Entries Tagged as ''

Elie Wiesel on Darfur

Remarks delivered by Elie Wiesel at the Darfur Emergency Summit, convened at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York on July 14, 2004, by the American Jewish World Service and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.Sudan has become today’s world capital of human pain, suffering and agony. There, one part of the population has been - and still is - subjected by another part, the dominating part, to humiliation, hunger and death. For a while, the so-called civilized world knew about it and preferred to look away. Now people know. And so they have no excuse for their passivity bordering on indifference. Those who, like you my friends, try to break the walls of their apathy deserve everyone’s support and everyone’s solidarity. Sudan has become today’s world capital of human pain, suffering and agony. There, one part of the population has been - and still is - subjected by another part, the dominating part, to humiliation, hunger and death. For a while, the so-called civilized world knew about it and preferred to look away. Now people know. And so they have no excuse for their passivity bordering on indifference. Those who, like you my friends, try to break the walls of their apathy deserve everyone’s support and everyone’s solidarity.This gathering was organized by several important bodies. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience (Jerry Fowler), the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the American Jewish World Service (Ruth Messinger) and several other humanitarian organizations.

As for myself, I have been involved in the efforts to help Sudanese victims for some years. It was a direct or indirect consequence of a millennium lecture I had given in the White House on the subject, “The Perils of Indifference”. After I concluded, a woman in the audience rose and said: “I am from Rwanda.” She asked me how I could explain the international community’s indifference to the Rwandan massacres. I turned to the President who sat at my right and said: “Mr. President, you better answer this question. You know as well as we do that the Rwanda tragedy, which cost from 600,000 to 800,000 victims, innocent men, women and children, could have been averted. Why wasn’t it?” His answer was honest and sincere: “It is true, that tragedy could have been averted. That’s why I went there to apologize in my personal name and in the name of the American people. But I promise you: it will not happen again.”

The next day I received a delegation from Sudan and friends of Sudan, headed by a Sudanese refugee bishop. They informed me that two million Sudanese had already died. They said, “You are now the custodian of the President’s pledge. Let him keep it by helping stop the genocide in Sudan.”

That brutal tragedy is still continuing, now in Sudan’s Darfur region. Now its horrors are shown on television screens and on front pages of influential publications. Congressional delegations, special envoys and humanitarian agencies send back or bring back horror-filled reports from the scene. A million human beings, young and old, have been uprooted, deported. Scores of women are being raped every day, children are dying of disease hunger and violence.

How can a citizen of a free country not pay attention? How can anyone, anywhere not feel outraged? How can a person, whether religious or secular, not be moved by compassion? And above all, how can anyone who remembers remain silent?

As a Jew who does not compare any event to the Holocaust, I feel concerned and challenged by the Sudanese tragedy. We must be involved. How can we reproach the indifference of non-Jews to Jewish suffering if we remain indifferent to another people’s plight?

It happened in Cambodia, then in former Yugoslavia, and in Rwanda, now in Sudan. Asia, Europe, Africa: Three continents have become prisons, killing fields and cemeteries for countless innocent, defenseless populations. Will the plague be allowed to spread?

“Lo taamod al dam réakha” is a Biblical commandment. “Thou shall not stand idly by the shedding of the blood of thy fellow man.” The word is not “akhikha,” thy Jewish brother, but “réakha,” thy fellow human being, be he or she Jewish or not. All are entitled to live with dignity and hope. All are entitled to live without fear and pain.

Not to assist Sudan’s victims today would for me be unworthy of what I have learned from my teachers, my ancestors and my friends, namely that God alone is alone: His creatures must not be.

What pains and hurts me most now is the simultaneity of events. While we sit here and discuss how to behave morally, both individually and collectively, over there, in Darfur and elsewhere in Sudan, human beings kill and die.

Should the Sudanese victims feel abandoned and neglected, it would be our fault - and perhaps our guilt.

That’s why we must intervene.

If we do, they and their children will be grateful for us. As will be, through them, our own.

