Committing to the Anglican Communion

On By Jesse ZinkIn Anglican Communion, Episcopal Church6 Comments

It seems pretty clear that the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant will not be approved by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church this summer. Having been rejected in Scotland, stymied in England, turned down by more conservative provinces, and approved by only a handful of churches around the world, the Covenant has had a tough row to hoe. It’s demise, I think, will be little lamented.

Several of the Convention resolutions concerning the Covenant politely turn it down but then use some sort of language about “committing” to the Anglican Communion. No one, it seems, wants the American church’s rejection of the Covenant to be interpreted as a step back from the Communion.

Actions speak louder than words, however, so here’s the question: what steps can this General Convention take to make it clear that its commitment to the Anglican Communion is more than nice words on a piece of paper?

Here’s a short list of ideas:

Fully fund the Anglican Communion Office. Congregations pay money to support the work of their dioceses because they are committed to work in their region. Dioceses pay money to the national church because they see that it does important work. National churches (or provinces of the Anglican Communion) should pay money to the international body that, on a bare shoestring, provides some sort of organization to the Communion and facilitates important projects like the Continuing Indaba or the Bible in the Life of the Church. The first head of the ACO (though it wasn’t called that at the time) was an American bishop named Stephen Bayne. Full disclosure, he is one of my Anglican heroes (yes I have those) and I think his legacy and his vision deserve all the support we can give them.

The budgets that have been proposed for Convention both slash (yet further) the Episcopal Church’s contribution to the ACO. I’m not sure how Episcopalians can gripe about dioceses that don’t pay the full asking when we don’t pay the full asking to the ACO. Other Episcopalians complain the ACO doesn’t do what we want, much in the way that Republicans in Congress are continually threatening to cut off funding to the UN when it “steps out of line.” Fully fund the organization and let it do its job.

Provide increased funding for the networks of the Anglican Communion. These are organizations, like the Anglican Indigenous Network or the Anglican Health Network, that bring together Anglicans from around the world to work on issues that are not, blessedly, the issues that have consumed the Communion for the last decade and more. Networks are important not only for the work they do but for the way they represent an effort to change the discourse in the Communion. The Episcopal Church used to contribute money to some of these networks as a way of bringing people together from different backgrounds to talk about important issues. That money is now gone. (Disclosure: I’ve been involved with the Anglican Peace and Justice Network.)

Challenge dioceses to be involved in at least one companion relationship. Many American dioceses, happily, have overseas partner dioceses. The companion diocese idea (which came out of work done by the Anglican Communion Office, incidentally, way back when) has been an important tool for building relationships across the Communion and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. But not all dioceses have companion relationships. Some dioceses have relationships that need to be reinvigourated. We can challenge parishes to have web sites (Resolution A025); why not challenge every diocese to have a companion? (Or two: some of the most exciting companion relationships involve three dioceses.) Companion relationships challenge the dominant Anglican narrative of fissure with one of relationship across reconciled difference.

(Convention has passed resolutions in the past encouraging companion diocese relationships but to the best of my searching has not passed one establishing an expectation that every diocese have a companion.)

Encourage the companion idea to spread to parishes. The budget of many dioceses around the world is equivalent (or smaller than) the budget of a good-sized parish in the U.S. What if, in addition to diocese-to-diocese relationships, there were parish-to-diocese relationships? (We’d have to think about how these relationships might be complementary or competing in a diocese.) There are hundreds of Anglican dioceses around the world, many eager for companions, as I have learned. There’s no reason large, mission-minded parishes can’t take the lead in partnering with them. (The Diocese of Virginia has done some exciting things around this idea.)

Encourage better communications. Communications in the Anglican Communion is abysmal. As I have found in my travels around the Communion, there is exciting work being done in so many parts of the world that few people know about because no one tells anyone else about it. Instead, the dominant communications medium in the church is something like Virtue Online, a polemical, often-false source of “news” that drives a narrative of fracture and decline. This needs to be matched with, well, facts. Solving the communications problem in the Communion is not something Convention alone can do. It can, however, take steps in that direction, like increasing funding for the Episcopal News Service so that the organization can broaden its horizons and get more Anglicans talking to one another. Right now, Anglican Journal, the newspaper of the (smaller and poorer) Canadian church does a better job covering the Communion than ENS does.

Many of these ideas cost money (not much) but, again, actions speak louder than words. If we mean what we say in these resolutions, we need to back it up. These are some of my ideas to do so. Yours?

