Guidelines rather than the Holy Spirit. No evangelism to Muslims if the state says so. "A" path to God. Well isn't that con-vee-nient!
Posted on 08/30/2007 10:24:53 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY (BosNewsLife)— In a move expected to increase pressure on millions of Christians preaching Christ as "the Way, the Truth and the Life" the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) wants to join an ecumenical effort, backed by the Vatican, to "guide activities seeking converts to Christianity," BosNewsLife learned.
WEA General Secretary Geoff Tunnicliffe "gave his full approval" to a "code of conduct" for preachers and evangelists developed by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Vatican, said Thomas Schirrmacher, the head of WEA’s International Institute for Religious Freedom, in remarks distributed by the WCC.
The WEA is an association of organizations and churches, claiming a membership of some 420 million evangelical Christians worldwide. If confirmed, the WEA would abandon its basic beliefs, signing up to a doctrine developed by at least some religious leaders questioning what evangelicals regard as Biblical truths and backed by leaders of Islam and other religions, BosNewsLife established.
For instance Hermen Shastri, the general secretary of the Council of Churches of (mainly Islamic) Malaysia and co-moderator of WCC’s Faith and Order commission, said that "religious preachers need to be told that no religion has a monopoly on the truth, that there are many ways to find salvation."
"LORD AND SAVIOR"
Within the WEA, Christians have said however that only Jesus Christ is "Lord and Savior," citing Bible verses including the New Testament’s John 14:6 : 'Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."' It remained unclear Wednesday, August 15, how the WEA planned to reconcile these differences.
WEA’s Schirrmacher announced his organization’s readiness to work with the WCC and Vatican at an 8-12 August consultation held in Toulouse, France, where some 30 Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal and Evangelical theologians and church leaders from Europe, Asia, Africa and the United States, outlined the ’code of conduct’, expected to be finalized by 2010.
Yet, Reverend Tony Richie from the Church of God, a Pentecostal US-based denomination, said the ’code of conduct’ is not about "whether" Christians evangelize, but "how" they do it. He advocated "dialogical evangelism" which he claimed should be "ecumenically oriented." Some evangelical scholars have questioned this approach saying Jesus never said He is "a way" but rather "the way" to the Father who is God, according to the Bible they regard as God’s Word.
However the WCC said that the ’code of conduct’ should "on the one hand establish what all the partners agree needs to be banned when it comes to Christian mission, a daunting task given the many different contexts involved." Among those issues was "a US Pentecostal struggling with the fact that Pentecostals are indeed ecumenical but just don’t know it," the WCC explained.
ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY
Launched in May 2006 near Rome, Italy, the ’code of conduct’ is part of an ecumenical project named "An interreligious reflection on conversion : From controversy to a ’shared code of conduct’." WCC and Vatican representatives announced they would open contacts with Islam and other faiths "to study ways to avoid conflicts."
Hans Ucko of WCC. The Head of the Interreligious Relations Office for the WCC, Hans Ucko, has already suggested that Christian evangelists should stay away from places in the Muslim world where conversion from Islam is a punishable offense, BosNewsLife monitored.
Some evangelical groups say there are no limits on spreading the Gospel as Jesus Christ died at the cross for the sins of everyone, before His resurrection on the third day, "so whoever believes in Him has everlasting life," as mentioned for instance in Bible verse John 3:16.
They seem to suggest that the ’code of conduct’ paves the way to the impending temporary rule by the ’Anti-Christ’ as described in the Bible. The move comes nearly four years after leaders at an unprecedented religious congress in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan agreed to create what they called a "United Nations of Religions."
NEW BUILDING OFFERED
In September 2003, the President of the mainly Muslim and former Soviet nation, Nursultan Abish-uly Nazarbayev, offered to provide a new building in the capital Astana for the organization where disputes can be discussed in a neutral setting.
Delegates in Astana said they would call the organization "the Congress of World and Traditional Religions", dropping the word "national" because most faiths stretch across national boundaries.
Evangelical commentators, including best-selling author Hal Lindsey, have warned that organizations such as the United Nations, the European Union with apparent support from the Vatican and likely WCC groups, are increasingly trying to create a "universally excepted religion ideology", a far cry from Christianity.
read later
Guidelines rather than the Holy Spirit. No evangelism to Muslims if the state says so. "A" path to God. Well isn't that con-vee-nient!
Far from all the hyperventilating, the “code” mainly appeals to Christian evangelists to target non-Christians, nominal Christians, and lapsed Christians, rather than sheep-stealing.
Sheep-stealing builds money and worldly influence, but brings no-one to Christ, and wounds weak faith.
It’s so basic, that wildly diverse denominations have signed on to it. Perhaps some for purposes less noble than others. But using the statements of some of the smaller signers as ad-hominem attacks against other signers is just plain silly.
If you can steal sheep that means someone owns the sheep. That is just a very very dangerous premise.
In the end this will all be honored in the breech as true Christian believers will end up obeying the scriptures rather then what people put together.
Honestly, I think Christians who evangelize other Christian churches are misguided. The whole point is to bring Jesus to those who don’t know of Him. Christians should be more careful who they judge to be false among the flock. God will sort it out.
I have never seen an good news or work come out of the World Council of Churches.
Do NOT trust any ecumenical anything that is "backed" by the Vatican.
