Queensland Synod News

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 ...

North and South Koreans have prayed together with world church leaders for the peaceful reunification of their divided country and are urging the World Council of Churches, the world’s largest grouping of Christian denominations, to give that process a boost. They prayed in the chapel of the Pontifical University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre during the WCC’s ninth ...

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 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 ...

The top official of the World Council of Churches says climate change represents one of humanity’s most dire threats and he has appealed to denominations around to world to speak with one voice to alert political leaders to tackle the issue. "Just as atomic weapons changed the very way we thought about life, so too the potential of major climatic ...

The top official of the World Council of Churches says climate change represents one of humanity’s most dire threats and he has appealed to denominations around to world to speak with one voice to alert political leaders to tackle the issue. "Just as atomic weapons changed the very way we thought about life, so too the potential of major climatic ...