wfn.org | ALC Noticias June 26 Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Columbia

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

ALC NEWS SERVICE
E-mail: director@alcnoticias.org

ALC HEADLINES:
BRAZIL: Differences between the IEAB and Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti increase
ECUADOR: Experts address perspectives of Evangelical journalism
BRAZIL: Few students attend religion classes
GUATEMALA: Former presidential candidate analyses experiences of electoral 
campaign
COLOMBIA: Jesus Project: Leader in Evangelism in Colombia

BRAZIL
Differences between the IEAB and Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti increase

By Edelberto Behs
PORTO ALEGRE, June 22, 2004 (alc). The Special advisory Commission to the 
Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazils (IEAB) chamber of bishops recommended 
that the primate publish a pastoral letter that he addressed last March to 
the bishop of the diocese of Recife, Robinson Cavalcanti, reprimanding him 
for practices that sow discord and the unnecessary exposure of the IEAB 
before the Anglican Communion

Bishop Cavalcanti participated, last year, in a confirmation service for 
110 young people, concelebrated in a Church in the Orthodox Church of Ohio 
by five retired Anglican bishops without permission from the local diocesan 
bishop.

The backdrop to the problem was the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson, a 
declared homosexual by the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA).

The young people who were confirmed, the five retired Bishops and the 
Brazilian bishop of Recife were not in agreement with ECUSAs position, 
while the Bishop of Ohio is aligned with the official position of the US 
Church.

After a March meeting, the Brazilian chamber called on Cavalcanti to not 
interfere in actions that infringe the statutes and regulations of other 
provinces in the Anglican Communion.

Cavalcanti has not been back to the United States, but continued to incite 
discord through letters and documents that expose the IEAB before the 
Anglican Communion, ignoring the pastoral reprimands from the bishop, the 
president of the Special Commission, Jubal Pereira Neves told ALC.

The Commission met in Porto Alegre June 15-16. In a June 18 letter aimed at 
Primate Orlando Santos de Oliveira, Cavalcanti reacted to the unjust, 
false and slanderous words from the Special Commission constituted to 
study the current Anglican Church situation.

I have affirmed the obvious: that the Anglican Communion is in crisis, 
that it makes no sense to deny it or to insist on the untouchable nature of 
its organizational models, wrote the Bishop of Recife.

The Anglican diocese of Recife, founded 27 years ago by charismatics, has 
historically had theological differences with the liberal leadership of the 
IEAB, explained the bishop in an interview with ALC. The province, the 
national Church, almost always votes with the ECUSA, following an old maxim 
present in Brazilian policies  what is good for the United States is good 
for Brazil.

After a fertile Evangelical phase and Anglo-Catholic influence our IEAB 
has known a liberal hegemony  first modern and then post modern  in its 
teachers and leaders, with an impact on the life of the institutions and 
the faithful, even the virtual monopoly of information, reflection and the 
interpretation of the facts, in tune with the mother Church, wrote 
Cavalcanti to the primate.

Cavalcanti admitted that he has disseminated news in the Brazilian province 
from other sources, from other dioceses that are not in agreement with the 
ECUSA decision to consecrate a homosexual bishop.

It is unfortunate the people who call themselves progressive do not agree 
with the circulation of ideas and information, said the Bishop of Recife.

Just like US President George Walker Bush, US Anglican Church leadership 
does not prioritize diplomacy, nor has it attempted dialogue, said
Cavalcanti.

In the letter the primate argued that the illness of Anglicanism will 
not be cured by canonic fundamentalism or by sentimentalist/sacramentalist 
manipulation and much less by the distorted and intolerant reading like the 
one from that Commission.

He emphasized my responsibility as bishop of the Church is not done by 
sowing discord but with the determination that the moment requires.

The debate surrounding the issue of sexuality is barely the tip of the 
iceberg affecting the Anglican Communion, said Cavalcanti. The crisis of 
civilization with the dawning of the relativist and experientialist 
paradigm of post-modernity, is a sign of the times we live in, strongly 
affecting Christianity and in particular our Anglican Communion, wrote the 
Bishop of Recife.

In the letter that the primate sent to Cavalcanti last March 17, whose 
publication was recommended by the Special Commission, Orlando Santos de 
Oliveira affirmed that the participation of the Bishop of Recife in the 
confirmation ceremony in Ohio violated ECUSA cannons and exposed the IEAB 
before the Anglican Communion.

This attitude demonstrates, although we hope we are mistaken, his slow 
withdrawal from the communion and collegiality of the IEAB Chamber of 
Bishops, clearly demonstrated by not observing advice and recommendations 
from that body, in this way hurting our collegiality and our 
affective  ties, the Primate said at the time.

In an interview with ALC, Cavalcanti said that the diocese of Recife, 
aligned with the network of opposition to ECUSA; moderated by Bishop Duncan 
of Pittsburgh, has no intention of breaking ties with the IEAB as long as 
the province does make the consecration of homosexual clerics in the norms 
of the Church official.

The diocese of Recife, he said, is a minority in the province but has a 
majority in the Anglican Communion.

