Queensland Synod News

The world’s churches are "missing in action" while one thousand children die each week in squalid camps in northern Uganda, a former foreign minister from that country has said at a global meeting of church leaders in Brazil. "The worst place in the world today to be a child is in northern Uganda," said Olara Otunnu, who served as United ...

Disputes in churches about homosexuality are hampering the search for Christian unity, Vatican officials have said during a global meeting of the World Council of Churches in Porto Alegre, Brazil. "In the past all Christian churches had the same position on this question," Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told a media conference at ...

A social researcher for the Malawi Council of Churches says religious beliefs that wives should be submissive to their husbands, "as if to the Lord", are fuelling gender-based violence in the country. He cited a recent occurrence in which a woman had her hands chopped off and another was killed for refusing to have sex with her HIV-infected husband. An ...

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 ...

Measuring church growth takes more than a head-count across the top of the pews, reports world-renowned Australian researchers at NCLS Research. Busy preparing for another National Church Life Survey in the second half of 2006, NCLS has its eyes on the big and little pictures of congregation size, attitudes and beliefs. A key focus will be helping churches reflect on ...

The WCC Assembly’s Mutirao Bate-papo on Wednesday was a lively discussion, with a young, lay Protestant woman telling a 70-year-old Catholic bishop that the future of Christianity lay in starting at the grassroots and addressing grassroots problems. For half an hour each day from 12.45, the Bate-papo – or "chat" – is an informal conversation between a leading ecumenical personality ...

A top Vatican official says it is urgent for churches around the world to find a common date on which to celebrate Easter, noting this would mark an enormous step forward in promoting Christian unity. "Especially for churches in Muslim countries it is a scandal if Christians cannot celebrate together," Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting ...

The moderator of the World Council of Churches has warned against his grouping’s adopting a "self-contained, self-centred" attitude and says cooperation with the Roman Catholic Church is vital for the future of Christian unity. "The World Council of Churches should not remain in a self-contained, self-centred existence," said Catholicos Aram I of the Armenian Apostolic Church at a media conference ...

As issues around migration, both voluntary and forced, become more complex, the efforts of churches are becoming increasingly critical to the survival of refugees worldwide, participants at a global church gathering have heard. "We know the long-term solution is peace and stability, so that people can be taken care of in their own homelands," said Georges Mourad of Lebanon. "But ...

Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop of the US Episcopal (Anglican) Church, says he is undergoing treatment for alcoholism. In a letter to the Episcopal churches in New Hampshire state, where he serves as bishop, and made public earlier this week, Robinson said he would spend all of February at a treatment centre, whose location he did not disclose ...