Exploring the Connections

NORTHERN IRELAND: Church leaders hail political agreement

by Ray McMenamin
Episcopal Life Online, February 8, 2010

[Episcopal News Service] Church leaders in Ireland have welcomed an agreement concluded between the two largest political parties in Northern Ireland, which will see the completion of a process of devolving power from the British government.

The Roman Catholic Primate of All Ireland Cardinal Sean Brady hailed news of the agreement reached on Feb. 5, saying, "My prayer is that everyone in our society will reflect on what has been agreed today with a spirit of generosity and concern for the good of the whole community." Brady also expressed his hopes for a resolution of issues concerning sectarian parades, which have in past led to violent confrontations.

"I want to express my particular hope that efforts to address the issue of parades will be met with generosity, sensitivity and a willingness to go beyond old ways of approaching each other on all sides," said the cardinal.

His (Anglican) Church of Ireland counterpart, Bishop Alan Harper, said, "I most warmly welcome the news that agreement has been reached on a way forward on the devolution of justice and policing powers to Northern Ireland, together with the other issues that have been taken into account in the recent protracted negotiations."

For many years in summer, Protestant groups such as the Orange Order have marched through streets in Northern Ireland to commemorate the victory of King William III, a Protestant, over King James II, a Catholic, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Many Catholics consider the parades as offensive.

The two largest parties in the province of Northern Ireland -- the Democratic Unionist Party, that draws its support from the Protestant community, and the mainly Catholic-supported Sinn Fein party -- had been locked in a months-long standoff over the issue of police powers, and a process to bring them under local control. Until now, they have been under British control.

Under the terms of the Belfast Agreement signed on Good Friday, April 10, 1998, responsibility for a wide range of government departments was transferred to a Northern Ireland executive and assembly. The First Minister and deputy First Minister must come from the two political traditions in Northern Ireland which have been bitterly opposed to one another -- the mainly Roman Catholic nationalist community and the predominantly Protestant community which has favored union with Britain.

Various government departments were established and headed by ministers in the executive, and are responsible for areas such as finance, health, education, the environment and agriculture. The 1998 agreement provided for the devolution of authority over the policing and justice systems but specified that this would only take place "with the broad support of the political parties."

The Feb. 5 agreement will see authority over the Northern Ireland policing and justice systems devolved on April 12, more than 12 years after the original agreement was signed. A cross-community vote, requiring a majority of both nationalists and unionists, will take place to effect this on March 9.

Which Dr. King Will We Honor?

by Ryan Van Lenning, truthout | editorial, January 18, 2010

As we observe the life and example of Martin Luther King, Jr., the question arises, "Which Dr. King will we honor?"

Will we yet again observe a polished, scaled-down, and non-threatening version of Martin Luther King, Jr. - the mere shadow of the man and his dream? At least we will recognize the leadership of the man who called for racial equality and urged us to be of service to our neighbors - as we should. We will even recognize that "we have come a long way" and "there is still further work to do" - as we should. Yet the further work to be done is invoked almost as an absolution, affirming our commitment to the dream, but without further specification and without discussing our troubling, ongoing racial inequalities.

Gone will be the King who called for an end to militarism and far-flung imperial wars, the King who said, "I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such," and who called his government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

The fact that our militarism has only grown significantly in the intervening decades makes it more comfortable to sweep these aspects of King's message under the national rug. With Obama mobilizing more soldiers and military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush did, authorizing more drone attacks that have killed more innocent civilians than Bush did, expanding military bases in South America, and requesting and receiving the largest military budget ever in the history of not only this nation, but any nation in history, it is easier to simply close our collective lips about this King.

Gone also will be his call for radical, nonviolent dissent, his willingness to be jailed or beaten when necessary - when it came to challenging racial and economic injustice, but also when it came to challenging the militaristic agenda of our government and the enterprises that profited from it. Who today is urging Americans to "move beyond the prophesying of a smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent" like King did in the context of the Vietnam War? Those who do dissent stand closer to King's legacy than those who purport to be his heirs merely by invoking his name or putting his image in their offices.

Gone also will be the King who criticized the evils of radical capitalism, materialism and the "glaring contrast of poverty and wealth" in this country - a gap that has only grown wider, with the wealth disparity greater now than in any year on record. (The wealthiest 10 percent control over 70 percent of the nation's wealth, the top 1 percent control 38 percent, and the bottom 40 percent own less than 1 percent.) King dared to say, "Now, this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism."

Gone certainly will be the King who supported robust reparations. He said, "A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis."

Finally, gone is the King the globalist, who believed that "our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class and our nation. This means we must develop a world perspective."

Talking heads, politicians and educators will once again invoke King as a stalwart warrior against segregation and for equality, and children will learn about his valiant struggle for the civil rights of African-Americans. His "I Have a Dream" speech will be played, while most of his other speeches will be ignored. This year will hold special significance because this nation's first African-American president has just finished his first year. Many have said that Obama is a fulfillment of King's dream, because our president achieved something that would have been unthinkable 40 years ago and he did it based on the content of his character, not on the basis of his skin color.

While there is truth in that - in that it was unthinkable 40 years ago, or even four years ago - King would no doubt judge character much more broadly, and would examine the types of values being upheld and policies being pursued. While it is impossible to know how King would have approached the Obama phenomenon, he would have likely noted that what he achieved was in some measure due to his true allegiances. In other words, that notwithstanding Obama's outstanding gifts, he is where he is in large part because he didn't pose any threat to the structural status quo that King continually critiqued. Perhaps King would gaze at fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama's policies and deduce a course of action that falls far short of his dream.

When was the last time we inquired into the full extent of the King's full dream? Most Americans learn of the "I Have a Dream Speech" as a child, learn that we should all get along - then promptly forget the context of the speech. How many of us learn that the speech was originally part of the campaign called "March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs," and that King called the large demonstration "a campaign for jobs and income because we felt that the economic question was the most crucial that black people, and poor people generally, were confronting."

We don't get an opportunity to forget King's deeper dream, because we are never taught it. This is not unusual, as most radical democratic dreams and actors are erased from our nation's official memory.

