wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Mending the brokenness

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Note #8456 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04364
August 16, 2004

Mending the brokenness

Conference participants learn about restoring God's creation

by Evan Silverstein

TACOMA, WA - For 12-year-old Donny Dix there was no gray area when it came to
his desire to attend the 2004 Presbyterian Peace and Justice Conference.

The five-day intergenerational event held here earlier this month was an
expansion of the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s annual Peacemaking Conference,
broadened this year to include hunger, environmental concerns and economic
justice issues.

The young member of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Dayton, OH, jumped at the
opportunity to bolt to the northwest for the parley at Pacific Lutheran
University, about 40 miles south of Seattle.

"Because I heard that they were going to be working on the topic of the war
in Iraq," said Dix, when asked why he turned out. "I really feel that war was
unnecessary because we still haven't found weapons of mass destruction. That
was their point for going over there in the first place."

The hope of clarifying those questions was enough for Dix to join some 550
Presbyterians of all ages at the conference, Aug 3-7.

Participants gathered from across the nation and world to explore their role
as peacemakers and caretakers of the earth in a time of global poverty,
environmental degradation and warfare.

	"I wanted to learn more about it, why we went, and just to bring my
point of view to the issue," Dix said of Iraq.

A number of guests from other countries and PC(USA) missionaries were present
for the symposium, whose theme was "Hope for a Global Future: Let's Pray,
Let's Act."

The event was co-sponsored by the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, the
Presbyterian Hunger Program, the Environmental Justice Program and the
Self-Development of People Program.

Conference leaders emphasized that God made all creation, including
humankind, good. But that creation has become broken, fractured by such
scourges as hunger, poverty, war, injustice and environmental abuse.

But they also insisted that God's plan is for hope. For renewal. And for
restoration.

"It is our goal this week for everyone to grow as an inclusive
intergenerational family and explore how scripture in a Reformed tradition
informs and inspires in us a reverence for God's sacred creation," said Doug
Grace, conference co-director and former associate for domestic issues at the
Presbyterian Washington Office.

He said other goals of the conference were to help encourage passion for
environmental and economic justice, a commitment to sustainable communities
and lifestyles and peacemaking in human communities and throughout God's
world.

"What does it mean then to live in a sustainable world where we don't have
hunger?" Grace asked in reference to the conference focus. "Where we're
working to feed everyone and making sure the pollution problems and Global
Warming is taken care of? All of the problems that ail the earth and God's
creation have broken us from creation. Put us back together into that healing
and wholeness."

Participants examined the conference theme through workshops, worship,
speakers and plenary sessions. They huddled in small groups or sang and
danced. There were programs for children, young adults and old, separately
and together.

They pondered how their faith impacts choices they make as consumers and
residents of the earth, and whether there are enough resources to fill every
person's basic needs in a thriving world.

The Rev. Agnes Norfleet, co-worship leader, spoke on opening night about the
goodness of creation, recalling astronauts traveling to the moon who
described how fragile Earth looked from space.

"We are instructed by God to be creative caretakers of all this goodness,"
said Norfleet, pastor of North Decatur (GA) Presbyterian Church. "The problem
is unlike the perspective from the distance of standing on the moon. We see
the earth up close and we are deeply troubled by what we see. We see too much
bloodshed. We see too many bellies swollen from hunger. Too many bombs
exploding, too many guns firing, too many young human images of God falling,
too long an Israeli wall going up."

A few days later reading from the Book of Luke, Norfleet said that
Presbyterians must act by becoming "a politically engaged community of
believers whose reverence for God will propel us into the environment. The
children of the world need the followers of Jesus Christ to shed our
possessions, to give to the poor ..."

Organizers noted higher attendance at this year's conference, especially
among younger participants and families who filled the campus chapel for
intergenerational worship and  turned out in large numbers for workshops with
names like "Searching for Peace in the Midst of War," or "Think Globally -
Worship Locally."

"I find it just incredibly spiritually enriching and sustaining," said Susan
Webb, a conference participant from Bowling Green, KY. "I think there's a
great theological and Biblical base for caring for the world and caring for
the people of the world and being peacemakers within the world."

There were personal stories, too. An Iraqi pastor in attendance spoke about
life in his war-torn nation.

 "Today, Iraq has been like a wounded dove looking for peace, trying to
survive, looking for security," said the Rev. Younan Shiba, pastor of the
Assyrian Evangelical Presbyterian Church, located in the center of Baghdad,
once considered an upscale area but now viewed as dangerous.

