wfn.org | ALC Noticias July 31 2005 Brasil Nicaragua Cuba

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

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

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CONTENT
BRAZIL
Movimiento Encontrão Movement laments lack of dialogue between charismatics
and IECLB leadership
NICARAGUA: Evangelical leaders protest the release of former President Arnoldo
Aleman
CUBA: Pastors for Peace participate in Rebellion Anniversary

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BRAZIL
Movimiento Encontrão Movement laments lack of dialogue between charismatics
and IECLB leadership

CURITIBA, July 27 (alc). The Encontrão Movement laments the distance and
lack of dialogue between a sector of the charismatic movement and the
Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession of Brazil (IECLB) which has
given rise to radical positions.

The comment about the Evangelical Lutheran Church is contained in the
pastoral message "Our relations, our pain and our hopes (Thinking Out Loud)"
signed by the executive director of the Encontrão Movement, pastor Jairo
Menezes dos Santos.

The IECLB, which has more than 700,000 members, has been confronting a
difficult situation in recent months and Pastor President Walter Altmann has
warned about the possibility that the Church will confront a "dangerous
schism" impelled by the spiritual renovation movement. Theological
differences such as the practice of re-baptism and Pentecostal
manifestations that some charismatic pastors have introduced into Lutheran
congregations, are at the root of the conflict.

Two male pastors and one female pastor have requested their separation from
the IECLB, while the Charismatic Movement has established several
congregations outside of the structure and procedures of the Church.

At the beginning of July the Encontrão made a "community reading of these
past nine years of the Charismatic Movement, the Encontrão Movement and the
relationship with the IECLB leadership." The message recognizes that the
dialogue between the Church and the Charismatics was taken up again,
although belatedly, in 2004.

The Charismatic Movement emerged with the Encontrão, a spiritual revival
movement within the IECLB that is celebrating its 40th anniversary this
year.

Encontrão laments the attitude of exclusion and lack of compromise on the
part of the Church and deplores the mechanisms of pressure, consummate acts
and the lack of respect for the IECLB normative documents on the part of the
charismatics.

As a result, the conflict grew worse, people tended more toward closure than
to openness, positions were exasperated on both sides, the tendency toward
exclusion was greater than the tendency toward integration", the document
said.

In its pastoral message, Encontrão defends the pedagogy of tolerance,
citizen integration, respect and a "fraternal relationship."

The Movement expressed its concern about the type of relationship that the
IECLB is going to establish with the charismatic segment that remains in the
Church and that should be the majority. It estimates that a third of the
members of the Charismatic movement will leave the Church.

"After this process of conflict and wear and tear, if we do not learn to
establish other forms and principles of mediation we are going to have an
IECLB that is increasingly unviable from a theological, missionary and
institutional point of view," the Encontrão warned.

The Encontrão letter warns that the IECLB, in its 180 years of history, has
always lived with ecclesiological diversity, with theological currents and
renewal movements. It proposes discussing this ecclesiological diversity but
also the Christological concepts in the IECLB and carry out a profound
analysis of Brazilian religiosity and anthropology.

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NICARAGUA
Evangelical leaders protest the release of former President Arnoldo Aleman

By Trinidad Vásquez

MANAGUA, July 26 (alc). A judge's decision to ease former President
Arnoldo Aleman's house arrest and allow him to be released under family
supervision was rejected by numerous Evangelical leaders. The former
president is accused of fraud and embezzlement, among other crimes.

"Aleman's release is a calamity for the justice process", said Evenor Jerez,
interim director of the Pro Denominational Alliance Council of Evangelical
Churches (CEPAD). He affirmed that the measure is political and lobbied the
public to demand that the law be upheld.

Pastor Jose Alguera, of the Nazarene Church said that Aleman's release "a
man who has embezzled $100 million" is unjust and paved the way to allow him
to run as a presidential candidate in upcoming elections.

On Monday Judge Roxana Zapata allowed Aleman to be released under family
supervision although Nicaraguan law restricts this to people over the age of
70 or the terminally ill.

A report from the Legal Medical Institute used by the judge to issue the
ruling, indicates that Aleman has 10 chronic illnesses such as diabetes and
cardiovascular problems.

Aleman (58) was president of Nicaragua between 1997 and
2002 and was sentenced to 20 years in jail for misappropriation of public
funds, among other crimes.

The family supervision regime cancels the house arrest he was serving in his
"El Chile" hacienda and allows him to circulate freely around the country.

The Attorney General announced it would appeal the ruling. Santos Amador, a
religious leader who impels the Consumer Defense Network sustained that
Aleman's release is an injustice that is being committed in the country.

For Presbyterian Ellen Sherby, who has lived in Nicaragua for the past five
years, Aleman's release is worrying and dangerous. She recalled that the
former president occupied one of the top positions of the most corrupt
leaders in the world according to Transparency International.

The head of the Autonomous Women's Movement, Patricia Orozco, called on
Nicaraguans to insist that Aleman be returned to jail. Rafael Cordobo, of
the Network for Nicaragua, said that Aleman's release is "shameful" and
added that it is "false that he is sick."

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CUBA
Pastors for Peace participate in Rebellion Anniversary

By Enrique López Oliva

HAVANA,  July 26 (alc). "We feel very content and honored to be with
the Cuban people celebrating a new July 26 anniversary and we are
committed to continue to be faithful to solidarity with Cuba," said
Thomas E. Smith in this capital, a US Baptist pastor and member of
the organization Pastors for Peace.

An advanced group of the US peace organization's caravan participated in the
"Waiting for the 26th" held by the "Luis Ramirez Lopez" Defense of the
Revolution Committee, in the municipality of Marianao in the capital city.

Each July 26, Day of National Rebellion, the insurrection led 52 years ago
by Fidel Castro that overthrew the Fulgencio Batista Regime is commemorated.

Another group, led by the Rev. Lucius Walter, leader of the Pastor for Peace
Movement, remained on the border between the United States and Mexico
because it refused to request permission to cross the border as a matter of
principle.

Walter and another six members of the Caravan remain on the border of Texas
and Mexico until US migration authorities return a bus, computer and
electronic equipment that was arbitrarily retained.

The caravan is made up of 80 men and 66 women coming from several states and
the majority of the pacifist militants are visiting Cuba for the first time.

Since last June 30 the group has traveled 130 cities in 48 US States and
four Canadian provinces collecting donations for the Cuban people.
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