Perhaps this year as we witness ever more defense spending and military engagements and the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and even the middle class drops out, we will listen a little more closely to this giant of a man who still has much to teach us: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

I wonder, which Dr. King will we honor and learn from this year? Will it be the agreeable, safe King that calls for service and nominal equality - or will it be the radical, fierce King who calls for questioning the triple evils of capitalism, racism and militarism?

Or both?

We hold up the former King as our favorite national, all-purpose icon who poets, preachers and politicians of all stripes can support from a safe distance; the latter King was shot down on that Memphis balcony. Could it be that we collectively pull the assassin's trigger every time we honor the former over the latter?

Working for justice and peace in Colombia

by Mark Beach

Ekklesia News Service, Nov 26, 2009

For nearly four hours, church activists participating in the World Council of Churches' United Nations Advocacy Week meetings in New York delved deeply into the tragedies and injustices of the current bloody conflict in Colombia.

The facts and figures were compelling and the stories personal. Thousands have been killed. An increasing number of children are being maimed and killed by homemade landmines disguised as toys, and by unexploded ordnance.

Fathers and sons have been kidnapped and murdered by paramilitary groups and guerillas. Land has been lost, people have fled and women and children left abandoned. Colombia has the second highest rate of internally displaced people in the world.

And across the street from the UN Advocacy Week's meetings in the Church Centre, in the broad and influential hallways of the United Nations, the tragedy of Colombia is barely on the world body's radar screen. "Every time we meet with folks there we ask 'what about Colombia?'," Joseph Donnelly, Caritas Internationalis representative to the United Nations, said to the group. "They don't want to hear it, and they say 'not Colombia again'."

At the same time, Bishop Juan Alberto Cardona, the bishop of the Methodist Church in Colombia, told the group that while the churches in Colombia are wrestling with the conflict and seeking peace, there is a role for churches throughout the world that is not being fulfilled. For a group of passionate and dedicated church activists, this was a bitter taste of reality about how far they still have to go to dismantle injustice.

The WCC UN Advocacy Week, held in New York City, US, from 15 to 20 November, brought together church activists from around the world to explore several topics, including the situation of people displaced by climate change, indigenous concerns around the world and continuing violence in Colombia. It is also a time when the activists build contacts and visit officials at various UN missions in the city.

A vision of peace with justice

The passion for bringing peace with justice to Colombia was reflected in the half-dozen presentations from church leaders and activists, in and outside Colombia, to some 80 participants on the second full day of the advocacy meetings.

Jenny Neme, director of the Christian Centre for Justice, Peace and Nonviolent Action (JUSTAPAZ) and a member of the Mennonite Church in Colombia, told the group that more than a decade ago the churches in Colombia realized that "we have not been either the light or the salt that Colombia needs."

Since that time, the churches have established a vision of seeking peace with justice for Colombia by educating communities and churches at the local level about the situation, continuing theological reflection and, in a particularly poignant way, starting to document the suffering within the society, particularly among Christians.

The JUSTAPAZ group has now released a fourth 100-page report, documenting in sometimes graphic detail the suffering of the Colombian Protestant churches.

Donnelly talked about the small steps that have been made in persuading the UN to pay attention to Colombia. The International Criminal Court is looking increasingly toward Colombia, he said, although this may have more to do with the fact that obtaining convictions in their current work in the Great Lakes region of Africa is meeting with only limited success, rather than with anything else.

Still, when it comes to advocacy the church has to be steadfast and persistent, Donnelly said. Today there are nearly 5,000 accredited non-governmental organisations hovering around the UN, he added, each with their access badges to the UN grounds. Holding his UN badge up to the group, he said, "and even this does not guarantee you access."

But, unless the church is consistent and persistent, a few weeks after a visit, the church is forgotten. Donnelly recalled that in the early days of the UN, the church worked hand-in-hand with world leaders to create the Human Rights Charter, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2008.

Bishop Cardona said in an interview after his address that the worldwide church has a significant role to play. "First, the church can provide the prophetic voice," he said.

Second, "the church can announce the good news of equity in the gospel," he continued. "In Colombia the church permeates society and is responsible for the prophetic point of view."

"In the case of the World Council of Churches, the WCC can carry out advocacy at the highest level so we can find a negotiated solution to this situation," he said.

In one sense, this brings the churches' commitment to Colombia right back into the halls of the UN.

The Church Centre, where the advocacy meetings are being held and which houses the UN-related offices of the WCC, United Methodists, Presbyterians and others, sits across the street from the UN. Within a few blocks around the UN are other church agencies and offices such as those of Quakers and Mennonites.

Donnelly said that [when] the church can have access to the UN, it can have an impact, but that this takes time; and when you ask for a meeting, he advised, "come with facts."

"What we need is to be more steadfast, to be there constantly," he said.

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(c) Mark Beach is director of communications at the World Council of Churches, based in Geneva.

Ugandan Anglicans continue to dither on anti-gay bill

by Staff Writers

Ekklesia, November 15, 2009

The Anglican Church in Uganda say that it “does not yet have an official position” on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill currently being proposed in the country's Parliament.

The bill would introduce the death penalty for certain homosexual acts between consenting adults and create new offences aimed at imprisoning those who fail to report any homosexuality of which they are aware.

In a statement last week, the Church of the Province of Uganda repeated its assertion that “homosexual behaviour is immoral and should not be promoted, supported or condoned in any way” but said that it did not have a stance on the bill itself.

However, the secretary of the Church, Mwesigye Kafundizeki, said that the death penalty clause should be removed from the bill, proposing “another punishment instead of death”. He appears to support the bill overall.

The Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi, is well-known for his anti-gay views. He has backed allegations about “homosexual recruiting in our schools”, suggesting that young people were being bribed “to become gay”. He did not explain how a bribe could enable a person to alter his or her sexual orientation.

The allegations, regarded by many as absurd, have also been endorsed by the Ugandan Minister for Ethics, James Nsaba Buturo, himself an Anglican. He has described the legislation as “an opportunity for Uganda to provide leadership where it matters most”.

Supporters of the legislation are attempting to portray homosexuality as a Western import, but the bill's most vocal opponents are themselves African. They include Sexual Minorities Uganda, the gay Nigerian Christian activist Davis Mac-Iyalla and a number of Christians from South Africa.

Many of them suggest that homosexuality was accepted in Africa until the arrival of European colonisers and that it is thus not homosexuality, but homophobia, that was brought in from the West.

