wfn.org | NewsBriefs

[ENS.parti@ecunet.org (ENS)]

December 4, 1997
Episcopal News Service
Jim Solheim, Director
212-922-5385
ens@ecunet.org

97-2039
NewsBriefs                                                                              
                         
Charismatic Episcopal Church chooses bishop for new diocese
     (ENS) The Charismatic Episcopal Church (CEC) consecrated
Craig Bates as bishop for a sprawling new diocese that covers New
England, New York and northern New Jersey. Bates will continue
serving the 700-member Church of the Intercessor on Long Island, one
of the church's largest and most diverse parishes. Until 1995 it was a
congregation of the Episcopal Church but joined the CEC because of
what it perceived as "moral and theological relativism." The CEC was
founded in 1992 as a new denomination, incorporating "the ancient
catholic church with a contemporary spiritual ministry," according to a
news release. It has 300 churches worldwide, with approximately 120
parishes in the United States. "We hope to provide a home for all
Christians who seek a catholic, evangelical, charismatic church," Bates
said.

Diocese of Florida withholds funds on theological grounds
     (ENS) The diocesan council of the Diocese of Florida passed a
resolution in October that holds its percentage of giving to the national
church at just over 10 percent, about half of the 21 percent established by
last summer's General Convention as a sign of protest. The resolution
also urged steps "to restore the seriously eroded trust in the national
leadership of the Episcopal Church," including: asking Presiding Bishop-
elect Frank T. Griswold III to remove his name from the Koinonia
Statement that emerged during a debate on sexuality in the 1994 House
of Bishops meeting in Indianapolis, declaring that sexual orientation was
"morally neutral," that the church should move towards blessing same
sex unions and accepting gay and lesbian clergy; sponsoring an
independent national survey on "the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities
and threats perceived by all members of the Episcopal Church at this
critical time in our journey;" report on recent audits of trust funds "with
clarity and integrity" to the whole church. The resolution said it would
revisit its decision at the June 1998 meeting of the diocesan council. The
resolution now goes to the Diocesan Convention in January of 1998.

Church of England votes to start unity talks with Methodists
     (ENI) The Church of England's governing general synod voted
recently to start "formal conversations" about unity with the Methodist
Church. The Methodists will now decide whether to back the initiative,
but this will not be until their conference in June, 1998. A previous plan
for unity between the Church of England and the Methodist Church twice
failed--in 1969 and 1972--to achieve sufficient majorities in the
assemblies of the Church of England. Bishop David Tustin of Grimsby,
the chief Anglican representative at the "talks about talks" that led up to
the decision, told members of the synod, "This is not a `merger scheme,'
as some have misreported. It is a next step on the way towards visible
unity." Keith Reed, the Methodist Church's ecumenical officer, said that
full unity was likely to be "several years" away even though he hoped for
a strong affirmative vote at next year's Methodist conference. Although
the two churches have many strong ties through ecumenical programs, a
number of speakers in the synod debate expressed anxieties about
differences over women's ministry. Women can become district chairs in
the Methodist Church, but cannot be ordained as bishops in the Church
of England.

Sewanee receives $200,000 grant
     (ENS) The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations recently awarded a
$200,000 grant to the School of Theology at the University of the South
in Sewanee, Tennessee. The grant is to support the work of the Center
for Ministry in Small Churches (CMSC). The grant includes $119,000
for specific projects and an additional $81,000 as a "special tribute" to
the Rev. Stanley A. Bullock, Jr., a graduate of the School of Theology
and a recently retired member of the Foundations. CMSC plans to use
some of the grant money to hold a national conference on the nature and
future of small church ministry and to develop an internship program at
Sewanee to foster small church ministries.

Crack-smoking priest avoids jail
     (Daily News) Chester Larue, an Episcopal priest who was
arrested while smoking crack cocaine in the rectory of his Brooklyn
church, recently avoided jail time in a plea bargain agreement. Larue,
rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Bay Ridge, pleaded guilty to
seventh-degree criminal possession of cocaine. He is expected to get
three years probation and 500 hours of community service when
sentenced in December. LaRue also agreed to undergo outpatient drug
treatment. "I hope Rev. LaRue uses this opportunity for a second
chance," said District Attorney Charles Hynes. When police raided the
rectory last January, they found LaRue simultaneously smoking crack and
writing a sermon. Bishop Orris Walker of Long Island said LaRue still
serves as the parish rector. A panel of lay and clergy leaders will decide
whether he will keep the post. 

