Chicago Conference Will Examine Christian-Muslim Relations

By the Reverend L.Humphrey Walz

"Christian-Muslim Relations: Toward a Just World Order" is the theme of the April 22-24, 1993 World Mission Institute, co-sponsored by two dozen Islamic and Christian organizations under the auspices of the Association of Chicago Theological Schools. Centered at Chicago's Lutheran School of Theology, the opening session will be held at the nearby American Islamic College. The programs will "bring together members of two of the world's great faith communities whose ever deepening encounter history is making inevitable," the sponsors announced. "As never before, Muslims and Christians must learn to live together in community rather than. . . in contention. "

Dr. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Harvard emeritus professor of the comparative history of religions, will give an overview of 14 centuries of encounters and clashes, noting grounds for reciprocal gratitude as well as mutual forgiveness. Dr. Willem Bijlefeld, director emeritus of the Duncan Black McDonald Center for Islamic Studies at Hartford Theological Seminary, will address "Alienation and Rapprochement" in 20th century Christian-Muslim relations. Dr. Mahmoud Ayoub of Temple University will speak on "Contemporary Problems and Challenges," and Prof. Rosemary Radford Ruether of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary will describe "Christian-Muslim Relations in a Post-Cold War era."

Participants also may choose two among seven workshops, each with a Muslim and a Christian facilitator, on such topics as "Theological Issues: Dialogue, Mission and Pluralism;" "Authority, Understanding and Use of Scripture;" "Islam in the African-American Communities;" and "How We Talk and Think About Human Sexuality. "

Forms for registration (which is free, although "voluntary contributions are appreciated") may be secured, along with information on meals and lodging, from Neva Vogelaar, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1100 East 55th Street, Chicago, IL 60615.

Churches Respond to Turmoil in Former Yugoslavia

In its latest "situation report" on the fragments of former Yugoslavia, the World Council of Churches highlights some of the frustrations secular and religious agencies are encountering there. Anticipating the problems that will affect postwar stability, it insists that plans for civic reconstruction must include the preservation of a multi-ethnic society "with special sensitivity to the needs of Muslims whose culture and identity have been gravely threatened by 'ethnic cleansing."'

Human rights violators, including rapists, must be brought before appropriate tribunals along with the fomenters of the war itself, the WCC says. "While refusing impunity for the guilty, one must also work for true reconciliation, avoiding revenge and restoring dialogue," the report adds.

"Churches and ecumenical organizations abroad," it notes, are pursuing efforts "to promote the role of religious leaders and communities in the war-torn area as advocates of non-violence, negotiation, tolerance and compassion" and "to encourage them to become visibly engaged in rehabilitation and reconciliation."

Such heartening responses are no substitute for peace, however, for all its problems. To that end, all possible encouragement should also be given to responsible U.N. and governmental agencies.

Spiritual Leaden of Armenia and Azerbaijan Plead for End to Strife

The tragic, divisive impact of history— including some seven decades under Soviet rule—on relations between mostly Christian Armenia and largely Muslim Azerbaijan must be ended and reversed, according to Vasken I, Catholicos of All Armenia, and Sheikh-ul-Islam Al lah shukur PashaZadeh, chairman of the Board of Caucasian Muslims of Azerbaijan. Their three-day February meeting with their cohorts, as guests of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Conference of European Churches in Montreux, Switzerland, produced a joint document to that effect. In drafting it, they kept in mind the warfare, since November 1989, over control of the 80 percent Christian-Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in the heart of Azerbaijan.

"Despite some attempts to characterize . . . [this] shedding of innocent blood as a Christian-Muslim conflict," the document asserts, "this is not a religious conflict. Armenian Christians and Azerbaijani Muslims have lived in peace, with respect and good neighborliness." Mindful of "the victims who have fallen," they wrote, and out of concern for "the future of both our nations, we call upon our people to cease the bloodshed" and, in harmony with the efforts of "representatives of the U.N., the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and other people of good will," to strive "to solve all problems peacefully, with justice, through political means, in accordance with universally recognized norms. "

The document calls upon both sides for "unconditional release of their hostages" and "treating their prisoners of war in the spirit of the Geneva Convention." It also requests the WCC and the International Islamic Council for Daw'a and Relief to help establish a United International Humanitarian Fund "for the victims and. . . the peaceful inhabitants who suffer severe hardships . . . in the zones of conflict, without distinction of nationality."