The proposed legislation has been condemned by a large number of NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) and Changing Attitude.

However, the Archbishop of York's office said on Friday (13 November) that he would not be commenting on the issue. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is under increasing pressure to condemn the bill, but has yet to make a statement.

Colin Coward of the Anglican group Changing Attitude has spoken of the “devastating silence” of many Anglicans, while LGCM has expressed “great sadness” that there has been so little comment from Anglican leaders in Britain.

LGCM's Sharon Ferguson said that she was “dismayed and shocked at this silence from the Archbishops”.

Microfinance is vital to human and social development, audit suggests

by Staff Writers

Ekklesia News Service, Oct 15, 2009

Oikocredit, a leading socially-committed private investor in microfinance, has just released the results of its social audit, looking at how to enhance human welfare through economic performance.

Drawing individuals and groups into providing vital loans for hard-pressed but enterprising communities in some of the poorest parts of the world is Oikocredit's specialist role.

The idea is to keep money working for change, rather than concentrating on one-off donations, to encourage participation and to enable grassroots economic development. 'Fair finance', in short.

Measuring both the financial performance and social progress of the world's economies is a major question, acknowledged by the organisation which has strong roots in the churches and in civil society.

The lively existing debate on the macro-economic indicators following the global crash, has been enhanced by the latest report of the Commission headed by Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz.

On a micro level too, tools and indicators are now in the process of being developed and tested. Oikocredit's social audit aims to be at the cutting edge of these developments, and is "the first of its kind", it says - trying to find out whether its work in providing small-acale finance really does fulfil its social mission and maintain its values.

"For Oikocredit and its investors, it is essential to know that investments of some €370 million lead to positive changes in the lives of the working poor," a spokesperson explained.

In the past few years, Oikocredit has taken substantial steps to assess the social performance of its 500 partners. Since 2005, it has notably increased the number of tools used to monitor and assess social performance.

In addition to impact studies, Oikocredit carefully reviews its partners’ aims, their products and services, their interest rates and their gender and environment policies, the NGO says.

"The latest innovation in social performance measurement is to look not only at the performance of the microfinance institutions, but also to undertake a social audit of private financiers."

Oikocredit, by turning the examination on itself, is the first financier to collaborate with Cerise in the on-going development of the social audit tool.

Cerise is at the forefront of social performance monitoring, and serves as an exchange platform on practices in microfinance.

Cerise’s Social Performance Indicator tool, a social audit instrument for microfinance institutions, is recognised by professional networks and donors worldwide. It is currently being developed to analyse financiers’ internal systems and processes.

Oikocredit emphasises that collaboration in this development process reflects its commitment to a serious assessment of its policies, procedures, products and services in the light of human need and development.

In terms of major findings, the social audit report reveals that Oikocredit has succeeded in developing a strong social mission and vision, committed human resources, trained staff and innovation.

It also has a clear focus on rural development and it finances a wide range of institutions, from small village banks to medium and large established institutions.

The report suggests that it is succeeding in meeting the needs of partners that require financing in local currencies (some 45 per cent of the total capital outstanding).

But the audit also indicates a range of challenges for the organisation - including understanding its microfinance partners and helping them to know their 16.8 million clients better and to improve their products.

"The main challenge is now to operate the shift from collection and assessment of data to management. This implies a pro-active strategy to improve and promote social performance," says Oikocredit.

Using the outcome from this audit, Oikocredit is now able to update its social performance procedures and further develop its outreach strategy, products and services.

"Fulfilling our mission means both investors and clients can benefit from the social and financial empowerment of an Oikocredit loan," the NGO comments.

Oikocredit has been expanding its supporter base in the UK recently, with the involvement of churches and community groups. For more information about how to get involved and "make small sums of money go a long way in sustaining global development", go to: http://www.oikocredit.org/site/en/doc.phtml?p=investors-in-britain-ireland

[Click on the item "Find out about our clients" on the oikocredit page for some interesting data]

Parliament hosts Forgiveness Project, 25 years after Brighton bomb

Ekklesia News Service, Oct 6, 2009

By Staff Writers

Twenty-five years after the Provisional IRA bombed a Brighton hotel during the Conservative Party conference, Parliament is to host a ground-breaking event on forgiveness, with talks from people on both sides of the incident.

Patrick Magee, a former IRA member jailed for planting the bomb, will speak alongside Jo Berry, whose father, Tory MP Anthony Berry, was killed in the blast.

The event, which is planned for 13 October, is run by the Forgiveness Project and hosted by the All Party Group on Conflict Issues. It aims “to open up a dialogue about forgiveness and promote understanding through awareness, education and inspiration”.

Magee was released from jail in 1999 under the Good Friday Agreement. He met Berry the following year and they have since worked together on issues of peace and forgiveness, speaking at meetings in Britain, Ireland and beyond. This is the first time they will speak together in Parliament.

“For both of us, it's not always easy” explained Magee, "But the spur to continue comes from the feedback we get.”

Magee's invitation was criticised by Norman Tebbit, whose wife was severely injured in the bombing. “I really cannot see why he should be invited to talk in the House of Commons” he said.

However, the event's organisers emphasise that they understand that forgiveness is a difficult and challenging process.

“If it were easy to forgive, we would all do it” explained Conservative MP Gary Streeter, chair of the All-Party Group on Conflict Issues, “It is not easy. That is why we are hosting this event”.

A Different Way of Reading the World

by Simon Barrow

Ekklesia News Service, September 9, 2009

One of the many ironies of modern life is that, wired in the technology of recognition and representation, we find it ever more difficult to perceive others, the world and ourselves in any kind of hopeful way. After God – as many see it – we are not just wallowing in the dark, we are also blinded by the light.

Recently I watched the extraordinary film version of Philip K. Dick’s noir fantasy, A Scanner Darkly, which draws its title (via St Paul’s “through a glass darkly”) and several of its key verbal references from a scriptural storehouse of language which fewer and fewer people now recognise in its traditional context – but which may still turn out to be vitally important to human flourishing as it is rediscovered in fresh ways.

The book and the movie concern a dystopian, reverse world in which the ability to view everything leads to top-down control and paranoia, where people end up spying on themselves, where identities are ‘blurred’ physically and mentally, and where the one agency that is supposed to be combating the evil of narcotic dependency is actually promoting it.

