wfn.org | Episcopalians: News Briefs

[dmack@episcopalchurch.org]

July 23, 2003

2003-165

Episcopalians: News Briefs

General Convention's World Mission Vision Roundtable set for 
August 2

(ENS) "Mission in Communion: A Roundtable on 'Companions in 
Transformation', the World Mission Vision Statement," is 
scheduled for 3-5 p.m. on Saturday, August 2, at St. Mark's 
Cathedral in Minneapolis.  The event is hosted by the General 
Convention's Standing Commission on World Mission, St. Mark's 
Cathedral, and the Diocese of Minnesota.

This is an opportunity for General Convention attendees to hear 
and share observations about the world mission vision statement 
that the standing commission is presenting to the 2003 General 
Convention.  Entitled, "Companions in Transformation: The 
Episcopal Church's World Mission in a New Century," the 
statement is available at the General Convention website and in 
published form in a booklet of that title from Morehouse 
Publishing.  Two General Convention resolutions ask for action 
on the vision statement.

A panel of distinguished world mission activists will open the 
gathering with brief assessments of the statement, followed by 
general discussion. Among the panelists are Bishop Mano 
Rumalshah, general secretary of the United Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel and bishop of Peshawar, Pakistan; the 
Rev. Patrick Mauney, director of Anglican and Global Relations 
at the Episcopal Church Center; Edwina Thomas, executive 
director of Sharing of Ministries Abroad; the Rev. John 
Kanyikwa, general secretary of the Council of Anglican Provinces 
in Africa; the Rev. Ian Douglas, professor of mission and world 
Christianity, Episcopal Divinity School and member of the 
Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism; 
and the Rev. Tad de Bordenave, executive director of Anglican 
Frontier Missions; among others.

The vision of "Companions in Transformation" highlights both the 
opportunities for discovering the gospel through Christians in 
the Global South and the need to witness to Christ with people 
with little or no gospel exposure.  Modes of mission are 
explored, and practical initiatives are proposed to renew the 
church's global engagement. 

The 3-4:30 discussion will be followed by a reception on the 
lawn of the cathedral.	

Somali church leader concerned about situation of Christians

(ENI) Leaders of Somalia's small Christian community attending 
talks in Nairobi have expressed concern about the plight of 
Christians in their troubled country.

"We live in constant fear. We have very little rights, since 
people believe that there are no Christians in Somalia," said 
Peter Ahmed Abdi, leader of the Mogadishu Pentecostal Church, 
who is also chairman of the tiny Somali Christian community.

Leaders and warlords of more than 20 fighting factions, as well 
as traditional and religious leaders such as Abdi, have gathered 
in the Kenyan capital for the Somali National Reconciliation 
Conference sponsored by the Inter-Governmental Authority on 
Development, which comprises countries in East Africa and the 
Horn of Africa. They are trying to reach agreement on an interim 
government for Somalia.

Somalia slid into anarchy without a stable government after the 
overthrow of the Siad Barre regime in 1991. The breakaway, 
self-proclaimed independent Republic of Somaliland in the 
northern part of the country is not recognised by any 
government.

Somali Christians were demanding the right to worship and 
assemble, to move freely and to have political representation, 
said Abdi, who was accompanied in the talks by two Roman 
Catholics. He said he had been shouted down at the conference by 
Muslim delegates, who had insisted Somalia had no Christians.

Somalia's few Christians are being oppressed and living in fear 
of being killed, Abdi said. "We do not walk openly proclaiming 
our faith because we can be assassinated anytime. We pray on 
Fridays in Somalia just like [Muslims], since they will not 
allow us to attend church on Sunday." Church structures erected 
in colonial times and shortly after the country's independence 
have collapsed.

Somalia is virtually 100 per cent Muslim, according to the World 
Christian Encyclopedia, with only about 200 Somali Catholics and 
small groups of Protestants associated with Mennonite 
missionaries and the Sudan Interior Mission. "We are calling on 
Christians from all over the world to help [rebuild] our 
churches," said John Muktar, a Somali Roman Catholic. 

