Argentina
"Another Argentina and another world is possible," the Reformed Churches of Argentina said at the beginning of October. The church synod was meeting in a country close to economic collapse.
"Poverty is deepened by the recession, the politics of economic adjustment, prioritizing the payment of foreign debt, a lack of active social policies, unemployment and underemployment," the synod said. "While the economic and social situation is unresolved, many innocent people around us continue to suffer and die."
"We are living through a form of globalization which enriches a few while making most people poorer, more marginalized and more excluded. Instead of globalizing justice, equity, right, peace and solidarity, it has generalized a culture of money, competition, corruption, power and violence."
In the Buenos Aires area, the Evangelical Church of the River Plate runs a street children programme as part of its commitment to proclaim the gospel to the poor. The children and young people served by the programme live in extreme poverty, exposed to neglect, child labour, legal harassment and abuse.
La Paloma day centre
The programme provides food, lessons in hygiene, school education, advocacy for legal rights and help with social problems.
The aim is to integrate the children and their families into an active social pattern. In the last four years, 264 children and 118 families benefited from the programme, which is supported by the Reformed churches partnership fund.
Ecumenical News International (ENI)
The Geneva-based international news agency specializing in religious, ecumenical and humanitarian issues is seeking a senior
journalist as editor-in-chief.
Wide experience of writing for the secular and religious press and the ability to lead an established team including two other experienced journalists is essential. The successful candidate will have English as first language or equivalent competence. International experience, including a good knowledge of French, would be welcomed.
Full details from: Human Resources Office (ENI), PO Box 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland.
England
John Gilbey of the United Reformed Church in the UK died on November 2. John joined the WARC executive committee at the
centennial celebrations in St Andrews, Scotland, in 1977. He served in the department of cooperation and witness until 1982, when he was elected moderator of the department of finance, a post he occupied until 1989. Delegates to the 23rd general council (Debrecen 1997) will remember him as one of the two recording secretaries.
He was a man of quick mind and exceptional linguistic ability, faithful and wise. A dedicated ecumenist, he worked tirelessly for his local church and kept it linked with the church worldwide. In earlier years, he taught as a missionary in Madagascar, together with his wife Julia, who survives him.
India
The National Council of Churches in India has charged the government with using the country's schools to inculcate Hindu nationalism.
A new national curriculum is due to go in effect in 2002. Critics see it as an attempt by the government, led by the right-wing Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party, to promote the view of India as an essentially Hindu nation. "The outcome," says Valson Thampu, a Church of North India pastor teaching at St Stephen's College in New Delhi, "will be even more biased texts that those that are already taught in some of the states."
The new curriculum, the NCCI fears, will encourage Hindu fanaticism and further marginalize Christians and other religious minorities.
The Netherlands
The Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC) has announced the theme for its next assembly, which it will hold in the Netherlands. The theme, "I will be with you always", is taken from Matthew 28.20. There Jesus gathers his disciples to say his final words. As he commands them to go to the ends of the earth, he also promises to be with them always, even to the end of the age.
These words also refer to the coming of the Holy Spirit. As REC vice-president Douwe Visser says, in this theme "Christology and pneumatology come together."
Jesus' presence with us in the Spirit is a comfort to the suffering, an encouragement to those in secularized societies, a motivation for those in mission, and a help for those seeking justice in our world. It is a word of solidarity and reassurance.
Neither date nor site for the meeting is yet decided, although the site search is nearing an end, following a visit to the Netherlands by REC general secretary Richard van Houten in October.
The normal date for the assembly would be 2004, but REC has ruled out mid-2004 because that would clash with the Alliance's 24th general council in Accra. More than half REC's member churches also hold membership in the Alliance, and a joint committee promotes cooperation between the two sister organizations.
Northern Ireland
Leaders of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland welcomed the late-October decision by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to begin decommissioning its weapons. Presbyterian moderator Alistair Dunlop hailed it as "a major step in the right direction".
The conveners of the church and government committee agreed with Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Féin - the political party linked with the IRA - that there was now an opportunity to move forward to a better future. They welcomed the statement that his objective is to replace conflict and strife with genuine partnership and equality.
The decommissioning of weapons by loyalists and republicans "is a crucial step" in creating "a settled but diverse society in which people from different parts of the community can participate and feel at home", they said.
Pakistan
Sixteen people who died in an attack on a church in Bahawalpur at the end of October may have been shot by mistake.
The sixteen belonged to a Church of Pakistan congregation that meets in a Roman Catholic church. That Sunday, the Catholic and Protestant congregations switched their service times.
Many suspect that those who gunned them down were radical Muslims and that their intended target was the local Catholic priest - a US citizen.
No one has yet been arrested, but Victor Azariah, general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Pakistan (NCCP), thinks the police know who the killers are. He believes they belong to "Sipah-e-Sahaba" [soldiers of Islam], one of several radical Islamic groups infuriated by their government's support for the US war in Afghanistan. The NCCP has demanded a judicial enquiry into the massacre.
Switzerland
Brigalia Bam from South Africa was the main speaker at a celebration in the Ecumenical Centre, Geneva, to mark the 75th
birthday of Lukas Vischer.
From 1961 onwards Vischer was a staff member of the secretariat of the WCC's commission on faith and order, and its director, 1965-79. He was a WCC observer at the second Vatican council, 1962-65, and was moderator of the theological department of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, 1982-89.
Since then his main contribution to the Reformed family has been through the John Knox Centre, where he heads the programme commission. He has long been concerned about climate change, and his biblical meditation on this topic appears elsewhere in this Update. A selection of texts by Lukas Vischer may be found on our department of theology website.