The IEAB constituted a Special advisory commission to analyze the paths and 
canonic implications that lead to Church unity. This commission will 
conclude its work in September and meanwhile convened the entire Church to 
pray and work for the unity of the province of Brazil and the Anglican 
Communion.

ECUADOR
Experts address perspectives of Evangelical journalism

QUITO, June 23, 2004 (alc). Two experts on Evangelical journalist shared 
their perspectives about the development of this activity when they spoke 
during a seminar on the Church and Communication in Latin America, convoked 
by the ALC news agency and held in Quito June 13-15.

Speakers were Manuel Quintero, Cuban journalist and communications director 
of the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) and by Rolando Perez, 
Peruvian and professor of Communications at the Catholic University of Lima 
and director of the Institute of Communication Studies (IEC).

The two emphasized the significant numerical growth of the Evangelical 
population in Latin America and the increasingly notorious presence of 
Evangelicals in the public sphere.

uintero noted that in these years, in Latin America, the religious panorama 
has changed with the irruption of Pentecostalism and so-called independent 
Churches, without forgetting the influence of the New Age and the presence 
of eastern religions. This demonstrates the progressive decline of the 
traditional hegemony of Catholicism and the emergence and affirmation of 
religious pluralism, he said.

He emphasized that in Brazil there are at least 26 million Evangelicals who 
represent 15 percent of the population and in Guatemala Evangelicals 
represent 25 percent of the population. This is accompanied by an 
increasing presence of Evangelicals in politics and in other areas.

For Evangelical journalism, he said, the diversity and fragmentation of the 
religious field makes it more difficult to determine what could be the 
qualified sources in the case of Evangelical Churches. This reality 
obligates journalists to multiply their efforts.  However, the important 
thing is that they affirm a cardinal principal in society: pluralism.

If these tendencies are maintained, sooner or later secular medial will 
have to open itself up to recognize and disseminate religious news. This 
will depend on the effort that Evangelical journalists make to overcome 
prejudice.

A first challenge for Evangelical journalists and communicators is training 
and experience. The objective and rigorous treatment of religious news 
requires knowledge that is not improvised but rather the result of a long 
learning period and continuous updating, he said.

Another challenge, he said, is to carry out high quality journalism that is 
capable of drawing the attention of media editors and owners to the 
religious phenomenon in all its complexity rather than just focusing on 
news related to scandal or ritual.

Rolando Perez, at the same time, underlined that there is a notable lack of 
actors linked to the Church in the public debate, which is principally 
takes place through communication media. Evangelicals do promote projects 
that are contributing to social development, but with limited visibility in 
the public agenda.

We need Churches and Christian movements to develop strategies to insert 
into citizen networks that have a political impact in our countries, he
added.

However, he noted that many Churches are going from producing programs or 
the eventual appearance in the media to the commercial appropriate of mass 
media, which implies constituting their own communication businesses. In 
this context, he said, the so-called electronic Church takes on a special 
importance that transcends the institutional nature of the Church.

An interesting fact is that today several Church sectors no longer discuss 
whether or not the Church should or should not have a public presence. The 
misnamed conservative Churches are now building a discourse that 
demonstrates their concern with moving beyond being a Church that focuses 
on itself to affirm their presence in the public sphere.

However, there is a need to go from the public appearance to an 
interlocution that transcends the Church territory.  In this sense, 
Christians can no longer be absence from the debate and discussion that is 
carried out each day in the public media forum.

It is not enough to have good development projects, it is necessary to know 
how to correctly communicate what we do, to be capable of dialoguing, 
propitiating effective structural changes and generating currents of 
opinion that achieve significant change, they said.

Times demand that we construct a Church with a public face and a citizen 
spirit, which firmly dialogues, not from the distant sidewalk but from the 
same place where the others are. This presupposes building friendly, 
respectful relationships with the gatekeepers of the media, but also 
involves being deeply rooted in a community of faith in order not to lose 
ourselves in the process.

BRAZIL
Few students attend religion classes

By Micael Vier B.
PORTO ALEGRE, June 23, 2004 (alc). The attendance of students in religion 
classes in public schools in the capital of this Brazilian state of Rio 
Grande do Sul is very low, according to an investigation published in the 
daily Zero Hour.

For example, of 1,102 students in the State Paula Soares School, only eight 
opted to attend these classes in 2004. Schools are legally required to 
provide the class but families can decide whether or not to enroll their 
children.

Last year, of 20 students who enrolled in the religion course in the Julio 
de Castilhos School, one of the more traditional in the state school 
network, half dropped out. The school has nearly 4,000 students enrolled.

In the Haidie Tedesco Reali school in Erechim, of 1,600 students only seven 
signed up for the religion class.

In the interior of the state, however, the statistics are reversed. In the 
Gonzaga School in Pelotas, 800 students attend the religion class and in 
the Joaquim Fagundes dos Reis school in Passo Fundo 1,500 students enrolled 
in the religion classes.

According to the Rev. Henrique Illarza, of the Anglican Episcopal Church of 
Brazil and director president of the Religious Education Council in Rio 
Grande do Sol said that families in the capital have much less interest in 
religion than those who live in small and middle sized cities.