“The Dinka national characteristic is laziness.”

On By Jesse ZinkIn Mission, SudanLeave a comment

The title of this post is taken from an article in the Church Missionary Society’s Gleaner newspaper in 1906. Missionaries of the new CMS mission among the Dinka people of southern Sudan were reporting back on what they were learning. As you might guess from this extract it’s not all that positive.

I gave this article (which I found while doing research at school this spring) to my class of Dinka students in the Sudanese American Theological Institute that I’m teaching at in Phoenix this summer. We were talking about the early years of the European mission effort in southern Sudan. Here are some other extracts from the article:

The value of the medical mission in breaking up the fallow ground is again receiving marked demonstration in the Dinka Mission. Illness is naturally prevalent owing to the fact that the Dinka will use the same water hole for drinking, washing himself, and watering his cattle! As the benefit of proper treatment is appreciated the pioneer doctor’s hands are kept full.

Contact with clothed Europeans is also having an excellent civilizing effect. Clothes are desired, and the possession of cloth leads to the need of soap. Clothing does not harmonize with the daubing of grease, red ochre, and ashes, and so the civilizing process goes on.

(This is actually not true. In separate letters home, the doctor and others complained about not having enough to do because the Dinka basically ignored them. But facts never got in the way of anyone’s fundraising appeal!)

The article makes me wince when I read it. It reeks of the late Victorian, noblesse oblige that so characterized mission efforts of that time. The way the word “civilization” is used constantly is a reminder that missionaries saw it as their job not just to spread the good news but also to bring with them their cultural suppositions.

I gave it to the students and I wanted to know what they thought. Right off the bat, one male student read it and said, “That’s accurate.” A female student agreed and said that it was the women who do all the work in Dinka culture. That prompted a male student to say, “They didn’t understand what men do in Dinka culture.” And the conversation took off from there. (For what it’s worth—and I noted this in class—I’ve read lots of ethnographies of Dinka from various points of the last 150 years and it’s amazing how often the word “lazy” crops up.)

We ended up talking at length about how—if at all—missionaries can separate their own cultural background from the gospel they are seeking to share. Ultimately, the answer is not entirely. The gospel is always enculturated. Missionaries share the way they understand the gospel and then it is received and transformed as it enters a new culture. The question for missionaries to ask, then, is what parts of what I am sharing are essential to the gospel and which are not?

This is all pretty obvious stuff for folks who’ve been engaged in cross-cultural mission. But it’s worth reading wince-inducing mission histories because it reminds us of this central dynamic in Christian mission between gospel and culture.

Mainline Protestant denominations have, in the past several years, moved away from explicit evangelism to a partnership model of mission that stresses the development of relationships. There is much to commend to this model and I’ve written a book that essentially endorses it without, of course, losing sight of the kerygma of Jesus Christ.

Even as we do so, however, I think it’s still important to step back and ask ourselves the question: what is gospel and what is culture? In working with other cultures—even in partnership—we still bring with us cultural suppositions as deeply rooted (if less obviously offensive) as those the first CMS missionaries brought with them when they went to southern Sudan.

“God is the interesting thing about religion.”

On By Jesse ZinkIn Episcopal Church4 Comments

The Episcopal/Anglican world commemorates Eveyln Underhill today, a noted author and proponent of contemplative prayer and the importance of the spiritual life. Her book Mysticism, now more than a century old, is still an important reference on that topic.

Recent graduates of Berkeley Divinity School likely know Underhill better for a letter she wrote to then-archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, in 1930. Our dean was fond of quoting one bit: “God is the interesting thing about religion.”

Odd as it may seem, It is very easy, for those involved in the life of the church, to lose sight of this basic fact. In seminary, we can get distracted by the shiniest new theological idea,  debates about theologies of ordination, or whatever. In the governance of the church, we get distracted by the particulars of resolutions and committees. In the day-to-day life of congregations, we get distracted by the pressures of keeping the lights on, the church clean, and the brass polished.

All of these things are important, of course, but they can tend to obscure our focus on what Underhill puts, self-evidently, at the center of religion: God. To my way of thinking, Underhill’s comments give added impetus to my earlier proposal for this summer’s General Convention: begin the thing with a retreat. The complete text of Underhill’s letter is online and I think it has important reminders for the church, particularly in a season of contentious conventions and governance meetings.

