News Briefs
Episcopal News Service. October 7, 2002 [2002-227-1]
EDS' Lilly-funded program focuses on parishes in northern New England
(EDS) Episcopal Divinity School has been selected to receive a grant of $1,593,117 from the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment to participate in a national program called "Sustaining Pastoral Excellence." The EDS proposal calls for the development of a sustainable regional learning system that promotes excellence in Episcopal clergy in areas of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont in collaboration with the bishops of the three dioceses.
"Our vision of ministry is one of pastors providing excellent care derived from their own spiritual depth, supported by those who share responsibility for ministry in their congregations, connected to other excellent pastors, and sustained by access to quality lifelong learning opportunities," said Bishop Steven Charleston, president and dean of EDS. "Our goal is to design and offer a system of supports and learning opportunities that will nurture, sustain, and deepen pastoral excellence among all ordained and selected lay leaders who are part of ministry teams in rural and regional ministries in Northern New England's Episcopal ministries.
"This program has been designed after extensive assessment with the Episcopal pastors in these communities. Working closely with them, we will accelerate the growth of local teams that will ground the ministry in even the most isolated communities. In cooperation with the Episcopal dioceses of Northern New England, we will use existing networks to weave a new fabric of mission support across this region," Charleston said.
At the same time, the seminary's training and resources will be made available to these communities through creative new models of information. This layered approach to strengthening regional mission will be thoroughly evaluated at the end of the project and offered as a blueprint for effective ministry that other dioceses throughout the United States and Canada can replicate.
The EDS award is for a five-year period.
"This project will unite the dioceses of Northern New England in a bold and unique partnership with a distinguished seminary of the Episcopal Church and will address urgent needs in support of innovative avenues for fostering and sustaining pastoral excellence in rural and regional ministry in our dioceses," said Bishop Chilton R. Knudsen of Maine. "We are poised to move forward in this endeavor, and are pleased the Lilly Endowment shares our enthusiasm for this unique partnership in service to the church of tomorrow."
Diane Stanton leads Uganda women's conference
(ENS) Thousands of women from throughout sub-Saharan Africa will gather in Kampala, Uganda in mid-October for a two-day Anglican women's conference led by Diane Stanton, the wife of Dallas Episcopal bishop James M. Stanton.
"Focusfest 2002" will include seminars, workshops, plays and songs of praise. The theme of the conference is "Leadership in Conflict." Stanton leads a team of women leaders from the Dallas diocese and five missionaries from the Houston-based Episcopal Medical Missionary Foundation.
"This is an evangelical festival for women from Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Zaire and beyond," said Mrs. Allen Ssekkade, the wife of Namirembe bishop Allen Ssekkade. "It's an opportunity for African women to get together to refocus their spiritual lives."
Workshops include Forgiveness and Transformation, led by Dispute Mediation Services mediator Laura Allen: Rebuilding Broken Lives , led by UT-Southwestern Medical School professor Barbara Cambridge; Surrendering Ourselves to God, led by author and lay leader Dana Pope; Developing a Compassionate Heart, led by Dallas Episcopal urban ministries director the Rev. Diana Luck; and Developing a Missionary Heart, led by the EMMF team. Choir leader is Varita Michell. In addition to being the keynote speaker, Stanton will lead the conference's 18 delegate facilitators.
Prior to the conference, the group will visit a pygmy resettlement project in southwest Uganda that Diane Stanton began six years ago, when Batwa pygmies were forced from the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest homes by the Uganda government. The group will also visit Uganda Christian University. Stanton is also executive director of the Uganda Christian University Partners.
The Leadership in Conflict theme of FOCUSFEST 2002 is taken from 2 Corinthians, which is based upon the apostle Paul's letter to the often-conflicted church in Corinth.
"Our African sisters and brothers face many difficulties," Stanton said. "We want them to know how much we support them and share in their suffering."