Prior to the change in the law in 1996 the religion classes were extensions 
of the Catholic catechism. They did not consider religious plurality and 
Brazilian culture, said Illarze. Today, proselytism is banned in schools. 
Religious teaching is increasingly tied to basic formation, respect for 
opinions and differences, emphasizing tolerance, justice and peace.

According to Vilma Teresa Rech, of the Catholic Sisters of Jesus the Good 
Shepherd Congregation, coordinator of Religious Teaching of the States 
Education Secretariat, religious education should contemplate peoples 
culture, religious expressions and anthropological identity.

GUATEMALA
Former presidential candidate analyses experiences of electoral campaign

By Antonio Otzoy
CITY OF GUATEMALA, June 24, 2004 (alc).  Many political parties and their 
candidates see Christians as potential votes, while many pastors believe 
in those candidates because they sing Christian songs and raise their hands 
when they sing, warned Manuel Conde, former Guatemalan presidential 
candidate on a Cambio Nacional party ticket.

In elections held last November 5, Conde did not qualify for the second 
round of voting, won December 28 by Oscar Berger, candidate for the Gran 
Alianza Nacional (GANA).

Before some 100 Evangelical leaders last Saturday, Conde offered a 
conference about Christian participation in politics in the Mariano 
Galvez University.  In a historic analysis of Christian participation in 
politics, Conde said that initially Christian leaders took joy in political 
participation, then there was a lack of understanding and finally enormous 
ingenuity.

He said that many pastors who led the Evangelical Alliance of Guatemala 
have negotiated with presidential candidates in an erroneous fashion.

Pastors can not play at politicians and the politicians cannot play at 
pastors, he said.   He recalled that the general and former elder from the 
El Verbo Church, Efrain Rios Montt made the elders in his congregation 
anoint him every Monday and failed in the end. Engineer Jorge Serrano 
Elias, who declared himself a Christian during his campaign won the 
elections in 1990 and forgot God.

Conde said it is necessary to seriously reflect on Evangelical 
participation in politics. Currently the role of the Church and the state 
is not well established, he said. As a result, there is confusion among 
Christians.

Another aspect, he said, is ingenuity in dealing with politicians. This 
happens when pastors draw near to a candidate and, in order to ingratiate 
themselves, say they can guarantee the 10,000 or 20,000 votes of their 
faithful.

In recent electoral campaigns, he noted, all candidates approached the 
Evangelical Alliance of Guatemala. In some cases, leaders of this 
organization taught candidates a Christian chorus. The next day, they took 
the stage at an Evangelical meeting, sang the song and amazed the faithful.

In the face of this and other situations, Conde said it hurts me that the 
Alliance negotiates in this manner with candidates and it hurts that 
pastors do not have the capacity to analyze the local, region and national 
reality.

Conde explained, it is necessary to know that everyone wants power, those 
who have political power want economic power and vice versa, those who have 
social power want economic and political power.   Finally he said, We 
must not abandon the ministry of reconciliation on the part of the Church 
because that is what Guatemala from us as  Christians.

Conde mentioned that the most difficult moments in his life were the death 
of his father by the army in 1960 and when he was six years old guerrillas 
killed his grandfather. In 1990 as general secretary of the presidency of 
the republic, under the Jorge Serrano Elias government, he lead the 
presidential commission to negotiate a peace treaty between the guerrillas 
and the army.

COLOMBIA
Jesus Project: Leader in Evangelism in Colombia

By William Delgado
BOGOTA, June 25, 2004 (alc). The Jesus Project, created by Dr. Bill Bright, 
founder of the Campus Crusade for Christ International, in the United 
States, is a specialized mass Evangelism strategy that has not only reaped 
results in Colombia but also in at least 170 other nations, according to 
those dedicated to this work in Colombia.

According to world statistics and a publication from the organization, from 
January 1998 to June 22 this year, teams from the Jesus Movie ministry 
reported 29,970,000 viewers.

Of that total, nearly 4.5 million (14.5 percent) said they have made a 
decision for Christ and some 4,257 missions have begun and there are 10,944 
new pastors in theological training.

The movie, which has been translated into more than 500 languages and 
dialects was produced in 1979 with the sponsorship of the Campus Crusade 
and distributed by Warner studies. It stars British actor Brian Deacon, who 
has since passed away.

In Colombia, there are than 25 teams dedicated to this purpose. They are 
distributed nation wide, covering above all isolated regions, where even 
grassroots communication media do not reach, said Wilson Moreno, 
coordinator of the project in Colombia.

The teams involve a group of believers from a Church or congregation who 
are trained and willing to offer their time for Evangelism, a 16-mm 
projector and giant screen, the movie and other accessories to present the 
film in open air, preferably in parks or public places where meetings are 
held with up to 1,500 people.

The presentations of the Jesus movie (based on the Gospel of Saint Luke) 
have also been made on public and private television, at Christmas and in 
Holy Week as well as specials like the Tribute to the Millennium of Jesus, 
three years ago, a presentation that was broadcast throughout Latin 
America, he concluded.

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