wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Unity and healing are challenges to the church in

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Note #8567 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04499
November 10, 2004

Unity and healing are challenges to the church in divided times, NCC head
says

by Jerry L. Van Marter

ST. LOUIS - A deeply divided nation - and world - must rally around "the
message of unity and reconciliation based on justice and peace," National
Council of Churches General Secretary Bob Edgar told the opening session of
the ecumenical organization's annual General Assembly today.

	Alluding to the Assembly's theme - "Weave Anew: Unity, Peace and
Justice, Hope" - Edgar said, "In weaving you have warp (vertical) and weft
(horizontal) threads. The warp is Jesus' plea for Christian unity. The weft
is the quest to
make our unity more visible."

	The challenge, Edgar continued, "is to tap resources for healing and
lift up issues for uniting."

	Justice, poverty, peace and environmental degradation are issues that
should be held by all as "deeply moral issues," he said, and ticked off five
illustrative NCC programs:

* The "Let Justice Roll" anti-poverty campaign that registered more than
100,00 new voters and "voiced the scandal of poverty" in the U.S.;

* The "Benefit Bank" that assists low-income Americans in accessing some $35
billion in unclaimed government benefits by providing counseling and a new
web-based software program that identifies available benefits. The bank is
"up and running" in Philadelphia, Edgar said, and will soon be operational in
Florida, Ohio, Georgia, Kansas and Mississippi;

* A Network of Seminarians for Social Justice that addresses such issues as
hunger and public education;

* Peacemaking activities such as interfaith dialogue; support of the World
Council of Churches' Decade to Overcome Violence, the focus of which this
year is the U.S.; legal advocacy for Guantanamo detainees; visits to troubled
regions such as Darfur in Sudan, the Middle East and Colombia; and a new
ecumenical curriculum, "Faithfulness and Foreign Policy"; and

* Environmental programs such as Earth Day observances a colloquium of
theologians that, in addressing environmental theology, decried "the false
gospel that God cares for the salvation of humans only and not the earth
itself, that our human calling is to exploit the earth for our own ends."

	Edgar said, "We must tell the world what we already know - that
poverty, peace and the health of the environment are deeply moral issues.
Framed this way," he concluded, "we can break through and unite far more
people, uniting us in our One Hope."

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