The readings for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost (Isaiah 35:4-7a, Psalm 146, James 2:1-13, Mark 7:24-37) also contain a whole series of dramatic reversals concerning darkness and danger. But in a remarkably different way.

In the ancient Hebrew tradition, from which Christian as well as Jewish understandings are forged, the prophet is above all else a ‘Seer’, a visionary – one whose vocation is not so much to predict the future (that belongs to God alone) as to enable us to see the fullness of reality, the world as it really is or could be.

What the prophetic imagination does is to “re-describe reality” with what is missing filled in. It suggests that if the present could be seen truthfully, the transforming possibilities of God would be all too apparent, inviting us to repentance – a radical change of heart and direction.

In this sense the vision of shalom presented by Isaiah and by the Psalmist reveals the opposite of what now is, in the form of a promise. A world of oppression, injustice and suffering is neither inevitable nor necessary. To defy the order of death and to envision a realm of peace based on the restoring of right relationships among people, with the natural world and with God is – despite all appearances to the contrary – to go with the final grain of the universe as sheer gift.

If only we could recognise it, say the biblical writers, there is a divine reversal going on. When mercy is shown, when the stranger is welcomed, when right is done, when abusive power is resisted, when the hungry are offered food, the prisoners release and the homeless shelter – in those moments of faithfulness to God’s underlying purposes, despite the suffering and brutality around us, a new world beckons.

In Psalm 146, the divine call is clear: to exalt the humble, and to watch over the most vulnerable in the land (the sojourner, widow, orphan). The creative God is also a redeemer. The final verse sets the cry for justice and a dramatic reversal of fortune – the plans of the wicked are thwarted – within a vision of the gentle realm of God.

In Isaiah 35 the Day of the Lord, the moment where right judgement trumps false pretensions, means deliverance from the confinement of despair, hopelessness, and God-forsakenness. The context, as in chapters 40-55, is one of exile and longing. The theme is not so much vengeance as vindication. Those who have followed a thorny path, refusing to believe that all is lost, are proved right after all. Those who put their trust in thrones and chariots were actually staring at themselves in distorted mirrors, rather than finding their true selves within the image of God.

Likewise, says the Epistle of James, when Christian communities are bolstered with self-regard, when they bask in the approval of the rich and powerful and convince themselves that the correct belief alone will justify them, they deceive themselves. This is especially the case when they simultaneously deny justice and dignity to those on the margins, to labourers, to people living on the edge – those who present to us the tangible judgement of God on the way we arrange our lives and our world.

In his 1977 book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, which prefigured much of the more recent concern among evangelical churches for people and planet, Ron Sider tells the story of a US pastor who causes great offence in the pews by delivering a fearsome manifesto denouncing the wiles of the rich and the mistreatment of poor people and workers. His congregation in turn accuse him of sedition and of ‘pulpit politics’. But he points out to them that, in fact, every word he has used is sourced directly from the likes of Isaiah, from Amos and from James. They call themselves biblical people, but the Word is apparently unknown to them when it comes to acting justly, seeking mercy and walking humbly before God as a social reality.

Yet the uncomfortable fact is that more often than not the Gospel reverses our ‘normal’ judgments, our idea of what is ‘natural’ and ‘right’. If we are to judge correctly, and not find ourselves hoist with our own legalistic petard, we need to discover what it is to live and to have faith with integrity, says the Epistle of James. This means seeking the knowledge of God that comes to us through merciful action, not through pious sounding words or recourse to the protection of religious tradition. In these terms, the Christian message is un-common sense – something rare and precious – rather than mere ‘conventional wisdom’.

Writing about the recent row over the decision by a Scottish court to allow the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber, Ali al-Megrahi, to die at home rather than in prison, Quaker writer Jill Segger (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/10119) cuts to the heart of the matter for those of us who would dare call ourselves Christians. “Mercy reflects God to us in a unique manner,” she says. “It invites us to share in the wholeness for which we were created. If we permit ourselves to become caught up in the power games between Holyrood, Westminster, Washington and Tripoli, we will miss the truth.”

The Seer stares long and hard at reality with all its agonising contradictions, but without losing sight of the deeper reality we call love. That is incredibly hard to do. Sinking to fashionable cynicism and resorting to realpolitik are much more acceptable paths, though we often pretend to decry them when it is convenient to us.

Scottish justice minister Kenny MacAskill is, in the eyes of many who see the world primarily through the lens of vengeance (either because of their suffering, or less creditably because of their worldview), a scoundrel or a fool. But there is surely genuine courage and insight in his way of trying to weigh the true odds: “Our justice system demands that judgement be imposed but compassion be available. Our beliefs dictate that justice be served but mercy be shown.”

Of course when we seek to act in the light of the Gospel’s way of seeing, we will not always know whether what we are doing is right. Sometimes we will mess things up. The facts and fallibilities of any given situation will always be questionable, ‘open to judgement’. What is most important is that we too are open to judgement, and that we are clear about the character of right-dealing tempered by mercy that lies at the heart of flesh which is God’s, made available to us in Christ and in the quality of community that bears his name.

Which brings us back to Mark’s Gospel. Here Jesus, operating on foreign territory (the Roman-ruled Decapolis), finds himself on the wrong end of a conversation with a woman who – the writer makes abundantly plain – is both a Gentile and, according to the more rigorous religious beliefs of the Jewish community, ‘unclean’ (because outside the Law).

So Jesus rehearses to her the conventional judgement on her status in the starkest terms imaginable. Ironic or not, it is little short of an insult. But the Syrophoencian woman turns the tables and demonstrates a true understanding of the mercy of God towards those outside the system, those in desperate need.

Her faith brings Jesus up short, and contrasts vividly with the legalism of some of his own inheritance. But perfection for God is found in brokenness restored, not in infallibility and immutability. As Leonard Cohen sings, “Everything has a crack in it. That’s what let’s the light in.” So it is that (remarkably, in our limited vision, perhaps) Jesus allows this woman both to shape and to participate in the Messiahship that people rightly come to recognise in him. A new kind of wholeness is achieved – one that was not available at the beginning of the encounter. A divine reversal takes place.

What we discover here is that, in God’s household, one ordered by grace rather than mortgage, everything that stands in the way of abundant life and the sharing of that life is cast aside. This often causes scandal to the conventionally religious.

