wfn.org | Newsline: Brethren take part in peacemaking dialogue with President of Iran

["COBNews Newsline" <cobnews@brethren.org>]

Newsline: Church of the Brethren News Service -- Sept. 26, 2008
Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford, News Director
800-323-8039 ext. 260 -- cobnews@brethren.org

BRETHREN TAKE PART IN PEACEMAKING DIALOGUE WITH
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD OF IRAN

(Sept. 26, 2008) Elgin, IL -- Two Church of the Brethren leaders were
among some 300 international religious and political figures, including
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a dialogue in New York
yesterday evening, Sept. 25. The meeting was held to discuss the role of
religion in responding to global challenges and building peace and
understanding between societies.

The Brethren leaders who attended were Stan Noffsinger, general
secretary of the Church of the Brethren, and Phil Jones, director of the
Brethren Witness/Washington Office. The Church of the Brethren was
requested to accompany Mennonite leaders and staff of Mennonite
Central Committee (MCC) to the meeting, as one of the three Historic
Peace Churches.

The gathering was one of an ongoing series of meetings that come at the
initiative of MCC. At a meeting with President Ahmadinejad a year ago
on Sept. 26, 2007, three Brethren were among some 140 Christian
leaders: Annual Conference moderator James Beckwith, Church of the
Brethren representative to the UN Doris Abdullah, and Jones. Previous
gatherings occurred when a small group of religious leaders met with
President Ahmadinejad during a previous visit to the US, and when a
delegation of US religious leaders traveled to Iran in Feb. 2007.

The theme of yesterday's dialogue was "Has not one God created us?
The significance of religious contributions to peace." A series of
panelists shared Jewish, Muslim, and Christian perspectives on
addressing poverty, injustice, environmental degradation, and war.
Speakers included President Ahmadinejad, Kjell Bondevik, former
prime minister of Norway, and Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, president
of the United Nations General Assembly.

The dialogue, which followed a meal, was sponsored by MCC,
American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker United Nations
Office, Religions for Peace, and the World Council of Churches-United
Nations Liaison Office, in consultation with the Permanent Mission of
the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN.

Arli Klassen, executive director of MCC, gave welcoming remarks on
behalf of the sponsoring organizations. She lit an oil lamp as a symbol of
faith and invited participants to reflect on peacemaking from their own
faith perspectives. "As a Christian, I believe that we are following Jesus
Christ's example and his teaching as we eat together and hold this
dialogue despite our many differences," Klassen said.

Klassen noted several areas of high tension in relations between Iran, the
US, and other nations. Addressing President Ahmadinejad, Klassen
raised concerns about his statements on the Holocaust and Israel, Iran's
nuclear program, and religious freedom in Iran. "We ask you to find a
way within your own country to allow for religious diversity, and to
allow people to make their own choices as to which religion they will
follow," Klassen said.

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, a leader in the Jewish Renewal movement, spoke
about Jewish traditions of peacemaking and nonviolence, and drew upon
her work for reconciliation between Muslims and Jews and Palestinians
and Israelis. She also spoke about the significance of mourning the
deaths of all victims of war, including the millions of people killed in  the
Holocaust, World War II, and wars in Iran and Iraq. "Because of the
Holocaust, I learned from the rabbis who ordained and guide me, to be
active in preventing further suffering of all human beings as a primary
religious call to action," Gottlieb said.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic
Relations, spoke about Islamic principles for alleviating poverty, caring
for the environment, and working for peace and justice. He encouraged
his interreligious audience to cooperate more closely toward these goals.
"Has not God created us?" Awad said. "Yes--and he wants us to work
together."

Although Klassen, Bondevik, and others raised concerns about religious
freedoms and human rights in Iran, President Ahmadinejad did not
address these issues directly. He spoke at length about theological  issues,
such as monotheism, justice, and commonalities among religions. "All
divine prophets have spoken of one truth," the president said. "The
religion of Islam is the same as that offered by Moses."

