In Brief...World News Review - Tensions Create Possible Splits at Christian Assembly
A Russian Orthodox Church official has complained that a council representing hundreds of millions of Christians is dominated by liberal Westerners, and said his church was being isolated.
HARARE, Zimbabwe: (Associated Press) - A Russian Orthodox Church official has complained that a council representing hundreds of millions of Christians is dominated by liberal Westerners, and said his church was being isolated.
The Rev. Hilarion Alfeyev, who leads a five-person Russian delegation at the World Council of Churches assembly in Zimbabwe's capital, said the possibility of Orthodox Church delegates walking out was not a threat, but "an outcry of pain."
"We do not want to leave, but we want the WCC radically transformed," he said.
The Orthodox churches of Bulgaria and the Georgian republic have already quit the council, and senior Russian Orthodox Church officials did not attend the assembly, which met in early December.
The council has a total constituency of 350 to 450 million non-Catholic Christians. The assembly, with 960 delegates from 112 countries, is the WCC's highest deliberative body.
Alfeyev said his church is the largest in the WCC, putting its membership at more than 100 million. "Many Protestant churches have adopted the tendencies of liberal western society," Alfeyev said. "The WCC agenda is dominated by a western Protestant ethos.... We are becoming more and more isolated."
Orthodox leaders have said many on the council take too liberal a stance on key issues including homosexuality and the inclusion of women in the clergy.
The Orthodox pleas drew a testy response from several Protestants at the assembly, including a bishop from Germany who expressed irritation that the Russian had cited his church's size.
In remarks that drew the day's warmest applause, one of the first generation of women priests in the Church of England, Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, also complained about the threatened walk-outs.
"You say I'm bigger than you are, or we have this great tradition. This is all about power," she said. "Let's not wrap it up in theological language."
"We live a strange world. On one hand modern technology has created a global community, yet it seems everywhere we look we see anything but harmony. Instead envy, strife, hatred and even war, almost as though there was a hidden desire within the human race toward the 'clan mentality,' the my country, my race, my religion syndrome. It has permeated nearly all aspects of our world, no matter where we live."
The lone area where one would think we might find some degree of harmony would be in modern so-called Christianity. After all, Jesus taught that God is love. In fact, on the night before He died He made it clear that we can tell who His disciples are by the love they share for one another. "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35). Yet what we see is a different pattern-one of splits and divisions-and a parting of the ways. It will take the return of Christ to put it all back together.
An Article from:
World News and Prophecy: January 1999
Course Content
David Palmer
Born in Saskatchewan Canada, David Palmer was first introduced to the radio broadcast of the World Tomorrow during his career in broadcasting, when the program was aired during his on air shift. In 1965 his radio career took him to Vancouver British Columbia, where he was eventually baptized, and began attending Sabbath services. He was ordained to the ministry in 1983. Now retired from broadcasting David currently pastors congregations in Vancouver, and Vancouver Island. He is also a member of the UCG-Canada National Council, and serves on the Canadian Ministerial Services Team, as well as the Canadian Media Team
Donald Hooser
Don Hooser is a minister for the United Church of God. He lives in McKinney, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. He and his wife Elsie had three children, and she died in August 2020. Don married Judy in January 2022. Mr. Hooser graduated in 1963 from Southern Methodist University with a degree in mechanical engineering, and graduated in 1966 from Ambassador College, Big Sandy, Texas. For most of the time since then, he served as the pastor of churches in Ohio, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington. From 2011 until his retirement in 2021, his primary responsibility was answering the many letters written to the Church.
John Ross Schroeder
John died on March 8, 2014, in Oxford, England, four days after suffering cardiac arrest while returning home from a press event in London. John was 77 and still going strong.
Some of John's work for The Good News appeared under his byline, but much didn't. He wrote more than a thousand articles over the years, but also wrote the Questions and Answers section of the magazine, compiled our Letters From Our Readers, and wrote many of the items in the Current Events and Trends section. He also contributed greatly to a number of our study guides and Bible Study Course lessons. His writing has touched the lives of literally millions of people over the years.
John traveled widely over the years as an accredited journalist, especially in Europe. His knowledge of European and Middle East history added a great deal to his articles on history and Bible prophecy.
In his later years he also pastored congregations in Northern Ireland and East Sussex, and that experience added another dimension to his writing. He and his wife Jan were an effective team in our British Isles office near their home.
John was a humble servant who dedicated his life to sharing the gospel—the good news—of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God to all the world, and his work was known to readers in nearly every country of the world.
Peter Eddington
Peter serves at the home office as Interim Manager of Media and Communications Services.
He studied production engineering at the Swinburne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, and is a journeyman machinist. He moved to the United States to attend Ambassador College in 1980. He graduated from the Pasadena campus in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and married his college sweetheart, Terri. Peter was ordained an elder in 1992. He served as assistant pastor in the Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo, California, congregations from 1995 through 1998 and the Cincinnati, Ohio, congregations from 2010 through 2011.
