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Faith is believing ... - June 1, 2016

Explaining the Balkans Conflict to an Apologist

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Religious comments about the war in Kosovo:

Christians were divided over how to resolve the conflict. Some Evangelicals, Protestants and Roman Catholics supported the bombing as the only way to eventually bring peace. Many Orthodox Christian leaders supported the Serbian Orthodox church in asking for a cease fire. Many faith groups concentrated on the plight of the refugees, and did not take an active position on the war itself. During 1999...

- Pax Christi is a Roman Catholic peace movement. Its Italian branch called for international action in Kosovo. "A temporary solution of one or two decades, would provide the immediate opportunity for increased economic cooperation with and political integration into the international community. It would enable the parties to build common ground for a final solution."

- A number of Roman Catholic, Serbian Orthodox, and Muslim religious leaders met in Vienna in an attempt to forge a united stance against violence. Father Leonid Kishovsky was an Orthodox priest from New York who was present at the meeting. He reported "It was a very tense and challenging conversation that nearly broke down. But they did manage to walk through this very painful dialogue and came up with a common statement to step away from...violence and seek a democratic solution."

- The Albanian Encouragement Project (a group of about 70 foreign Evangelical Protestant agencies working with the local Albanian Evangelical Alliance) stated that the immediate solution was to bring NATO ground troops into Kosovo. They felt that the long range solution is more difficult. "We can set up borders, we can guard borders with UN troops and maintain a semblance of peace, but until hearts change and ethnic hatred ceases there is no long-term solution."

- Charles Colson, head of the Prison Fellowship ministry in the U.S. criticised NATO's refusal to agree to a cease-fire requested by the Serb President, Slobodan Milosevic during the Orthodox Christian Easter. "NATO's actions show how completely tone-deaf Western governing elites have become on the subject of religion -- or at least Christianity." Colson contrasted the Kosovo situation with that of the 1998 decision to cease bombing in Iraq during Ramadan.

- The Commission of the Orthodox Church predicted that further escalation of the war may have "unforeseeable, terrible consequences." They noted that both Evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders in Germany have supported the bombing in Kosovo.
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- Archbishop Spyridon, primate of the Greek Orthodox church in America said: "The further escalation of this conflict can only serve to exacerbate the human tragedy of violence, displacement and the inevitable hatreds that will be spawned by the forces of death and destruction."

- The World Council of Churches, the Conference of European Churches, the Lutheran World Federation and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches called on Christians and Christian Churches to observe an international day of prayer for peace and reconciliation in the Balkans. These four groups had the opportunity to make a major positive contribution to religious tolerance by involving other than Protestant Christian groups in this day of prayer. Unfortunately, they decided to not involve the three main religious groups that are at least partly responsible for the terror and crisis in the Balkans: the Serbian Orthodox Church, Roman Catholic Church, and Islam.

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[ Faith is believing ... - http://revjimc.blogspot.com/2016/06 - June 1, 2016 ]