c. 2003 Religion News Service
WCC Names Kenyan Pastor as New General Secretary
(RNS) The World Council of Churches on Thursday (Aug. 28) elected a Methodist pastor from Kenya as the next general secretary of the Geneva-based ecumenical agency.
The Rev. Samuel Kobia, a member of the Methodist Church of Kenya, was elected by the 134 voting members of the WCC’s central committee. Kobia beat out the only other candidate, the Rev. Trond Bakkevig of the (Lutheran) Church of Norway.
Kobia will assume the WCC’s top post in January, succeeding the retiring Rev. Konrad Raiser, a German pastor who has held the post for 11 years.
The WCC is a global fellowship of 342 churches from 100 countries. Founded in 1948, the WCC includes most Orthodox and mainline Protestant churches from the United States, but does not include Roman Catholics or evangelical groups.
“I am sure that you will accept this call, which we believe is from God, to serve the ecumenical cause,” His Holiness Aram I, moderator of the central committee, told Kobia after the election.
Kobia, the WCC’s special representative for Africa, quoted an African proverb, saying, “If you want to walk fast, walk alone. But if you want to go far, walk together with others. My prayer is that we shall go very far, walking together, strengthening each other to fulfill that prayer of ours _ that all may be one.”
A former head of the National Council of Churches of Kenya, Kobia served as director of the WCC’s Justice, Peace and Creation office. Between 1978 and 1984, Kobia directed the WCC’s urban and rural mission office. In 1991, he chaired peace talks in Sudan and chaired Kenya’s election monitors in 1992.
Kobia was born in 1947. He holds degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, St. Paul’s United Theological College in Kenya, McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis.
In other business, WCC officials said the agency’s finances are slowly improving after staff cuts and decreased spending. “What you could have called one or two years ago a crisis is over,” said the Rev. Anders Gadegaard, vice moderator of the WCC’s finance committee.
Kobia said that between 1996 and 2002, income to the WCC dropped from about $58 million to $31 million.
A financial report for 2002 showed a drop in contributions of about $2.26 million from 2001, contributing to an overall budget decrease of about $4.6 million for the year. Ecumenical News International reported the portion of member churches that contributed to the WCC, however, rose from 53 percent to 66 percent last year.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Poll, Rally and Commentary Follow Removal of Ten Commandments Monument
(RNS) As a new poll shows that more than three-quarters of American adults disapprove of the federal court order removing the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of Alabama’s state judicial building, evangelical leaders continue to voice divided opinions about the controversy.
A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll of 495 adults found that 77 percent said they did not approve of the order, 19 percent approved of it and 4 percent had no opinion. The poll, taken Monday and Tuesday (Aug. 25-26), has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
On Wednesday, workers rolled the granite monument out of public view after suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore declared he would not comply with an order calling for its removal. Alabama’s eight associate Supreme Court justices overruled Moore and told the building manager to find a way to move the monument, which was declared unconstitutional in November by a federal judge.
At a rally Thursday outside the building, hundreds of Moore’s supporters continued to demonstrate in favor of the monument’s placement in the rotunda.
“The liberal elite and the judges at the highest level and some in the media are determined to remove every evidence of faith in God from this entire culture,” said Focus on the Family Chairman James Dobson, another Moore advocate, at the rally.
But other evangelical leaders have a different stance.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. said he agrees with Moore that the monument is constitutional, but he should have complied with the order.
“Christians cannot turn to the courts when we want rescue and then disobey the same courts when we lose,” Mohler, of Louisville, Ky., said in a Wednesday column in Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention’s news service.
“Chief Justice Moore is not helping his case _ or the cause of religious liberty _ by having refused to obey a lawful order of the court.”
In other developments, a Mobile, Ala., district judge dismissed a suit that had been filed Monday in an effort to stop the monument’s removal.
Also, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan weighed in on the dispute, telling reporters Wednesday that the president thinks it is important to uphold the law.
“It is important that we respect our laws and our courts,” she said. “In some instances, the courts have ruled that the posting of the Ten Commandments is OK. In other circumstances, they’ve ruled that it’s not OK. In either case, there’s always opportunity for appeal of the court’s decisions. But we believe that it’s important to respect the laws in the courts.”