Official Anglican web portal launched by the Anglican Consultative Council
(ACNS) A major expansion of the Anglican Communion web site, published by the Anglican Communion Office in London, was announced in September at the 12th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. The web site will become the official Anglican web portal and be a comprehensive source for news, photos, information, and educational resources and have links to other official Anglican web sites around the world.
ACC members gave the news an enthusiastic endorsement. The new portal will be available soon at www.anglicancommunion.org and is expected to improve the way information about the life and work of Anglicans is accessed on the worldwide web. Members and leaders in the church, the public and the media will be able to use the portal to locate or request information about the worldwide Anglican Communion and its 38 primarily national provinces with 70 million members.
Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, who presided at the portal launch, was praised and thanked by the Rev. Oge Beauvoir of Trinity Church, Wall Street, New York, as a model for Anglican leaders by the way he has used email and the web to stay in touch with issues and colleagues during his extensive travel and global ministry. Beauvoir said, "He has been a model by his avid and even experimental use of the internet as a tool for research and intercommunication in his own ministry."
James Rosenthal, director of communications for the Anglican Communion, said, "The web portal will allow us to provide much more than web pages. It will be the hub of a computer networking system on the internet that will offer online collaboration tools for church related committees and staff; private email based discussion groups for bishops and other leaders; and an enlarged online shop for books and materials about the life and mission of Anglicans."
This telecommunications initiative is being funded by a two year grant from the Parish of Trinity Church, Wall Street, New York City, in response to requests and consultations from and with web specialists and communication officers from Anglican provinces and dioceses, many of whom already are developing web sites in their parts of the world. They have cited the need for a coordinated and comprehensive web portal to represent and serve the Anglican Communion.
The Rev. Clement W. K. Lee from the Office of Communication in the Episcopal Church USA, and an adjunct staff member of the Anglican Communion Office, is convener of the working group developing the new portal. The group, doing most of its work online, includes Rosenthal and Christopher Took, from the Anglican Communion Office, the Rev. Joan Butler Ford (California), Dr. Dennis Johnson (Washington, DC), Tom Lopez (New Mexico), John Allen (New York), the Rev. Emmanuel Adekola (Abuja, Nigeria), and the Rev. Peter Moore (Gilgandra, Australia).
Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs in India march against religious hatred
(ENI) Christians leaders in New Delhi joined their Hindu, Sikh and Muslim counterparts in a peace march against the spread of hatred in the name of religion.
Church of North India Bishop Karam Masih and Roman Catholic Archbishop Vincent Concessao joined prominent national leaders for the final stretch of the five-day march which ended at Raj Ghat, the Mahatma Gandhi memorial, on October 2, a national holiday commemorating Gandhi's birthday.
Christian school children were among hundreds from schools in Delhi who walked a few kilometers carrying placards saying "Shed hatred" and "Let's keep Gandhi alive." Several dozen peace activists, a majority of them Hindu, marched the length of the 700-kilometer route, starting on September 27 near Ayodhya, a Hindu holy town. The march ended at the sacred flame at Raj Ghat, the spot where Gandhi was cremated.
Church of North India pastor Valson Thampu, one of the march organizers, told ENI: "At a time when the merchants of [ethnic hatred] are trying to divide the nation and polarize [religious] groups, our message is let us unite and not divide people in the name of God." The exploitation of religious sentiments for political gain, Thampu said, was "one of the greatest evils faced by Indian society now. That is why we decided to carry out this march." Thampu lamented, however, that the government of the state of Uttar Pradesh had refused permission to begin the march from Ayodhya itself--a town that had become a "symbol of the misuse of religion for divisive purposes" in recent years.
Thampu was referring to the meteoric rise of the ruling pro-Hindu BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) over the past decade after a massive campaign to build a large Hindu temple at a disputed religious site in the town of Ayodhya. That campaign culminated in the razing of a 16th-century Muslim mosque at the Ayodhya site in 1992 by Hindu zealots, who claimed it had been built after demolishing a Hindu temple on the site, believed to be the spot where Hindu deity Ram was born. The razing of the mosque led to nation-wide riots between Hindus and Muslims that left several thousands dead.
