of the religious leaders' council, Onaiyekan said, 
"will include advancing multi-religious cooperation and 
providing the opportunity for inter-religious collaboration and 
leadership on issues of HIV/AIDS, conflict resolution, human 
rights, good governance and poverty eradication."

The Abuja conference is the first meeting of the council, which 
was formed in June 2002 by the World Conference on Religion and 
Peace (WCRP), a global coalition. The meeting is co-sponsored by 
WCRP and Nigeria's Inter-Religious Council.

Among the participants are William Vendley, secretary general of 
WCRP; Anglican Archbishop Livingstone Nkoyoyo of Uganda; Kwesi 
Dickson, president of the All Africa Conference of Churches; and 
Methodist Bishop Onema Fama of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Methodists to mark 300 years since their founder was born

(ENI)  For some 70 million Methodists around the world, June 17 
is a special date: it marks the 300th anniversary of the birth 
of their founder, John Wesley. In Britain, where Wesley was 
born, the celebrations will include an ecumenical service at 
Lincoln Cathedral in central England on that day.

Wesley was born at Epworth, in north Lincolnshire, and among 
other events to mark the anniversary is an exhibition at Epworth 
Old Rectory, with some of his personal letters on show until 
July 31.

As an itinerant preacher, Wesley is estimated to have traveled 
200,000 miles in his lifetime, much of it on horseback. He often 
preached several times a day.

"John Wesley gave ordinary people a sense of counting. His faith 
was not simple pietism but the means of producing social 
outcomes," Leslie Griffiths, minister in charge of Wesley's 
Chapel in London, told ENI. The chapel, which draws up to 20,000 
visitors a year, was Wesley's London base and is where he is 
buried.

Wesley and his younger brother Charles, one of the world's most 
celebrated hymn writers, were Anglican priests. With colleagues 
like George Whitefield and Thomas Coke, they produced the 
"Methodist Revival" in England and spread the evangelistic faith 
to the American colonies, subsequently the United States.

In the areas Wesley visited, he left people to organize 
congregations, known as societies, so that at his death in 1791 
at the age of 87, Methodism was a flourishing community of 
72,000 people. "Wesley's achievement was the energy he released 
in others," said Griffiths.

Although Wesley is said to have declared, "I live and die a 
member of the Church of England," an independent Methodist 
movement eventually grew up as a result of Wesley's preaching. 
He emphasized the pursuit of holiness and the role of the church 
in social care.

"He was not just an evangelist but also a theologian," said Neil 
Richardson, president-designate of Britain's Methodist 
Conference. "He believed in liturgy and freer forms of worship. 
Methodism at its best to this day combines the two styles."

In the 19th century, the movement became immensely influential 
among the working class. Its belief in abstention from alcohol 
helped many to lead dignified lives in degraded conditions. Some 
commentators said social reform in Britain owed "more to 
Methodism than to [Karl] Marx."

Methodism in Britain now has more than 300,000 members, making 
it one of the biggest denominations after the (Anglican) Church 
of England and the Roman Catholic Church. In the United States, 
Methodism quickly took root, and the World Methodist Council has 
its headquarters at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. Over the 
last 40 years, Methodism has seen spectacular growth in Latin 
America (780 per cent), Asia (690 per cent) and Africa (450 per 
cent), according to Britain's Methodist Church.

In Wesley's tercentenary year, British Methodists are poised for 
a step that may eventually see Methodism reunited with the 
Church of England. At the governing Methodist Conference in 
July, delegates will vote on an Anglican-Methodist covenant 
intended to bring the two denominations closer together.

The ecumenical service is to be broadcast by the BBC on the 
World Wide Web at www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/. 

Churches exhorted to demonstrate unity in divided Sri Lanka

(ENI)  Churches in the South Asian nation of Sri Lanka, which 
has been torn apart by a bloody civil war for almost two 
decades, are being challenged to seek greater harmony.

"We need to be united and stay together if we are to preach 
unity to our divided nation," said Anglican Bishop Kumara 
Illangasinghe, chairperson of the National Christian Council of 
Sri Lanka (NCCSL), at the council's annual meeting in Colombo. 
"Let us give up competition in mission and cold war among 
ourselves."

