GENEVA(ENI)-- Pope Benedict XVI and the Rev. Samuel Kobia, the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, will meet in Rome on 25 January, at a ceremony to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
The WCC said in a statement on 21 January that Kobia will meet the Pope in a private audience along with members of the Joint Working Group of the Roman Catholic Church and the WCC, during a yearly working group meeting in Rome from 21-26 January.
Geneva, 17 January (ENI)--Believers in many parts of the world are preparing for the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which this year marks the 100th anniversary of an initiative to promote unity between Christians of different traditions. The week of prayer for 2008 is using the theme 'Pray without ceasing', a Biblical verse from St Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:17).
The week offers local churches and congregations belonging to different Christian traditions, an opportunity to exchange prayers, or to join together for prayer for prayer and worship. In many parts of the world the week is marked from 18 to 25 January, but in some places in the southern hemisphere, another time is used, such as the period of Pentecost.
PASADENA, CA -- "How will we draw anyone else to us if we don't show them that there is some extraordinary power in Jesus Christ?" asked Barbara Wheeler, president of New York's Auburn Theological Seminary, at a public forum here sponsored in conjunction with Fuller Theological Seminary and hosted by Pasadena Presbyterian Church.
The forum -- entitled "Repairers of the Breach" -- was the latest in a series of public dialogs that Wheeler and Fuller President Richard Mouw have shared over the past seven years, coming together to discuss their differences, but perhaps more importantly to model the ability to come together in the midst of theological disagreement.
"I hope that both sides can build enough trust to learn and to do some good things together," Mouw said. "This mutual learning and cooperative doing requires both sides, or more accurately, all sides, since we don't divide evenly into two, to cultivate some important sensitivities."
Prominent evangelical leaders have called on media outlets to correct flaws in their presidential primary exit polls by asking only Republicans that question. The result is "pigeon-holing evangelicals as beholden to the Republican Party," according to their letter made public today.
LOUISVILLE -- All Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission personnel in Pakistan are reported safe after the latest bombing in Lahore, which killed at least 22 people and injured scores more today (Jan. 10).
MONTREAT, N.C. -- If Hope* ... *has a voice, as the theme of the conference went, then 800 students attending the College Conference at Montreat in western North Carolina got to encounter as vivid an example as they might ever hear or see on January 5. Ishmael Beah, author of the best-selling A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, showcased for the students how a wrecked child's life had been turned from killer to humanitarian, thanks to the efforts of a few ordinary radicals.
Beah delivered a plenary address in the morning and responded to questions in an afternoon session. In his address, he told his story in two chapters: his old life and his new life. They couldn't be more different. The old life took shape when a band of young rebels engaged in his nation's civil war arrived in his small Sierra Leone town. Soon this 12-year- old was far away from his home and parents, toting an AK-47, taking drugs (marijuana, amphetamines, and a toxic mix of cocaine and gunpowder), wandering around with a band of trained teen and pre-teen hoodlums. He cannot count the number of people he killed in the ensuing two years. He had become a brutal killing machine.
LOUISVILLE -- As I write this column, the Iowa caucuses are set to take place. What seems to be the longest Presidential campaign ever is about to enter an important stage as voters begin to make public their choice for the person who will fill the Oval Office next January.
As negative as I fear the campaign will most likely become before it's over, it pales drastically in comparison to other parts of the world that are also in election seasons.
The assassination of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto just days before a scheduled election is one heart-wrenching example. The violence has ended, according to PC(USA) mission coworkers Robert Johnson, Jr. and Marianne Vermeer, but the tension and uncertainty continue.
MONTREAT -- George F. Barber III announced today his resignation as president of the Montreat Conference Center effective February 15. He will be available for consultation through April 30.
In his resignation letter, Barber said that he and his wife, Wanda, "feel we have completed the chapter of leadership God intended us to bring here and are confident that it is time for us to move on. We are excited about the new phase and potential for our lives."
VATICAN CITY -- Roman Catholic missionaries should aim to win souls and not restrict themselves to humanitarian good works, the Vatican said Dec. 14.
A new 19-page document, which was personally approved by Pope Benedict XVI, draws on a controversial Vatican declaration he issued in 2000 that asserted Catholics alone have "the fullness of the means of salvation."
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is investigating the finances of six prominent evangelical ministries, said Dec. 7 he doesn't plan to hold hearings on any individual ministry and hopes he won't have to subpoena any of them.
But in response to critics who wonder if his investigation into alleged lavish spending is too broad, Grassley said he simply expects tax-exempt ministries to follow the law.
"I think their fear is that we're going to get involved in doctrine, in the internal teachings of the church," said Grassley, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, in an interview. "That's none of my business.
Nusa Dua, Indonesia (ENI) -- The (Lutheran) Church of Sweden says it is to convene an interfaith climate summit in Uppsala, Sweden immediately before a United Nations climate change conference in Poland in 2008.
"On the basis of my experience here in Bali, I am all the more convinced this kind of initiative is absolutely urgent," the Rev. Henrik Grape, sustainable development officer at the Church of Sweden told Ecumenical News International, during the final stages of the December 3-14 UN climate change talks in Bali, Indonesia.
New York, (ENI) -- The former head of the United Methodist Church's main ecumenical and inter-religious agency says his recent dismissal was due to disagreements over the future direction the body should take.
