wfn.org | WCC "Living Letters" team listens to US stories and

["Sheila Mesa" <smm@wcc-coe.org>]

encourages US churches to listen too

World Council of Churches
Update, Up-01-39
For Immediate Use
16 November 2001

WCC "Living Letters" team listens to US stories and encourages
US churches to listen too

cf. WCC Press Release, PR-01-41, of 7 November 2001
cf. WCC Press Update, Up-01-33, of 21 September 2001
cf. WCC Press Release, PR-01-32, of 11 September 2001

The ecumenical "Living Letters" team organized by the World
Council of Churches (WCC) to bring a pastoral word to United
States churches following the terror attacks of 11 September, has
put its message in writing: "We have come to love you."  

In the final days of its US visit in Oakland, California, the
team drafted the letter to summarize its dialogue with US church
leaders since 8 November in New York, Chicago and Washington:  

"To the churches and Christians in the United States:

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

We have come as 'living letters' to your country. Shocked at the
tragic events of 11 September, we have come as representatives of
member churches of the World Council of Churches, committed to
the Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches seeking peace and
reconciliation. We have come to be with you as a sign of
compassion and solidarity in your suffering. We have come out of
our wounded contexts to share with you in your woundedness. We
have not come with answers; we have come to love you.  

We have stood at Ground Zero and experienced it as death. We
were profoundly moved by the terrible silence, the
colourlessness, the sense of loss. In that emptiness, we grasped
hands and offered our prayers; we reclaimed life in the midst of
death.  

It is always difficult to walk into a house of grief. But you
have received us with gracious hospitality in this time of
sorrow, and we are grateful. In South Africa, there is a saying
used at the time of mourning: 'What has happened to you has
happened to others as well.' We are witnesses that God makes it
possible for 
life to continue. Many American churches have visited us in our
difficult times to help us find a way when we have been
overwhelmed with our grief. We now say to you, take courage. We
have come to you as living letters, signs of hope in the
suffering and pain of the cross.  

During our visit, in New York, Chicago, Washington DC and
Oakland, California, we have had the privilege to listen to
different voices and words. We have listened to words of hurt and
anger from a pastor on the front lines: 'We are not ready to be
lectured. We still smell the smoke; there are too many funerals
each day to be objective. A new consciousness will arise, but if
it is forced, it will only stoke the anger.' There is the need
for space to grieve. And we are ready to wait with you, in your
mourning and in your healing.   

We have heard voices of deep sadness. We have been moved by the
ways in which you have expressed this sadness. This sea of sorrow
also engulfs those who minister, who are now exhausted. 'Who will
heal the healers?' someone has asked.   

We have heard persons speak of 'joining the world': 'I didn't
just see my congregation weeping, I saw a weeping world.' A
pastor spoke of the interconnectedness of pain and suffering as
he ministered to wounded and orphaned children in New York. 'I
would have liked to embrace also the children of Iraq, who have
been wounded and orphaned. Maybe this experience of suffering
will help us to embrace all others who suffer.'  

We have heard people speak of fear and insecurity, from
immigrants who came to the US for safety and freedom to peace
workers who feel intimidated and accused of being unpatriotic.  

We have not heard words of bitterness or of revenge. We have
been moved to humility and encouraged to hear church leaders
battling with questions that are broader than their own concerns,
that take in the larger context of the world. The discussion is
just beginning.  

We have heard some asking: 'What things have been done by us and
in our name that have made people feel such hatred for us?'   

We have heard people speak of their ignorance and fear of Islam,
but we also heard expressions of solidarity with Muslim
neighbours.   

We have heard people relating their suffering to the sufferings
of people in Afghanistan and Palestine.  

We have heard people explaining how difficult it is for some
Christian communities to be engaged by ethical issues of the
response to 11 September.   

We have listened to a pastor in tears ask: 'How can the bombing
of Afghanistan be the way of Christ?'  

These words did not call for answers from us. We have cried and
prayed with you; now, together with you, we ask the questions
that have accompanied our conversations:  

1.  Where do we find the basis to be together? What can be our
common search in the days ahead? We have in common to reject
terrorism. We can affirm that military response will never bring
security and peace. What kind of relationships with neighbours,
across geographical and faith borders, need urgently to be built?
 

2.  How can churches be at the front line of the struggle
against injustice? The churches have responsibility to reflect
together and to name together the major injustices in the world.
In our encounter we have spoken of the destructive economic
imbalances, oppression in places like Palestine, gender and
racial discrimination, support of totalitarian regimes.  

3.  How can we communicate the imperatives of the Gospel where
there is a struggle for the hearts and minds of people? What kind
of communication, what images, will bind us together in
community, rather than increase the gulf between people, as
dominant media images do? As Christians, we have been given the
stories and invited into a community that speaks truth to power.
We say to our churches: listen carefully to other Christians
around the world. By allowing the churches to tell their stories,
you give them voice.   

4.  Do we wait to speak until there is unanimity? How do we
encourage the prophetic voices in our midst? Love unites us. You
are our sisters and brothers. Together we are the body of Christ.
Let us hold hands and seek to overcome all forms of violence,
direct and structural, in order to build a culture of peace." 

Bishop Mvumelwano Dandala of the Methodist Church of Southern
Africa, and president of the South Africa Council of Churches, is
the leader of the "Living Letters" team. Other members are: Rev.
Jean-Arnold de Clermont, president of the French Protestant
Federation; Bishop Samuel Azariah of the Church of Pakistan; Rev.
Father Nicholas Balachov, Russian Orthodox Church; Ms. Septemmy
Lakawa, Indonesian theologian and WCC Executive Committee member;
Metropolitan Elias Audi, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch
and All the East, Lebanon; and Jean Zaru, presiding clerk,
Religious Society of Friends, Ramallah, Palestine.

Accompanying the team were the Rev. Kathryn Bannister, moderator
of the US Conference for the World Council of Churches and WCC
president for North America; Georges Lemopoulos, acting general
secretary of the WCC; and Jean S. Stromberg, executive director,
US Office of the WCC.

For more information, please contact Philip E. Jenks,
CommunicationsOfficer, US Office, World Council of Churches, 475
Riverside Drive, Room 915, New York, NY 10115, Tel.:  (+1)
212-870-3193

**********
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a fellowship of churches,
now 342, in more than 100 countries in all continents from
virtually all Christian traditions. The Roman Catholic Church is
not a member church but works cooperatively with the WCC. The
highest governing body is the assembly, which meets approximately
every seven years. The WCC was formally inaugurated in 1948 in
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Its staff is headed by general
secretary Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church in Germany.

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