Uniting Church in Australia accepts homosexual clergy  

(ENI) Homosexual clergy have been formally recognized in the 
Uniting Church in Australia in a landmark vote that ends a long 
battle over the issue.

The vote by an overwhelming majority of the church's delegates 
on 17 July at the national church assembly in Melbourne 
formalizes the acceptance of gay and lesbian clergy living in 
committed same-sex relationships. The church has informally 
accepted them for some time.

The issue has been at the forefront of debate since 1997, when 
the Rev. Dorothy McRae McMahon resigned from her position as the 
church's national director for mission after informing the 
assembly that she was a lesbian.

Following her move, the 1997 assembly voted that it was possible 
for people within the church to hold opposing views on 
sexuality. The new president of the Uniting Church in Australia, 
the Rev. Dean Drayton, described last week's vote as 
"clarifying" the earlier decision.

Acceptance of homosexual clergy will not be forced on 
congregations across Australia. Rather, individual parishes will 
be able to make choices on a case-by-case basis.

After the vote, McMahon said it was inevitable that the church 
would eventually move to the blessing of same-sex relationships. 
"When the church appears to be less inclusive, less 
compassionate, than the community, then I believe that we must 
at least stop and reflect on that," she said. "We often discuss 
homosexuality as though it is primarily about sex. I want to say 
it is primarily about love. It is about a God whose imagination 
and variety may well extend far beyond our understanding," she 
said.

However, conservative evangelicals have threatened to split from 
the church and form their own church.

The assembly's decision may also threaten continuing discussions 
about a merger between the Uniting Church and the Anglican 
Church. The Sydney Anglican diocese, which has been particularly 
outspoken in opposing the ordination of Anglican gay priests, 
has issued a statement expressing "grave concern" about the 
Uniting Church move.

Mary Hawkes, a spokeswoman for the Uniting Church's conservative 
lobby group, said a full-blown church division was likely. She 
claimed she knew up to 3,000 people in one state alone who would 
split from the church over the issue.

The Uniting Church was formed in 1977 as a union of the 
Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian churches and is the 
country's third-largest Christian denomination, with 300,000 
members and a total of 1.3 million Australians professing an 
association. 

Anglican and Presbyterian numbers leap in Ireland  

(ENI) The Anglican and Presbyterian churches in the Republic of 
Ireland have recorded their first increases in support since at 
least 1881, according to a government census.

Over the past decade, the (Anglican) Church of Ireland grew by 
30 per cent, to 115,611, and Presbyterians jumped by 56 per 
cent, to 20,582. Both figures, disclosed in the 2002 Irish 
national census published this year, easily outstripped 
population growth.

"Some of the growth we believe is from Roman Catholics 
converting to Anglicanism," Brian Parker, spokesman for the 
Church of Ireland, told ENI. "Paedophile scandals have had an 
effect among Catholics, and some, particularly young people, 
feel a general discontent at the conservative edge of the 
[Catholic] leadership."

Parker said the Anglican membership figures had benefited from a 
new census entry, "Church of Ireland/Protestant," which included 
Protestants without a denominational allegiance.

The Central Statistics Office in Dublin says immigration is an 
important factor in the growth of the main Protestant faiths. 
Throughout the 1990s Ireland enjoyed one of the European Union's 
most buoyant economies and was known as the "Celtic Tiger."

The London-based Church Times newspaper quoted a call by the 
Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, John Neill, for greater efforts 
by Irish Anglicans to welcome newcomers.

Stephen Lynas, spokesperson for the Presbyterian Church in 
Ireland, said the church's growth was mainly due to the arrival 
of asylum-seekers, particularly from West Africa and Asian 
countries. "Congregations say they have greatly enriched 
worship," he told ENI.

Ireland--excluding six counties in the north, which are part of 
the United Kingdom--remains an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic 
country. But support for Catholicism has slipped from 91.6 per 
cent of the population in the 1991 census to 88.4 per cent in 
2002. Ireland has a population of about 3.6 million.

