‘Scandal’ of treatment of migrants highlighted by church service
May 2, 2011 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
Over 2,000 migrants living and working in London are attending a special Mass for Migrants, celebrated at Southwark Catholic Cathedral on Monday 2 May 2011.
In the Catholic calendar the day is the Feast of St Joseph the Worker – whose celebration is associated with concern for the dignity and rights of labour, including the migrant labour upon which of the wealth of the modern world depends.
The Homily at the Mass for Migrants, which takes place at 11.00am, will be given by the Catholic Bishop of Brentwood, Thomas McMahon.
Source: Ekklesia
Church aid group urges Europe to do more for Libyan refugees
April 20, 2011 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
An ecumenical aid organisation has urged European governments to do more to help refugees from the war in Libya, and warned that continued inaction could damage relations with the Arab world – writes Jonathan Luxmoore.
“The European Union should be helping with resettlement facilities – instead, all we’re seeing is the reinforcement of border controls to prevent new arrivals,” said Genevieve Jacques, a staffer at La Cimade, an aid group belonging to France’s Protestant Federation.
Source: Ekklesia
Church calls for end to violence
March 29, 2011 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
Church leaders in Zimbabwe have called for an end to escalating political violence and the “hate language” fuelling it as elections approach and the nation slides deeper into a political crisis.
Churches prioritise peace, migrants’ rights, religious freedom and development
October 13, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
At the 50th meeting since its foundation in 1946, the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) decided to refocus, establishing four thematic working groups, in order better to respond to the needs of the member churches.
During their 2010 meeting, the commissioners identified four areas on which CCIA activities should be focused through thematic working groups, namely, “Peace and Security”, “Dignity and Rights of Migrants and Migrant Workers”, “Freedom of Religion” and “Peace in the Community”. This last group will pay special attention to the Millennium Development Goals and their impacts.
The meeting was hosted by the Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania at St Vlash Monastry in Durrës, Albania from 2 to 8 October 2010.
The CCIA’s new focal themes resonate with the mandate of the commission during its early years. The churches had established the commission as part of the World Council of Churches (WCC), itself still in the process of formation, in order to deal with the protection and resettlement of people uprooted by World War 2 and to make the voice of the churches heard on issues of common concern, notably on religious liberty.
South Africa, Christianity and the World Cup
June 8, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
By Tinyiko Sam Maluleke
During Edinburgh 2010, you’ve sometimes been wearing a South African football shirt and carrying around a vuvuzela (a traditional South African stadium horn). Can you tell us your motivation behind that?
I think the awarding of the FIFA World Cup to an African country for the first time is quite historic, because [it] is easily the biggest sporting event in the world. So I wanted to acknowledge and celebrate that, to start with.
Secondly, I wanted to emphasise the affirmation for, and of, Africa in the process. It’s a massive affirmation in a world where Africa has often been suspect and thought of negatively. This is one major morale boost for Africa.
Greater Manchester Church Receives Hate Mail Regarding Refugees
November 26, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
It now seems that a Methodist minister at a church in Greater Manchester has been under fire for helping refugees. Phil Mason, from the Victoria Hall in Bolton, said he was very concerned for his family after receiving a few notes over the past few months. Despite these letters, the minister has said that he has forgiven the author.
The hall is, as of now, supporting the Befriending Refugees and Asylum Seekers group. This is a group that makes a weekly drop-in session to the church. On the radio, Phil Mason went on to say that it was very hard to open a letter and see some aggressive language directed at the reader. He said it makes his stomach turn, and normally the reader would have concerns for his safety and his family.
Mason noted that he was able to see beyond the language in the letter and noticed that peoples’ perceptions of asylum seekers and refugees is very distorted. Either way, the notes have not been reported to the Greater Manchester Police despite the offensive content in them.
The minister said that, unfortunately, all of the letters that come have been anonymous, thus, he has not been able to respond to the writer or writers. However, Mason does still believe that people can understand other peoples’ stories if they will just listen. A lot of times people just need a different perspective on the story at hand.
A campaigner for the Refugee Action group, Nigel Rose, said that he feels that Mr Mason should contact the authorities. He went on to say that the people who are threatening him should be prosecuted.
The News Bulletin – January 15,1982
November 6, 2009 by Webmaster · 10 Comments
Below are extracts of the late Rev T.G.Oshokoya’s Missionary Trip Report from the Apostolic Faith Church Nigerian News Bulletin; 49 Maloney St.Ebute Metta, Nigeria dated January 15, 1982. Please note that due to a gray condition of the copy of the bulletin which rendered some parts of the report nondescript, we had to select legible paragraphs for online re-publication.