President Ahmadinejad spoke in broad terms about "challenges facing
the human community," including poverty, declining morality, and a
lack of religion in public life. He decried the humanitarian costs of wars
in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon, and spoke extensively about the
hardships suffered by Palestinians. He criticized nations such as the
United States for maintaining nuclear weapons and did not deviate from
his previous statements that Iran's nuclear program is for peaceful
purposes.

"We were guests of the Mennonites," Noffsinger emphasized in a
telephone interview today, following a debriefing meeting for the
Mennonite delegation. "It was delightful to sit with about 20 people of
member churches of the MCC and their staff." At this morning's
debriefing, Noffsinger reported that the group wanted to hear Brethren
responses to the event. It is that same sense of collaboration that
Mennonites are using in their ongoing attempts at dialogue with the
people of Iran, he added. "It's good and it's healthy," Noffsinger said.

A couple hundred protesters demonstrated across the street during the
meeting with Ahmadinejad, Noffsinger said. The protesters, he felt, were
identifying the peace churches as "irrelevant to American culture. That's
been abrasive and difficult to hear," he said.

During the meeting with Ahmadinejad, the American religious leaders
spoke "about nuclear armaments and the Holocaust," Noffsinger said.
These concerns "were all raised and clearly articulated multiple times. It
was very open speech."

Other denominations that are members of the World Council of
Churches have received criticism of the WCC sponsorship of the
meeting, Noffsinger said, and he himself has received questions about
why the Brethren participated. Those questions "missed the point," he
said. "The dialogue is what really matters."

To the question, are you going? Noffsinger said he has responded, "Of
course we're going to be there."

"To be at that table, this is what it means to be a peace church," he  said.
"We're always called by Jesus' command to love neighbors as ourselves.
The church also has position papers on nuclear weapons, war,
international relationships. We have a statement on peacemaking, and
we will take every avenue of nonviolent resolution. These are reasons we
go to the table, that's why we risk it. Our faith compels us."

The Church of the Brethren has consistently engaged in conversation and
relationship building with peoples identified as political enemies, in
obedience to the command of Jesus to "love your enemies" (Mt. 5:44,
Lk. 6:27). For example, during the Cold War the Church of the Brethren
hosted delegations of Russian representatives from the Russian Orthodox
Church, at a time when those visits also were met by hostile groups of
protesters.

"There are going to be other places around the world where we are going
to be called to be in the middle of it, and that's where we ought to be"  as
Brethren, Noffsinger said. "It's where we've always been."

"It was with a delicate balance of faith and trust that I attended," Jones
said today as he reported on the meeting. He noted that this is the fourth
attempt at open and honest conversation with President Ahmadinejad.
"Have I seen great progress in our understanding?" he asked. "Certainly
not, it takes time to develop that safe place where real dialogue can
occur. But truths have been told and lies have been challenged."

"We must meet and greet and love all of our sisters and brothers, not just
those we are comfortable with," Jones said. "Many within our tradition,
Christian and Brethren, have challenged this attempt at loving dialogue.
We do not always choose our enemies, we do not always choose those
we love. In faith and trust we simply live the greatest commandment of
all, to the best of our ability."

For more information, contact the Brethren Witness/Washington Office
at pjones_gb@brethren.org or 800-785-3246.

The Church of the Brethren is a Christian denomination committed to
continuing the work of Jesus peacefully and simply, and to living out its
faith in community. The denomination is based in the Anabaptist and
Pietist faith traditions and is one of the three Historic Peace Churches.  It
celebrates its 300th anniversary in 2008. It counts more than 125,000
members across the United States and Puerto Rico, and has missions and
sister churches in Nigeria, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and
India.

(Sections of this report came from a Mennonite Central Committee press
release.)

># # #

>For more information contact:

>Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford
>Director of News Services
>Church of the Brethren
>1451 Dundee Ave., Elgin, IL 60120
>800-323-8039 ext. 260
>cobnews@brethren.org

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