In Mark’s account, Jesus offers healthcare to all, including those outside the Law, and cautions those he heals not to let on lest the authorities find out. But the Good News and the threat it causes to those who wish to control God’s mercy for their own purposes will not be contained.

The question we need to ask of ourselves, of our churches, and of the plans we have for the future, is therefore something like this: Are we willing to receive the pattern of ‘divine reversal’ that is God’s way in the world? Are we willing to be vehicles for a love that crosses boundaries, breaks barriers and inconveniently opens our hearts to others? Or do we prefer the safety that comes from trying to wrap up the Gospel in institutions and practices that protect us from the disturbing Word we meet in Christ?

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© Simon Barrow is co-director of Ekklesia. www.simonbarrow.net This article is adapted from an address given at St Stephen's Anglican Church, Exeter, on Sunday 6 September 2009.

How turning the other cheek defies oppression

by Walter Wink
Ekklesia News Service, May 4, 2009

You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. (Jesus in Matthew 5:38-41, Revised Standard Version)
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Many who have committed their lives to working for change and justice in the world simply dismiss Jesus' teachings about nonviolence as impractical idealism. And with good reason, it seems, on first sight.

At a surface level, "turn the other cheek" suggests the passive, Christian doormat quality that has made so many Christians cowardly and complicit in the face of injustice. "Resist not evil" seems to break the back of all opposition to evil and counsel submission. "Going the second mile" has become a platitude meaning nothing more than "extend yourself." Rather than fostering structural change, such attitudes encourage collaboration with the oppressor.

Jesus never behaved in such ways, however. Whatever the source of the misunderstanding, it is neither Jesus nor his teaching, which, when given a fair hearing in its original social context, is arguably one of the most revolutionary political statements ever uttered.

When the court translators working in the hire of King James chose to translate antistenai as "Resist not evil," they were doing something more than rendering Greek into English. They were translating nonviolent resistance into docility. The Greek word means more than simply to "stand against" or "resist." It means to resist violently, to revolt or rebel, to engage in an insurrection.

Jesus did not tell his oppressed hearers not to resist evil. His entire ministry is at odds with such a preposterous idea. He is, rather, warning against responding to evil in kind by letting the oppressor set the terms of our opposition.

A proper translation of Jesus' teaching would then be, "Do not retaliate against violence with violence." Jesus was no less committed to opposing evil than the anti-Roman resistance fighters like Barabbas. The only difference was over the means to be used.

There are three general responses to evil: (1) violent opposition, (2) passivity, and (3) the third way of militant nonviolence articulated by Jesus. Human evolution has conditioned us for only the first two of these responses: fight or flight.

Fight had been the cry of Galileans who had abortively rebelled against Rome only two decades before Jesus spoke. Jesus and many of his hearers would have seen some of the two thousand of their countrymen crucified by the Romans along the roadsides. They would have known some of the inhabitants of Sepphoris (a mere three miles north of Nazareth) who had been sold into slavery for aiding the insurrectionists' assault on the arsenal there. Some also would live to experience the horrors of the war against Rome in 66-70 C.E., one of the ghastliest in history.

If the option of fighting had no appeal to them, their only alternative was flight: passivity, submission, or, at best, a passive-aggressive recalcitrance in obeying commands. For them no ‘third way’ existed.

Now we are in a better position to see why King James' servants translated antistenai as "resist not." The king would not want people concluding they had any recourse against his or any other sovereign's unjust policies. Jesus commands us, according to these king's men, to resist not. Jesus appears to say that submission to monarchial absolutism is the will of God. Most modern translations have meekly followed the King James path.

Neither of the invidious alternatives of flight or fight is what Jesus is proposing. Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil. His is a third alternative not even touched by these options. The Scholars Version translates antistenai brilliantly: "Don't react violently against someone who is evil."

Jesus clarifies his meaning by three brief examples. "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." Why the right cheek? How does one strike another on the right cheek anyway? Try it. A blow by the right fist in that right-handed world would land on the left cheek of the opponent. To strike the right cheek with the fist would require using the left hand, but in that society the left hand was used only for unclean tasks. As the Dead Sea Scrolls specify, even to gesture with the left hand at Qumran carried the penalty of ten days penance. The only way one could strike the right cheek with the right hand would be with the back of the hand.

What we are dealing with here is unmistakably an insult, not a fistfight. The intention is not to injure but to humiliate, to put someone in his or her place. One normally did not strike a peer in this way, and if one did the fine was exorbitant (four zuz was the fine for a blow to a peer with a fist, 400 zuz for backhanding him; but to an underling, no penalty whatever). A backhand slap was the normal way of admonishing inferiors. Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; men, women; Romans, Jews.

We have here a set of unequal relations, in each of which retaliation would be suicidal. The only normal response would be cowering submission. It is important to ask who Jesus' audience is. In every case, Jesus' listeners are not those who strike, initiate lawsuits, or impose forced labour. Rather, Jesus is speaking to their victims, people who have been subjected to these very indignities. They have been forced to stifle their inner outrage at the dehumanizing treatment meted out to them by the hierarchical system of caste and class, race and gender, age and status, and by the guardians of imperial occupation.

Why then does Jesus counsel these already humiliated people to turn the other cheek? Because this action robs the oppressor of power to humiliate them. The person who turns the other cheek is saying, in effect, "Try again. Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status (gender, race, age, wealth) does not alter that. You cannot demean me."

Such a response would create enormous difficulties for the striker. Purely logistically, how can he now hit the other cheek? He cannot backhand it with his right hand. If he hits with a fist, he makes himself an equal, acknowledging the other as a peer. But the whole point of the back of the hand is to reinforce the caste system and its institutionalized inequality.

The second example Jesus gives is set in a court of law. Someone is being sued for his outer garment. Who would do that and under what circumstances? Only the poorest of the poor would have nothing but an outer garment to give as collateral for a loan. Jewish law strictly required its return every evening at sunset, for that was all the poor had in which to sleep. The situation to which Jesus alludes is one with which his hearers would have been too familiar: the poor debtor has sunk ever deeper into poverty, the debt cannot be repaid, and his creditor has hauled him into court to wring out repayment.

Indebtedness was the most serious social problem in first-century Palestine. Jesus' parables are full of debtors struggling to salvage their lives. It is in this context that Jesus speaks. His hearers are the poor ("if anyone would sue you"). They share a rankling hatred for a system that subjects them to humiliation by stripping them of their lands, their goods, finally even their outer garments.

