c. 1998 Religion News Service
German Lutheran theologians urge rejection of statement with Vatican
(RNS) Some 140 of Germany’s most prominent Protestant theologians have signed a statement calling on the country’s Lutheran churches to reject a proposed joint Vatican-Lutheran statement resolving one of the key disputes that led to the Reformation 400 years ago.
The proposed joint declaration by the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation may be issued sometime this year. It maintains that there is a”consensus”about the doctrine of justification _ how a person is saved _ between Catholics and Lutherans.
Martin Luther broke with Roman Catholicism over the issue, stressing that justification is by God’s grace alone while Catholic theologians seemed to argue humans can earn salvation through good works.
The statement by the German theologians, with signatures coming from across the theological spectrum and including some of the world’s best known religious scholars such as Jurgen Moltmann, Gerhard Ebeling and Martin Hengel, comes as the 122 member bodies of the LWF are examining the proposed text of the Vatican-LWF statement for their approval.
The German scholars urging rejection of the joint statement repudiated the notion that a consensus exists.
It also said the proposed joint statement would have no meaningful effect on Lutheran-Roman Catholic relations.”It would mean neither the recognition of Lutheran churches and their ministries”by the Vatican,”nor any advance on the question of intercommunion”with Roman Catholics, the Lutheran theologians said.
The scholars’ statement also said the proposed joint statement could threaten the relationship between Lutheran churches and other Protestant churches.
Texas Baptist convention may reject church with gay deacon
(RNS) The Texas convention of Southern Baptists has begun an effort to distance itself from an Austin church that ordained a gay deacon.
The administrative committee of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) has voted to recommend that the”BGCT not receive any funds from University Baptist Church in Austin.”The committee also urged that the church”discontinue the publication of any materials that indicate they affiliate with the BGCT,”reported Associated Baptist Press, an independent news service.
The executive committee of the state convention will consider the recommendation Feb. 24.
The University Baptist Church ordained a homosexual as a deacon in 1995 and was removed from the Austin Baptist Association that fall.
Although a motion to withhold fellowship from the church was ruled out of order at the convention’s annual meeting in 1996, it remained a concern for some Southern Baptists in the state.
Charles Davenport, the administrative committee chairman, appointed a subcommittee to study the issue after it kept being brought up by”many churches of all persuasions.””They feel this is a moral issue,”he said.
Larry Bethune, pastor of University Baptist Church, said he was grieved by the possibility that his congregation may be kicked out of the state convention.”University Baptist Church has made an important contribution to the BGCT through the years,”said Bethune, who described the church as an”enthusiastic contributing supporter”of Baptist mission efforts.
He said if the recommendation is approved, it”will add to the grief of homosexual persons and their families who have been told from many Baptist pulpits that God hates them.” U.N. religious intolerance official ends U.S. survey
(RNS) A United Nations official in the United States to investigate religious intolerance said American Indians and Muslims complained to him most about infringements of their religious rights.
Abdelfattah Amor, a Tunisian who serves as the U.N.’s special rapporteur on religious intolerance, said American Indians”feel they are simply not understood at all”while Muslims believe they”suffer”because of misconceptions about them held by many Americans.
At the same time, Amor said he found the United States to have”great freedom here, particularly for religion, so every person can believe what she or he thinks … without any limits whatsoever.” However, he added,”no state is a paradise on earth, including the United States,”and religious intolerance does exist in the United States.
Amor, a legal expert and educator who is also president of the International Academy of Constitutional Law, completed a two-week tour of the United States Friday (Feb. 6), during which time he visited Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Washington.
While here, he met with state and federal officials, representatives of non-governmental organizations and Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other religious officials. In Phoenix, Amor heard from members of at least four American Indian tribal groups and he also traveled to northern Arizona to meet with Navajo tribal representatives.
Amor was invited to the United States by the federal government. He has held his U.N. post _ established in 1986 by the Geneva-based U.N. Commission on Human Rights _ since 1993.
Amor’s job is to visit nations and report how they comply with international agreements concerning freedom of religion. His findings and non-binding recommendations are contained in reports to the U.N. General Assembly and the Commission on Human Rights.
