Queensland Synod News

nglican Archbishop and Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu has urged African political leaders to deal with corruption and human rights abuses on the African continent. "In Africa we have had a succession of corrupt governments," the former head of the Anglican church in South Africa told a 20 February media conference during a meeting of the World Council of Churches ...

Organizers of church-backed initiatives say that with the right approach, the control of violence stemming from small arms and light weapons, particularly among children and teenagers, is possible. "Preventing small arms-related violence and effecting peace among the youth is not only possible, but practical," asserts Salpy Eskidjian, initiator of the World Council of Churches-supported Peace to the City Network or ...

A prominent African Pentecostal Christian has proposed "strategic level" talks with the World Council of Churches (WCC) that he said could lead to far greater participation by Pentecostal churches in the world’s largest grouping of churches. "If the WCC has been able to embrace its current diversity then it should be able to also embrace the Pentecostal churches to create ...

Citing Hollywood, an Argentinian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate has told a gathering of global church leaders in Brazil that the United States’ cultural influence over Latin America is just as damaging as its military and economic domination. "When the Berlin Wall fell, we thought there would be a world of cooperation, but instead we have domination by the empire," said ...

The image of US rap star Kanye West posing as Jesus for a recent cover of Rolling Stone magazine has drawn from editorial writers and religious organizations the sort of pungent rhetoric West himself has been producing for years. The 27-year-old rapper took three more Grammy awards, the music industry’s Oscar, on 12 February. But his appearance on Rolling Stone’s ...

This morning the Uniting Church in Australia was contacted by Bishop Elmer Bolocon with the news that an entire mountainside collapsed on to the village of Guinsaugon in Leyte, Central Philippines. Covering an area of nine square kilometers, local communities were buried under 30 meters of thick mud. Bishop Bolocon is the General Secretary of our partner church, the United ...

Christianity in South Asia needs to be redefined if it is to be relevant and responsive to issues of armed conflict and religion-based animosities, say church leaders from the region attending the World Council of Churches’ ninth assembly. "Why are we not being recognised as Christians? Maybe we have failed to follow Christ. Maybe our churches have become worship-oriented rather ...

The US National Council of Churches is calling on the government in the United States to close its detention centre on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following a United Nations report that recommended the immediate closure of the facility. The NCC’s general secretary, Robert Edgar, sent a letter to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterating a request made in 2003 and ...

The head of the worldwide Anglican Communion has cautioned against a military incursion into Iran by Western powers who say they are increasingly nervous about that country’s revived nuclear technology programme. "I hope and pray that the West doesn’t embark on another costly and misjudged military adventure that will further destabilise an already unstable region," the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan ...

A group of religious leaders from the United States has issued a public letter criticising the war in Iraq and acknowledging their churches’ inability to stop it. "We confess that we have failed to raise a prophetic voice loud enough and persistent enough to deter our leaders from this path of preemptive war," the 18 February letter to the assembly ...