News Briefs

Episcopal News Service. August 28, 2002 [2002-196-1]

WCC facing financially 'unsustainable' position

(ENI) The World Council of Churches (WCC) is in a "financially unsustainable position" and its central committee, meeting in Geneva until September 3, will have to take decisions to restore "financial stability," the committee was told.

Anders Gadegaard, on behalf of the WCC's finance committee, said the council's audited financial results for 2001 showed an operating deficit of $3.91 million. The WCC is the world's biggest church grouping, with a staff of about 180 at its Geneva headquarters.

The preliminary report of the finance committee placed the blame for poor financial results in 2001 on a shortfall in investment results, a decrease in contributions and on a one-time cost of an early retirement program for departing staff. The report said the Geneva meeting would have to make decisions that would reshape the council in terms of its organizational setup and activities. "Management has exhausted possibilities to decrease costs within the current structure," the report stated.

Michiel Hardon, the WCC's income monitoring and development manager, said many WCC-member churches were facing financial difficulties, including cuts in budgets and staff, and that competition from other ecumenical agencies for funding had increased. The fall in stock markets had affected the WCC both directly and indirectly through its effects on the finances of member churches.

WCC warned of link between globalization and violence

(ENI) Leaders of the main governing body of the world's largest grouping of Christian churches expressed concerns on August 26 about how the blind acceptance of market principles can exclude many people in the process of globalization. The meeting of the central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) began in Geneva as the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development was starting in Johannesburg.

By submitting all relationships in society to the logic of the market, globalization can break up communities and exclude large numbers of people from participation, WCC general secretary Konrad Raiser said in his opening remarks to the central committee in Geneva. "The brutal shock of 11 September has suddenly revealed that in a situation of globalization even the seemingly powerful who are enjoying the benefits of economic globalization are vulnerable," Raiser said. "For a short while after the events of 11 September there was the vain hope that the shock might lead to recognizing and acknowledging the fundamental condition of mutual vulnerability and thus might become an incentive for new forms of co-operation and solidarity."

But, he went on, "the response on the part of people and governments in the powerful industrialized countries has instead been to demand increased security against the threats of terrorism… Where both sides in a conflict consider themselves to be victims of the violence and aggression of the other we enter the vicious circle of violence and counter-violence which justify each other mutually," said Raiser. "The violent confrontation of Israel and Palestine provides the most dramatic evidence of this condition."

"It would be an obvious over-simplification to establish a direct and causal link between the impact of economic globalization and the emergence of international terrorism," Raiser said. Still, he noted, vulnerability as a consequences of poverty, disease, unemployment and violence was condemning more and more people to a "perennial experience of victimization under the domination of powerful forces beyond their control…It is this generalized sentiment of being condemned to the status of victims which in turn is being exploited by those who engage in acts of terrorism," said Raiser.

New Anglican head in Kenya opposed to abortion and homosexuality

(ENI) Bishop Benjamin Nzimbi, who will be consecrated as the new head of the Anglican church in Kenya on September 22, is socially conservative and known to be vehemently opposed to homosexuality and abortion.

Currently bishop of Kitui diocese in eastern Kenya, Nzimbi, unlike his predecessor, Archbishop David Gitari, does not have a reputation for being politically outspoken.

Nzimbi was declared the new Anglican archbishop on August 16 after a two-thirds majority vote in an election which took place at Nairobi's All Saints Cathedral. After his election, Nzimbi told ENI "any new ideas should be theologically sound. We want the church to be the church."

Like Archbishop Livingstone Mpalanyi-Nkoyoyo of neighboring Uganda, Nzimbi is vehemently opposed to homosexuality and abortion. "My leadership will follow the authority of the scriptures," he said in an ENI interview.

The new archbishop becomes the fourth head of the Anglican Church of Kenya and will be enthroned when Gitari formally retires in September. Married with five children, Nzimbi was first ordained in 1985 as the Bishop of Machakos, before moving to Kitui.

"I know I have a lot of challenges on the road ahead," he said.

Greek Orthodox official questioned in Israel, criticized by patriarchate

(ENI) Israeli police have questioned an official of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem on suspicion of supporting terror groups and illegally visiting countries hostile to the existence of Israel. Archimandrite Atallah Hanna, who has faced criticism from his patriarchate for his alleged remarks, claimed after his release from custody that his arrest had been unjustified as he had only expressed opposition to Israel's military occupation of areas claimed by the Palestinians.

"Our position is consistent and thorough," he said. "We will continue to support the Palestinians, until they gain their freedom. We are not terrorists or murderers; we are people who aspire to live in freedom and respect."

Hanna was taken from his home in the walled Old City of Jerusalem and was questioned on suspicion of having met with the leader of the militant Islamic group Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Narallah, during a recent visit to Lebanon. Hanna said his meetings with Sheikh Nasrallah had taken place in the context of a conference on Christian-Muslim religious dialogue. He is also suspected by Israeli police of calling on Palestinian Christians to join the uprising against Israel, which began in September 2000. In a recent article in Gulf News, a newspaper published in Dubai, he is quoted as supporting suicide bombings.

"Some freedom fighters adopt martyrdom or suicide measures. But all these measures serve the continued Intifada [Palestinian uprising] for freedom. Therefore, we support all these casualties," the newspaper quoting him as saying in a speech in Dubai. The newspaper also identified him as an official spokesman for the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.