The plane took off at 11:15pm from Lagos on Tuesday the 15th of December 1981. after a stop at Douala, we flew to Nairobi arriving at 7:15am. We changed plane and continued to Salisbury, the capital of Zimbabwe. Brother Brooks, a lecturer at the University there met us at the airport. He was very helpful to us staying around until our next plane took us on local flight from Salisbury to Bulawayo where the Campmeeting was taking place. Bulawayo is the headquartes of our work in Southern Africa therefore gathered at the Campmeeting were many saints from Zambia, Botswana, Cape Town, Johannesburg, South Africa, Malawi etc.
Most of the morning service that day was taken up by introductions and reminiscences. Joy was mixed with tears as the Rev.Morgan Sengwayo thanked the Lord that my team members and I were able , at last to visit him and the saints since 1955 – my first visit. This was a fulfillment of his prayers and the earnest desire of his heart. He then formally handed the work over to me and told me to take full control of everything and then he stepped down from the platform.
I recalled how in March 1955 we held meetings in Salisbury, Gatooma, Gwelo and Bulawayo. Suddenly I got a call to be in Ghana and at the Bulawayo airport, the Lord laid it on my heart to tell Brother Sengwayo to carry on the work.
Page 2 paragraph to page 3 paragraphs 1-2
Brother Sengwayo held a get together for the team on the first Monday. The evening turned out to be a wonderful time of sweet fellowship as we heard testimony after testimony of God’s faithfulness. He told us of his early life when his mother wanted him to be baptised in water in the church, but he refused though he was still a boy because the life of the church members did not impress him. Later in Johannesburg, he was afflicted with a dreadful infectious disease. Since it could not be cured in hospital, it was thought to end his life for fear of contaminating others. But a kind nurse who knew his fate set him free. He later met some praying people who prayed for him and he was healed.
This set him seeking for deeper things of God. Later he heard about salvation. His heart longed to be saved and one day by a stream, he prayed earnestly the way he knew best. He told God to save his soul or he would drown. The Lord saved him that day. He later came across a tract of the Apostolic Faith Church and he wrote to Portland. He was sent some literature.
Sometime later, Portland wrote to inform him about the visit of the Overseer from Nigeria – Rev Timothy Oshokoya – and he went to meet him. He became my(Oshokoya’s) interpreter and at a meeting in Bulawayo, he broke down in tears as the message cut across. Right there he rushed to the mourners bench and the Lord sanctified him.
‘Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints’
The Apostolic Faith
Church(Gospel) Southern
Africa – Formative Years
US media network sees peace potential of church refugee services
September 19, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
The campaign is working to collect pledges from a million people to join in one minute of prayer for peace at noon on 21 September 2009 in observance of the United Nations International Day of Peace. CWS, an ecumenical development NGO, is a campaign partner.
“Prayer is a powerful thing that can bring the world peace, testifies Abdikani Abdi, aged 19, in the webisode, entitled ‘Messengers of Peace – the Abdi Family’ and posted in the Peace Video Festival section of www.odysseynetworks.org.
Abdikani’s brother Suleban, aged 17, and their widowed mother Halima also are featured. The video also includes a sequence on refugee sisters from Guinea, who tell their own story and then interview the Abdis.
After fleeing civil war and persecution in Somalia, Halima and her children took refuge at Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya. “We spent our life as refugees in Kenya, [for] 17 years,” Abdikani explained.
The Abdis – including two more brothers, Aden and Ahmed – were accepted into the United States refugee programme and arrived from Kenya on 11 September 2007. They were resettled by Church World Service to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
“When they arrived, Aden and Abdikani were severely malnourished, and Ahmed had suffered nerve damage for lack of proper medical care at the camp,” reported Barbara Witmer of CWS-Lancaster.
“A lot of people in the camp (were) so hungry,” Abdikani says. Sick and weak, he weighed 110 pounds when he arrived in the United States. Now he weighs 140. As he gained weight, “I got stretch marks,” he observed.
The family relocated to Buffalo, New York, from Lancaster, and now live in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, where Aden is working and Abdikani, Suleban and Ahmed are in school.
The boys’ sister had to stay behind in Dadaab. Halima currently is engaged in an intensive effort to get her daughter, now aged 14, over to the USA to be with them.
“Every time I see her picture, I’m crying,” Halima says.