Tags: Peace, Politics, News by Administrator
No Comments »

Eritrea’s Ancient Church Weather’s Modern Pressures

by Peter Martell Wed Apr 25, 2:53 AM ET 

DEBRE BIZEN, Eritrea (AFP) - Wrapped in white blankets against the chill air at an all-night vigil, Eritrean Orthodox monks sway slowly as they chant.

The community of around 200 men lead an austere life hardly changed since the Debre Bizen monastery was founded some 650 years ago. They keep a low profile in a country where religion is a delicate matter.

“Life here is simple,” said one monk staring at clouds, silver in the moonlight, floating far below the community’s scattered collection of simple stone dormitories.

The site, which lies east of the capital Asmara on a rocky peak 2,400 metres (7,920 feet) high, can be reached only by a breathtaking two-hour climb up narrow and twisting paths.

“We devote our time to prayer, to God. We are kept busy with that, we are happy and are at peace,” he said.

The government says it wants to keep national unity in this country of about 4.2 million, split equally between Muslims and Christians, and people are reluctant to talk about religion — even at this remote outpost.

But human rights groups and opposition reports say all is not well in the ancient Church, which was established in Eritrea in the fourth century.

Patriarch Abune Antonios, named the Church’s leader in 2004, was removed from his post in January last year.

The human rights group Amnesty International attributes his removal to his criticism of alleged state interference in church activities, including a crackdown on several evangelical Christian movements popular with some young Eritreans.

But the government dismissed the allegations, saying it was an internal Church matter.

Eritrea has reacted angrily to human rights organisations, which regularly accuse authorities here of religious persecution particularly against unregistered evangelical congregations.

A US State Department report last month branded Eritrea as a “country of particular concern” over the “government’s continuing severe violation of religious freedom,” including what it said were the arrests of hundreds of worshippers.

Asmara denounces such reports as “fabrications” and “childish plots by colonialists” using religious issues to “create division and conflict” in a bid to weaken the country.

The information ministry recently singled out Washington in a caustic editorial, posted on the ministry’s website, saying “the US’s daily pretentious cry for religious freedom is nothing but a means to establish political domination and subordination by creating division among peoples…”

The ministry also slammed what it said was a bid “to defile religion by using it as a political tool to satisfy one’s own gluttony.”

Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu himself angrily dismissed claims last December that the government had wrested financial control away from the Church as “rubbish.”

He rejected a US State Department report that Church offerings now go into a state-controlled fund — from which the priests’ salaries are then paid — and that Church leaders must now perform military and national service, from which they were formerly exempt.

Amnesty meanwhile says that Abune, still recognised as the legitimate Church head by the Coptic Orthodox headquarters in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, has been held under house arrest since January. A recent statement by the human rights watchdog expressed concern about the health of 79-year-old cleric.

This followed a statement posted on an opposition website in February charging that three security officers and two priests had forcibly stripped Abune of his chain and sceptre, symbols of his spiritual authority. The statement was allegedly signed by monks, priests and deacons of the Orthodox Church.

“We have been following the sad developments in our Church and the suffering of His Holiness for the sake of his faith and the Church he loves so much,” it read.

The patriarch’s failure to pronounce the Easter benediction earlier this month on the most solemn day in the Church calendar raised eyebrows. The blessing was given instead by Abune Dioskoros, whom the state-run media described as a “senior religious leader.”

In the quiet of Debre Bizen, such earthly concerns seem far away and monks insist they know nothing about the allegations.

“I don’t want to talk about that, I don’t know anything about it,” said a young novice nervously, carrying a Bible in a cloth bag by his side.

Prayer dominates life in the monastery, which lies above the town of Nefasit, 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of Asmara, and is accessible only to men.

In a small dining room lined with portraits of past spiritual leaders, monks preparing a simple supper look forward to the future.

“Eritrea had to suffer for many years in the fight to be free,” said one monk laying out the traditional injera, a sour flat bread, on a communal plate.

“There was much hardship, but the monastery never closed. Life is still not easy, but the church goes on.”

Tags: Peace, Politics, Discipleship, News by Administrator
No Comments »

Boom in Christianity reshapes Methodists

 By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer

 The United Methodist Church is the latest Protestant group caught in the shifting currents of world Christianity. While the American denomination is shrinking at home, its congregations in the developing world are growing explosively.

