Area religious leaders describe
interfaith, ecumenical relations
Believing God cares about all people, the Rev. Bob Edgar told those
gathered for the Fig Tree anniversary lunch in Spokane that the United
States’ greatness is its respect of different traditions.
Speaking on ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, he announced that there
will be a larger ecumenical table in April 2005: Christian
Churches Together (CCT).
CCT will include Roman Catholics, the Salvation Army and Evangelical
churches, as well as the National Council of Churches’ Protestant and
Orthodox members.
“As churches lose money, there is good news. They ask what they
can do together,” Bob said.
CCT will be a new way Christians can come together to learn about each
other’s traditions. It will increase conversation among churches
theologically from the right to the left, but it will be hard for it to
take prophetic stands. So it will not replace the NCC but will
provide another level to ecumenical relationships, he said.
Bob likens ecumenical cooperation to a spaceship with docking stations,
like Church World Service, Catholic Relief Services, World Relief,
Lutheran World Relief, Evangelical Associations and Churches Uniting in
Christ—formed by nine denominations open to share communion.
“The message for our times is for the Christian ecumenical community to
come together so they can work on interfaith relations,” he said.
Local faith leaders then told him about local ecumenical and interfaith life.
The Rev. Randy Hyvonen
the Pacific Northwest United Church of Christ (UCC) conference
minister, said that he encouraged the local ecumenical council to
become an interfaith council.
He said UCC pastors are involved in
interfaith work in Richland, Yakima, Pullman and other communities of
the region. Beyond that many UCC congregations themselves are
ecumenical: Lutheran pastors serve two, others are federated
UCC-United Methodist and UCC-Presbyterian; four are Disciples-UCC
unions; one is a UCC-Mennonite combination and two are UCC-Brethren.
Interculturally, the regional UCC includes six Samoan congregations
plus German, Taiwanese and Japanese congregations. It has
partnerships with Presbyterians in Seoul, Korea, Evangelical United
Churches in Berlin, Germany, African congregations and a congregation
in Russia.
“Our global perspective is emerging as we live on the Pacific Rim and
need to look at the world with new eyes,” Randy said.
“Last fall, the Interfaith Council helped us focus on religious and
environmental issues. We found we are on the same page and use
primary documents from the National Council of Churches to inform our
stands,” he said.
Interfaith Council director
Kateri Caron said Sept. 11 consolidated interfaith relations in
Spokane as people gathered each week afterwards for vigils.
“To
develop interfaith ties with
Muslims seemed a logical step,” she said, adding that she has heard
positive feedback from unchurched people about the “move into the
interfaith space from the I’m-right-you’re-wrong space.”
Kateri finds several common understandings:
• Each person is a human being.
• The core of every tradition is love, compassion and caring, and a
call to work for all who are vulnerable in one’s own community and
beyond.
She resists when people compliment her as a Christian with vision, and
seek to steer her to condemn Evangelicals. She meets regularly
with the Rev. John Tusant, director of the Greater Spokane Association
of Evangelicals.
“We look for what we can raise up and work for together,” she said.
Bishop Walt Mize of the Christ
Holy Sanctified Church said his denomination is not in the ecumenical
movement, but his aunt was Methodist, a cousin was Pentecostal, and he
was Catholic before becoming Pentecostal.
“What will it take for us to see what God sees when we look at
Spokane: one Church, broken into pieces? How can we move
the pieces to see themselves as one, so that they work together for the
peace of the city in which all may prosper?”
When Walt came to Spokane, he joined the Spokane Council of Ecumenical
Ministries, the Greater Spokane Association of Evangelicals and the
Interdenominational Ministers’ Fellowship Union.
“I have been a thorn in the side of all three. I ask the GSAE how
they can do city-wide reconciliation if they talk only with Evangelical
churches. I helped the SCEM start Churches Against Racism to find
positive solutions to racism in ways that involve churches in
evangelization. With 16 black churches for the nearly 3,000 black
people in the community, it’s clear there are many to evangelize, but
we live in a 97-percent white population. Churches should reflect
that. Government cannot mandate integration of churches. We
need to make it happen.”
“When I travel overseas, I attend services with people of different
faiths. We can act in goodwill to love people who are different,”
he said. “How can we put aside what divides us to act for the
common good? As churches work together, the renewal Evangelical
churches pray for will happen.”