The Vatican made it known earlier this year that ecumenism is just a game they play to sucker in the unsuspecting and ignorant.
Ridiculous!!!
Everyone is called to Christ. It is the duty of Christians to preach to all, not just nominal and lapsed Christians. All deserve the chance to hear the Word of LIfe.
They are also free to reject it.
Is anybody calling for Muslims not to “sheep-steal”?
>> Everyone is called to Christ. It is the duty of Christians to preach to all, not just nominal and lapsed Christians. <<
If the world were filled with Christians, and “preaching Christ” meant simply admonishing people to live as better Christians, you’d have a point. But when 80% of Americans don’t attend church regularly and are ignorant about the basics of the bible, why do so many preachers focus on other pastors’ flocks?
Because other pastors’ flocks have money and talent that the preachers covet, that’s why.
Besides, when pastors war over whose church is better, all the laity hear is, ‘Your church sucks,’ ‘No, your church sucks.’
There’s a certain amount of truth to what you say. However, “preaching Christ” does not mean living a better “Christian life”, whatever you define that to be. It means accepting Christ as Saviour, repenting of your sins and accepting salvation. This needs to be preached to the non-Christians, whether Budhist, Hindu, Muslim, pagan, atheist, or nominally Christian who have not done so.
Evangelicals will never accept such a code, no matter what the leaders of various evangelical denominations may decide for them.
“The Vatican made it known earlier this year that ecumenism is just a game they play to sucker in the unsuspecting and ignorant.”
Lovely attitude. Isn’t it strange for the pope to have publicly proclaimed what you speak of as if it were a secret conspiracy?
Whenever you hear an influential, informed person speaking to other influential, informed people and they seem to you to say contradicting things at the SAME time to the SAME people, odds are that the contradiction is only in appearance, and you have missed something that others in the audience understood.
The “code” seeks to prioritize evangelism (converting non-believers) over proselytism (converting believers); I think the core audience understands that, ultimately, Christian unity is also desired, and that no-one intends to say, “eh, Baptist, Catholic, it’s all the same.”
Attitudes such as “Do NOT trust any ecumenical anything that is ‘backed’ by the Vatican” probably further your comprehension ability, since things “backed by the Vatican”
The Pope, in 1939, was making full-page, front-page headlines in the New York Times and Boston Globe by calling for the world to resist the ‘Twin Terrors of Absolutism’ — Germany and Russia — at all costs. Should you have been suspicious about WWII? (Maybe we should have paid as muc attention to Stalin as to Hitler!) The Pope met with Reagan to coordinate Polish Solidarity to discredit the Soviet Union internally. Should you have been suspicious of Ronald Reagan, or anti-Communism. The Papal states organized a coalition of the Lithuanian (Poland, Ukarine, etc.), Austro-Hungarian, and Spanish Empires to rescue Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe from Turkish and Moorish forces. Should you have been suspicious of the defense of civilization against the Muslims? In 1980, most Christian denominations, including Southern Baptists, supported abortion on demand. Even today, the right-to-life movement is dominated by Catholics. Should you be suspicious of that movement?
My only concern is whether this effort is more backed by the likes of Cardinal Walter Kaspar than Pope Benedict, himself.
>> There’s a certain amount of truth to what you say. However, “preaching Christ” does not mean living a better “Christian life”, whatever you define that to be. It means accepting Christ as Saviour, repenting of your sins and accepting salvation. This needs to be preached to the non-Christians, whether Budhist, Hindu, Muslim, pagan, atheist, or nominally Christian who have not done so. <<
That’s actually the intended thrust of my argument.
Catholic and Orthodox churches often have a territorial view of their religion, as do most religions where one is born into the faith. Places like South America or Russia are their marked territories and if any other church comes in, they are considered interlopers and trespassers instead of allies in Christ. I have to wonder if this is a defensive strategy by the Vatican to protect their territory.
Exactly what does “ecumenical” discussions mean, and how much are they worth, when you declare that all the churches you’re talking to aren’t really churches?
Are you trying to understand another apparent contradiction, or are you using another apparent contradiction as an excuse to dismiss it all as a bunch of hooey?
To the Catholic church, a church (in Greek, the word is more similar in meaning to assembly) is, by definition, in visible unity. Even “church building” specifically means that the church is the headquarters of a parish, and is used exculsively to distribute the actual body of Christ. (Many of what even lay Catholics call churches are properly called “oratoria,” or “chapels.”)
Protestant communities are unassembled, and they don’t believe in the objective and real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. So, by their own beliefs, they are not what Catholic bishops mean when Catholic bishops use the word, “church.” The Pope bent over backward to reiterate emphatically that Protestants are Christians, but people who want something to fight over used this part of his statement, out of context, to make it seem like he was saying Protestants weren’t Christians. And in this case, those who publicized the comments deliberately sowed misunderstanding.
Examples of an oratorium: a ‘church’ at a Catholic Univeristy, or a ‘church’ which exists at pilgrimage sites that is not used by locals as their own parish.
Ecumenical discussions are not with individuals, they are with Churches.
It was all smoke and mirrors and PR.
Your pope is allowed to believe anything he darn well feels like.
I, on the other hand, don’t have to buy any more RC ecumenical doublespeak.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
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