"They didn't agree with my vision or my ability to bring it forward," Larry Pickens said of his December 5 dismissal as head of the denomination's General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, a post he had held since 2004.
Harare, (ENI) -- The United States government has honored Maxwell Kapachawo, the first Zimbabwean religious leader to publicly disclose his HIV-positive status through the use of radio and television, by conferring him with the "award for Breakers of Silence."
"Kapachawo's actions and interventions have significantly contributed to breaking the silence around HIV and AIDS in the Church," the US ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, said while presenting the award to the 34-year-old pastor and others engaged in the fight against the pandemic.
For the Presbyterian students at Virginia Tech, hope has found a voice that has quieted the lingering echoes of gunshots. Several of them -- survivors of last April's mass murder on their campus -- testified to their harrowing search for and discovery of hope with 800 fellow students at the College Conference at the Montreat Conference Center on January 3.
LOUISVILLE -- Responding to Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) partners in the Middle East who are increasingly concerned with conditions in Gaza, General Assembly Stated ClerkClifton Kirkpatrick has issued a statement expressing "alarm" at "the worsening conditions affecting all of Gaza's inhabitants."
In addition to reiterating the PC(USA)'s condemnation of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and "provocative acts of retaliation" by Palestinian militants, Kirkpatrick expressed growing concern for the Christian minority in Gaza, which is frequently caught in the crossfire between Israel and Palestinian militants.
Whenever expectations meet reality, questions are sure to follow.
Years ago my wife told my son that they were going to do something very special to get ready for Christmas. She pumped up his excitement. She told him they were going to have fun. As a consequence, he couldn't wait until the day came -- to make a gingerbread house. I walked in just as the project was being completed. He was sitting there with his head in his hands, bored to tears and asking his mother if they were having fun yet.
The situation in Kenya is getting worse, and we can help bring it to a quicker end. I know from past associations with Amnesty International that when the world's attention is directed to governments they listen, because too much is at stake for them to NOT listen when their actions are known and are being watched by many.
Dr. Robert Barasa, executive director of the Ember Kenya Grandparents Empowerment Project, says that in Funyula, where the Ember Project is located, he has been warned that the building in which the Ember offices are located is targeted for burning down because the landlord is Kikuyu. Also, all businesses are shut down and nobody can go out in public to work or to get food because the danger is too great. He says that people cannot get food and are in danger of starving.
(PNS) The Commission on Presidential Debates has announced the locations of next year's three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate.
(RNS) Sister Margaret A. Farley, a Roman Catholic nun and former Yale Divinity School ethicist, has been awarded the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Religion by the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville.
New York -- For the first time since the American Civil War, fought from 1861 to 1865, an entire diocese of the U.S. Episcopal (Anglican) Church has voted to leave the denomination.
The December 8 vote by the central California diocese of San Joaquin follows disagreement with the national church hierarchy, which in 2003 approved the consecration of V. Gene Robinson, a divorced man who lives in a same-sex relationship, as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church.
LOUISVILLE -- A non-profit organization related to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has launched a Fair Trade Web site aimed at helping disadvantaged Peruvian artisans find a new marketplace for their goods and earn a sustainable wage in return.
The Partners for Just Trade (PJT) Web site makes it easy to purchase Peruvian handcrafts and other products online and educates consumers about the meaning of fair and just trade.
Mainline church decline is so well known in contemporary American parlance as to border on the cliché. But awareness does not always lead to response. Christian A Schwarz's, Natural Church Development (Churchsmart Resources: Carol Stream, Illinois, 7th edition, 2006) is one place congregations have turned in order to begin to address these issues of decline and growth in a practical, tangible, and measurable way.
What makes a church grow? More than that, is it okay to admit that you might want to know the answer?
What we hope is the final update on this situation:
Pakistan has simmered for the last two days under a 'state of mourning'. Frankly, I preferred the State of Emergency! Stores that dare to open to sell niceties like food have to shield their windows, ready to roll down metal shutters in case roving mobs of PPP supporters come by to 'enforce' grief on their bazaar. Gas stations are nearly all closed for the same reason, and even the largest ambulance service has temporarily suspended operations due to a lack of petrol.
A story on one of the Pakistani news channels last night gave the final totals of grief on Thursday: something like 50 killed, hundreds seriously injured, more than 300 shops looted and then burned, an undetermined number of houses burned, 110 banks burned, 75 train cars burned, 15 petrol pumps, etc.
All was well until Thursday when this country was rocked to its core by Benazir's assassination. Our lives have since been dominated by watching TV, reading online, and pondering what will come next in this tumultuous environment. We have no wisdom to impart: we're watching the same news you are. Our Pakistani colleagues don't have a sense of what will happen either. We've tightened security on campus and closed the college offices until January 2.
Daylight has come to Pakistan, as has calm. Grief, shock and anger over Benazir Bhutto's assassination, however, are still with us. It appears that the wave of rage that washed over some areas in the night subsided fairly early. The three day mourning period for Benazir has begun, and with it, an uneasy truce. However, the potential for violence remains high, so high that the city of Karachi (a PPP stronghold) is under virtual lockdown today, with flights in and out of that city suspended for the day. Here in Lahore, there were small, but violent demonstrations.
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