Bishop Martin Wells of
the Eastern Washington Idaho Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America (ELCA) said ecumenical dialogue concerns order and power: “Who is in charge?”
Within
churches there are
divisions. When the Lutheran Church started in the 1500s, there
were divisions among leaders and then divisions by nationalities—Danes,
Finns, Swedes and Germans.
Lutherans are involved in bilateral and multilateral dialogues with
Catholics, Methodists, Orthodox, Disciples of Christ, and with those in
full-communion, the Episcopalians, Moravians and the Reformed
churches—Presbyterians, Reformed Church in America and United Church of
Christ.
Other levels of ecumenical and interfaith dialogue include The Fig
Tree, the Washington Association of Churches, the Interfaith Council,
the Spokane Alliance, Whitworth College and Gonzaga University, Martin
said.
He also participates in personal dialogue with the Octet—once
eight—judicatory leaders who meet Wednesdays for breakfast.
“We receive one another as brothers and sisters confessing Jesus Christ
and as colleagues,” he said.
Martin challenges the region on its unfinished dialogue on the Catholic
Bishops’ Pastoral on the Columbia Watershed. “We need to begin
conversations about water justice issues, about who has rights and
access to the West’s limited water supply,” he remarked.
In follow-up discussion, Bob said the National Religious Partnership on the
Environment with the NCC has worked “secretly”—meaning with little
press coverage—for 10 years with Roman Catholics and Evangelicals for
Social Responsibility, Reformed Judaism and the World Council of
Churches, collaborating on environmental issues in 20 states.
On Sept. 11, Bob said: “We learned about the world and
rediscovered that we do not live in isolation. After World War
II, we rebuilt enemy nations. In the 1950s and 1960s, churches
filled, and there were strong youth programs. Churches became
complacent in the 1970s and began to refocus on denominationalism.
“In the 1980s and 1990s, churches discovered money was important and
began to focus on survival. As they continue that trend, mainline
denominations become irrelevant,” Bob said.
Since Sept. 11, he said, Americans realized oceans no longer provide
protection.
“We discovered we are interconnected,” he said. “We received much
international compassion and support, but we have squandered it,
becoming the nation the terrorists say we are.
“If we are to survive as a nation, the war on terrorism should be
a police action with all nations collaborating to address issues that
create terrorism. If we address terrorism and its causes—by
feeding and educating people—we can model democracy, pluralism and
compassionate rule that help people living in poverty and
hopelessness,” he said. In one sense, exporting jobs to alleviate
poverty may be okay, if jobs here are maintained and jobs both abroad
and here pay living wages so people have access to health care and
education,” he said.
Spending New Year’s Eve 2003 in Bagdhad with Orthodox Christians, Chaldean Catholics and
Presbyterians, Bob learned that under sanctions, hospitals were denied
parts to repair equipment and water pipes because those items “might be
used” for weapons of mass destruction. “So children died of
diseases we don’t see here,” he said.
“All faiths are damaged by a handful of overly literalistic, violent
core of Christians, Muslims and Jews. We should not label all
Christians, Muslims or Jews by the handful,” he asserted.
In several sessions in Spokane, Bob quoted Martin Luther King’s words
of 1968 in Washington, D.C., words that continue to give impetus to his
ministry: “Darkness does not drive out darkness, only love
can. Hate does not drive out hate, only love can. Violence
multiplies violence. Toughness multiplies toughness in a
descending spiral of destruction. That chain reaction of evil
must be broken or we will be plunged into an abyss of annihilation.”
Bob considers Sept. 11 a “test of faith,” moving people from being an
isolationist nation to becoming a global village, from isolated
churches, synagogues and mosques to brothers and sisters of different
faith traditions.
“We gathered for common prayer and community interaction. We
gathered to walk, talk, sing, pray and learn about our neighbors,
people we are called to love,” he said.
He also considers it a test of faith that calls people “to love our
enemies, to be peacemakers, to have the courage of Jesus, to stand up
to intolerance, to stand firm on principles and never to stand by when
there is violence and never to stand still when we are called to act.”
For information, visit www.ncccusa.org.
By Mary Stamp, Fig Tree editor
- © September 2004