"It has sought security in the past, however it's harvested killings and
blood," Shiba said of Iraq through a translator, noting that car bombs
exploded near five Christian churches Aug. 1, killing at least seven people.
"The liberators came to liberate us from war. We said 'we will wait. We will
give it time and look for some justice and peace. We will wait for a new Iraq
that would have harmony and justice.' We are still waiting, looking for peace
and justice."

Some participants said the situation in Iraq was ripe on their minds, but
also pointed to other battlefields people of faith must confront.

"We're fighting the war on environmental issues," said elder Helen Hamilton,
a participant from First Presbyterian Church in Kent, WA. "We're fighting the
war against hunger. We're fighting the war against the displacement of people
of all shapes, sizes and colors."

Meanwhile, Presbyterians Emily Krause and Patti Nussle recounted meeting
residents in a remote mountain town outside Lima, Peru, who the two claim are
being poisoned by toxic emissions from an American-owned plant there.

"The children in La Oroya, Peru, had levels of lead in their bloodstream
four, five and six times the safe limit," said Krause, a member of Broad
Street Presbyterian Church in Columbus, OH.

She traveled to the small town two years ago on a mission trip with Nussle,
who also worships at the Columbus church, scooping up soil samples and
testing the blood of about 100 men, women and children.

"The soil that they live in and farm in and work in and play in have levels
of lead in it," Nussle said. "Not twice the normal limits or three times the
normal limits, but six times the normal limits. The amount of arsenic was
just horrendous. It's no wonder crops don't grow there anymore."

PC(USA) General Assembly moderator Rick Ufford-Chase spoke about economic
injustice in Central America, while a United Nations official helped
celebrate 35 years of action by the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP).

PHP was established in 1969 as a channel through which Presbyterians can be
engaged in the fight against hunger in the United States and around the
world. Since then the hunger program has helped Presbyterians put more than
$100 million to work in direct feeding programs, hunger education,
development activities, public policy advocacy and the promotion of
sustainable lifestyles.

 "We have consistently raised our voices to call for more effective responses
to hunger in the U.S. and abroad," said the Rev. Gary Cook, associate
director for Global Service and Witness in the PC(USA)'s Worldwide Ministries
Division. "What we most celebrate at this anniversary is the unswerving
commitment of Presbyterians to this cause."

 Cook, who is also acting coordinator of the hunger program, said while the
problem has not been eliminated, PHP has been part of a global effort that's
reduced the proportion of those going hungry from one-in-four in 1970 to
one-in-six today.

Cook announced PHP's newest global hunger outreach initiative with the
Joining Hands Against Hunger network, which links anti-hunger and human
rights programs in eight countries with networks of Presbyterian
congregations in eight presbyteries for mutual support, education and
advocacy.

Ufford-Chase, an elder and mission co-worker from Tucson, AZ, who was elected
moderator in June, said people earn an average of $6 to $7 a day in Nogales,
Mexico, where a gallon of milk cost $3.30.

 "You have to work for five-to-six hours to make enough money to purchase
that gallon of milk," said Ufford-Chase, co-founder of BorderLinks, a
binational organization on the U.S./Mexico border whose mission is to connect
and educate people of faith from both sides of the border.

"We will never ever be secure until the following is true," said
Ufford-Chase. "A secure world is a place where a day's wage is enough to
provide for the basic need of one family, period. No exceptions. We need a
secure world. That will only happen when my use of the world's resources is
appropriate and modest. So that I am not destroying the environment where
someone else lives."

The Rev. Flora Wilson-Bridges, a plenary leader and Baptist minister from
Seattle, WA, examined connections between the brokenness of God's creation
and justice issues. Worship co-leader, the Rev. Thomas John, a theologian and
ordained minister with the Church of South India, spoke about the brokenness
through the lens of poverty and hunger.

"I think the speakers, the leaders of worship and the plenary sessions are
very powerful," said Webb, the conference-goer from Kentucky and member of
The Presbyterian Church in Bowling Green. "They've also been very
informational and inspiring and the workshops also. I've been really
impressed."

Mosala Raboko said he expects attending as an international guest will allow
him to return home to Lesotho, South Africa, with important information to
share.

"This event we are coming to learn more about the world and how to keep peace
with each other, to understand the word, the meaning of peace," said Raboko,
one of a handful of participants from South Africa. "In Lesotho, most people
don't have knowledge about what is happening around the world. So we are here
to learn."

The Rev. Jeff Peterson-Davis, associate pastor at Pleasant Hill Presbyterian
Church in Duluth, GA, said the conference hit home for him on many levels: as
a pastor, as a Christian, as a parent, and as a citizen of the world.

"We're worshipping in a multi-ethnic, multi-racial Presbyterian gathering
from around the world," Peterson-Davis said. "It's phenomenal. I'm just
really glad that our church is taking these issues seriously."

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