Ugandan faith leaders urge transparency after oil discovery; Hard news from South Sudan; Walter Wink: rise in glory; Rosa Parks remembered at National Cathedral; Anglican Communion weekly review
Ugandan faith leaders urge transparency after oil discovery
http://www.eni.ch/featured/article.php?id=5656
Hard news from South Sudan
The Diocese of Chicago, which has a companion relationship with the Diocese of Renk, links to difficult news this morning about the deteriorating situation along the Sudan-South Sudan border.
UN has already estimated that more than 418,000 people have been displaced since fighting between Sudanese government forces and indigenous rebels erupted in South Kordofan in June last year and later spread to Blue Nile in September.
According to Andrej Mahecic, spokesperson of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), nearly 2,000 new refugees from Blue Nile had arrived in neighboring Assosa region in western Ethiopia so far in May.
“The refugees cited night-time killings, abductions and the burning of their crops as reasons for fleeing” the UN spokesperson said in a press release seen by Sudan Tribune.
Assosa region contains a refugee camp that is already hosting nearly 35,000 refugees mainly from Sudan.
Numerous Episcopal dioceses are in companion relationships with dioceses in Sudan, so news of what happens there, often gets here quickly. Please keep the people of the region in your prayers. To learn more, visit the Diocese of Chicago’s Renk Media Team or the American Friends of the Episcopal Church in Sudan.
Walter Wink: rise in glory
Walter Wink, one of the most influential Bible scholars and theologians died May 10 at age 76.
Ekklesia writes:
At the time of his death, he was Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. He was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1961. He developed nuanced biblical arguments in favour of pacifism, anti-capitalism and the acceptance of same-sex relationships.
He built on Gandhi’s understanding of nonviolence as a more effective and more radical option than both violence and passivity. Although he was a pacifist, he was sharply critical of pacifists who seem more concerned with being personally virtuous than with serving the needs of the world.
Much of Wink’s theology concerned “the principalities and powers” mentioned in the New Testament. He wrote of their contemporary manifestation in institutions through which humans dominate each other and the rest of creation. He saw capitalism as just one manifestation of this “domination system”, in conflict with the freedom and justice of God’s kingdom.
His most famous published works are perhaps the three books in the “powers” trilogy, published between 1984 and 1992: Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers and Engaging the Powers.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/16632
http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/wink_3707.htm
Rosa Parks remembered at National Cathedral
The National Cathedral in Washington DC dedicated a stone carving of Rosa Parks recently according to USAToday:
From the program book for the event:
Rosa Louise Parks, nationally recognized as the mother of the modern day civil rights movement in America, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama,on February 4, 1913. her refusal in 1955 to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus triggered a wave of protest that reverberated throughout the United state
Rosa Louise Parks, nationally recognized as the mother of the modern day civil rights movement in America, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. Her refusal in 1955 to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus triggered a wave of protest that reverberated throughout the United States.
The sculpture of Parks will sit in the Cathedral’s Human Rights Porch alongside a carving of Mother Teresa. Both carvings were designed by Chas Fagan, an artist from North Carolina, and carved in the spring of 2011 by cathedral stone carver Sean Callahan.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/05/national-cathedral-dedicates-stone-carving-of-rosa-parks/1#.T7D3Gr-5YUm
Anglican Communion News Service
Weekly Review 5 – 11 May, 2012
This week’s Anglican Communion news
Anglican Life – Making youth proud to be Anglican
Anglican Life – Ugandan faith leaders urge transparency after oil discovery
Anglican Life – Anglicans take part in Mexican G20 talks
Anglican Life – Don’t apologise for the ‘Christian’ in Christian Aid, says Bishop
Anglican Life – Canada asks: ‘What makes a competent priest?’
Anglican Life – Happy Sunday for Indonesian congregation
Digital Communion – Mobile money maker
Digital Communion – Virtually speaking about Skype ministry
Bookshelf – Archbishop’s book review in Prospect magazine
http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2012/5/11/ACNS5105