I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.
As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
-- John 17:20-21, NRSV
Ecumenical / Interfaith Headlines
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By The Rev. Tex Sample*
John Wesley understood quite clearly the atrocities carried out by Europeans against Native Americans. In his sermon “ A Caution Against Bigotry” he wrote:
 UMNS Photo
“Even cruelty and bloodshed, how little have the Christians come behind them! And not the Spaniards or the Portuguese alone, butchering thousands in South America: not the Dutch only in the East Indies, or the French in North America, following the Spaniards step by step: our own countrymen, too, have wantoned in blood, and exterminated whole nations; plainly proving thereby what spirit it is that dwells and works in the children of disobedience.”
The Anglo European takeover of a continent from its native peoples occurred through a host of means— political, economic, military, cultural, social, and religious— and the guilt for these measures is historically broad in sweep and pervades the land. Neither our government nor our economy is innocent, and our faith traditions are complicit—indeed, often actively engaged in the violations and even the cultural and physical genocide of those we now call Native Americans. It is long past time for The United Methodist Church to recognize these wrongs and to take steps to begin a healing process which will begin with the 2012 Act of Repentance to Indigenous Peoples during the General Conference on April 27, 2012 in Tampa.
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by The Rev. Anita Phillips  Anita Phillips As a Native American United Methodist I view the Act of Repentance as a double edged sword. On the one hand, it will be a time when delegates to the top decision-making body of the denomination will stop and listen and, I pray, engage seriously in the reflection and self examination that repentance requires. |
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by The Rev. Dr. Stephen J. Sidorak, Jr. Presented at the Pre-General Conference News Briefing January 19, 2012 Tampa, FL
The 2008 General Conference assigned to the General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns the task to help lead our whole church toward a 2012 General Conference Act of Repentance on “Healing Relationships with Indigenous Persons.” To do this with dignity and gravitas will require United Methodists to enter into an ongoing process of prayerful contemplation and spiritual preparation. Each of us must engage in rigorous self-examination and encourage other United Methodists to do likewise. How meaningfully we can carry out an Act of Repentance in 2012 will depend in large measure on how faithfully we discern the need for it—historically and intellectually, morally and emotionally. The invitation is extended to every United Methodist to join in an intensive, even exhaustive, conversation about a heinous record of crimes against humanity, often perpetrated in the name of Christ Jesus, thus confirming our complicity in them. Lest we harbor any doubts or share any misgivings about this fact, we only have to remember the words of Frantz Fanon from the opening chapter, “On Violence,” in his book, The Wretched of the Earth. “The Church in the colonies is a white man’s Church, a foreigners’ Church. It does not call the colonized to the ways of God, but to the ways of the white man, to the ways of the master, the ways of the oppressor” which is “aided and abetted in the pacification of the colonized by the inescapable powers of religion." |
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by Dr. Glen Alton Messer, II Associate General Secretary, GCCUIC One of the things I am often asked when I talk with people about
ecumenical work is, ‘What is a bilateral dialogue and what is its
purpose?’
The simplest and most obvious answer is that a bilateral dialogue is a
formal conversation between members of two communions (churches).
Similarly, a multi-lateral dialogue is one involving three or more
communions. 
According to one set of logic, the purpose of bilateral and multi-lateral dialogues is as adjuncts to conciliar ecumenism (that
has, for a number of years now, been aimed at the ultimate goal of
‘full communion’ among all council members). Specific discussions are
initiated between two conciliar partners in order to facilitate their
progress in the broader conciliar discussions, moving them past sticking
points that are unique to them — and holding up the progress of the
larger conciliar enterprise. That’s the theory. And, there is much virtue in this understanding of
bilateral and multilateral ecumenism. It places the primary emphasis
upon the big picture and the multitude of relationships among the
Christian churches. Thus, Christian unity is seen as something
undertaken as a commitment of the whole of the Body of Christ.
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