News Briefs
Episcopal News Service. January 29, 2003 [2003-018-1]
Interfaith delegation to Middle East arrives in Jordan
(EPF/FOR) Seventeen U.S. citizens departed January 25 for two weeks in Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine as part of Fellowship of Reconciliation's Interfaith Peace-Builders fact-finding delegation, sponsored by the Episcopal Peace Fellowship (EPF), The Witness, and Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Terry Rogers, EPF member and public health nurse in New York City, is one of two co-leaders of the group. The other is Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Both co-leaders have extensive experience in the Middle East.
During their stay in the region, delegates are scheduled to meet with peace and human rights activists and organizations, humanitarian assistance workers, community and religious leaders, refugees, settlers, educators, and government representatives from across the political spectrum. The purpose of their visit is to gain deeper insight into the issues surrounding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, to examine the effects of United States foreign policy in the region, and express support for Israelis, Palestinians, and others who are working for a nonviolent, just, and sustainable peace.
Rogers, a lifelong Episcopalian and longtime member of EPF, first went to the area in 1989. After the Gulf War in 1991 she became a volunteer nurse in an Anglican hospital in Nablus. In 1996 she served as a World Council of Churches election observer for the Palestinian elections. In the spring of 2002 Rogers returned to the region with a Christian Peacemaker Team delegation.
Other Episcopalians in the delegation include Chris Pottle of Maine, another longtime EPF member and current EPF treasurer; Elisha Harig-Blaine of Boston, Massachusetts, recipient of the EPF "Young Adult Scholarship" for the delegation; and Pete Churchill of Massachusetts, EPF member and longtime peace activist.
Representatives for The Witness magazine include Ethan Flad, website editor, who will serve as reporter for the magazine during and after the visit; the Rev. Winnie Varghese, Episcopal chaplain at Columbia University in New York and co-chair of the Peace and Justice Commission; and the Rev. Michael Battle, assistant professor of spiritual and moral theology at the School of Theology, Duke University.
Upon their return to the United States on February 8, delegates are committed to sharing their experiences with the public and their political representatives. The delegation will be sending back regular reports during their trip, which can be found on the FOR website at www.forusa.org, or email Joe Groves at middleeast@forusa.org.
Iraqi Christians make preparations for war
(ENI) Like their compatriots, Chaldean Christians in Iraq are stockpiling food and fuel and preparing for the war threatening their country, an Iraqi archbishop told reporters on Tuesday.
For the past month, they have also been gathering daily for prayer, "hoping God will help us avoid a war," Gabriel Kassab, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Basra, said at a news conference on Tuesday at the Geneva offices of the World Council of Churches. The archbishop was in Europe to urge the end of United Nations sanctions on Iraq and the prevention of a new war.
Asked whether Christians in Iraq were afraid of being targeted by Muslims should a war break out, Kassab stressed that the communities lived in harmony. "All of us are afraid. Christians are Iraqis just like Shi'ite Muslims, like Sunni Muslims," the archbishop said, referring to the two Islamic groups in his country. "We are afraid because we are Iraqi, and Iraq is targeted by this war. Christians are part of the Iraqi population."
No tension existed between Christians and Muslims in southern Iraq, said Kassab, noting the presence of local Muslim religious leaders at the inauguration of the Catholic cathedral a month ago. "Of course, there are some small problems. These come from small Islamic groups that are highly radical." Asked about the possible consequences of a war on average Iraqis, Kassab said: "We will have to flee. People go where they find safety and security."
Christians account for roughly 3 per cent of Iraq's mainly Muslim population, or about 700,000 people. Approximately 70 per cent of them belong to the Chaldean church, which follows the ancient Chaldean rite but is in union with the Roman Catholic Church. The Christian population, which once stood at 5 per cent, has decreased in recent years due to emigration and to deaths in two military conflicts: the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran (1980-88) and the six-week Gulf War in 1991, Kassab told ENI after the news conference.
"It [the Gulf War] didn't last 42 days, but went on from 1991 to this day," he told reporters. "Every day American and British aircraft fly over our heads and they often bomb us and kill our people. This is true more particularly during the past two months."