Trinity Commons to serve as spiritual center for downtown Cleveland
(ENS) A two-year, $9.8 million project to restore the campus of Cleveland's Trinity Cathedral and create an environmentally friendly spiritual, cultural and community oasis for downtown Cleveland is nearing completion. Trinity Commons, located at Euclid Avenue and East 22nd Street, will be dedicated November 8 as part of the 186th Annual Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio.
"We envision this landmark facility as a resource to be shared by everyone in the community," said Bishop J. Clark Grew II of Ohio. "Trinity Commons is more than a restoration and modernization of Trinity Cathedral's campus, although that part of the project was desperately needed. It also will serve as a vibrant center for cultural and artistic events as well as a comfortable gathering place for downtown Cleveland, the Quadrangle community and the nearby student population."
A joint venture of Trinity Cathedral and the Diocese of Ohio, Trinity Commons combines 56,000 square feet of renovated space in the Cathedral Hall, Parish House and diocesan Church House (the historic former Rorimer Brooks building) with 11,000 square feet of new construction. It includes meeting rooms, classrooms, offices, a youth hostel, an art gallery, green space and retail space. Cafe Ah-Roma, a privately owned coffee shop, and Sacred Path Books and Art, a diocese-run bookstore, will occupy storefronts facing Euclid Avenue.
The project was designed to preserve the architectural and historic quality of the cathedral while modernizing the building and enhancing the use of the surrounding property. The facility will be accessible to people with disabilities and will offer state-of-the-art audio-visual communications technology, including capabilities for distance learning and sharing of information with remote locations throughout the diocese.
PBS documentary tells tale of troubled Liberia
(PBS) Two hundred years after the first Africans were transported to America against their will, their descendants sailed back to the land of their ancestors. Soon, thousands of freeborn blacks and former slaves settled on Africa's west coast, in the land that would become Liberia--named for the "liberty" they so dearly sought.
Liberia's growth from a "colony," with a coastline barely 600 miles long, to a modern state was not without challenges, but nothing prepared Liberians for the country's devastating civil war that began on Christmas Eve, 1989, and lasted seven long years.
The untold story of America's African progeny is presented in "Liberia: America's Stepchild," premiering on PBS Thursday, October 10, 2002. This dramatic documentary follows the parallel stories of America's relationship with the African republic of Liberia--founded and backed by the American Colonization Society and the US government as a home for freeborn blacks and former slaves--and the settlers' relationship with the indigenous people.
Looking through the eyes of Liberian filmmaker Nancee Oku Bright, the film also explores the causes of the turmoil that has ravaged Liberia since 1980. "Today people generally think of Liberia as a disaster, but it was not always so. Liberia was a founding member of the United Nations and one of the key initiators of the Organization of African Unity. It was the only black republic in the sea of colonial Africa and it made the colonizers very uncomfortable and the Africans very proud," says Bright.
"Many of the events that occur in Liberia happen partly because people simply don't know their own history, and, in that vacuum, history can be terribly manipulated," said Bright. "I would still like to believe that human beings can, if they understand the nuances of their own histories, learn not to repeat the destructive lessons of the past. I also hope that this film can show us how tragedies unfold when there is no political will to do the right thing, either from leaders or from those who they believe to be their allies."
The Liberian story begins in the early 1820s, when the Washington, DC-based American Colonization Society endeavored to send free blacks to Africa. The society's purpose was twofold: to reduce the possibility that free blacks might induce slaves to revolt against their oppressors, and to spread Christianity and "civilization" to the "black continent."
The documentary retells the early story of Liberia, including its early struggles with disease; eradicating slavery on its own shores; warring indigenous tribes; its evolution as Africa's first independent republic; and the nurturing of its international diplomatic relations, particularly with the United States. One hundred and fifty years later, Liberians were divided into two distinct groups--the often-privileged American descendants, known as "Americo-Liberians," and the indigenous population. It was a division that would lead to political unrest, and ultimately, sow the seeds of war.