ACC Peace, Family Networks Meet
Episcopal News Service. April 30, 1987 [87094]
SINGAPORE (DPS, April 20) - Two world-wide grassroots Anglican mission systems -- the International Network on Family and Community and the Peace and Justice Network -- met here April 21-24 prior to the seventh meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), the body which brought them into being.
Working independently of each other except for one joint session with ACC staff, the two networks came up with remarkably similar assessments of some of the world's major problems.
Both saw international debt as having disastrously crippling effects upon all third world nations and morally indefensible consequences in Western first world nations. In particular, the Peace and Justice Network found a major world crisis in what they termed "the inability of governments to cope" with this situation.
Both saw the arms race and increasing militarism around the world not only in terms of violence and potential holocaust but also as draining off resources which could otherwise be used to raise the standard of living for the two thirds of the world's population which struggles just to remain alive.
Both decried governmental decisions on land and natural resource usage that benefit foreign investors rather than local people and transnational companies that answer to no political authorities and themselves wield enormous power over the lives and property of people and communities.
Both saw the increasing number of refugees throughout the world as destablizing and destroying communities and families and creating a multitude of complex problems.
A major agenda item for the Peace and Justice Network was consideration of the problems of the churches of Southern Africa. These were represented by Emmra Mashinini of South Africa, director of the Church's provincial Department of Justice and Reconciliation, and Bishop Ralph Peter Hatendi of Zimbabwe.
Mashinini recounted stories of hardship, unemployment and upheaval caused by the increasingly oppressive government policy of apartheid, particularly the cases of 25,000 detainees, about 10 percent of whom are children, according to Church sources. She called on the international community "not to believe propaganda about black-on-black violence," but to understand the root causes of violence in her country, which results from the government's "divide and rule" policy. "No one ever says anything about white-on-white violence," she said, pointing to the strife in Northern Ireland and to the recent Falkand Islands war.
Mashinini also asked the world community to call for international sanctions against the South African government and disinvestment by churches in companies doing business in South Africa.
Hatendi noted that the frontline states (those bordering South Africa) are already feeling the pinch of sanctions but said the majority there are willing to live with that situation to end apartheid. "The call from Christ himself is that we may be one," Hatendi said. "We in the frontline states believe that we are one with South Africa. We are not free and independent unless South Africa is free and independent."
The network subsequently endorsed a series of recommendations to the ACC, asking that body to call for an "internationally coordinated campaign of comprehensive and mandatory sanctions against South Africa;" to ask its member Churches to disinvest from all institutions which "have a financial stake in South Africa," particularly directing this demand to the Church of England (the Episcopal Church already has divested itself completely of such holdings); to call on business and financial institutions around the world to "disinvest and disengage" from the South African economy; to express its solidarity with the frontline states and call on the international community to offer support to them; to call for the implementation of UN Resolution 435 regarding South Africa's illegal occupation of Namibia; and to call for the release of Nelson Mandela and all political prisoners and detainees in South Africa.
Then, directing its attention to another of the world's trouble spots, the Middle East, the network endorsed a series of recommendations on the Palestine/Israel situation drafted by the Rev. Canon Na'em Ateek, network member from Jerusalem.
In these, the network affirms the existence of the State of Israel and its right to recognized and secure borders and calls for human rights for all within those borders. At the same time it "rejects fundamentalist interpretation of Holy Scriptures" as detrimental to peace and justice and damaging to Jews, Christians and Muslims living in Israel.
Calling attention to injustices done to Palestinians in consequence of the creation of the State of Israel, the network affirms the right of Palestinians for self determination, including establishment of their own state in Palestine.
The network declared its support for the convening of an international conference on the Palestine/Israel matter under the auspices of the UN, to which all parties of the conflict should be invited, including the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The Peace and Justice Network was established by the ACC at its 1984 meeting and has been gathering occasionally over the past three years. Chaired by the Rev. Charles Cesaretti, deputy for Anglican affairs of the Episcopal Church, the network includes, in addition to those mentioned above, members from Kenya, England, Barbados, Scotland, Sudan, Japan, Ceylon, the Philippines, New Zealand, Tanzania, Nigeria, Brazil, Madagascar, Ireland, the Solomon Islands, Canada, Wales, Peru and Australia. Each has established a network of peace and justice workers within his or her province. The Rev. Stephen Commins of Los Angeles also was an invited observer and participant at this meeting. Commins is director of the Development Institute of the African Studies Center at the University of California at Los Angeles. He has put together a network of persons working in development around the world, along with a proposal to this ACC meeting to endorse the linkage as an official network of the ACC.
The Family Community Network grew out of an International Project on Family and Community, also authorized by ACC-6 in 1984, because of concerns about families raised by the delegates to that meeting from most of the Communion's provinces. The project's goal was to define for the ACC and for the 1988 Lambeth Conference the theological issues concerning the family as a backdrop to an exploration of how the Church should minister to families in rapidly changing environments across the world.
Coordinated by the Mission of St. James and St. John in Melbourne, Australia, the project focused on existing family ministries in six parts of the Communion. Consultancies were conducted with these ministries over the past two years on the Partners in Mission model, bringing together visiting and local consultants. Altogether, some 3,000 people were involved in the project.
The meeting in Singapore was the first time persons representing the consultancies gathered together. A major purpose was to share reports of the consultancies, which told of families dislocated by government housing policies in Hong Kong; rural-urban drift in Nairobi; churches as centers of resistance and hope in the Philippines; domestic violence and homelessness in Canada; alienation of Aboriginals in Australia; and ethnic ministry groups in white New Zealand.
Underlying all the reports seemed to be several pervasive problems which are having dramatic and disastrous effects on families; economic structures which lock 75 percent of the world's population into massive economic deprivation; the dominance of men over women, which the network named the "sin of sexism;" racism, manifesting itself in an inequality of wealth with a resultant decimation of family life.
"Marriages and families are often treated by governments solely as economic units, or are Trade subservient to political goals, or are neglected because of an exclusive focus on individuals," one report from the network declared. "But they are institutions provided by God for mutual fidelity, love, intimacy, procreation and nurture."
The network called on the Church to represent the needs of families and communities and to challenge the political process to hear and respond to these needs. It also affirmed the importance of life in community, recognizing that today, for many single or elderly persons and others, a community may be the substitute for a traditional family.
"We need a broader vision of defining intimate relationships," said Canadian participant Diane Marshall. "We should reclaim the idea of household. People are meant to live in community, characterized by faithfulness and covenant relationships."
The network meeting was chaired by Fanga Matalavea, UN Development Project Program Director for Samoa, who is also a member of ACC.
The Family and Community Network does not presently include a U.S. Representative. However, Comnins participated in its meeting as well as that of the Peace and Justice Network.