Each of the council's eight member churches has been asked to 
appoint full-time staff to deal with inter-church relations. 
Christians comprise 7 per cent of Sri Lanka's 19 million people. 
Roman Catholics account for more than 80 per cent of Christians. 
The council's member churches include Anglicans, Methodists, 
Church of South India, the Dutch Reformed Church, and the 
Salvation Army.

In a report to the assembly, the council's general secretary, 
the Rev. Ebenezer Joseph, listed a number of steps already 
approved by the council to forge greater unity between churches. 
A common lectionary (table of bible readings for worship) 
already approved by NCCSL member churches will come into force 
in November, and common marriage, baptism and funeral service 
liturgies are being drafted.

"We are a minority in a small nation. We have to be as much 
united as we can," said Joseph.

Episcopal bishop to teach at Lutheran seminary, thanks to 
teacher's bequest

(EDPA)A surprise $1.2 million legacy from a Northeast 
Philadelphia retired public school teacher is creating a new 
teaching post for an Episcopal professor at a Lutheran seminary 
in Philadelphia.

The gift to the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania from the late 
Anna Werner, who lived modestly in Philadelphia's Rhawnhurst 
section before her death a year ago at age 92, has led to the 
appointment of the Rt. Rev. Frederick Houk Borsch, retired 
bishop of Los Angeles, as first holder of a chair of Anglican 
Studies at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. 

Werner, a shy woman who was thought to be far from wealthy, 
attended church for 20 years at All Saints' Episcopal Church in 
Rhawnhurst. A published poet and strict grammarian, Werner was 
also known to be concerned broadly about the future of education 
in general and theological education in particular. She amassed 
the legacy after her husband died in 1980 by saving Social 
Security and pension payments and much of her retirement income.

"She was not interested in luxury," says the Rev. Otto Lolk, 
rector at All Saints'. "She had no washer or dryer and only an 
old refrigerator. She didn't use air conditioning." Toward the 
end of her life, she was cared for by a few members of the 
parish and by Lolk, who often visited her daily.

Werner probably would have appreciated the new appointee. "I 
love to teach and prepare people who are candidates for ministry 
in a theological setting," says Borsch, who has most recently 
served as interim dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale 
and associate dean of the Yale University Divinity School. In 
his new position, he also will be theologian-in-residence at the 
Episcopal Cathedral in Philadelphia. Increasingly, the 
Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran 
Church in America is a visible presence at the cathedral. For 
instance, as a sign of Lutheran/Episcopal unity through baptism, 
the synod donated a baptismal font for the refurbished interior 
of the cathedral.

Commenting on the legacy, Charles Bennison, bishop of the 
Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, said: "It's obvious to me 
that Anna Werner came to love the Lord through the love of that 
parish (All Saints'). Part of the Christian life is to be 
generous, and All Saints', Rhawnhurst, was the seedbed where she 
learned that tradition. It's an amazing legacy. The chair will 
go on in perpetuity." 

In a letter sent to clergy in the diocese, Bennison noted that 
the new chair "will make the seminary even more of a resource 
for educating our leaders than it has been in the past." He said 
the appointment of Borsch and the establishment of the chair are 
integral to diocesan efforts "to strengthen our congregations."

In an interview, Borsch said the Lutheran and Episcopal 
communions have "much in common, but we also have different 
heroes and traditions." He called his appointment and the 
establishment of the new chair key steps in "continuing to learn 
from each other" and in helping to live out Called to Common 
Mission, a full communion agreement between the Episcopal Church 
and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He said topics 
for his early teaching at the seminary will include "Parables in 
the Synoptic Gospels," "Poets, Mystics and Theologians," a 
course focusing mostly on the Anglican tradition, and an 
advanced-level course tentatively called "Jesus Then and Now: A 
Christology for Today."

Bishop Christopher Epting, deputy for ecumenical and interfaith 
relations, said: "As we live into our full communion 
relationship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 
this is precisely the kind of partnership we need to be forming. 
I commend Bishop Bennison, the Diocese of Pennsylvania and the 
Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia for this visionary 
leadership."