Why then does Jesus counsel them to give over their inner garment as well? This would mean stripping off all their clothing and marching out of court stark naked! Put yourself in the debtor's place; imagine the chuckles this saying must have evoked. There stands the creditor, beet-red with embarrassment, your outer garment in one hand, your underwear in the other. You have suddenly turned the tables on him. You had no hope of winning the trial; the law was entirely in his favour. But you have refused to be humiliated. At the same time you have registered a stunning protest against a system that spawns such debt. You have said, in effect, "You want my robe? Here, take everything! Now you've got all I have except my body. Is that what you'll take next?"

Nakedness was taboo in the Judaism of the time. Shame fell not on the naked party but the person viewing or causing one's nakedness (Genesis 9.20-27). By stripping you have brought the creditor under the same prohibition that led to the curse of Canaan. As you parade into the street, your friends and neighbours, startled, aghast, inquire what happened. You explain. They join your growing procession, which now resembles a victory parade. The entire system by which debtors are oppressed has been publicly unmasked. The creditor is revealed to be not a "respectable" moneylender but a party in the reduction of an entire social class to landlessness and destitution.

This unmasking is not simply punitive, however; it offers the creditor a chance to see, perhaps for the first time in his life, what his practices cause-and to repent.

Jesus in effect is sponsoring clowning. In so doing he shows himself to be thoroughly Jewish. A later saying of the Talmud runs, "If your neighbour calls you an ass, put a saddle on your back."

The Powers That Be literally stand on their dignity. Nothing takes away their potency faster than deft lampooning. By refusing to be awed by their power, the powerless are emboldened to seize the initiative, even where structural change is not possible. This message, far from being a counsel of perfection unattainable in this life, is a practical, strategic measure for empowering the oppressed. It provides a hint of how to take on the entire system in a way that unmasks its essential cruelty and to burlesque its pretensions to justice, law, and order.

Jesus' third example, the one about going the second mile, is drawn from the enlightened practice of limiting the amount of forced labour that Roman soldiers could levy on subject peoples. A soldier could impress a civilian to carry his pack one mile only; to force the civilian to go further carried with it severe penalties under military law. In this way Rome tried to limit the anger of the occupied people and still keep its armies on the move. Nevertheless, this levy was a bitter reminder to the Jews that they were a subject people even in the Promised Land.

To this proud but subjugated people Jesus does not counsel revolt. One does not "befriend" the soldier, draw him aside, and drive a knife into his ribs. Jesus was keenly aware of the futility of armed revolt against Roman imperial might. He minced no words about it, though it must have cost him support from the revolutionary factions.

But why walk the second mile? Is this not to rebound to the opposite extreme: aiding and abetting the enemy? Not at all. The question here, as in the two previous instances, is how the oppressed can recover the initiative, how they can assert their human dignity in a situation that cannot for the time being be changed. The rules are Caesar's but not how one responds to the rules. The response is God's, and Caesar has no power over that.

Imagine then the soldier's surprise when, at the next mile marker, he reluctantly reaches to assume his pack (sixty-five to eighty-five pounds in full gear). You say, "Oh no, let me carry it another mile." Normally he has to coerce your kinsmen to carry his pack; now you do it cheerfully and will not stop! Is this a provocation? Are you insulting his strength? Being kind? Trying to get him disciplined for seeming to make you go farther then you should? Are you planning to file a complaint? To create trouble?

From a situation of servile enforcement, you have once more seized the initiative. You have taken back the power of choice. The soldier is thrown off-balance by being deprived of the predictability of your response. Imagine the hilarious situation of a Roman infantryman pleading with a Jew, "Aw, come on, please give me back my pack!" The humour of this scene may escape those who picture it through sanctimonious eyes. It could scarcely, however, have been lost on Jesus' hearers, who must have delighted in the prospect of thus discomfiting their oppressors.

Some readers may object to the idea of discomfiting the soldier or embarrassing the creditor. But can people engaged in oppressive acts repent unless made uncomfortable with their actions? There is, admittedly, the danger of using nonviolence as a tactic of revenge and humiliation. There is also, at the opposite extreme, an equal danger of sentimentality and softness that confuses the uncompromising love of Jesus with being nice. Loving confrontation can free both the oppressed from docility and the oppressor from sin.

Even if nonviolent action does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor, it does affect those committed to it. As Martin Luther King, Jr attested, it gives them new self-respect and calls on strength and courage they did not know they had. To those with power, Jesus' advice to the powerless may seem paltry. But to those whose lifelong pattern has been to cringe, bow, and scrape before their masters, to those who have internalized their role as inferiors, this small step is momentous.

Jesus' different way

If we wanted to summarise what has been said so far about Jesus’ ‘third way’ alternative to violence on the one hand and passivity on the other, we might say that its tactical and strategic essence is:

* Seize the moral initiative.
* Find a creative alternative to violence.
* Assert your own humanity and dignity as a person.
* Meet force with ridicule or humour.
* Break the cycle of humiliation.
* Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position.
* Expose the injustice of the system.
* Take control of the power dynamic.
* Shame the oppressor into repentance.
* Stand your ground.
* Force the Powers into decisions for which they are not prepared.
* Recognize your own power.
* Be willing to suffer rather than retaliate.
* Force the oppressor to see you in a new light.
* Deprive the oppressor of a situation where force is effective.
* Be willing to undergo the penalty of breaking unjust laws.

It is too bad Jesus did not provide fifteen or twenty more examples since we do not tend toward this new response naturally. Some examples from political history might help engrave it more deeply in our minds:

In Alagamar, Brazil, a group of peasants organized a long-term struggle to preserve their lands against attempts at illegal expropriation by national and international firms (with the connivance of local politicians and the military). Some of the peasants were arrested and jailed in town. Their companions decided they were all equally responsible. Hundreds marched to town. They filled the house of the judge, demanding to be jailed with those who had been arrested. The judge was finally obliged to send them all home, including the prisoners.