Over the last decade, the number of United Methodists outside the U.S. more than tripled. The denomination’s largest district is now in the West African nation of Ivory Coast. At the next national church assembly, the 2008 General Conference in Texas, overseas delegates will have more say than ever in the church’s future — as many as 30 percent could come from abroad.

“Trends suggest that Christianity is going to continue to grow as a global phenomenon, and denominations that have thought of themselves as being predominantly North American in character are going to have to get over that,” said William Lawrence, dean of the Perkins School of Theology, a Methodist seminary in Dallas.

Nearly 8 million United Methodists are now in the U.S., with another 3.5 million church members overseas. The denomination is the third-largest in the nation behind Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists, and middle-class worshippers mostly fill the pews of its American churches.

But if current patterns continue, within decades the typical United Methodist will be from Africa. While international congregations expand, the denomination’s U.S. ranks have decreased by 19 percent since the 1970s.

In a sign of the times, the United Methodist high court, called the Judicial Council, will hold a session in the Philippines on Wednesday. It will be the first gathering outside the U.S.

Many in the mission-minded church see the new overseas ties as a gift. Yet as the experience of other Protestant groups indicates, there also is conflict ahead. Christians overseas have been deeply influenced by the zeal of the missionaries who brought them the faith. In the developing world, traditional Bible teachings aren’t questioned — they’re accepted.

As United Methodists debate how they should interpret Scripture on issues from salvation to sexual orientation, delegates from overseas will be a steadfast conservative voice in the fight.

“You definitely see among the African delegations a much more conservative perspective on issues of homosexuality,” said retired United Methodist Bishop C. Dale White, a liberal who oversaw publication of the book “United Methodism at Risk: A Wake-Up Call,” which contends that conservative groups are trying to take control of the denomination.

“In the past two General Conferences, we’ve seen a readiness of conservative American delegates to make common cause with the African delegates who very sincerely believe that in their context, if the United Methodist Church is open to ordaining gay and lesbian people, that it will hurt their outreach there,” White said.

A similar dynamic is eroding the 77 million-member world Anglican Communion, the loose association of churches that traces its roots to the Church of England.

The fellowship was once dominated by its liberal-leaning European and North American provinces, including the U.S. Episcopal Church. But these days, the communion’s biggest and fastest-growing churches — by far — are conservative and African. The 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, caused an uproar that threatens to break up the Anglican family.

Tensions over sexuality are far less acute in United Methodism. Still, advocates for full inclusion of gays and lesbians have been challenging the church’s ban on ordaining “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals” at national policy meetings for the last three decades.

“I do think that the world Anglican Communion and what’s happening with the Episcopal Church in America — that whole dynamic can teach United Methodism,” said Maxie Dunnam, chancellor of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., who has worked extensively with Methodists overseas. “The issue is how we’re going to understand ourselves as a world church.

“How rigid are we going to be with defining who we are?”

Through a spokesman, United Methodist Bishop Benjamin Boni, head of the Ivory Coast Annual Conference, declined to be interviewed because of this week’s Judicial Council session.

The panel is taking up a technical issue that will determine the size of the Ivory Coast delegation to the next national church assembly, and Boni was concerned that commenting could be seen as trying to influence the ruling, his spokesman said.

But the impact of the Ivory Coast district on the United Methodists is clear. With about 700,000 members, it became the biggest United Methodist conference as soon as it joined the church in 2004, after years as an independent fellowship. Ivory Coast church leaders are so passionate about their faith that they send missionaries out to other African nations.

Last month, 14,000 Ivory Coast congregants filled a sports stadium in Abidjan for a service commemorating a partnership with United Methodists in Texas. An overflow crowd of about 3,000 listened from outside for the four hours of singing and prayer, according to Texas Bishop Janice Riggle Huie, who preached at the service.

“People were so hungry to hear the word of God,” Huie said. “Growth in the developing countries, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, will certainly outpace growth in the United States for a long time to come.”

Tags: Evangelism, News by Administrator
No Comments »