The Church wants not more consecrated philanthropists, but a disciplined priesthood of theocentric souls who shall be tools and channels of the Spirit of God: and this she cannot have until Communion with God is recognized as the first duty of the priest. But under modern conditions this is so difficult that unless our fathers in God solemnly require it of us, the necessary efforts and readjustments will not be made…. God is the interesting thing about religion, and people are hungry for God. But only a priest whose life is soaked in prayer, sacrifice, and love can, by his own spirit of adoring worship, help us to apprehend Him. We ask the bishops . . . to declare to the Church and especially its ministers, that the future of organized Christianity hinges not on the triumph of this or that type of churchman’s theology or doctrine, but on the interior spirit of poverty, chastity and obedience of the ordained. However difficult and apparently unrewarding, care for the interior spirit is the first duty of every priest.

Read the whole thing (it’s a page and a half). In an age of managerial rectors, is the answer to church decline more “theocentric” souls? And is that an issue that can be addressed by a Convention resolution?

“If you are not baptized, please sit down”

On By Jesse ZinkIn Episcopal ChurchLeave a comment

I was recently looking through my notes from my trip a year ago to China and I found this story I had forgotten.

One Sunday I visited one of the major, sanctioned Protestant churches in Beijing. The congregation stood while the pastor prayed over the communion elements. Then, just before the distribution, the pastor made an announcement. “If you are not baptized, please sit down.” About a third of the congregation did so. They watched while the rest of us received communion that was passed through the pews. None who sat down seemed offended. No one stormed out in a huff. This was how things were. They were not baptized yet but looked forward to the day when they were.

So what’s the difference between this church in Beijing and your average Episcopal congregation, where I can never imagine something like this happening?

One difference—and there are many—is that folks are beating down the door of this church in Beijing. I had to wait in line twenty minutes to get into that service. The sanctuary could probably hold 1000 people and it was standing room only that morning. In the Episcopal Church, perhaps, we’re so desperate for folks to come in, we don’t want to do anything that will turn people away.

I’ve written before about how the “open communion” conversation in the Episcopal Church is about much more than the relationship between communion and baptism. However that may be, I was struck to find this story in notes this morning.

What would we think about an Episcopal rector saying the same thing on a Sunday morning?

Learning from the past

On By Jesse ZinkIn Anglican Communion, Episcopal Church, Mission, Sudan3 Comments

This is the first summer in five in which I will not visit some part of Africa and spend time with our sisters and brothers in Christ in that part of the world.

But I’ve found what is, perhaps, the next best thing.

St. Paul’s Sudanese Mission in South Phoenix is an Episcopal church like no other in the country: it’s the only free-standing Sudanese Episcopal church in the country. The congregation is primarily what are often called “Lost Boys”: some of the thousands of children who walked into refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya twenty or more years ago and were resettled in the U.S. a decade ago.

On past trips to Sudan, I’ve done a fair amount of teaching: in dioceses, and in seminaries. (I’ve also done much more learning than I’ve done teaching.) St. Paul’s has a Saturday school for lay people that they call the Sudanese American Theological Institute. Thanks to a generous grant from the Evangelical Education Society of the Episcopal Church and building on a course I did at Yale this past spring, I’m teaching a course this summer on Sudanese Church History. Here’s the first class.

Now, at first glance, you might think it a bit odd that an American should be a teaching a bunch of Sudanese about their own church history. In fact, however, many Sudanese, particularly many of the Lost Boys, became Christian after they were forced to leave southern Sudan. Their conversion happened in places like Kakuma Refuge Camp and Khartoum. Church history is not something that is widely known.

So on Saturday we began at the beginning, with the so-called Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8 (Really, he was from the Meroitic empire in what is now northern Sudan) and the Nubian Christian empire that withstood an Islamic invasion and was a flourishing Christian kingdom for centuries on the Nile River. We talked about what we can learn about the enculturation of the Gospel, missionary strategies, Christian-Muslim relations, and much more.

I had them read extracts from the sixth century writer, John of Ephesus, who documented the work of missionaries to the Nubian kingdoms.

Then we talked about the pros and cons of a missionary strategy that focused on converting kings and nobles and discussed how relations between the Nubian kingdoms changed from enmity to friendship when the kings became Christian.

You get this sense, sometimes, that westerners think Christianity is a relatively recent import to Africa, brought by Euro-Atlantic missionaries in the last century or two. That’s obviously not true. After Pentecost, the Gospel radiated in every direction from Jerusalem—not just to the north-east—and we do well to remember that. Christianity is part and parcel of African history. Studying that history seems like a good idea to me, both for what we learn about what happened and for what it can teach us about our own time.

