c. 1997 Religion News Service
British Methodists to debate closing churches to other faiths
(RNS) If Buddhists want to use the lawn of a Methodist church in England for a cricket match, it might be possible. But they shouldn’t pray before they play.
That’s the recommendation of a joint report from the Methodist Church’s Faith and Order Committee and Committee for Relations with People of Other Faiths that will be debated when the Methodist Conference meets June 28-July 5 in London.
The recommendation asks the church to reaffirm the stance taken by the church in 1972 that allows adherents of other faiths to use Methodist facilities for social and secular activities but not for worship.
The report concludes that”the use of Methodist premises for the purposes of formal acts of worship in other faith traditions is inappropriate.” The Church of England has adopted a similar policy.
World Vision begins children’s medical program in North Korea
(RNS) World Vision, the independent evangelical relief organization, has announced it is sending a team of health experts to North Korea next month to determine how best to help more than 2,400 children under the age of five.
The six-member team will survey several of the government-run institutions and train staff to diagnose and treat malnutrition.
North Korea has suffered food shortages for the past two years, and famine is expected to reach critical stages in the next four months. Government officials granted the agency permission to assist the children’s centers during a trip by senior World Vision staff in early June.
Assistance to the children’s centers will be the first opportunity for World Vision members to work in person in North Korea. However, since 1995, the organization has provided the country some $5 million in assistance through partner agencies, the group said.
Adults over age 60 and children have been hit the hardest by the famine, World Vision officials said. They reported an estimated 1.3 million metric tons of relief food are needed.
World Vision officials hope to use the medical program as a stepping stone to expand other aid to North Korea, including food and agriculture support and the development of noodle factories.
Southern Ohio bishop enters contest for Episcopal Church’s top post
(RNS) An Ohio bishop who could serve only two thirds of his term if elected has agreed to allow his name to be placed in nomination as presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.
Bishop Herbert Thompson Jr. of the diocese of Southern Ohio is expected to be nominated from the floor during the church’s General Conference in Philadelphia in July. In a statement released June l3, Thompson said,”If God says yes, I will serve in that ministry with all that I have to offer.” Thompson, 63, would be able to serve just six years of a nine-year term because of a canonical requirement that a presiding bishop must retire at age 70. A church spokesman said he was uncertain if this eventuality would set a precedent in the church.
Thompson’s name would be offered from the floor after the four other nominees, who emerged from a nomination process overseen by the Joint Nominating Committee, are presented at a session of bishops and deputies on July 20.
Thompson said he has fulfilled the presiding bishop’s and General Convention’s requests for medical, psychological and background checks required of all nominees.
The other nominees, presented April 1 by the committee, are Bishops Frank Griswold of Chicago, Robert Rowley of Northwestern Pennsylvania, Don Wimberly of Lexington, Ky., and Richard Shimpfky of El Camino Real, Calif.
Black church leaders pledge to”continue to break the silence” (RNS) Organizers of last week’s (June 12-13) two-day conference on the black church and human sexuality have pronounced the first-ever gathering of its kind a success and promised to”continue to break the silence”on what has been one of the most sensitive issues in the black religious community.”The issue of being silent (on sexual issues) in the black church and in the black community, is pervasive,”said Claudia Highbaugh, chaplain and associate director of ministerial studies at Harvard Divinity School.
Some 200 mainly black clergy, lay leaders and counselors from across the nation participated in the conference sponsored by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
Following two days of worship, speeches and workshops at Howard University Divinity School in Washington, D.C., the clergy attending the conference in a separate meeting agreed to”continue to break the silence”and to expand the dialogue by including issues of clergy misconduct and ethics as well as sexual orientation _ topics that were absent from the forum.
The clergy also pledged to work with the nation’s seminaries to train”graduates who are prepared to deal with these issues.” As the clergy participants struggled to draft their statement on the church and sexuality, they got stuck in a familiar but thorny place _ what to say about sexual orientation and clergy who use their power to get sex.
As they moved from debating whether HIV/AIDS is an appropriate umbrella for the discussion on homosexuality to settling on the term sexual orientation, the Rev. Barbara J. Evans of Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y., told the group that none of the language dealing with sexual orientation”will fly in the black community”if it isn’t couched in biblical and theological terms.”Our members will think we’re coming from somewhere in left field,”she added.
After the conference, Cain Hope Felder, author and New Testament scholar at the Howard divinity school, said sexuality issues create tension throughout the black church.”We face a fundamental contradiction and a great tension on this question of human sexuality, particularly in the black church. The church is a very conservative social institution that seeks to be a conservator of values with great sensitivity of its own conservative traditions,”he said in an interview.
Felder, who was not part of the national conference, said he sees a black church in crisis and out of sync with the world.”We find ourselves in a time warp that has locked us into an ultra-conservative posture informed by Bible principles that are without any interpretation that would show how we are trying to adapt ministry and the Bible for a new life in light of the problems confronting our community.” But making the Bible and the church responsive to contemporary issues isn’t something that most black churches want to do, Felder said.”Those that do are very nervous about not offending their fundamental conservative constituency,”he said.
World Council assembly dates changed
(RNS) The Eighth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC), scheduled to be held in Harare, Zimbabwe, in September 1998, has been pushed back to December 3-14, 1998, because of”unforeseen circumstances,”the WCC announced Tuesday (June 17).
According to WCC officials, the reason for the change is the sudden reduction in Zimbabwean government allowances for students, which caused officials at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, site of the meeting, to alter the university’s academic schedule. This included moving the school year forward to August.
The WCC Assembly Planning Committee initiated tentative explorations of alternate sites in South Africa, the Netherlands and Geneva, site of the WCC international headquarters, but decided to keep the meeting in Zimbabwe because of the”deep disappointment”to the churches in Zimbabwe if the meeting was canceled.
The Assembly is the highest governing body of the WCC, a umbrella organization of 330 Orthodox and Protestant churches in more than 100 countries, and meets approximately every seven years.
Quote of the day: The Rev. John Buchanan, outgoing moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
(RNS) The Rev. John Buchanan, who recently ended his one-year term as moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), preached a final sermon at the denomination’s meeting in Syracuse, N.Y., on Sunday (June 15). In his sermon, Buchanan said the unity of the church should be of paramount importance to the members of the fractured denomination:”Now wait a minute. Are you proposing that belief in the church is of equal weight or comparable weight with belief in Jesus Christ and furthermore that the church’s unity is as as important as my individual conclusions about this or that? About COCU (the Consultation on Church Union) or mission budgets, or Amendment B (the so-called”chastity and fidelity”amendment for church leaders). That’s exactly what I’m suggesting and I am convinced that’s exactly what the Bible says.”
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