Christ’s love is for all

The probably strongest message today was delivered by a Muslim. Professor Azza Karam is the Secretary General of Religions for Peace International. She was the quest of the General Assembly and was invited to the podium to give a greeting. She compared religious leaders to political leaders. And her point was that religious leaders have more power than political leaders.

Then she made a plea to all the Christian leaders present in the big conference hall. A plea that they should extend their love to all human beings. And she became very particular when she stated said:

I believe as a Muslim that Christ’s love was meant for all.

Of course she alluded to the Assembly theme:

Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity.

This is not easy. Some Christians live under great pressure. I have spoken to Church Leaders from Nigeria telling me about how it is to live close to Boko Haram. Or to Church leaders in India whose congregations consists of mostly Dalits. Or just look at my own context in Sweden. Today Muslims are blamed for many things when parliamentarians don’t differ between Islam and Islamism. White supremacy is the order of the day. When racism is allowed in society, sexism will come suit. And it goes on. Discrimination of persons, that don’t fit the hetero norm comes after that. I could mention other groups of people.

So, it takes a Muslim woman to come and tell us that Christ’s love was meant for all.

The rest of the first plenary was about the war in Ukraine. Also, very important. Hopefully the WCC can be a space where Christians in Russia and Ukraine can deepen their dialogue.

I also want to say something about the voice of the young delegates and participants. They are literally shouting for Climate Justice. Adults like me need to hear this cry. Also a Professor Mathew Koshy Punnackadu, leader of the Department of Ecological Concerns in the Church of South India was clear when he made a comment about the parable about the good Samaritan. The man who was attacked by the robbers is the soil, the water, and the trees, he said. It is not only other humans that are our neighbours. Food for thoughts.

The Russian Orthodox church and WCC

There is an ongoing conversation about the relationship between the World Council of Churches and the Russian Orthodox Church. The issue at stake is the standpoint of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Kirill of Moscow, when it concerns the war in Ukraine. The war started already in 2014 when Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula. It exploded with the full-scale invasion that started earlier this year. As far as I have understood, Kirill is giving his blessings to this. The invasion started 24 February and three days thereafter Kirill wrote on the website of the Russian Orthodox Church:

Today we lift up a special prayer for His Beatitude Onuphry, for our Church and for our devout faithful. May the Lord preserve the Russian land. When I say “Russian”, I use the ancient expression from “A Tale of Bygone Years” - “Wherefrom has the Russian land come”, the land which now includes Russia and Ukraine and Belarus and other tribes and peoples. That the Lord may protect the Russian land against external enemies, against internal disorders, that the unity of our Church may strengthen and that by God’s mercy all the temptations, diabolical attacks, provocations may retreat and that our devout people in Ukraine may enjoy peace and tranquillity - these are our prayers today. (My bold text).

Notice how Kirill defines Russia. Both Ukraine and Belarus is part of Russia according to Kirill. He prays for Onuphry, he leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. But Onuphry had already on 24 February appealed to Putin and asked him to immediately end the “fratricidal war”. This is read on the website of the WCC.

The war between these peoples is a repetition of the sin of Cain, who killed his own brother out of envy /…/ Such a war has no excuse, neither from God, nor from people.

The acting General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Fr Ioan Sauca, wrote to Kirill on 2 March and asked him to

… intervene and mediate with the authorities to stop this war …

In a letter dated 11 March Kirill answers in summary that the West is to blame:

This tragic conflict has become a part of the large-scale geopolitical strategy aimed, first and foremost, at weakening Russia.

There are a number of voices that suggest that the WCC should be more vocal and even expel the Russian Orthodox Church from the Council. One such voice is the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The Tablet cites him:

When a Church is actively supporting a war of aggression, failing to condemn nakedly obvious breaches of any kind of ethical conduct in wartime, then other Churches do have the right to raise the question.

But there are still those who suggest that the WCC should continue with its diplomacy:

I believe that the WCC needs to bring everyone together, however sharply opposed they may be. The heated debate that is bound to take place is surely much more likely to lead to change than expulsion and isolation will.

This is said by Jonathan Edwards, a former general secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, according to Premier Christianity magazine (The UK's leading Christian magazine).

Also, in Sweden there are different views on this. Should the WCC expel the Russian Orthodox Church or not? Yesterday I listened to Professor Cyril Hovorun at the Stockholm Shcool of Theology, who is an orthodox priest. He was very vocal about this and said that the WCC has fallen behind. He described how Pope Francis more actively has raised his voice. This he said, when the ecumenical leadership of both the Christian Council of Sweden and the Swedish Mission Council were gathered in Stockholm for their Annual General Meetings. 

My suggestion is that we could look at how global Christian networks acted during apartheid. The dominant white, reformed church of South Africa, the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) left the WCC after the Cottesloe consultation in 1960. But with the white Lutheran churches the situation was different. When the Sixth Lutheran World Federation Assembly took place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1977 the Assembly resolved that

… the racial separation of the church in Southern Africa constituted a status confessionis or a matter on which there was to be no discussion.

But the white, Lutheran churches were only suspended at the Seventh Assembly in Budapest 1984. Between the two assemblies the those member churches were given a chance to change. But they did not and subsequently they were suspended. I have written about this in an article. The link is here.

In this way the WCC could make a strong resolution against the Russian Orthodox Church later this year but keep a door open for talks. But the time before the Eleventh Assembly in Karlsruhe is short. There needs to be a thorough theological conversation that undergirds such a move. But I guess that there are systematic theologians in a number of member churches who would be willing to work with this. To start with severel orthodox theologians have published extensively on this.

What I found encouraging in the LWF decision from Budapest is the commitment to continue to pray for the suspended churches. Yes, on one crucial point they had left the Christian doctrine, but they were still Christians. This is important. We need to be able to condemn what is evil but still see the other person. 

 

South Africa helps Europe or maybe not …

Earlier today I heard the news on the radio:

Ukraine buys 1 million tons of coal from South Africa.

Wow! It’s not every day that South Africa is helping out in Europe, but according to Bloomberg News this is happening.

Reason being the armed conflict in Ukraine. Ukraine is dependent on natural gas from Russia, but Russia cut off deliveries on June 16.

President Zuma just met Putin in Moscow. Did they talk about this. I don’t understand much.

But one thing is clear. Coal is not the best solution. At least not for the environment and therefore not for any living creature on this planet. Hence, not good for human beings either.

Who am I to judge. I think the Swedish company Vattenfall owns a lot of coal production plants I Germany. Greenpeace reports:

The Swedish energy corporation Vattenfall is planning to extract more than 700 million tons of lignite in five new opencast mines in Germany’s Lausitz region in order to secure the operation of its climate-damaging coal-fired power plants until 2050.

There is a long way to sustainability.

About Syria

After having watched the SABC news I had to go on line and find out if I had understood correctly what Obama said. To me it seemed as if Obama is considering a diplomatic solution, if possible. So I read the ABC News online:

The Obama administration has begun discussing "elements of a potential U.N. Security Council resolution" on Syria's chemical weapons with other members of the international body, including China and Russia, officials said today.

Bravo!

The world has been praying and lots of people have been engaged in different ways. Hopefully the leaders of this world could pull themselves together.

God, have mercy!