American evangelicals ‘learned a lot’
from conference
‘We affirms that God loves all humanity’
An American official with the Evangelical Middle East Understanding Council said Thursday
that a four-day conference held here this week has helped bridge the gap of
misunderstanding “we might have had” about this part of the world.
The gathering, organized in coordination with the Middle East Council of Churches, was
called The Church: A Sign of Hope and Healing in the Middle East, and hosted by the Saydet
al-Jabal Monastery in Jounieh.
Marilyn Borse told The Daily Star that the conference was “a powerful meeting of
church representatives from parts of the region like Iraq and Palestine who told us their
actual experiences with sanctions and injustices, certainly clarifying any
misunderstanding we might have had.”
Her “non-conservative” group, she added, will take its views to a “large
main-line Protestant constituency in the United States, influencing conservative Catholic
evangelists who lack the key facts about this area.”
“Conservative groups who support the idea that the ‘Promised Land’ was
given to Israel,” she continued, “are going against the New Testament’s
calling for no race differentiations between people, and are under constant pressure from
political and theological groups to continue believing that.”
Conference participants called for lifting sanctions against Iraq and ending the illegal
occupation of Palestine.
“We affirm that God loves all humanity and that all people regardless of race, nation
or creed are created in the image of God,” according to a statement issued on
Wednesday.
“We reject all efforts to demonize our brothers and sisters, we are against constant
political threats to nations and repeated political efforts to label some as
‘evil,’ while referring to others as ‘peaceful,’ and to use scripture
for the purpose of waging war,” the statement added. “We refuse the
establishment of territorial or national superiority based on military might, economic
power or by a claimed divine decree.”
Father Riad Jarjour, the secretary-general of the Middle East Council of Churches, said
during a recent interview with Tele-Lumiere that the conference’s goal was to give
the American clerics in attendance an idea about the Arab world as well as the problems
that Arabs face.
“These religious Americans will be our ambassadors to the West,” he said. Copyright © The Daily Star |
