Episcopal News Service December 15, 2006
Presiding Bishop joins in call for renewed efforts at Middle East peace
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[ENS] Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is one of 34 Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders who wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice December 12 asking for a meeting with her to discuss the "urgent situation in the Middle East" and calling on the United States to make peace in the region an "urgent priority."
The leaders, acting as the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East, issued a statement the same day, saying that "as Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders, our shared Abrahamic faith compels us to work together for peace with justice for Israelis, Palestinians and all peoples in the Middle East."
"As Americans, we again ask the United States to make peace in the Middle East an urgent priority," the statement's preamble concludes. "Our nation has an inescapable responsibility and an indispensable role to provide creative, determined leadership for building a just peace for all in the Middle East."
Quoting from the religious texts of all three faith traditions, the statement says that "building peace through justice is simultaneously an urgent human challenge and a gift of God."
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_80534_ENG_HTM.htm
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