Next up: the beginning of the European mission era. Why did European missionaries—who had so much success elsewhere in Africa—fall flat on their face when they encountered the Dinka people? And what does that tell us about mission and evangelism in our own time?

Visions for Christian Unity: Roland Allen and the Body of Christ

On By Jesse ZinkIn Anglican Communion, Mission1 Comment

The Episcopal Church commemorated Roland Allen on June 8. (I’m a day late with this post. Oops.) Allen was an Anglican missionary to China and later Kenya in the first part of the twentieth century. For a variety of reasons—notably what his commemoration generously calls “a gregarious temperament combined with absolute confidence in his ideas”; i.e. he was a real S.O.B.—Allen never rose particularly far in the church hierarchy.

The church commemorates Allen primarily because of one book he wrote, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? This is everything an author could ask for in a book: short, profound, and still in print nearly a century after its publication. (And it’s now on Kindle for less than $2!) Allen argues that St. Paul’s missionary method was to found churches, teach them the gospel, establish a leadership structure, and then leave them to grow on their own. He contrasts that with the decades- and centuries-long hand-holding among mission agencies of his own time. (You may have heard of Allen because Vincent Donovan cites him heavily in Christianity Rediscovered, which, as far as I’m concerned, should be read by every Christian alive.)

Allen (and Donovan) can be criticized on various grounds but I want to remember Allen for something that is rarely mentioned about his writing: the vision he articulated for worldwide Christian unity.

But first, something slightly more recent. For the last quarter century, the Anglican Communion has pursued its efforts toward unity by arguing that the church is something like the Trinity. The loving relations of the three members of the Trinity are what the church is trying to approximate. Just as the Trinity is many but one, so too should the church be.

This is due, in large part, to an Orthodox theologian and bishop named John Zizioulas, who spoke at Lambeth 1988 and whose book, Being as Communion, was hugely influential on Anglicans (and others). The 1997 Virginia Report shows this influence: “Our unity with one another is grounded in the life of love, unity and communion of the Godhead. The eternal, mutual self-giving and receiving love of the three persons of the Trinity is the source and ground of our communion, of our fellowship with God and one another.” (2.9)

These Trinitarian themes have continued in Anglican theology, as, for instance, in the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant, which says, in its first paragraph, “the communion of life in the Church participates in the communion which is the divine life itself, the life of the Trinity.” (The Presiding Bishop’s recent talk to provincial synods is in this vein as well, though she also seems heavily influenced by this more recent book.)

So, with that context in mind, back to Allen.

Allen’s vision for worldwide Christian unity was animated not by the Trinity but by something more Pauline: the body of Christ. Allen rooted his case for unity between churches in countries that sent missionaries (like his own England) with churches that were growing in places where missionaries were being sent (like China, where he wrote Missionary Methods). His insight was that the teaching about the body Paul applied to individuals within the Corinthian, Roman, and other churches could be applied to individual churches within the broader Church catholic.

That is to say, just as individuals in Corinth needed one another to be a fully functioning Christian community, so too did Christians in England need Christians in China (and elsewhere) to be a fully functioning Christian body. Coming at a time when mission reeked of colonialism and noblesse oblige, this was a pretty profound thing to be saying. Moreover, Allen realized, this meant each church was co-equal and had something of value to contribute. (Allen was silent on just what the Chinese church could contribute, an indication, perhaps, of the way in which he was still captive to his own time.)

One of the implications of thinking in this way—and Allen realized it—is that Christian unity is not something that is created by Christians. Rather, it is something that is a gift from God that Christians realize in their relationships. Christians join a body that exists long before they—or anyone else—were around.

Allen was not the first to apply the body of Christ imagery to the world church—John Chrysostom had done so in his sermons—but he is, so far as I can tell, the first to develop it in such great detail. He had a vision for the unity of the world church and that vision was rooted in the idea of the body of Christ. The Church Catholic is one body. Each individual Christian and individual church is a member of it and has gifts to contribute and gifts to receive from it. This body is not created but is joined.

Nor was Allen the only Anglican to rely on this vision to promote Christian unity. Bishops relied on it at the 1930 Lambeth Conference to talk about Anglican unity. The idea reached an apex in 1963 in Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ, the manifesto that laid out a new way of understanding the Anglican Communion. (Elsewhere, I’ve written an article about why MRI needs to be remembered in the Anglican Communion.) And it makes sense. Paul’s teaching on the body is intuitive and easily graspable.