Odyssey Networks is US’s largest coalition of Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith groups dedicated to media production and distribution. It is a service of the National Interfaith Cable Coalition, Inc., established in 1987.
For more information, visit www.odysseynetworks.org.
Church group urges truth commission on country’s violence
August 13, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
HARARE – A grouping of church organizations and Christian leaders in Zimbabwe has called for the creation of a commission to hear cases of political violence and determine punishment for perpetrators, and compensation for victims.
“Those involved in the designing, targeting, coordination and sponsoring of the violence must take ownership of their actions by a public acknowledgment of such actions,” said the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance in an August 7 statement.
The statement followed three days set aside in July by Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government for national healing and reconciliation after political violence that accompanied elections in 2008. The then main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party won the parliamentary vote and the first round of the presidential poll. The MDC had refused to take part in the presidential run-off, citing intimidation, and incumbent president, Robert Mugabe, won the election.
The Christian grouping that includes Roman Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, Evangelicals and Pentecostals said the reconciliation campaign would be in vain without “full disclosure of what happened during the period of conflict and such information made public.”
The MDC, whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai became prime minister in a power-sharing government with his long-time enemy Mugabe, and with the head of an MDC breakaway faction, has said at least 150 of its supporters were killed by state security agents and pro-Mugabe militants. Mugabe in turn accused the MDC of violence including arson attacks on rural supporters of his party.
A Zimbabwean cleric said at the end of July that the church should have a key role if the national healing and reconciliation process was to succeed.
“There cannot be peace without the church being part of the peace process,” Goodwill Shana, chairperson of the Heads of Christian Denominations in Zimbabwe told hundreds of people at an interdenominational meeting at the end of the three-day reconciliation period.
“We believe the peace process cannot be done without involving the church as a significant player. We believe the church is the most qualified. It may not be the only player, but it is the most qualified to help spearhead the process of national healing in Zimbabwe,” said Shana.
The Zimbabwe Christian Alliance in its statement said there needed to be an independent commission, “composed of eminent men and women of integrity from various sectors of society including ministers of religion and former or practicing judges.” The commission would, “hear and consider each case on its own merits and decide on appropriate compensation to be paid on wronged ones and or due punishment.”
The alliance comprises church leaders and groups from various Christian denominations campaigning for a just society based on Christian values.
Zimbabwe’s neighbor South Africa had its Truth and Reconciliation Commission headed by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, after the demise of apartheid and the country’s first national universal suffrage elections in 1994.
Source: The Zimbabwean
Church must fill ‘political vacuum’ over migration, says bishop
July 23, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
(Ekklesia) – Following comments by an ex-minister at the weekend that the Government has failed to make a positive case for immigration, a bishop has said that the Catholic church should take a lead.
Bishop Patrick Lynch, Chair of the Office of Migration and Refugee policy of the Catholic bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, highlighted the vacuum in political leadership on the question of migration and called for the Church to fill the void.
His comments came as James Purnell singled out the Government’s “failure” on highlighting the benefits of migration in an interview for the Guardian newspaper.
Bishop Lynch, speaking at the annual Justice and Peace conference, outlined the implications for migrants in the economic recession with rising tensions between British and overseas workers.
He called on those in the Church to welcome, walk with and empower migrants. “Our own experience with migrants and their families teaches us that welcoming and walking with always leads to empowering so that as people grow in knowledge and skills, in confidence and in hope they themselves – individually and collectively – are inspired and empowered to reach out to and work for justice for their fellow migrants,” he said.
He underscored the Church’s position with reference to six elements of the social teachings on the subject.
Bishop Lynch was one of four main speakers to address the 31st annual Justice & Peace conference at Swanwick in Derbyshire.
Around 300 attended the event which used an open space format for the first time to address issues around he growth of the BNP, negative media coverage of migration and the need for a regularisation of undocumented workers.
The outcomes of the deliberation will form part of an action plan for the National Justice and Peace Network over the next year.
Don Flynn, of the Migrants Rights Network, who also spoke, called for faith groups, trade unions, citizens organisations and others working on migration to come together in solidarity. “There has been a generous response across the country to migrants. The big story is that refugees and migrants have found solidarity in local community and often the Church is the first friend available,” said Don, who believes many of these groups work in isolation from others doing a similar thing down the road.
Mary Grey, Professor of Theology at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, also called for recognition that the UK did not welcome asylum seekers, “practices torture and colludes in rendition of people around the world”.