More than a decade of sanctions, imposed by the United Nations because of Iraq's refusal to comply with 19 UN resolutions after the Gulf War, have taken a heavy toll on average Iraqis. "The sanctions, the embargo on Iraq is a form of war on Iraq," Kassab asserted. "With sanctions, people are killed slowly, in a bad way."
Asked whether the churches in Iraq were doing anything to encourage the Iraqi government's compliance with UN resolutions on arms inspections in order to avoid war, Kassab said: "Anything that is conducive to peace and serves the common good of society, we as a church are in favor of. But the government of Iraq itself has made it clear that it is willing to cooperate with UN resolutions."
Due to the wars and their aftermath, he said, people in the south of Iraq are facing new diseases that doctors are not able to identify and an increased number of miscarriages and birth defects. There are power cuts of up to 12 hours a day and a lack of clean drinking water. "A bottle of clean drinking water is 30 times more expensive in Basra than the equivalent amount of petrol," he said.
Many young people are dropping out of school in order to do odd jobs to help their families survive. Hospitals have shortages of basic equipment, such as syringes, and "most surgery is performed without anesthesia," the archbishop reported.
Basra now has many homeless people, "something we didn't know before in Iraq," he said. The church is responding, establishing a kindergarten in a poor neighborhood where it gives hundreds of children free breakfast and shoes so that they can walk to school. It has opened a computer training center for young people, a pharmacy to provide basic medicine and shelter in the archbishopric for about 20 families.
The World Council of Churches, along with such regional ecumenical groups as the National Council of Churches in the United States and the Middle East Council of Churches, has in recent months issued warnings against pre-emptive military action against Iraq. The WCC has called for the lifting of sanctions, which they maintain are ineffective against the ruling regime and mainly harm poor civilians.
Global Fund gives LWF first NGO grant in AIDS fight
(ENI) The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has for the first time allocated a grant to a non-governmental organization by presenting $485,000 to the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) for its HIV/AIDS action plan.
"Resources have been pledged to overcome this life-threatening illness, but they need to be renewed and increased," said the LWF general secretary, the Rev. Ishmael Noko, at a signing ceremony in Geneva on January 27. "The signing of this grant agreement sends an important message to the international community, declaring mutuality between us, saying that we are working together as national and international organizations towards the eradication of this pandemic," Noko said.
Previous grants of the Global Fund, an independent, public-private partnership established in 2002, have gone directly to countries.
"It's vitally important that we build bridges between faith-based organizations and partners in-country in the fight against HIV/AIDS," said Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund. "The Global Fund process enables this linkage and affirms it."
The grant will support LWF initiatives to fight HIV/AIDS for the next two years, with an additional $215,000 allocated for a third year.
The purpose of the LWF campaign is to strengthen support among the federation's 136 member churches in 76 countries serving 62 million people. The plan includes conferences with church leaders, and the employment of an AIDS consultant to organize them and to co-ordinate follow-up activities. The LWF already supports HIV/AIDS-related projects in Africa and Latin America funded by several other donor organizations.
Head of Swedish church's support for boycott of Israeli products stirs debate
(ENI) A statement signed among others by the (Lutheran) Archbishop of Sweden, K. G. Hammar, and by the Swedish ambassador to Germany, Carl Tham, urging a boycott of Israeli products from territories occupied by Israel has provoked strong protests from opposition political parties.
Hammar's name was at the top of a list of 73 Swedish public figures who signed a statement urging a boycott of goods produced by Jewish settlements in territories occupied by Israel since 1967.
"We call on citizens, non-governmental organizations, unions, consumer co-operatives, political parties and companies to boycott all goods from the illegal Israeli settlements," said the statement quoted in the leading Swedish daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter. The signatories hope a boycott will pressure Israel into dismantling the settlements.
The ire of opposition politicians was aimed mainly at Ambassador Tham, whom they said was going against official Swedish policy. But Hammar has also faced criticism from some of his church members. Some of the bishop's critics complained the church was taking standpoints on matters other than those dealing with religion and belief.