In this context, the Trinitarian vision of unity in the past quarter-century seems like something of an outlier. And yet Anglicans have been debating and discussing and arguing about unity as if the Zizioulas-Trinity vision is the only way we have of understanding what it means to be a worldwide church without ever seriously questioning if it is the most helpful vision for Christian unity

It seems likely that the Anglican Covenant is dead. The debate surrounding it has focused primarily on its Section IV, the one that promises unspecified “relational consequences.” As Anglicans figure out a way forward post Covenant, perhaps we might also have a conversation not just about Section IV but also about the implicit assumptions underlying our visions for worldwide unity. What does it mean to say we are a “world church”? How do we understand relations between these various parts of that world church? Are those relations important? If so, why? The body of Christ, I think, gives us the language to begin answering some of these questions.

I’m hoping to publish a paper on this in the not-very-distant future so I’m not going to list all the reasons why I think the Trinitarian consensus of the last quarter-century is lacking and why the body of Christ might be a better answer. But perhaps we might use the commemoration of Roland Allen to reflect on just what vision we have for our world church. Zizioulas, at Lambeth 1988, said, “ecumenism needs a vision.” Substitute “intra-Anglican relations” for “ecumenism” and the point remains sound.

When we start looking for that vision, I think we might find that it’s time to turn away from the Trinity and return to the Body.

New extract of Grace at the Garbage Dump

On By Jesse ZinkIn Grace at the Garbage DumpLeave a comment

Episcopal Cafe’s Daily Episcopalian has an extract of my new book, Grace at the Garbage Dump.

The word mission is more and more a part of conversations about the future of the Episcopal Church. As I’ve watched the conversation unfold, I think back to my weeks driving Pakama to her never-ending string of appointments. Mission begins when difference is engaged—whether on a garbage dump in South Africa or just down the street. Where it ends up, we cannot control. But it is the fact that we are willing to render ourselves vulnerable to God’s guidance on a journey whose destination we may not know that makes our life as Christians missional. None of us will ever live to see the perfect peace of the kingdom of God on earth. But perhaps if we set out on the journey, we’ll find that the journey of mission truly is its destination.

Read the whole thing.

Purchased your copy of Grace at the Garbage Dump yet? All the ordering information is here.

Not sure you want to buy it yet? Read the first two chapters for free on Amazon.

0 for 4

On By Jesse ZinkIn Episcopal ChurchLeave a comment

Four dioceses in the Episcopal Church today elected new bishops—a kind of Episcopalooza.

While I am sure the Holy Spirit was at work in each election, it’s striking to me that in not one election did a woman win. In fact, of the 18 candidates in the four elections, only five were women, one of whom had to be nominated by petition so the slate wouldn’t be all male. This is so striking to me because in my recently graduated seminary class, more than half of my classmates were women. What gives?

A friend directed me to the report from the Executive Council Committee on the Status of Women in the so-called Blue Book prepared in advance of this summer’s General Convention. The report begins on p. 623 of the Blue Book and this paragraph of the report seems to speak directly to today’s results.

The data reveals a growing possibility of a two-tiered clergy system emerging where one tier, largely male, engages in full time parish or diocesan ministry as a primary vocation, and the other, largely female, engages in part-time ministry within or outside the parish system. Compensation for those in the second tier is very often not commensurate with experience or hours committed and many times they work on a non-stipendiary (unpaid) basis. While we acknowledge the need for the church to reexamine assumptions about full time and bi-vocational ministry, we feel it equally important that such trends do not contribute to existing patterns of inequality, with a disparate impact on women. Along those lines, we also call for a reexamination of the canons regarding clergy canonical residence. For this emerging tier of largely female extra-parochial and assistant/associate priests, years and even decades can pass before one is granted residency. Without the ability to participate in the councils of the Church in the places where they minister, these priests cannot live into the vow they took at ordination that they take their place “in the councils of the Church.”

The report references Called to Serve, a newish report from the Church Pension Fund (and others) about female clergy. I haven’t made it all the way through yet but it’s well worth your consideration.

There are many reasons why the lack of female bishops is problematic but here are at least two. First, the church is a diverse body and needs all its members to function properly. That diversity needs to be true of all levels of the church. Second, the church is a counter-cultural society. Yet there are more female U.S. Senators than female Episcopal bishops, even though the Senate has long been a bastion of male (and other) privilege.