During the Vietnam War, one woman claimed seventy-nine dependents on her United States income tax, all Vietnamese orphans, so she owed no tax. They were not legal dependents, of course, so were disallowed. No, she insisted, these children have been orphaned by indiscriminate United States bombing; we are responsible for their lives. She forced the Internal Revenue Service to take her to court. That gave her a larger forum for making her case. She used the system against itself to unmask the moral indefensibility of what the system was doing. Of course she "lost" the case, but she made her point.

During World War II, when Nazi authorities in occupied Denmark promulgated an order that all Jews had to wear yellow armbands with the Star of David, the king made it a point to attend a celebration in the Copenhagen synagogue. He and most of the population of Copenhagen donned yellow armbands as well. His stand was affirmed by the Bishop of Sjaelland and other Lutheran clergy. The Nazis eventually had to rescind the order.

It is important to repeat such stories to extend our imaginations for creative nonviolence. Since it is not a natural response, we need to be schooled in it. We need models, and we need to rehearse nonviolence in our daily lives if we ever hope to resort to it in crises.

Maybe it would help to juxtapose Jesus' teachings with legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky's principles for nonviolent community action (in his Rules for Radicals) to gain a clearer sense of their practicality and pertinence to the struggles of our time. Among the rules Alinsky developed in his attempts to organize American workers and minority communities are these:

(1) Power is not only what you have but also what your enemy thinks you have.

(2) Never go outside the experience of your people.

(3) Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.

Jesus, like Alinsky (or perhaps the other way round!), recommended using your experience of being belittled, insulted, or dispossessed in such a way as to seize the initiative from the oppressor, who finds reactions like going the second mile, stripping naked, or turning the other cheek totally outside his experience. This forces him her to take your power seriously and perhaps even to recognize your humanity.

Alinsky offers other suggestions. Again we see the parallels:

(4) Make your enemies live up to their own book of rules.

(5) Ridicule is your most potent weapon.

(6) A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.

(7) A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.

The debtor in Jesus' example turned the law against his creditor by obeying it, following the letter of the law, but throwing in his underwear as well. The creditor's greed is exposed by his own ruthlessness, and this happens quickly and in a way that could only regale the debtor's sympathizers, just as Alinsky suggests. This puts all other such creditors on notice and arms all other debtors with a new sense of possibilities. Alinsky's list continues:

(8) Keep the pressure on.

(9) The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.

(10) The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure on the opposition.

Jesus, in his three brief examples, does not lay out the basis of a sustained movement, but his ministry as a whole is a model of long-term social struggle that maintains a constant pressure. Mark’s Gospel depicts Jesus' movements as a nonviolent blitzkrieg. His teaching poses immediate and continuing threats to the authorities. The good he brings is misperceived as evil, his following is overestimated, his militancy is misread as sedition, and his proclamation of the coming Reign of God is mistaken as a manifesto for military revolution.

Disavowing violence, Jesus wades into the hostility of Jerusalem openhanded, setting simple truth against force. Terrified by the threat of this man and his following, the authorities resort to their ultimate deterrent, death, only to discover it impotent and themselves unmasked. The cross, hideous and macabre, becomes the symbol of liberation. The movement that should have died becomes a world religion.

Alinsky, whose stock in recent times has been raised by the fact that US President Barack Obama used to be a community organiser in Chicago, incidentally, offers three last suggestions:

(11) If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through to its counter-side.

(12) The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

(13) Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.

Alinsky delighted in using the most vicious behaviour of his opponents - burglaries of movement headquarters, attempted blackmail, and failed assassinations - to destroy their public credibility. Here were elected officials, respected corporations, and trusted police, engaging in patent illegalities to maintain privilege.

In the same way, Jesus suggests amplifying an injustice (turning the other cheek, removing your undergarment, going the second mile) to expose the fundamental wrongness of legalized oppression. The law is "compassionate" in requiring that the debtor's cloak be returned at sunset, yes; but Judaism in its most lucid moments knew that the whole system of usury and indebtedness was itself the root of injustice and should never have been condoned (Exodus 22.25). The restriction of enforced labour to carrying the soldier's pack a single mile was a great advance over unlimited enforcement, but occupation troops had no right to be on Jewish soil in the first place.

Jesus was not content merely to empower the powerless, however. Here his teachings fundamentally transcend Alinsky's. Jesus did not advocate nonviolence merely as a technique for outwitting the enemy but as a just means of opposing the enemy in such a way as to hold open the possibility of the enemy's becoming just as well.

To Alinsky's list I would like to add another "rule" of my own: never adopt a strategy you would not want your opponents to use against you. I would not object to my opponents using nonviolent direct actions against me, since such a move would require them to be committed to suffer and even die rather than resort to violence against me. It would mean they would have to honor my humanity, believe God can transform me, and treat me with dignity and respect.

Today we can draw on the cumulative historical experience of nonviolent social struggle. But the spirit, the thrust, the surge for creative transformation that is the ultimate principle of the universe-this is the same one we see incarnated in Jesus. Freed from literalistic legalism, his teaching reads like a practical manual for empowering the powerless to seize the initiative even in situations impervious to change.

To risk confronting the Powers That Be with such clown-like vulnerability, to affirm at the same time our own humanity and that of those we oppose, to dare to draw the sting of evil by absorbing it-such behavior is unlikely to attract the faint of heart. But to people dispirited by the enormity of the injustices that crush us and the intractability of those in positions of power, Jesus' words beam hope across the centuries. They especially resonate in our current time of turmoil – an age of war, terror, poverty, injustice and environmental degradation.

What Jesus’ injunction, example, resistance and vindication by God says, among other things, is this: We need not be afraid. We can assert our given human dignity. We can lay claim to the creative possibilities that are still ours, burlesque the injustice of unfair laws, and force evil out of hiding from behind the facade of legitimacy.

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© Walter Wink is a biblical scholar and advocate of radical, nonviolent social change toward justice and peace. He is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, USA. http://www.walterwink.com/ Among many other books, he is author of Jesus and Nonviolence: The Third Way (Fortress Press, 2003).

This article is adapted with grateful acknowledgement from The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, edited by Paul Loeb (Basic Books, 2004). See: www.theimpossible.org.

Palestinian Christians refusing the cycle of hate

By Emma Halgren
Ekklesia News Service, May 1, 2009

"A land is nothing without people, and people are nothing without a land." That's the maxim followed by Palestinian farmer Daoud Nassar. And when he speaks of the intimate connection between people and their land, he is talking from hard-won experience.

