Entries Tagged as 'News'

Moratorium Blues

On Sunday, Archbishop Rowan Williams pleaded with the members of the Anglican communion to establish a moratorium (official or otherwise) on ordaining gay bishops. He is trying desperately to hold together two wings of a church which seem so desperate to rip themselves apart from one another.

The fact that his time as Archbishop has been utterly consumed by the question of gay bishops is a sign that his request will not be met. He is trying to hold together a monster that will probably not hold anymore.

The Anglican communion is forced in to pick between two options, both of which seem to be fundamentally good and true. On the one hand, all good Christians are commanded by God to not cause their brethren to stumble. This being the case, it makes sense not to ordain gay bishops, since not all the brethren have realized the truth that we are all God’s children and no qualified and called person should be deprived of the right to serve.

On the other hand, there are numerous Biblical injunctions which would indicate that homosexuality is against the will of God for human beings. While these passages are highly disputed by Christians of the right and left, there is no question that one can legitimately construe them to speak against any form of homosexuality.

So, both parts stand on the side of Biblical witness and the command of God against one who would oppose both. And there is the rub. This is one of those questions that will only be solved through the prayer of the people of God over a generation or two. As long as the people of God are committed to not putting in this time of reflection and meditation on the will of God (and there is every reason to believe many of the loudest Christians are not), we will err and err grievously.

Archbishop Williams ought not to have called for a moratorium on gay bishops. He should have called for the silence of know-it-all Christians and for an engagement with the loving Christ in prayer seeking guidance.

Tags: Prayer, Gay Rights, News by Administrator
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Evangelical Manifesto

This document was recently produced by a collection of prominent evangelical Christians. It is a fien summary of the evangelical Christian witness, with a refreshing mea culpa for the politicizing of Christian beliefs in America over the last few decades. It is nicely inclusive, while avoiding a watering down of the strong witness of the evangelical tradition. Check it out if you are interested…

http://www.evangelicalmanifesto.com/

Tags: Politics, Discipleship, Evangelism, News by Administrator
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The Work We Have Done…

 

The above picture was taken during the South Carolina Democrat primary which, as I write this, it going on still. I have little to say about this primary. In my capacity as a pastor and minister of the United Methodist Church I have not endorsed anyone and I am unsure that I will.

What I wanted to comment on was this simple little picture. Martin Luther King’s birthday was celebrated this past week. How far we have come! I know it is fashionable sometimes to lament that we have not come farther. But it is nice to sometimes take stock on how far we as a nation have come.

 This picture would not have been taken just a few decades ago. Half of South Carolina’s electorate is Black. The majority of poll workers are still White. And here we have a poll worker welcoming, greeting, and offering basic instructions to a voter. This in a state which only a few decades ago was considered an impregnable fortress of segregation and racist legislation.

We may need to do better, but we have also done well.

Tags: Politics, News by Administrator
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Poile Zedek

Congregation Poile Zedek is an Orthodox Ashkenazic synagogue located in New Brunswick, NJ. About ten years ago their beautiful synagogue was placed on the historical registry of New Jersey. They have wonderful people and a kindly rabbi. Every year, the put on a wonderful dinner for the poor in the area at Thanksgiving. In fact, their synagogue was originally founded as a mutual aid society and grew into their present congregation over the last hundred years or so.
 

This week, someone vandalized their cemetery, with 499 stones overturned, of which more than 50 will need to be replaced.
 

The police initially said that they were not considering this to be an act of anti-Semitism – which to me can only mean that they fail to take this event seriously in any way.
 

I know that New Brunswick is the home of Rutgers University and sometimes college kids get bored and do dumb things, but no one could have been ignorant of the fact that they were at the very least desecrating the graves of people who were beloved by the living. This is already long past unconscionable.
 

Still more, it is hard to believe that anyone who has grown to the age of maturity necessary to topple a gravestone can be ignorant that Jews have had a long history of being labeled “undesirable” in almost any place they have called home. If this was college students, they certainly would have been knowledgeable about the legacy of the Shoah, gulags, and ghettoes which litter the history of Western civilization.
 

But if somehow the persons who did this act where ignorant, then I would argue anti-Semitism is still a root cause of this event. The fact that a child has been allowed to come to some level of maturity and not know the great and evil deeds of our forbearers means that they are destined to repeat it, as the old adage goes. And in this much, the failure to teach the legacies of hate which we inherit, it a commitment to repeat them in the future. In this way, the ignorance of the youth betrays the legacy of hate or - what may be worse – indifference of us all.
 

Please pray of Congregation Poile Zedek, for their honored dead, and for the people who did this awful thing to these good people.

Tags: Politics, News by Administrator
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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
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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
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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
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South Hill UMC’s New Member

Rev. Barry Burkholder has finally - after two years - accepted the transfer of an openly gay person to the South Hill United Methodist Church in Virginia.