Presbyterians, Lutherans and the Horrors of the Sudan

When Presbyterian commissioners and advisory participants convene in Orlando for their 205th Annual General Assembly from June 2 to 9, they will be encouraged to "pray and fast for at least one meal" and donate "the money saved . . . to Sudan Relief 9-2000043" (the number of the Presbyterian Central Treasury account dedicated to Sudanese relief). This approach to stimulating both sensitivity and support for displaced and starving southern Sudanese was prompted by a heartrending report from a special emissary of the Presbyterian Church of the Sudan to the 1992 General Assembly in Milwaukee.

At the beginning of the dry season, he revealed, northern-controlled government troops had launched a massive March 1992 attack against southern towns and villages, adding 500,000 refugees to the four million previously forced from their communities. The government had then canceled the south's weekly U.N. airlift of desperately needed food and milk powder. Presbyterian World Service was able to send funds for some immediate food relief and longer-term development. Along with other international relief services, it contributed toward opening several towns to renewed air deliveries of food. The 1993 Assembly, however, will be asked to do more.

Articles in the March and April issues of The Lutheran contain moving accounts of the growing, deadly crisis in southern Sudan. Text and photographs by David L. Miller [see his photographs on page 99 of this issue] depict living skeletons and dying children and assign responsibility for the tragedy largely to the authorities in Khartoum. "The Sudanese government," Miller charges, "remains one of the most repressive regimes in Africa ."

His March article, entitled "The Root of the Problem," also explores the forces churning the civil war between the Arab—and strongly Islamic—Khartoum government in the north and the Sudan People's Liberation Army in the Black and 85 percent Christian south which, although frustratingly divided along tribal lines, is united in its desire for autonomy. Khartoum cannot permit this, Miller writes, without losing its access to "the vast, rich rural lands of the south [which] lie atop large, undeveloped oil reserves."

Thus, "a deadly trinity of religion, race and economics twist themselves together in Sudan's civil war." Miller leaves his readers with the feeling that the World Mission Institute's aim to direct "Christian-Muslim Relations Toward a Just World Order" is right on target, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and its Sudanese colleagues are close to where the action is.

Israeli Embassy Targets U.S. Churches on Vatican Issues

Ari Granot is the new "Counselor of Church Affairs" at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. The position was described in the announcement of his March 23 lecture on "Christian Community and the Israeli Government" at St. Roman Parish,. Milwaukee: "In order to promote dialogue on issues of concern to the American Christian communities regarding the State of Israel, the Israeli Foreign Ministry recently created a consular position with specific focus on this area...including Israeli-Vatican relations."

One can hope that someone like Msgr. Jean Louis Tauran, Vatican secretary for relations with states, will be invited to bring supplementary facts and perspectives to parishes where Mr. Granot speaks. Progress on those "issues of common concern," Tauran believes, can't be made until the Israeli government clarifies officially whether the State of Israel is a state for the Jews or the state of the Jews. That this is no mere quibble over a couple of
prepositions is, in the judgment of Holy Cross Professor George Emile Irani, demonstrated by Israel's avoidance of a straight answer to the question ever since its 1948 establishment.

"A state for the Jews," as Irani sees it, "would imply the possibility that non-Jews could live in that state as equal citizens." On the other hand, a "Jewish state," that is a state of the Jews, would exclude "Goyim" (non-Jews) from full-fledged citizenship.

In practice, the latter seems the more applicable definition to date. Though, as Israel's apologists emphasize, there are 800,000 Palestinian "citizens" of Israel, their status and rights are not comparable with those of Israeli citizens who also enjoy "Jewish nationality." The latter, born of Jewish mothers or authentically converted to Judaism, have, from the moment they set foot on Israeli soil, the right to live on the government-owned (mostly expropriated) 93 percent of the land. They also enjoy water, electricity, telephone service, road repair and other public amenities in their work or residential areas superior to the services extended to areas occupied by Israel's Muslim and Christian citizens. The bilateral Vatican-Israeli commission established last July has yet to come to grips with these matters.

Much of the discussion in that commission has centered about Jerusalem, occupied in part by Israel in 1948 and in full in 1967, and enlarged and "annexed" in 1980 as "the eternal and indivisible capital of the nation." (All three stages were carried out over United Nations opposition.)

The Vatican, says Tauran, considers Jerusalem less from the standpoint of territory than of values. "The Holy City in itself is an immense treasure for millions of Jewish, Christian and Muslim believers," he says. To preserve this value, Touran asks that Jerusalem be given a special status, internationally guaranteed, not unlike that foreseen in the still unrescinded U.N. 1947 partition plan.

