This marks the first column as Interim Deputy for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations. As many of you probably know, the position of Associate Deputy, which I held from 2001-2009, was eliminated at General Convention 2009, along with over thirty other staff positions at the Episcopal Church Center.
Thoughts from Fr Tom Ferguson
Religious Groups Fill Haiti Government Gaps
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti— Outside a red and gray Coleman tent, a boy sat mute in a wheelchair holding a dented metal bowl of yellow gruel. His arms were laced with pus-filled wounds, flies swarmed around his grotesquely swollen ankles, and his right foot was missing its littlest toe—but he was lucky. Not only had he escaped the school for the disabled, where many of his handicapped classmates were crushed to death, but he had found his way to what passes for an oasis in this city of death and ruin: a camp run by the Episcopal church.
In earthquake-stricken Haiti, an Episcopal bishop is providing relief to as many survivors as he can while they wait for the arrival of official aid. Jean Zache Duracin speaks with WSJ's Charles Forelle on how he's trying to help.
Multimedia: Haiti's Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin on relief efforts
WCC News
- How theology can help save the world from climate change
What does the Bible say about climate change? What are the theological insights churches can offer to a world facing an unprecedented ecological crisis?
These questions, addressed at a public seminar on "Creation and the climate crisis" attended by church representatives to the UN climate summit in Copenhagen on 15 December, seem even more urgent after the summit’s failure to reach the fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement that millions around the world had hoped for.
EIR Updates
- Parliament of World Religions meets in Melbourne
First held in Chicago in 1893, the Parliament of the World’s Religions brings together the world’s religious and spiritual communities, their leaders and their followers to a gathering where peace, diversity and sustainability are discussed and explored in the context of interreligious understanding and cooperation.
- Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order Communiqué
The Commission devoted this first meeting to developing a vision that gives expression to its mandate. It sees its role as being a communicative and connection-making body which models and promotes communication and connection-making in the Anglican Communion, within a confident and vibrant expression of our shared faith and life, participating by God's grace in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ.
News in the Field
- The Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology
The Forum on Religion and Ecology is the largest international multireligious project of its kind. With its conferences, publications, and website it is engaged in exploring religious worldviews, texts, and ethics in order to broaden understanding of the complex nature of current environmental concerns.
- Bishop Smith of Connecticut on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
The world's wounds cry urgently for the healing Spirit and forgiving love of Jesus. Christ risen is our one hope, and our common calling.
CWS News
- Lack of binding Copenhagen climate accord doesn't let developed nations off the hook, says humanitarian agency CWS
As the Copenhagen climate change conference ended without official adoption of a non-binding accord brokered by President Barack Obama and emerging countries, humanitarian agency Church World Service called on individual nations to "act 'as if,' starting now."
Other Perspectives on Climate Change
- Sheikh Ali Gomaa
Islam has a rich spiritual tradition of personal development, but it is also a religion that places a great amount of emphasis on what we do in the world and how we treat those who surround us, whether they be other human beings, members of the plant or animal kingdoms, or more ephemeral beings such as the angels.
NCC News
- Earthday Sunday 2010 resource available for order or download
The 2010 Earth Day Sunday Resource, Sacred Spaces and an Abundant Life: Worship Spaces as Stewardship is available now to help congregations prepare for and celebrate stewardship of God’s Creation in their house of worship.
- Week of Christian Unity observed January 18-25
This year's theme, "You Are Witnesses of These Things" from Luke 24:48, was selected in part to commemorate the witness of the 1910 Edinburgh Mission Conference that historians name as the birth date and place of the modern ecumenical movement.
- Devestation in Haiti calls for unprecedented response
"The destruction around Port-au-Prince is so massive it can't yet be measured," said the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon. "What is clear is that the toll in lives and property will go beyond our ability to comprehend it. The situation has few precedents in our lifetimes, and our response to it must also be unprecedented."
Resources following up on General Convention's ecumenical and inter-religious work
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