Staff at the headquarters of the Church of Sweden say that since the statement was published the bishop has received a torrent of e-mails, phone calls and letters. Many were encouraging, but several accused Hammar of failing the Jewish people and made comparisons to the 1940s, an era in which Swedes have been criticized for failing to have done more against the persecution of Jews.
Hammar said in response that he wanted to focus on the occupation and illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory. A boycott was an instrument to raise awareness about this, argued the bishop. All Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are considered illegal by the international community, according to many UN resolutions.
"To buy and sell goods from the occupied territories is to actively support the illegal Israeli occupation," the group said in their statement, noting that "it is also against international law."
The group, which included writers, publishers, doctors and professors, urged the international community to act since the Israelis and Palestinians have proven "unable to resolve the conflict on their own." According to the appeal, a lasting peace in the Middle East requires an independent Palestinian state together with the acceptance of the right for Israel to exist within undisputed and secure borders.
Palestinian bishop urges Swedish prime minister to play mediating role
(ENI) Giving hope in a hopeless situation is a must for the church, believes Palestinian Bishop Munib Younan, who told Swedish journalists: "The church is not only a building where you sing hallelujah. We have a political responsibility."
Younan, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jerusalem, which works in Palestine, Jordan and Israel, met a large group of journalists January 22 after talks with Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson.
"The world is deaf," rued Younan. "The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is incompatible with international and humanitarian law, [yet] schools and universities are closed down as a consequence of Israeli curfews."
Israelis argue they only take military action to stop acts of terrorism being committed against them, but Younan said the occupations and its consequences snuff out the hope of Palestinians who see constant curfews that shut down their educational institutions as an unjustified collective punishment. "The schools and the universities are the only places where hope can grow. The Israelis now have closed our schools and imposed curfews on us. Thus the hope and the belief in the future that we try to give our children break into pieces," Younan said.
He urged Sweden to take the lead as a peace mediator in the Middle East conflict, saying he believed the European Union was too passive. Younan was invited to Sweden by Church of Sweden Archbishop K.G. Hammar, a member of the council of the Lutheran World Federation.
Hammar noted that a war in Iraq could transform the Middle East into a backwater, removing it from the spotlight of world media attention, giving the Israeli army the opportunity to act as it liked.
Younan reminded journalists of a Swedish tradition of defending human rights established by assassinated former prime minister Olof Palme, who, he said, was an international giant in fighting injustice.
Absalom Jones celebration at EDS honors first African-American Episcopal priest
(EDS) The Episcopal Divinity School's annual Absalom Jones Celebration will feature the Rev. Kortwright Davis and the Rev. Zenetta M. Armstrong. Davis will deliver a lecture, "The Episcopal Face of Ebony Grace," at 7:00 p.m. on February 12. Armstrong will serve as celebrant at the Eucharist the next day at 8:30 a.m. These events commemorate the life and ministry of Absalom Jones, the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church.
The Absalom Jones celebration is also the beginning of the 2003 Organization of Black Episcopalian Seminaries Conference, sponsored by the Office of Black and Urban Ministries of the Episcopal Church and hosted by the Episcopal Divinity School.
An Absalom Jones celebration is held every year at EDS to help support the Absalom Jones Scholarship Fund. Established in 1986, the fund provides scholarships for African-American students from EDS preparing for ordination in the Episcopal Church.
Absalom Jones was born a house slave in Delaware in 1746. At 16 he was sold to a store owner in Philadelphia, but eventually bought his wife's freedom and his own. In 1787, black Christians organized the Free African Society, with Jones elected as one of two overseers. He was ordained deacon in the St. Thomas African Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Pennsylvania in 1795, and priest in 1802.
Davis is professor of theology at Howard University School of Divinity and rector of Holy Comforter Episcopal Church in Washington, DC. Born in the West Indies on the island of Antigua, Davis was one of the archbishop of Canterbury's representatives on the Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission. He has also served on the Faith & Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. Armstrong is co-rector of Church of the Holy Spirit in Mattapan, Massachusetts. She serves on the board of the Mattapan Community Commission as well as the board at Boston Senior Home Care.