Note #9231 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:
06194 March 30, 2006
Outnumbered but surviving
Conference of Waldensian Church taps into heritage as religious minority
by Toya Richards Hill
NEW YORK CITY - Probably no modern denomination knows more about being a religious minority than the Waldensian Church.
The Waldensians, rooted in a 12th-century Protestant movement in defense of the poor and oppressed of France and Italy, have always taken a side seat to the religious giants of the world - especially the Roman Catholic Church.
So it was fitting that the theme of the four-day centennial conference of the American Waldensian Society (AWS) was "The Role of Religious Minorities in Pluralistic Societies." The AWS supports Waldensian congregations and social programs in Italy, Uruguay and Argentina.
"The Italian Waldensian Church ... is, in today's Europe, the only surviving pre-Reformation dissident church," said the Rev. Gianni Genre, senior pastor of the Waldensian Church of Milan and former moderator of the Tavola Valdese (the Waldensian Board in Italy).
"Many local and European movements and churches, not necessarily less worthy than ours, have died away in time because of hardships and persecutions - or maybe simply because their mission had been somehow accomplished," Genre said.
The founder of the church was a merchant from Lyons, France, named Valdo (hence Valdese; Waldensian), who endeavored to live as a follower of Christ and therefore sold all his possessions and dedicated himself to preaching the gospel. The Roman Catholic Church responded by excommunicating Valdo and his followers, who were known in France as "the poor of Lyons" and in Italy as "the poor Lombardi." Like all so-called "heretical" movements, it was repressed and persecuted by civil and religious authorities.
The church is alive and well in South America, a home for Waldensians since Italian colonists arrived there in 1856.
The staying power of the Waldensian Church, which has 140 communities in Italy and 40 in Uruguay and Argentina, was repeated often during the conference, which opened on March 23 at Rutgers Presbyterian Church.
A melting pot of Waldensians from Europe, South America and the United States attended. Workshops touched on "Interfaith Dialogue," "Practices of Justice," "Contemporary Spirituality and Evangelism," and "Churches in Multicultural Societies." A keynote presentation featured the Rev. Harvey Cox, the Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard University.
Also on hand were representatives of the Waldensian Church's U.S. partner denominations, including the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Methodist Church. In Italy, the Waldensian Church and the Italian Methodist Church are joined in a federation with a single synod, although the churches maintain separate organizations and financial autonomy.
"I'm impressed by your history, your struggle for religious freedom" and "your commitment to justice and to the poor," said the Rev. Oscar McCloud, moderator of the PC(USA)'s Presbytery of New York City.
The conference challenged participants to breathe new life into a church struggling with economic hardships and evangelism hurdles.
On a scale of 0 to 10, the Italian Waldensian Church is functioning at about a 6, said the Rev. Maria Bonafede, moderator of Tavola Valdese.
"It's doing well enough, for a church that is able to hope, to preach and to gather new people," she said in thick Italian through an interpreter. Yet "it needs to find new spiritual energies, new perspectives."
Challenges include reaching some of Italy's more than two million immigrants, mainly Muslims living in cities, and dealing with secularization in the Waldensian-rich Piedmont valleys, the region where the church found refuge in its early years and still thrives today.
In South America, the continent's widespread poverty is a big challenge. The Rev. Hugo Celmar Armand Pilon moderates the church there, called La Iglesia Evangelica Valdense del Rio de La Plata.
One of denomination's greatest disappointments came three years ago when the Italian church closed its three hospitals, which Genre called "our best-known, Waldensian flagship social works in Italy."
"In spite of our renewed and desperate efforts to keep them, we had finally to give up all three hospitals ... to recover from the accrued loss over the years of more than $80 million," Genre added. "It has been a very hard lesson to learn. Our church is, and probably always will be, too small in Italy to manage such demanding, overwhelming works as hospitals."
The future of the church, he said, is in "light deaconship" - work that can help the poor and disadvantaged without requiring huge financial investments.
"This is the new frontier of our commitment to the gospel," he said, "and we want to pursue it with a renovated and stronger, yet wiser and somewhat humbler, effort."
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