Calvin Synod Herald, 1986 (86. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1986-02-01 / 1. szám
CALVIN SYNOD HERALD — 5 — REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA Rural Crisis j Statement \ New York — Churches “cannot be silent or passive about the pain in the countryside,” leaders of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S. A. (NCCC) and its member churches have declared in a statement on the rural crisis. This week, the members of the NCCC Rural Crisis Issue Team commended the Farmers Home Administration and Congress for easing the pressure on indebted farm families. They urged the FHA in particular to be “farmer friendly.” And they called on church leaders to keep up the effort “to make the continuing crisis in rural America — the erosion of our fields and small communities, the demise of family farming and the forced liquidation of family farm operations, the growing concentration of land ownership — an urgent part of our national agenda for action.” The NCCC Rural Crisis Issue Team is made up of representatives of NCCC member church bodies whose portfolios include rural crisis, or “town and country," issues and members of other church bodies working in this field. In the statement, the church leaders recalled the NCCC Governing Board’s action urging that the NCCC, in close cooperation with the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, “press for enlightened public policy that will preserve the diverse ownership of land and the continuation of the family farm system.” They commended the FHA for reducing the number of farm families that will receive liquidation/foreclosure notices and for postponing the date such notices will be issued. Originally set for Jan. 1, the FHA has put off issuing the notices, first to Jan. 23 and now to Feb. 10, they note. And the number of farm families to receive those notices has been reduced from 80,000 to 30,000 and now to only those who have not been able to make payments in the last three years. “We also look forward to early implementation of the Homestead Protection and Interest Rate Reduction features of the 1985 Farm Bill, the Food Security Act of 1985, sections 1321 and 1320,” they said. “For some farm families, reduced interest will enable them to live with their indebtedness. For others, the homestead protection will enable them to retain their home through retirement years. For still others, interium use of the homestead will ease the pain of changing life’s direction.” NCC What is a United Church? by Thomas Best It has its own particular theology, ministry, structures of authority and decisionmaking — in other words, it is a “church”, a distinct confessional body. It has been formed from two or more confessional bodies which were previously separate entities — in other words, it is the product of a specific act of “unipn” among churches. It understands itself as something different from, and more than, the sum of its parts — in other words, it is a “new creation,” not merely the merging of elements from its parent traditions. It understands Christian unity, expressed structurally in some way as well as theologically, as a fundamental and pressing demand of the faith. It tends to have been formed within national boundaries, and often identifies itself in this way. It tends to have been formed from churches which were not dominant within their own cultures. It has often developed from churches of the Reformed tradition, churches which are less “liturgical” in worship and which have non-episcopal structures of governance. From this is follows that a “uniting church” is one in active union negotiations with another church or churches — seeking at least some elements of structural union, not only theological clarification or joint mission programming, et. Sometimes the vision of the churches confounds those who like to systematize: the name “The Uniting Church in Australia,” eight years now after union, witnesses that union is a continuing process and seeks to become yet more inclusive. And there are united churches whose name includes neither the word “united” nor “uniting” (such as the Church of South India). And of course various features may be more or less prominent at a given point in the life of a united church. At the time of union, for example, the consciousness of unity as a demand of the gospel is very high; it may seem less important later on, as members become comfortable with “our” church and reluctant to enter “yet another” union... (Still,) they tend to think of themselves as “international”: their church has claimed its own identity given from God through the Holy Spirit, they have given up the comfortable past to reach for something new, they have experienced the “dying in order to live” that is the mark of the Christian life... of an individual or of a church. Keeping You Posted. Switzerland A Rgfuge for the Huguenots Lausanne (RPS) — On the occasion of the tercentenary celebration of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the historical museum situated in the old bishopric diocese of Lausanne is presenting a national exhibition which evokes the biggest exodus in modern times. In cooperation with the best Swiss specialists and the help of iconographic documents, objects, manuscripts (among them the original of the Revocation of the Edict, on special loan from the National Archives), maps and plans, the exhibition and its bilingual catalogue claim to contain all the actual knowledge about this event which was of such great importance to the history of our country. In 1598, Henry IV signed the Edict of Nantes, which guaranteed to the Protestants ofhis kingdomfreedom of conscience and free practice of their religion. Eighty seven years later, in 1685, the grandson of Henry IV, Louis XIV revoked the Edict. Churches were destroyed and those Protestants who refused conversion chose exile, mostly under dramatic conditions, equal to those of certain modern exodus. The refugees flocked into Geneva before continuing their route northwards. In spite of the anger of Louis XIV, Reformed Switzerland supported her persecuted coreligionnaires to whom she offered asylum and aid in the cantons of Geneva, Berne (which in those days included the cantons of Vaud and Argovia), Neuenburg, Basel, Ziirich, Schaffhausen and St-Gallen essentially. Many then went on to Germany, Holland, even England and the United States of America. According to the latest estimates, one quarter of the French Protestants (200 to 250.000) took the road to exile, of whom about 140.000 entered Switzerland. Up to now, this important flow had never been measured so precisely. This task has now been taken up by a team of Swiss researchers, using computerised information. Unitarianism —Universalism Needs More Heart. — For centuries the essentially creedless religion known as Unitarianism has been called the “thinking man’s religion.” “Unitarianism-Universalism has been too much of a religion of the head and not enough of the heart,” says the Rev. Dr. O. Eugene Pickett of Boston, MA, president of the 170,000-member Unitarian-Universalist Association. “It’s been a fairly rationalistic, fairly intellectual approach to religion, but I don’t think this is adequate for our times.”
