Executive Council gets briefing on Ecuador's challenges
Episcopal News Service. February 13, 2008 [021308-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Members of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council February 12 heard from a government official, an academic and a Latin American church leader about the challenges facing Ecuador.
The briefing came after Council members, Church Center staff and their guests traveled earlier in the day to one of eight venues in and around Quito to learn about and briefly engage in the mission of the Diocese of Ecuador Central.
Augusto Saa, a minister in the office of the Ecuadorian Vice Chancellor, spoke to Council about Ecuador President Rafael Correa's plans for the country and the work he has already done to repay what Saa called the country's "social debt" to those whom he said previous Ecuadorian governments had marginalized. Saa said that marginalization came about despite the country's richness in natural resources.
"We are living in a very favorable moment," Saa said, adding that he believes there is the "political will" to change the way the government relates to people.
Dr. Hugo Arias, a professor at Universidad Politécnica del Litoral in Guayaquil, Ecuador and coordinator for Nacional de Jubileo 2000, painted a forceful picture of Ecuador's economic straits. He described a country burdened by both external and internal debt to the point where little money is left for social services for its 3.5 million people.
Its foreign debt is larger than its gross national product and Arias said the debt service on all Ecuador's debt is "unsustainable."
The Rev. Israel Batista, general secretary of the Latin American Council of Churches, praised Council for what he called the "very brave" and "prophetic" decision to leave the boundaries of the United States to hold its winter meeting.
Batista told Council members that among most faith communities -- and even among the U.S. presidential candidates -- there is "an awareness that this world cannot remain the same."
He said Ecuadorians "humbly" hear the candidates' call for change but he added that they have already seen changes in the ways the U.S. relates to the rest of the world. Batista noted what he called a "messianic" stance with which the U.S. approaches other countries while maintaining a desire to stay at home and keep tight control over its borders, and an ever-growing sense of individualism in the U.S. People from the U.S. used to come to countries like Ecuador to live and work among their citizens and "to suffer with us." Now, Batista said, the U.S. shows more of its corporate face.
"We want to relate to that noble American who will walk through our streets with us and who loves the same God we do in their temples," he said.
He said that churches must be prepared to respond creatively to the realties around it, noting the growth of the Christian church in the southern part of the world and the movement there from Roman Catholicism to Pentecostalism. Batista suggested that Ecuador could be a model of how to live in the growing pluralism of the world, adding that work towards creating that model "will always be deficient" without the Episcopal Church's involvement especially because of the growing Hispanic population in the U.S. and the subsequent movement of people back and forth.
Batista, a Methodist minister who said he was "trembling" in the face of a request to say more about the Episcopal Church's future role, said all churches must "formulate brave questions" because "if we do not ask ourselves brave questions, we will not progress."
Batista said that whenever he thinks of the Episcopal Church's roots he has a "sense of hope" about the future. He suggested to Council that the Episcopal Church needs to promote the "wealth of your liturgy" during a time when people -- including those who leave the Roman Catholic Church in search of a better way to express their faith -- are looking for ritual. The Episcopal/Anglican sense of a communion where lay members participate in the governance of the church while the ordained orders are maintained can be attractive to people, he said.
While the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church have had difficulty recently acknowledging their diversity and working for consensus within that diversity, Batista said "I would not like to judge, but this is not Anglican to fight" about such things. He said the Episcopal Church traditionally "opens a wide space" by living in its diversity. He added that resolving diversity issues is especially important at a time when the world is seeking alternative ways of being and beginning to acknowledge that "there are no single answers."
Finally, he said, Anglicans and Episcopalians must both practice their traditional ministry of reconciliation to end their divisions and return to what he called the "essential agenda" of mission.
The February 12 session was conducted primarily in Spanish and translated into the English. The first language of the majority of Council members and staff is English and, typically, proceedings are conducted in English and translated simultaneously into Spanish, and Spanish-speaking Council members have their remarks translated into English. Those who needed Spanish-English translation wore wireless headsets in order to hear the simultaneous translation.
The Executive Council carries out the programs and policies adopted by the General Convention, according to Canon I.4 (1)(a). The council is composed of 38 members, 20 of whom (four bishops, four priests or deacons and 12 lay people) are elected by General Convention and 18 (one clergy and one lay) by provincial synods, plus the Presiding Bishop and the president of the House of Deputies.