Nassar, a Palestinian Christian, lives with his family on 42 hectares (100 acres) of fertile land west of Bethlehem. His grandfather bought the land in 1916 and the Nassar family has farmed there ever since, growing olives, almonds, grapes, pears and figs.

In 1991, Daoud Nassar learned that the Israeli authorities were planning to confiscate three quarters of his land – a practice that is illegal under international law, but nonetheless widespread on the West Bank.

Since then, the family has been locked in a costly legal battle with the Israeli government, despite possessing all the land registration documents and other paperwork necessary to prove ownership, Daoud Nassar told a visiting ecumenical delegation on 10 March.

The ecumenical delegation – a Living Letters team travelling on behalf of the World Council of Churches (WCC) – visited the Nassar farm along with ecumenical organizations, church leaders and civil society groups in Israel and Palestine in March.

Amid the legal battles and harassment from surrounding Israeli settlers, the Nassar family has chosen a path of peace. It has opened up its land to locals and people from around the world to participate in educational and peace building activities.

The Nassar farm is part of a parcel of land, including eight nearby Palestinian farming villages, which Israeli authorities hope to annex in order to expand the Gush Etzion settlements, whose population is around 50,000.

Many West Bank families do not have the official documentation required to prove ownership of their land, let alone the resources to be able to fight lengthy court battles.

Since their first court appearance in 1991 to challenge the confiscation order, the Nassars have surprised the courts not only with the thoroughness of their documentation, but with their persistence. Daoud Nassar estimates that the family and supporters of the project have spent around 145,000 US dollars in legal and other fees and attended numerous court hearings – with the result that, for now, the land is safe.

"We refuse to be enemies"

The Nassar farm is already surrounded by Israeli settlements, and like many Palestinians, the Nassars have endured harassment, threats and attacks from nearby settlers. In one such attack, Daoud Nassar's mother was threatened with a gun. In another, settlers uprooted 250 olive trees from the property.

It is acts like this, Nassar says, that may easily fuel violence among Palestinians. For many others, the only possible options seem to be to resign themselves to the situation, or to emigrate.

The Nassar family decided there should be another option – to refuse to be enemies. So they established on their land a project called the Tent of Nations (http://www.tentofnations.org). Its overarching aims are to build bridges between people of different backgrounds and between people and land.

"We wanted to move away from a circle of blame, and channel our frustration into something positive," Daoud Nassar told the Living Letters team.

The Israeli authorities have forbidden any permanent infrastructure development on the site, as well as access to the electricity grid and public water, so the Nassars have refurbished seven underground caves, painting them, fitting them out with comfortable rugs and cushions and connecting them to electricity from a generator so that they could be used for meetings and other gatherings. There are now plans to install solar panels and build wind turbines on the farm.

Since the establishment of the project in 2000, the Nassars have garnered significant local and global support. Children from Bethlehem are given the opportunity to reconnect with the land through tree planting and helping with the grape and olive harvest.

A women's project equips women from the nearby village of Nahalin with English, computer and craft skills. Restrictive permit systems prevent many women from leaving the village for education or work, so the women's project provides a rare opportunity for them to pursue an education.

Each year, the Nassars run a tree planting campaign on the farm. In 2009, the goal is to plant 1000 trees on the land, with the help of the hundreds of people – including local Palestinians, Israeli peace activists and international supporters – who visit the site.

Volunteers also visit the farm throughout the year to help with the grape, almond, fig and olive harvests and to take part in artistic projects.

Building bridges

In a show of solidarity, members of European Jews for a Just Peace visited the property in 2003 and planted 250 olive trees to replace those ripped out by settlers.

At the local level, Nassar says, the activities of the Tent of Nations have gone at least some way towards promoting understanding between Palestinian and Israeli people. In early 2008, a woman from a visiting group of peace activists invited her friend from a nearby Israeli settlement to come and visit the Tent of Nations. The woman had been living in the settlement for nine years but was not aware that there were Palestinians living in the surrounding areas. The visit gave her a powerful insight into the living conditions of the Palestinians in the region.

Actions like these may not change the reality of the Occupation, but they are a small step towards better relationships between these deeply divided groups, said Daoud Nassar.

He hopes that his project will encourage other Palestinians not to see themselves as victims, but rather to look at the future with some hope. "What we are trying to do here, in a simple way, is to motivate our people, and show them there is a future," he said.

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(c) Emma Halgren is a member of the Uniting Church in Australia, and a communications intern at the World Council of Churches (http://www.oikoumene.org/).

Asian churches call for US military withdrawal from Afghanistan

Ekklesia News Service, April 9, 2009

At a time when the United States is trying to rally North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies behind its South Asian strategy, which includes reinforcing military presence in Afghanistan with thousands of extra international, mainly US, troops, participants at the International Consultation on Peace, Security and Development in South Asia have called "for the withdrawal of US-led international combat troops from Afghanistan".

The consultation took place in Bangalore, India, from 30 March to 2 April 2009.

Participants also appealed "to the international community to ensure that the resultant power vacuum may be filled by a UN-sponsored peacekeeping force with Asian forces as major players". This strategy, the statement says, "will help the country's transition towards stability".

"The overwhelming presence and reliance on 52,000-strong foreign forces in Afghanistan has created more animosity among the local people as well as in neighbouring Pakistan. This situation creates an atmosphere ripe for extremist groups to exploit the religious sentiments of ordinary people and involve them in committing more violence," the statement says.

Analyzing what they see as "one of the most volatile regions of the world," participants at the consultation stated that "South Asia has become a hotbed of the war on terror and a victim of the strategic interests of major power blocs keeping the region in constant turmoil and uncertainty".

With the "US-led war on terror" being an overall defining framework for the region's conflicts, "resentments against foreign forces" are "growing among various sectors in society, especially as they feel that peace and security in South Asia are today defined in terms of American [US] strategic interests and objectives".

The consultation condemned "all forms of terrorism both by state and non-state actors in the South Asia region". It also expressed "concern over the emerging religious extremism and fundamentalism in all South Asian countries". Among the "silver linings which provide hope," the consultation's statement mentions a number of "democratic transitions and electoral processes," like those that have taken place recently in Bhutan, Maldives and Nepal.

The statement of the International Consultation on Peace, Security and Development in South Asia can be found here: http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=6743