An additional $800,000 will be needed to complete endowment of 
the $2 million chair. The diocese and the seminary hope that 
appointing Borsch, a noted theologian, will attract the 
additional donor support needed.

Theologians from 22 countries form Anglican Contextual 
Theologians network

(EDS)  A consultation of Anglican contextual theologians was 
held in May, 2003 at the Episcopal Divinity School, in 
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Thirty-four theologians from 22 
countries participated in the consultation.

Organized by Dr. Denise Ackermann (South Africa), the Rev. 
Sathianathan Clarke (India), the Rev. Ian Douglas (USA), and Dr. 
Jenny Plane Te Paa (Aotearoa-New Zealand), the aim of the 
consultation was to establish a voluntary network of Anglican 
Contextual Theologians (ACTs network) and to provide a forum in 
which multiple theological voices in the Anglican Communion 
could be heard and acknowledged.

"This consultation was a response to emerging concerns on the 
part of these leaders and others, including theological 
educators," explained Douglas. "Those concerns included the 
insufficiency of current resources available for theological 
education for both the laity and the ordained as well as the 
need for contextual theologians, who are grounded in a variety 
of cultural settings from around the Communion, to come together 
for mutual support and challenging theological engagement and 
the deep value and depth their varied voices and perspectives on 
the lived experience of God's grace and love would add to 
inter-Anglican meetings and conversations."

The consultation took the form of group and plenary discussions 
around definitions and methodologies of contextual theology. It 
identified issues of particular concern to members' contexts and 
their relevance for theological education. Four key issues were 
discussed, including: the dehumanizing effects of poverty, 
globalization and its marginalizing effects on small 
nation-states, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and war and violence. 
Challenges of interfaith realities were also considered.

"The ACTS gathering was a privileged opportunity for me to take 
a leadership role in bringing together a very diverse group of 
Anglican theologians all of whom share a commitment to doing 
theology contextually," said Jenny Plane Te Paa, Ahorangi (or 
Dean) of Te Rau Kahikatea, New Zealand. "While definitions and 
understandings varied quite widely, the conference was a very 
significant starting point for a global conversation among 
Anglican contextual theologians. The significance of the 
gathering has since been underscored by reports from the 
Primates meeting which clearly indicate a powerful and priority 
commitment by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates to 
theological education. For me contextual theological education 
provides a much-needed tool for helping me to teach students how 
to 'do' theology as much as it enables me to continue to simply 
teach students theology. The difference is both subtle and 
profound."

The process adopted by the consultation reflected an evolving 
theological method, resulting in a broad conversational agenda 
for the group. The consultation sought to develop a working 
understanding of the nature of contextual theology and its 
potential contribution to the life of the Anglican Communion.

Collaborative effort produces book, DVD/video, web site focusing 
on September 11

(EDNY)	Everyone has their own memories of September 11, 2001 -- 
where they were, what they were doing, how they reacted, and 
what they did. Suddenly, on that beautiful September morning, a 
sense of loss and dread crashed into our lives. However, many 
responded with an equally strong sense of duty and service. The 
actions of the Episcopal Church and its organizations and 
members were among the strongest of these immediate responses, 
with churches, organizations and people directly in the shadow 
of the World Trade Towers.

Now, five organizations have banded together to present a book, 
DVD/video and web site on the church's response to the attack, 
entitled Spiritual Responses to 9/11. The book is Will The Dust 
Praise You? Spiritual Responses to 9/11. The DVD/video is 
Revelations from Ground Zero: Spiritual Responses to 9/11. The 
web site is www.spiritualresponsesto911.org.

Spiritual Responses to 9/11 is a joint project of the Episcopal 
Diocese of New York, Church Publishing, the Church Pension Fund, 
and Trinity Church, Wall Street. The historical advisor is the 
New-York Historical Society. The collaborative effort is the 
first of its kind for these institutions and furthers the work 
and value of partnerships.

The book and DVD/video can be purchased as a set for $45. 
Individually, the book, Will the Dust Praise You? Spiritual 
Responses to 9/11 is $21.95; the DVD/video, Revelations from 
Ground Zero, Spiritual Responses to 9/11, is $29.95.

------