At a Washington news conference Friday, Amor declined to provide any specifics about his findings in the United States, saying they were only”initial impressions”that required further investigation.
State Department urges freedom for New Tribes missionaries
(RNS) The U.S. State Department Friday (Feb. 6) urged a Colombian revolutionary group to free three American missionaries who have been held for five years.
The missionaries are David Mankins, Mark Rich and Richard Tenenoff of the evangelical Protestant New Tribes Missions, based in Sanford, Fla.
The men were seized Jan. 31, 1993, by, it is believed, members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, generally known by its Spanish acronym FARC. It is also believed that the three were taken hostage in Panama and later brought to Colombia.
State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said:”We call upon the FARC to return these men to their loved ones out of a sense of compassion, justice and simple humanity, or to provide information about their whereabouts and condition.” Rubin also said”high-ranking Colombian military and civilian officials have promised to continue systematic questioning of all captured guerrillas for news of the hostages.”
Russia to return confiscated objects to Russian Orthodox Church
(RNS) The Russian government has promised to return 536 objects _ including 220 pounds of silver _ confiscated from the Russian Orthodox Church.
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin ordered the return of the objects Friday (Feb. 6). The objects will be used in the completion of Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, the ITAR-Tass news agency said, without explaining how the objects would be used.
During much of the Soviet era, the Russian Orthodox Church faced extreme persecution. However, since the fall of communism, the church has emerged as a symbol of Russian nationalism and now enjoys official state protection.
One example of the 80 million-member church’s comeback has been the reconstruction of Christ the Savior Cathedral, destroyed by Josef Stalin in 1931. The cathedral’s interior is still under construction.
Bishop Lesslie Newbigin dead at 88
(RNS) Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, a leading expert on world mission whose influence reached deep into both ecumenical and evangelical churches, died Jan. 30 of undisclosed causes in Birmingham, England. He was 88.
Newbigin, a prolific author and speaker, began his church career as a missionary in India and in 1947 helped create the Church of South India _ an early merger of Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian and Anglicans he felt could be a model for the emerging ecumenical movement and, at the age of 38, was appointed a bishop in the new church.
While much of his career was spent in the orbit of the World Council of Churches, some of his most important influences have been on British and American evangelicals.”The man does not fit any convenient category,”Christianity Today wrote of him in a December 1996 profile.”He is a world-class theologian, yet he writes books without footnotes and never, until he retired, taught at a theological institution.” In a statement, the World Council of Churches called Newbigin”a senior statesman”of the ecumenical movement who”saw the WCC develop from its beginning in Amsterdam 50 years ago and was within the circle of the Student Christian Movement which provided so many ecumenical leaders.” Newbigin was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1909 and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister by the Church of Scotland in 1936 and sent to work in India.
He represented the Church of South India at the founding of the WCC in 1948 and served as the first director of the Geneva-based group’s Division of World Mission and Evangelism.”The fact that the WCC today, with church members on every inhabited continent, so strongly represents churches outside Europe and North America is in no small measure due to his pioneering efforts,”said Eleanor Jackson, senior lecturer in religious studies at the University of Derby in the United Kingdom.
In 1965, Newbigin was recalled to India to serve as Bishop of Madras and in 1974, retired from the church, returned to England.
It was in retirement that much of Newbigin’s influence was felt in Britain and the United States, where he promoted the idea of the need for the”re-evangelization of the West.”His writings, especially the 1983 book”The Other Side of 1984: Questions for the Churches”and his 1987 volume”The Gospel in a Pluralist Society,”served as a springboard for the”gospel-and-culture”movement that challenges Christians to realize they live in an alien culture and must develop proper, soundly based biblical and evangelistic answer to that setting. A 1985 bibliography of his books listed 209 titles.
Newbigin is survived by his wife, Helen, and three children.
Quote of the day: singer and actress Barbra Streisand
(RNS)”We elected him president, not pope.” _ Singer and actress Barbra Streisand on the Clinton scandal, quoted at a White House dinner for British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
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