Both the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Church in 
Ireland have most of their support in the six northern counties, 
which became Northern Ireland in 1922 when the rest of the 
country achieved independence from Britain. Census returns show 
that the previous decline of the two main Protestant 
denominations in the mainly Catholic south had begun decades 
before independence.

US churches join presidential drug prevention campaign	

(ENI) The National Council of Churches (NCC) and other US 
religious groups are joining a campaign by the administration of 
President George W. Bush to prevent drug abuse among young 
people.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy and the White House 
Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives worked with 
members of the US faith community to develop a Web site and a 
series of publications entitled "Pathways to  Prevention: 
Guiding Youth to Wise Decisions."

"Faith plays an important role when it comes to teen marijuana 
prevention," said John Walters, director of National Drug 
Control Policy, at a 10 July news conference. He urged youth 
ministers, volunteers and religious leaders to integrate drug 
prevention messages into youth programs and sermons.

The campaign materials, adapted for many faiths, respond to a 
need not being met, officials from the office of the president 
and Christian, Islamic and Jewish leaders said at the news 
conference held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. 
Administration officials said clergy were enormously influential 
in such matters, but that often they did not have the tools to 
discuss drug- and substance-abuse related issues with young 
people.

"The reality is a lot of people don't know how to talk about 
these issues," said Jim Towey, the director of the White House 
Office of Faith-Based and  Community Initiatives.

Brenda Girton-Mitchell, the NCC's associate general secretary 
for public policy, and a one-time Sunday School teacher, was 
often asked by her students about drugs. She did not know how to 
respond, in part because she didn't know what her students' 
parents were telling them. "I often prayed for the right words 
to say and looked to Scriptures," she said.

Despite some disagreements with the Bush administration on a 
number of issues, most recently in opposing the US-led war in 
Iraq, the NCC has supported elements of the administration's 
"faith-based initiative" program under which US religious groups 
are being asked to expand their role in providing social 
services and to work with the administration on a number of 
issues. 

Victims of Zimbabwe's political violence to get counseling from 
churches  

(ENI) Zimbabwe's main church bodies have launched a project to 
heal victims of the politically motivated violence that has 
plagued the southern African nation for the past three years.

The Rev. Patson Netha, a member of the project's organizing 
committee, said the venture seeks to promote "national healing 
and reconciliation" by counseling survivors and other people 
traumatized by the violence.

The project is sponsored by the United Nations Development 
Programme (UNDP) and supported by the Evangelical Fellowship of 
Zimbabwe (EFZ), Zimbabwe Council of Churches and Zimbabwe 
Catholic Bishops' Conference.

"We have various cases of people who have been brutalized, 
maimed or killed with nothing being done," Netha, a former 
executive secretary of the EFZ, told the independent Daily News.

"Some of the victims know the people who killed their loved 
ones, and they are silently seeking revenge. As church bodies, 
we have to start building relationships from there, and the best 
way forward is the national healing process," he said.

Netha said leaders of various Christian denominations had 
already started attending training courses in counseling and 
would be deployed to their respective communities to assist 
those who had suffered directly or indirectly as a result of 
politically encouraged violence.

Bishop Trevor Manhanga, the president of the EFZ, confirmed to 
ENI at the end of June that he had been invited to participate 
in the project, which he said was "still in its infancy."

Zimbabwe has been sliding towards anarchy since February 2000, 
when bands of veterans of the country's 1970s liberation war 
launched a series of farm invasions. They targeted properties of 
white commercial farmers whom they accused of inciting 
Zimbabweans to reject a proposed constitution drafted by a 
commission hand-picked by President Robert Mugabe.

The draft had a clause allowing the government to seize selected 
commercial farms without compensating the owners. From the 
commercial farms, the militants--whose numbers were swelled by 
graduates drafted from national youth service training 
camps--turned their violence on opposition supporters and 
perceived enemies of the government.

The militants have been blamed in reports by human rights and 
other non-governmental organizations for the deaths of at least 
160 people and displacement of thousands of others since 
mid-2000. 

------