In an official statement, however, the Greek Patriarchate in Jerusalem denied that he was a spokesman for the church. The statement said that Hanna was a clerk in the Arabic department of the patriarchate's secretariat. Bishop Aristorchus, a spokesman for the patriarchate, said the church did not agree with Hanna's statements reported in the newspaper, nor had it granted permission for him to travel to Syria and Lebanon. Israeli police spokesman Gil Klieman said Hanna held Israeli citizenship and was not allowed to visit Lebanon and Syria, with whom Israel is technically still at war.

Churches celebrate pioneering work of Lausanne conference 75 years ago

(ENI) Church leaders gathered August 25 to mark the 75th anniversary of the first World Conference on Faith and Order that took place in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1927.

That meeting has been described as literally the first time since Christendom began to be divided that official representatives of churches discussed divisive questions of doctrine in an effort to learn rather than simply to dispute. It paved the way alongside other church unity efforts for the foundation in 1948 of the World Council of Churches (WCC).

Metropolitans, bishops and priests were among the WCC leaders and local Christians from all major denominations who crowded into the city's cathedral for an ecumenical service to mark the anniversary. In a simple ceremony at the Lausanne cemetery, WCC representatives laid a wreath on the grave of Charles Henry Brent, a U.S. Episcopal bishop who was the moving force behind the Lausanne conference and died in 1929 during a visit to the city.

Today the WCC has 342 member churches from around the world from all mainstream traditions--Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox--with the exception of the Roman Catholic Church, which has nevertheless been a full member since 1968 of the WCC's Faith and Order Commission.

One of the major achievements of Faith and Order was the production 20 years ago of a key text on "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry"--three of the main doctrinal issues that separate churches. With at least 12 million copies produced in some 30 languages, the text led to hopes of an imminent ecumenical advance, and some were disappointed when there was no spectacular breakthrough. But the church landscape "has changed and is changing" as a result, according to Mary Tanner, a member of the Church of England and former moderator of the Faith and Order commission.

Tanner pointed to new rules in her church to allow eucharistic hospitality and shared ministry in the many local ecumenical partnerships in towns and villages in England. The Church of England had come into communion with Nordic and Baltic Lutheran churches and drawn closer to Lutheran and Reformed churches in Germany and France. Anglicans and Roman Catholics had reached "substantial agreement in faith," she said. "Each of these new relationships of communion, or closer fellowship on the way to visible unity, are based upon the fruits of the ecumenical conversations begun in Lausanne," she told the symposium.

New Westminster dissidents take case behind closed doors

(ACC) The normally public dealings of a group of Anglicans opposed to same-sex blessings in the Anglican Church of Canada's Diocese of New Westminster have moved behind closed doors on the say-so of a Texas priest.

From August 30 through September 3, the Anglican Communion in New Westminster (ACinNW), a coalition of eight parishes and 12 clergy who walked out of a June diocesan synod after hearing that same-sex blessings could go ahead in the diocese, will hold consultations with sympathetic foreign primates and bishops, but the meetings will be private.

Organizers say the only part of the gathering open to the press will be a September 1 celebration at a nearby Baptist church. They predict that more than 1,000 people, not only members of their coalition, will attend.

The Rev. Ed Hird, a spokesperson for the coalition, said in an interview that if it were up to him, the entire gathering would be open. Indeed, Hird's coalition has made public much of its correspondence with primates and bishops of the Anglican Communion, even before the diocesan synod.

It was not the coalition that which declared the consultations closed, but the Rev. Bill Atwood, a Texas priest and head of a conservative international mission organization called Ekklesia, whose membership is largely made up of conservative primates, archbishops and bishops. Atwood, who is serving as a booking agent of sorts for the primates, wrote in an e-mail, "The archbishops have not made a final decision about whether or not to have any press briefing, but I would be surprised if they do. The archbishops I know do not like to comment to the press about ongoing conversations."

Atwood, Hird, and the diocese all refused to name those who have confirmed that they will attend the gathering, but a Sunday bulletin insert for ACinNW parishes identified them as Archbishop Bernard Malango of the Province of Central Africa; Archbishop Yong Ping Chung of the Province of South East Asia; Bishop Peter Njenga, representing Archbishop David Gitari of Kenya; and Bishop Andrew Fairfield from North Dakota.

New Westminster bishop Michael Ingham is in Brazil and has not said if he will meet with the primates, who have requested a meeting. Anglican protocol dictates that bishops and primates do not enter each other's dioceses without an invitation or permission from the local bishop. That did not happen in this case.

Fort Worth boycotts provincial synod over same-sex blessings

(ENS) Bishop Jack Iker and the standing committee of the Diocese of Fort Worth have refused to join other members of Province VII for their annual synod in October because of Kansas bishop William Smalley's decision to authorize the blessing of relationships other than heterosexual marriage. Smalley is chair of Province VII, of which Fort Worth is a part.

"The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth and I want to express our alarm and dismay over your decision to authorize the blessing of same sex unions and of other persons living in 'committed relationships' other than marriage," Iker wrote in a letter dated August 19. "This decision repudiates the clear teaching of Holy Scripture, the witness of the Christian Tradition over the ages, and the mind of the Anglican Communion as expressed in the Lambeth Conference of 1998.

"Your decision is a serious departure from Christian faith and practice, which violates our communion as Christians. It is divisive and schismatic. By your action, you have seriously compromised our relationship with you, and we wish to go on record as repudiating this new policy. As a consequence of this, no representatives from this Diocese will be present for the Province VII Synod, which you are to Chair in October.

"We call upon you to rescind this action in the interest of preserving the peace and unity of our Church," the letter concluded.