Clearly, there are all kinds of complicating factors here: vocational aspirations, family life, length of time in ministry, and so on and so forth. But the raw statistics of today’s elections—five candidates of 18; zero new female bishops in four dioceses—bears consideration and reflection, particularly by those of us who have not given serious attention to these issues in the past.

I’m not saying male bishops are a problem. It’s just that I think the House of Bishops could benefit from some gender (and other kinds of) diversity. People who look like me are already more than adequately represented in the House of Bishops.

Punching above its weight

On By Jesse ZinkIn Episcopal Church1 Comment

The Diocese of Western Massachusetts will elect a new bishop tomorrow. Prayers ascending for all of candidates and delegates!

Any election is noteworthy in the life of a diocese. One of the reasons this election is noteworthy is that no candidate from within the diocese is among the nominees. That means that by December, when Bishop Scruton steps down, there will be one fewer member of the House of Bishops with roots in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts.

It’s a small diocese but when when you have a look at this list (recently posted on Facebook), you realize it’s a diocese that has punched above its weight.

The Rt. Rev. Gordon Scruton – Western Massachusetts
(served @ Grace, Dalton 1977-1981 & St. Francis, Holden 1981-1996)

The Rt. Rev. George Councell – New Jersey
(served as Canon to the Ordinary 1986-1995)

The Rt. Rev. Lawrence Provenzano – Long Island
(served @ St. John’s, North Adams 1987-1994 & St. Andrew’s, Longmeadow 1995-2009)

The Rt. Rev. Mark Beckwith – Newark
(served @ All Saints, Worcester 1993-2007)

The Rt. Rev. John Tarrant – South Dakota
(served as curate Atonement, Westfield 1983-1985, St. Paul’s Gardner 1985-1989,
St. Paul’s Holyoke 1989-1991 & St. Paul’s Stockbridge 1996-2005)

The Rt. Rev. John Bauerschmidt – Tennessee
(served as curate @ All Saints, Worcester 1984-87)

The Rt. Rev. Michael Vono – Rio Grande
(served as curate @ All Saints, Worcester 1976-80 Christ Church, Rochdale 1980-92)

The Rt. Rev. Ian Douglas – Connecticut
(Home parish Christ Church, Fitchburg)

The Rt. Rev. Andrew M. L. Dietsche – Bishop Coadjutor New York
(served @ Good Shepherd, West Springfield 1990-2001)

The Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld – Bishop Coadjutor elect New Hampshire
(served @ Grace Church, Amherst 2001-2012)

That’s enough for a baseball team, with one sub. (It’d be an all male baseball team, you’ll note.)

What accounts for this preponderance of Western Massachusetts-related bishops?

The Church in Bukavu, Congo

On By Jesse ZinkIn Anglican CommunionLeave a comment

(This post contains graphic images of victims of violence.)

I’ve written before about how the church around the world is on the front-lines of some very serious, distressing, and appalling conflicts. News comes recently of the Diocese of Bukavu’s response to the ongoing violence—including killings, rapes, and general displacement—in eastern Congo, a place of conflict for much of the past two decades.

Extracts of the report follow. A reminder, as with anything we read from our sisters and brothers around the world, that English is often their third or fourth language.

The diocese of Bukavu serves to South Kivu Province and a great part of North Kivu Province. In both regions, the security situation is becoming worse because of fighting everywhere, massacre of innocents and massive displacement of people….

A large number of the victims are in displacement in Bulambika Centre and Bukavu town. Many of them are vulnerable people such women, children and old people. They are now living in the families of the Christians who hosted them but their situation is anxious because there is nobody to improve their basic needs….

Therefore, with anxious and sadness in hearts, the diocese of Bukavu recognizing the holistic mission of the Church is humbly requesting your prayers for peace and any kind of support YOU so that these vulnerable victims can get relief.

Their report includes a pictures of victims of the violence.

The full report is posted here, with contact details about how you can be in touch with folks in the Diocese of Bukavu. (The report contains pictures of the victims that are more graphic than these.)

If we take our baptism seriously, these pictures are not simply pictures of dead people but of dead sisters and brothers in Christ, whose suffering we, in a very real way, are connected to. And as the Bible tells us, “If one part suffers, all suffer with it.” (I Cor. 12:26)

Is it more than a little infuriating that the Anglican Communion can work itself into a lather about a proposed covenant, taking up years of time and huge swathes of Internet space, but barely notice when events like this take place?