ECUMENICAL NEWS INTERNATIONAL

Ecumenical News International
News Highlights
News - June 2000

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Zimbabwean Catholic activist calls on Pope to excommunicate Mugabe

Harare (ENI). The former director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe (CCJP), Mike Auret, has called on Pope John Paul II to excommunicate Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, for condoning violence and the breakdown of the rule of law in this southern African country. President Mugabe is a practising Catholic. Mike Auret, who is now linked to an opposition political party, is one of the most prominent white Catholic laymen in Zimbabwe. News of his attempt to have Mugabe expelled from the church comes at a highly sensitive as general elections are to be held here on 24 and 25 June. Prayer has cut crime rate by 10 per cent, say Nottingham's Christians.
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London (ENI). Cooperation between police and churchgoers in an English city has cut the crime rate on a housing estate, thanks, it is claimed, to the power of prayer. The organisers of the Prayerwatch scheme in the deprived Arnold area of the English city of Nottingham have reported a 10 per cent drop in crime over
two years, against national trends. Remove 'jihad warriors' to give peace a chance, says Maluku churchman.
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Tomohon (ENI). A senior Protestant leader from the Indonesian province of Maluku - which has been troubled by 18 months of inter-religious strife - has warned that efforts to end the conflict are now at risk because of the arrival of thousands of Muslim volunteers who have vowed a jihad (holy war) against
Christians. Churches urge European Union to consider rights of new members.
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Geneva (ENI). Representatives of Europe's mainstream churches - Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox - have urged the European Union to consider the rights and cultures of potential new member states as the organisation prepares to expand, allowing central and east European countries to join. The appeal by members of French and pan-European Christian organisations was made in discussions with a high-ranking French government official, Pierre Moscovici, secretary of state for European matters in France's foreign affairs ministry, on 5 June. From 1 July France will hold the presidency of the European Union for six months.
News Highlights 13 June 2000
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Canada's UCC celebrates 75 years of ecumenical history

Vancouver (ENI). Seventy-five years ago, on 10 June 1925, Canada's Congregationalists, Methodists and Presbyterians merged to become the United Church of Canada (UCC). More than 8000 members from the three churches took part in the union service at Toronto's Mutual Street Arena. The three denominations had begun serious consultations in 1899. These were interrupted by the First World War, but resumed in 1921, when the General Council of Local Union churches in Western Canada - representing congregations that had already merged locally in many communities - also joined the talks. English Christians celebrate orthodoxy and the millennium Ecumenist tells churches to take stronger action against 'global capitalism'

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Hofgeismar, Germany (ENI). A former general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) has urged church leaders to speak out against the "unjust structures of global capitalism". Philip Potter, originally from Dominica, West Indies, and WCC general secretary from 1972 to 1984, also vigorously criticised the
ecumenical movement for failing to identify economic injustices, as well as for its "theological silence" on social issues in the 1990s. Potter was speaking at the start of "Colloquium 2000 on Faith - Theology - Economy: Churches and Social Movements facing Globalisation", organised by the WCC, the World Alliance of
Reformed Churches and a leading Roman Catholic agency, Pax Christi International.

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Africans warn that 'false gospel of prosperity' may displace churches

Hofgeismar (ENI). Leading African Christians have warned churches that they risk being displaced by new religious groups offering a "false gospel of prosperity" unless they provide "more credible forms of support" to local communities. "Mainstream churches are losing ground - people are worshipping at them in the morning, but going to the new preachers in the evening," said Baffour Amoa, of Ghana, who is secretary-general of the
Fellowship of Christian Councils of Churches of West Africa.
"Violence, corruption and moral degradation are on the rise, and this is a serious challenge to anyone brought up believing in good behaviour, love of neighbour and respect for the Ten Commandments. The young are no longer being nurtured on these values, and people no longer have time to teach them."

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Church leaders take a desert trek to bridge Australia's divisions

Melbourne (ENI). Leaders of nine Australian churches have completed a pilgrimage of reconciliation - a week-long 3000-kilometre bus trip to Australia's remote heart. The pilgrimage - described as a ''pilgrimage to the heart'' and a chance for a ''just reconciliation between races, cultures and churches'' - began on 4 June in the Australian capital, Canberra, where the nation's head of state, the governor-general, Sir William Deane, bid farewell to the pilgrims. The journey wound up seven days later at Uluru (formerly known as Ayer's Rock) with an ecumenical Pentecost service in Australia's massive central desert, with the Mutitjulu people, traditional owners of the rock, one of the most powerful symbols of the nation and of indigenous spirituality.
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Lutheran leader warns of risk of anti-globalisation protests world-wide

Turku (ENI). The president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), Bishop Christian Krause, today warned of the risk of world-wide protests by the losers in "so-called free trade and globalisation". Bishop Krause, from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brunswick, Germany, was speaking at a meeting in Turku,
Finland, of the LWF council, the organisation's governing body.
He referred to a meeting of the World Trade Organisation last December in Seattle, United States, where "militant crowds forced hundred-strong police contingents into the defensive, destroying part of the city centre of Seattle in protest against the plans of the international trade conference meeting there to liberalise
world trade still further".

