CESNUR Annual Conference, Aletheia University, Danshui, Taiwan, 21-23 June 2011 (original) (raw)
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The Ecumenical Review, 2017
is general secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) and has served on the staff of the World Council of Churches as its Asia secretary and as director of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs. This is an edited version of an address given at an international consultation on "Towards Revitalizing the Ecumenical Movement in Asia" in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in July 2017 to mark the 60th anniversary of the CCA.
The way forward: A Global Council on Religion, Culture and the Human Future
The self-understanding of mainstream Christian communities, and claims they make of priority status, have influenced alliances between their institutions and various military and political powers and resulted in the long-running pattern of exploitation, oppression and religious disputation and conflict in both the Old World and the New World. However in recent years it has also caused open conflict on a massive scale in a number of countries and is contributing to an inversion of authority relationships between the White Western Christian Bloc of countries, (WWCB), and the World Majority Peoples, (WMP). In its current early phase, this inversion is already becoming traumatic for the West and this leads to social tension that encourages resistance to change and deepens conflict. The inversion cannot be reversed but if it is properly understood and if the Western World modifies its policies it can be managed with less trauma while the World Majority Peoples benefit progressively. There is no quick fix solution to the crisis, and the threat to the human future will remain, unless and until religious disputation is resolved. The focal point of the crises is conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestinian peoples, and their respective supporters, but the complexity of the global crisis requires world leaders – religious, secular and political - to accept two considerations. All major faiths are legitimate, established under divine inspiration with various obligations, but one in common: to enable humanity to move towards harmony, stability and security for whatever may be the life-supporting existence of planet Earth. Harmony cannot be achieved while religious communities insist on rigid, divisive creeds and dogma, that their theology is absolute and that they have special status and authority. Therefore solutions must be found through a Council on Religion, Culture and the Global Future, [CRCGF], independent of religious institutional or government membership, by existing Institutions, NGOs and civil society organizations resourced by civil contributions. Council’s primary program must include integrated reassessment of human history, evolution of religious belief systems and affiliations, governance, the end of national greed, sovereignty imperatives, and the elimination of weaponry that can only lead to global destruction, all coupled with promotion of harmony and stability.
Issue 1 $ The Journal of CESNUR $ $
2002
This monographic issue of The Journal of CESNUR is devoted to the campaign against "cults" in China and to The Church of Almighty God, one of the movements the government labels and persecutes as a "cult." In this introduction, "sinicization" of religion and the use of the word "cult" for translating, or mistranslating, the Chinese expression xie jiao are discussed as two main tools of control and repression of religious practice in China. After a review of the existing scholarly literature on The Church of Almighty God, a short outline of its history is presented.