ELCA undertakes identity campaign
     (ENS) The church council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America recently endorsed a new emblem and theme, "Living Faith,"
which will be featured in national and regional media campaign that will
begin in the fall of 1998. Over the next 12 months the church will design
a marketing and identity campaign, executed by Periscope Advertising
Communication, Minneapolis. Emily Child of Periscope reported to that
council that most of the current leadership of the ELCA are "matures,"
people whose strongest impressions are of the Great Depression or World
War II. She said that baby boomers value individuality and have "a
nostalgic yearning to offer traditional values in raising children."
Generation X, she said, values diversity and seeks "connection amidst . .
.  community-based peer groups which offer support."

Diocese of Olympia supports ordination of homosexuals
     (News Tribune) The Diocese of Olympia narrowly approved a
resolution stating that homosexuality is "morally neutral" and supporting
the ordination of gays and lesbians to the clergy. After almost an hour of
spirited but civil discussion, delegates to the recent diocesan convention
adopted the resolution, 244-190. The resolution affirmed the belief that
"some of us are created heterosexual and some of us are created
homosexual" and noted that gay and lesbian clergy were already serving
the Episcopal Church "with effectiveness and integrity." The resolution
also said that gay and lesbian relationships that are "faithful,
monogamous, committed, life-giving and holy are to be honored."
Several Episcopal dioceses have approved the document, entitled the
Statement of Koinonia that emerged from a House of Bishops meeting in
1994.

Three Dutch denominations agree to form United Protestant Church
     (ENI) Three Dutch Protestant denominations--with a total
membership of 3 million people--recently took a major step towards unity
by agreeing on a constitution and a name for a new united church. The
new church will be called the United Protestant Church in the
Netherlands (Verenigde Protestantse Kerk in Nederland, VPKN). To
avoid giving offence to any of the denominations involved in the talks, it
had been agreed at an earlier stage that the united church should not
include in its title any name currently used by the three denominations:
the Netherlands Reformed (Hervormd) Church (NHK), the Reformed
(Gereformeerd) Churches in The Netherlands (GKN) and the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (ELK). The unity
talks also ran into difficulties on the issue of whether the new constitution
should refer to marriage. The GKN and ELK say nothing in their present
constitutions about this subject and generally hold a liberal interpretation
of who can be married. The ELK blesses homosexual couples. As a
compromise the three synods agreed on a letter to be sent to all their
local churches, according to which the new church will stress the
"sacred" character of marriage. But the letter will also state that the
churches have had to admit "with pain that there is at the moment no
unanimity" about other forms of "life-long relationships." 

Tutu opens hearings exploring churches' complicity with apartheid
      (ENI) Speaking at the start of South Africa's Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings for religious organizations,
chair Desmond Tutu, former Anglican Archbishop of Capetown, said that
those confessing were not supposed to confess the sins of others, nor
justify themselves. "You are meant to say what went wrong with
yourself." He noted that religion "is not necessarily a good thing and not
necessarily a bad thing. It was, after all, German Christians who
supported Hitler, but it was also Christians who showed that wonderful
resistance to the awfulness of Nazism." During the proceedings, Tutu
personally apologized for Christian arrogance in South Africa. "We claim
arrogantly, a claim that is difficult to justify, that this is a Christian
country. I've never known what is meant by that, unless we are merely
claiming that the majority of the country are Christians. The experience
we have had in the world is that those who have claimed to be these
[Christian countries] have not usually excelled. Christians do not have the
monopoly on God," he said. TRC is investigating gross human rights
violations that occurred under apartheid. 

Pope assails inaction during the Holocaust
      (Washington Post) Pope John Paul II recently condemned the actions
of many Christians before and during the Holocaust, telling a Vatican
conference that the Christian world contributed to the rise of
anti-Semitism and then failed to fight it as Jews were slaughtered during
World War II. "In the Christian world--I am not saying on the part of the
Church as such--the wrong and unjust interpretations of the New
Testament relating to the Jewish people and their supposed guilt [in
Christ's death] circulated for too long, engendering sentiments of
hostility toward this people," he said. He described anti-semitism as a
pagan refutation of the essence of the Christian doctrine that was "totally
unjustifiable and absolutely condemnable." While the pope's statement
was his strongest on the subject to date, he stopped short of issuing an
apology of the Church or of his controversial wartime predecessor, Pope
Pius XII. "The statement is a breath of fresh air in what has been . . . a
dismal record of the Church's failure to say these things openly and
honestly," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center in Los Angeles. Hier is one of several Jewish leaders who are
critical of the Vatican's refusal to open wartime archives that would shed
light on the role played by Pius XII. Hier acknowledged that Pius XII
saved lives by speaking out for European Jews after 1942. "But by then
there were hardly any Jews left," he said. "They'd all been murdered. In
critical years the pope was silent."