_ Adelle M. Banks
Top Episcopal Bishop Defends Vote in Support of Gay Bishop
(RNS) The top bishop of the Episcopal Church has told Anglican leaders around the world that his vote to confirm an openly gay priest as a bishop was not “unfaithful to an authentic way of reading Scripture.”
Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, in a letter to the primates, or presiding bishops, of the Anglican Communion, said he was bound to respect the decision of New Hampshire Episcopalians to elect the Rev. V. Gene Robinson as the church’s first openly gay bishop.
“I must say in strongest possible terms that if I believed in any part of my being that the consent to this election was unfaithful to an authentic way of reading Scripture and contrary to the leading of the Holy Spirit, I could no longer serve as presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church,” Griswold wrote in an Aug. 19 letter to his fellow primates.
Robinson’s Aug. 5 confirmation, along with a resolution that “recognized” same-sex union ceremonies as part of the church’s “common life,” angered conservative primates in Africa, Asia, South America and Australia.
The leader of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has summoned the 37 primates to an emergency meeting in London in October to discuss the issue.
Griswold, who said he was writing “with a heavy heart,” acknowledged that the two decisions have “strained” relations in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion.
“I need not tell you how difficult it is for me to be a chief pastor at this time, and I ask for your prayers for me and for our church,” Griswold said.
Griswold, argued, however, that the votes did not endorse either homosexuality or same-sex unions. “It is my prayer that you will see what has occurred in the life of the Episcopal Church in its complexity, and not dismiss it as an instance of infidelity to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, or disregard for the bonds of communion we share,” he said.
_ Kevin Eckstrom
Pagan’s Complaint Leads to Removal of Jesus From Town Council’s Prayers
(RNS) A federal judge has ordered the town council in Great Falls, S.C., to cease mentioning the name of Jesus Christ in prayers before its meetings after a pagan complained.
District Judge Cameron Currie of Columbia, S.C., issued the order on Aug. 21, ruling in favor of Wicca High Priestess Darla Wynne, The Charlotte Observer reported.
Wynne had accused the council of violating the separation of church and state.
“What Judge Currie said today is the Great Falls Town Council is wrong,” said Wynne. “And Darla Wynne, a pagan, is on the side of the law.”
She said she had received death threats after filing the suit.
Great Falls Mayor H.C. “Speedy” Starnes said of the ruling, “We’re disappointed in the judge’s decision because we still feel like we’re right on this matter.”
Town attorney Brian Gibbons said the order would be appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Wynne, who said she was offended by the Christian prayer, filed the suit in August 2001 after the council refused her suggestion that it substitute the words “Our Heavenly Father” for “Jesus Christ.”
“The establishment clause of the Constitution safeguards the separation of church and state and that is what the judge is upholding,” said Herbert Buhl, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who is handling Wynne’s suit.
Report: One in 20 Swiss Priests in Sexual Relationship With a Woman
LONDON (RNS) One Swiss priest in 20 is or has been in a sexual relationship with a woman, the international conference of Roman Catholic priests’ conferences in the English-speaking world has been told, according to a report in the Irish Times.
A Swiss priest, the Rev. Jean-Pierre Brunner, told the conference, meeting in Dublin, that in his country a group was campaigning to allow such couples to live together openly.
Last May, the group published figures showing that 310 women, with 149 children, were in a relationship with a priest, but following publicity the number of women known to be in this situation had risen to more than 400.
In June 1995 Bishop Hansjoerg Vogel of Basel resigned his post when his mistress became pregnant. He was elected bishop in January 1994.
Swiss dioceses still have the right to elect their own bishops and Swiss parishes elect their parish priests.
_ Robert Nowell
Quote of the Day: Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of South Africa
(RNS) “I know times are tough, but … just think what we could achieve if every business responded with a small percentage of profit. Our God is a generous God. How wonderful it would be if we could mirror that generosity.”
_ Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of South Africa, speaking of his plans to propose a national reparation fund for apartheid survivors to which individuals, business and civil society can contribute. He was quoted by the Anglican Communion News Service.
DEA END RNS