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Sudden death of WCC editor shocks staff of Ecumenical Centre

Geneva (ENI). Marlin VanElderen, executive editor at the World Council of Churches and the author and editor of several key ecumenical books, died suddenly early on 12 June, at the age of 54. VanElderen, who was a member of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, joined the WCC as a consultant in the
Communication department in 1980. Later he became editor of the monthly magazine One World, and in 1994 he was appointed executive editor for all WCC publications. According to a WCC press release, "during his 18 years of service for the WCC, VanElderen was one of the key staff persons in interpreting the
work, the mission and the vision of the WCC. As managing editor of the WCC journal Ecumenical Review, he provided a platform of discussion to ecumenism world-wide. Countless WCC books and brochures owe their existence to his skills as a writer and editor."

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Academic denounces oppressive culture of 'having rather than being'

Hofgeismar (ENI). A leading ecumenist has warned that the expansion of "financial capitalism" risks generating a "major crisis" unless challenged effectively by churches and other social movements. "The process of the capitalist economy has aimed at subordinating all other interests. It has been a process of conquest by mainly bourgeois Western powers," said Julio de Santa Ana, a professor at the Ecumenical Institute, at Bossey,
near Geneva in Switzerland. "It aims at freedom, but imposes oppression. It aims at happiness, but creates pain and suffering.
It says it affirms life, but it brings death." The Uruguayan professor was addressing the international inter-faith Colloquium 2000 on "Faith - Theology - Economy: Churches and Social Movements facing Globalisation", sponsored by the World Council of Churches and World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and held in
Hofgeismar, Germany.
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As Christians celebrate Expo 2000, Tutu declares that evil will be defeated

Hanover (ENI). Christians had their own day at Hanover's Expo 2000 on 11 June when they celebrated "Pentecost- Day of the Christian Churches". To mark the event 1600 musicians from all over Germany provided music, along with a choir of 1500 singers, 800 of them from Hanover. The celebrations began with a Catholic service at the Expo's Christus-Pavilion, and in the evening South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Anglican) preached at an ecumenical service.

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Academic accuses 'neo-liberals' of abuse of biblical texts

Hofgeismar (ENI). A Bible scholar has urged Christians seeking "social justice against globalisation" to "return to the Bible" to strengthen their campaign. However, he warned that sacred texts were also being used increasingly by "neo-liberal theologians" to justify the expansion of "global capital" by multinational corporations. "All movements face phases of enthusiasm and decline, and we need to ask which sources can help us in the choices we have to make now," said Professor Bastiaan Wielenga, a Dutch-born theologian who is now based in India. "We all have certain ideological presuppositions which can be strengthened or weakened by biblical texts. But if our interest in the Bible is genuine, we can reach an understanding." The
professor, who teaches social analysis and biblical theology at a seminary in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, was speaking during "Colloquium 2000", an inter-faith meeting co-sponsored by the World Council of Churches and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches at Hofgeismar Evangelical Academy in Germany. [567 words, ENI-00-0239]

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Lutheran treasurer's final advice - rationalise international church work

Turku (ENI). The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) should "participate actively and strategically" in efforts to rationalise the work of international church organisations, according to the LWF's outgoing treasurer, Sigrun Mogedal. In a report presented today to a meeting of the LWF's council - the organisation's governing body - in Turku, Finland, Dr Mogedal said that such efforts were necessary because of the "overall resource constraints" facing many of the world's ecumenical and confessional organisations, and in order to offer a "credible witness".
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Singapore authorities detain bishop 'like a criminal'

Hofgeismar (ENI). An Indian bishop who was detained while in transit in Singapore on his way to an ecumenical colloquium in Germany believes the incident highlights a continuing disregard for human rights, as well as dangers facing Christians in parts of Asia. "This is typical of the rights violations prevalent in many Asian states today, who don't want opposition and won't allow freedom of speech," said Bishop George Ninan, secretary of the joint council of two of India's leading denominations, the churches of North and South India. "They treated me like a criminal and branded me a deportee, when I had merely asked to
visit the country for a few hours."
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Liberation theology 'regaining influence' despite Vatican criticism

Hofgeismar (ENI). More than a decade after being condemned by the Vatican, liberation theology is regaining its influence, according to some of the participants at an ecumenical gathering taking place in Germany.
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'We resist the idolatry of capital and the new religion of consumerism'

Hofgeismar (ENI). Christians from many denominations have appealed for alternatives to "globalised capitalism". These alternatives should strengthen democratic participation and ensure survival of the poor and marginalised. They also urged churches to support a "global coalition for economic justice and
faith" and to resist the "fundamentalist religious adherence to neo-liberalism". "The ideology of the free market captures and dominates all sectors of societies and all dimensions of people's lives, even our bodies and deepest desires," said a concluding declaration from "Colloquium 2000", an ecumenical meeting in
Germany. "The time has come for a radical change in the dominant economic system. The time has come for a committed process of committed recognition, education and confession regarding economic injustice and ecological destruction."
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