Said gentleman (his name is not known) applied for membership in 2005 after having worshipped there for a while, joined the choir and participated in other fellowship. When he asked to join the church, he was denied because he was gay. This decision was appealed to the bishop and annual conference. All told the then-pastor Edward H. Johnson to accept the man if he was willing to take the various oaths required for membership. Johnson then appealed these ruling all the way to the United Methodist Church’s version of the Supreme Court, called “The Judicial Council”. Much to everyone’s surprise, Johnson won. The Judicial Council ruled that a pastor, as the head of the congregation, had the right to accept or reject any membership application she or he may see fit. This ruling caused something of a fire-storm in the United Methodist Church, primarily among the bishops, clergy and lay leadership. While the UMC bars “open and practicing homosexuals” from becoming clergy or being appointed to churches, it has never made any such restriction for membership. In fact, the UMC has always had a very open and welcoming membership policy. For my own part, I believe that there were two miscarriages of justice in that case. The first is that a United Methodist minister was permitted to reject a man from membership to the church in spite of the fact that he could make every necessary vow. He was able to confess Jesus Christ as his savior, put is trust in His grace, and offer his loyalty to the universal church and the United Methodist Church. These have always been our criteria. We ask that everyone admit that they are a sinner before God and that they are working on their sin. We do not ask that a person delineate each and every sin, and that they even agree to what are sins and what are not. Methodists have always opposed gambling. I would be turning away many good Christian souls at the door if I rejected for membership every person who went to Atlantic City once in a while and thought there was nothing wrong with that. For that matter, I’d turn even more away if I rejected everyone who like a beer with a steak once in a while. We do not demand perfection. We demand a willingness to work on perfection.

The second miscarriage of justice was that the person was denied for being a person who our own theology claims is “a person of sacred worth” even in and as a practicing homosexual. The pastor thought that the theology of the church was not strict enough, rejected it in violation of his covenantal obligation to uphold the church’s teaching, and then claimed that a “person of sacred worth” is not worthy enough to be a self-professed disciple of Jesus Christ in communion with other such disciples.

That is mind boggling!
 

I offer a big and warm welcome to my new brother in Christ and within the connection of the United Methodist Church, whoever you are. In fact, I applaud you for sticking with it when you could have left, gone down the street, and found another church. Your commitment has made us better Christians.

Tags: Politics, Gay Rights, News by Administrator
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New Pastor Accepts Gay Member

Posted by North West Arkansas Online’s Morning News. Click here.

SOUTH HILL, Va. — The new pastor at a Methodist church that had barred a gay man from membership two years ago has reversed that decision and allowed the man to join.

The Rev. Barry Burkholder, the new leader of South Hill United Methodist Church, told the congregation to accept the man’s transfer from a Baptist church. The denomination has not released the name of the gay congregant.

The former pastor, the Rev. Edward H. Johnson, said in 2005 that he could not accept the man as a member because he would neither repent nor seek to change. Johnson has since been appointed pastor at another Virginia church, Dahlgren United Methodist Church.

The case led to a showdown in church courts between Johnson and the denomination’s Virginia Conference, which oversees congregations and pastors in the region.

The conference tried to bar Johnson from ministry for a year for his decision.

The Methodist Book of Discipline declares gay relationships “incompatible with Christian teaching,” and bars sexually active gays from ordination. However, the denomination has no rules on church membership for openly gay congregants. The mainline Protestant denomination advertises itself as an open and welcoming church.

Johnson appealed his punishment to the highest church court — the Judicial Council — and won. The high court concluded that pastors have the authority to decide who becomes a member of a local church and ordered Johnson reinstated to ministry.

Burkholder told United Methodist News Service last week that the gay man professed that Christ was his savior and that Jesus died for his sins, so he was ready to become a member of the church.

NOTE FROM ANDREW: The sixth paragraph “Methodist Book of Discipline” should read “United Methodist”, that being the actual name of the denomination.

Tags: Gay Rights, Discipleship, News by Administrator
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Churches Warned to Follow Campaign Rules

Posted by North West Arkansas Online’s Morning News. Click here.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A lawyer for the United Methodist Church is cautioning clergy against getting caught up in the presidential race as the 2008 election heats up.

The Internal Revenue Service has been warning churches and nonprofits that they risk losing their tax-exempt status by backing a candidate or engaging in partisan activism.

“Churches should take stands on appropriate issues, but it cannot be a substantial part of their ministry,” said Jim Allen, general counsel of the Methodist Council on Finance and Administration.

To protect themselves, Allen said congregations should not invite candidates to speak from the pulpit and avoid statements at any church function that could be interpreted as endorsing or opposing a candidate. Churches, however, are allowed to distribute voters education guides and encourage people to vote.

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