How the Israelis expect Granot to influence Vatican policy through American churches is unclear, as is the role either Israel or the Vatican is ready to accord the Palestinian Christians, whether clergy or communicants, on matters that affect them as much as anyone else. Also unresolved are the Vatican's requests for full tax exemption for its institutions in Jerusalem, Israel and the occupied territories and the right to send as many church workers into Israel as it chooses.

Candid New Guide for Puzzled Pilgrims

The Middle East Relationships Committee of the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland (35-41 Lower Marsh, London SE1 7RL) is distressed by the confused impressions many Western Christians bring home from their guided tours of the Holy Land. Too often, sightseers are "taken from their hotels by air-conditioned coaches along roads that avoid Palestinian villages to sites of religious interest which are presented more as museums than as the places of worship of a living, indigenous Christian community," the Committee notes.

Too rarely, it observes, have tour directors arranged for Christian pilgrims to meet with any of their 100,000 remaining fellow-Christians there, let alone enjoy their typically Arab hospitality. Western visitors arrive and depart without sensitive exposure to the conflicting counterclaims in this "one land with two histories."

If their concern to follow Psalm 122:6's charge to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" has been whetted by visiting that city's religious shrines, it has not been abetted by any exposure to Israeli government-condoned or -initiated obstacles to that peace in the form of violations of human rights and international law.

To remedy this, the Anglican/Catholic/ Protestant CCBI committee has produced Holy Land Pilgrimage, a fact-packed 42-page guide for visitors who want an uncommercialized, spiritually oriented focus on what they've come to see. Its amazingly concise sketch of the region's biblical and post-biblical history features careful summations of the contrasting Israeli and Palestinian views.

It also points to the disturbing, centuries old role of outsiders in complicating the life and stability of the area. Nor does it hesitate to acknowledge the guilt at its own national doorsteps: The Crusaders, with strong English contingents, "killed Arabs whether they were Muslims or fellow Christians," the booklet notes. Also, during and after World War I, contradictory British promises to European Zionists and Palestinian Arabs helped fuel subsequent intercommunal violence. And, in the 1956 attack on Egypt, the UK, though bitterly divided, joined forces with the Israeli and French invaders. "We are," the British church-people write, "not innocent, superior, 'objective' observers of other people's problems, but participants in the . . . background of the present complex situation."

The book is in part a response to an appeal by Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) Secretary-General Gabriel Habib "to Christians of the world to go on pilgrimage to the Middle East...to meet human beings . . . and, beyond based concern for one country or another. . .to be pan of the Churches' ministry of reconciliation, justice and peace." To this, Greek Catholic Archbishop Lutfi Laham, Patriarchal Vicar of Jerusalem, adds that it is "important to include . . . a visit to the service programs of the local church, such as a school, children's house or dispensary." Such visits to contemporary Palestinian Christians are enlightening for the visitor, and also strengthen the resolve of a harried Palestinian Christian minority to resist the temptation to emigrate, and stay on in "loving, vital witness to Jesus Christ and His Gospel."

Also ready to cooperate, the book informs readers, is Clergy for Peace, which is dedicated to bringing together rabbis, imams, priests and parsons to exchange views on such modern challenges as pluralism, dialogue and genuine democracy. Its founder, David Rosen, once was the chief rabbi of Ireland who, before he migrated to Jerusalem, became deeply involved in dialogue with South African Christians and Muslims.

Potential American pilgrims interested in background facts or contacts in any pan of the Middle East are directed to the MECC's Ecumenical Travel Support Services at Stony Point Center, Stony Point, NY 10980, phone/fax (914) 786-3887, which has a supply of Holy Land Pilgrimage at $4.50 postpaid. That office is headed by Mary Davies, who formerly operated out of MECC General Headquarters in Cyprus. A Methodist, she endorses the resolution of the May 1992 General Conference of the United Methodist Church giving official guidance for effective "Holy Land Tours."

Ecumenical Middle East Study Tours, 32820 Colony Hill, Franklin, MI 48025, phone (313) 851-5605, fax (313) 8556077, also operates study tours with the same criteria. Its next trip to Israel, the occupied territories and Egypt is scheduled for May 30-June 12. It also helps churches and other groups tailor their own tours.

A very different but also ecumenically endorsed tour to Damascus from June 9-27 will be led by Dr. Elaine C. Hagopian of the Sociology Depanment, Simmons College 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115, phone (617) 738-3156.

The Rev. L. Humphrey Walz, D.D., retired associate executive of the Presbyterian Synod of the Northeast, is active in ecumenical activities.