Daily briefs of the top news stories impacting Christians around the world.
In today's edition:
World Council of Churches Begin Meeting
Leaders and envoys from across Christianity opened their most ambitious gathering in nearly a decade Tuesday, the AP reports. The World Council of Churches meeting - its biggest since 1998 – contains a full agenda: from the faith's many internal rifts to easing discord with Islam. Attendees will seek to clarify new priorities for a membership that covers more than 500 million followers: mainline Protestant denominations, Anglicans and Orthodox churches. The Roman Catholic Church is not a full WCC member, although it cooperates closely in many areas. The Christian congregations fully outside the WCC fold are likely to be a recurring theme during the 10-day assembly of more than 4,000 clerics, scholars and religious activists. The stunning growth of Pentecostal and other evangelical-style churches has left many WCC members struggling with shrinking congregations and declining influence in some regions - particularly in Africa, Latin America and increasingly China. At the same time, the mainstream denominations are watching church attendance fall steadily in Europe and elsewhere. "Christianity is undergoing radical changes," said one of the policy documents for the conference. "While Christianity appears to be on the decline in some parts of the world, it has become a dynamic force to others."
Christian Leaders Debate Government's Responsibility for the Poor
Christian leaders split sharply over the 2006 federal budget and deficit-reduction bill, according to an article in Christianity Today. They differed not just on how Washington can help the poor, vulnerable, and aged, but also the extent that government should. The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 on February 1. The spending measure trims $39.5 billion from the federal budget over five years. The largest cuts target Medicare and Medicaid. The act also reduced $343 million for foster-care programs and $5 billion over 10 years to states for enforcing child support. Many Christian leaders condemned the spending reductions as immoral. "Today's vote was a callous vote," the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, said in a statement on February 1. But many Republicans in Congress with ties to religious conservatives voted for the spending cuts and disagreed that the government should prioritize aiding the poor and marginalized. "I believe the 'least of these' is my daughter, who's 4 years old, and my son, who's 2 years old, and all of those not born," Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, said. "I believe it's unfair to saddle them with debt way into the future." Of those who protested the budget, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said, "They don't know what they're talking about. There's $1.7 billion fraud in the food-stamp program. If the churches had done their job and followed Jesus' teachings, the government wouldn't have started all these programs and created all these problems."