Dutch report shows widening gap between popular faith and churches
      (ENI) Most Dutch people want churches to play a significant role in
society even though they find the churches less and less important in
their personal lives, according to a recently published report in the
Netherlands. The report, published by the Roman Catholic broadcasting
organization KRO/RKK, also showed that while the number of people in
the Netherlands who describe themselves as religious has remained
stable, the number who actually attend church continues to fall. The
report said that rather than being seen as vital to the faith of their
members, churches were regarded as public institutions playing a
constructive role in society. About 65 percent of all Dutch people believe
that the churches are a reliable source of information about social and
political questions--more reliable than the media, trade unions,
government or politicians. A large number of Dutch people believe that it
is the task of the church to speak out on social and political questions and
no less than 80 percent believe that the churches have to speak out on the
issue of poverty. However, the report also revealed a growing gap
between interest in religion and church membership. Whereas 67 percent
of Dutch people were church members in 1966, the proportion had
dropped to 47 percent by last year--a decline of 100,000 church members
in a period of 30 years.  
US delegation calls for aid to be stepped up to North Korea
      (ENI) Relief aid has made a significant difference to famine-stricken
North Korea, according to a United States interfaith delegation which
recently returned from a five-day visit to the country. But the 10-member
delegation warned that whatever slight stability North Korea was
experiencing was only temporary and would be short-lived. The
delegation called for a redoubling of efforts to assist the country. More
than two years of floods and drought have destroyed much of the
communist nation's cropland and depleted food resources. The situation
was aggravated when parts of North Korea were hit by a tidal wave
earlier this year. Describing North Korea as a nation of abandoned
factories and dark, unlit cities, unheated hospitals and almost barren rice
fields, the members of the delegation said the country still faced the
prospect of a bleak, potentially deadly winter, plagued by yet another
poor harvest. "We start with good news: outside help this year has made
a real difference," said Lutheran bishop Howard Wennes, a board
member of Lutheran World Relief. "But more is needed now to see those
who still suffer through the winter and later when this harvest will soon
be gone." The visit was organized by Interfaith Hunger Appeal (IHA), a
coalition of four U.S. relief organizations: Church World Service (the
relief arm of the National Council of Churches), Lutheran World Relief,
the Joint Jewish Distribution Committee, and Catholic Relief Services.
The four groups have donated $2.5 million in relief assistance to North
Korea and are calling for increased support for their respective aid
efforts.  

Church leaders' remains identified at mass grave from Stalin era
      (ENI) The remains of four senior Russian Orthodox leaders, as well
as a bishop and 31 priests from the Roman Catholic church, have been
identified in a mass grave in Russia's northern Karelia region. Veniamin
Joshe, a spokesman for Russia's "Memorial" organization, said that the
remains of 1,111 bodies had been unearthed at a forest site about 150
miles north of St. Petersburg. Joshe said that most of the bodies had
originally been brought to the site from labor camps on the Solovetskiye
Islands in the White Sea. It seems likely that most of the dead--who had
been shot through the back of the head--were killed between October 27
and November 4, 1937, with the approval of then Soviet leader, Joseph
Stalin. In 1995 a Russian government commission found that more than
200,000 priests and nuns of various denominations had been killed, and
one-half million imprisoned or deported in Soviet purges of the 1920s
and 1930s, a period now described as the worst persecution ever inflicted
on Christians. The identification of the remains has been made with
information from the Moscow archives of the secret police.

After outcry at home and abroad, Cape Town council honors Tutu
     (ENI) Cape Town city councilors have voted unanimously to grant
the freedom of the city to their city's former archbishop, Desmond Tutu.
The municipality recently reaped local and international scorn when a
previous proposal to grant Tutu the honor failed to win sufficient votes
from the councilors. Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his
opposition to apartheid, is now chairman of South Africa's Truth and
Reconciliation Commission which is trying to heal the wounds of the
country's racist past. Clearly embarrassed by the outcome of the previous
vote, which had been cast in secret, all 65 councilors present at a council
meeting raised their hands in approval when a public vote was called. A
minimum of 50 votes was required. Cape Town Council members
belonging to President Nelson Mandela's African National Congress
(ANC) accused councilors of the National Party (NP), custodians of the
former apartheid regime, of having blocked the previous attempt to honor
Cape Town's most famous citizen. Earlier this year Tutu angered the NP
by accusing it of failure to accept full responsibility for human rights
abuses carried out during the apartheid
era.

Correction:
ENS release #97-2002 of November 13, 1997, entitled "Griswold's
installation to be broadcast live on television and Internet" contained an
incorrect email address which originated with our source. The correct
address for the Internet simulcast of the audio portion of the installation
of the 25th Presiding Bishop is www.ecusa.anglican.org/ectn.