The Ficca controversy

Peacemaking Conference 2000

Peacemakers explore non-Christian faith traditions

600 Presbyterians share "Holy Ghost good time" in sunny California

by John Filiatreau, Presbyterian News Service

ORANGE, Calif. -- 2-August-2000 -- About 600 members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gathered here last week on the shade-dappled campus of Chapman University to pray for peace and polish their peacemaking skills in lectures, workshops and field trips.

The theme of the four-years-in-the-planning Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference for 2000 was "Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a Diverse World." Many of the conference sessions and off-campus activities focused on relations between Christians and peace-loving people of other faiths. About 150 participants took part in daylong "immersion experiences" featuring visits to Los Angeles-area Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim places of worship.

The conference was, in the words of one speaker, an opportunity "to explore what it is like to live as Christians ... where cultures meet."

The peacemaking group was unusually young by Presbyterian standards (including 43 children, 74 youth and 27 young adults), and, perhaps not surprisingly, unusually gifted in harmony (winning effusive praise from music leaders Juan and Kathy Trevino, a sonorous wife-and-husband team of pastors from central Texas).

The Scripture passage for the four days of worship was Luke 10: 27-39, the story of the Good Samaritan, which inspired the conference preacher, the Rev. Alika Galloway of Minneapolis, Minn., to tell personal adventure stories -- one, for example, was about facing down a gunman she encountered while hitch-hiking to her ordination after her car broke down -- that provoked hearty laughter but also illuminated her theology.

Galloway invited her listeners to join her in having "a Holy Ghost good time," and urged them to identify with the major characters in the Good Samaritan story:

The waylaid man: "If you live long enough, you're going to be ambushed. ... And when you have been, don't try to get up too soon; lay there for a while. ... Take the time to rest. Ask God to nurse you and revive your soul. ... You'll need to pray ... And when you groan before the Lord, God will send somebody to (rescue) you."

The thieves: "We'd rather identify with the man laying by the road, battered and half-dead. We're the good guys; we never want to see ourselves as the thief ... but I've robbed somebody, because I refused to enter into dialogue and conversation with him ... We've robbed somebody, pushed them aside because we don't like their theology. ... You and I are thieves, and we need to repent. ... So what do we do about our thiefness?"

The Samaritan: "You are going to have to kiss the wounds of the wounded ... (and) open your heart to somebody who doesn't look like you, who doesn't smell like you, who doesn't speak like you, who doesn't believe in the same things you believe in. ... Radical love doesn't walk to the other side of the street. Are you awake enough in the spirit that you can see the man laying on the side of the road? Let us ask God to give us 20/20 spiritual eyesight."

The Rev. Dirk Ficca of Chicago, a featured conference speaker, espoused a radical brand of ecumenism, calling into question the common Christian assumption that Jesus is the only way to salvation.

"Imagine that you're in a church, and that light is streaming through a number of stained-glass windows there," he said. "The light is truth; the windows are religion; and the church is the world. Note that the window is not the light. ... Religions need to be distinguished from the light of God that shines through them."

Ficca, a Presbyterian minister, is executive director of the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, a non-sectarian organization that promotes interreligious dialogue and common action. He also directs the council's Metropolitan Chicago Interreligious Initiative, which promotes cooperation among religious organizations in the Windy City.

"People of other religions have told me that, when Christians approach them with the sole purpose of converting them to Christianity, it feels to them like ... a kind of religious 'ethnic cleansing,'" said Ficca, who asserted that "the purpose of dialogue is not, as I once thought, consensus or agreement ... but understanding -- the mutual experience of understanding."

The challenge Christians face today, he said, is to find "a way to maintain the integrity of our own Christian faith, yet not feel that we have to convert others."

"God's ability to work in our lives is not determined by becoming a Christian," he said. "... So what's the big deal about Jesus?"

Ficca urged the peacemakers to abandon their "instrumental" view of salvation, which holds that "salvation comes solely through Jesus ... that Jesus himself is the Good News ... (and) that the goal of the Christian faith is the establishment of Christendom."

He recommended instead what he called a "revelatory" view -- that "salvation comes through the Holy Spirit ... that the Good News is what Jesus revealed ... that it is God who saves, and that God offers salvation to all people ... and the purpose is the establishment of the Kingdom of God."

Ficca pointed out that "proselytizing," whose goal is conversion, is not the same as "evangelizing," which simply spreads the Good News of Jesus Christ and proclaims the gospel. He questioned whether the purpose of God's people should be "to create Christians," and whether Jesus' Great Commission to his followers (to "make disciples of all nations") necessarily means that "we are to make every person in every nation a disciple."

"Whatever we think about the Christian faith," he contended, "it is an interpretation."

In workshops and other sessions, the conference participants also heard from:

* Wesley Ariarajah, a Sri Lankan Methodist minister and longtime employee of the World Council of Churches, now a teacher at Drew University, who presented and explicated Bible texts deemed more exclusive ("No one comes to the Father except through me"), and more inclusive ("the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth"). Ariarajah contended that the writers of the Bible weren't aware that what they were writing would become Scripture, and that "Jesus never intended for the whole world to be Christian." He pointed out, "God has come to save the world, not the church."

* Virginia Miner, a pastor of two Pennsylvania churches and a former election observer in Nicaragua, who pointed out that, in many PC(USA) congregations, "peacemaker" and "troublemaker" are virtually interchangeable words. She urged would-be peacemakers to "think local ... start somewhere," learn to "listen actively," speak only for themselves, look for areas of agreement, and "trust the Prince of Peace."

* Doug Welch, the Worldwide Ministry Division's coordinator for eastern and central Africa, who presented a very bleak report on the twin scourges of AIDS and war and their decimation of the people of the continent, of whom he said: "We need to raise them up to God in prayer."

* Jim Watkins, the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program's associate for public policy advocacy, who urged his listeners to become "active, good citizens," pointing out that John Calvin considered public service "the highest calling of all ... higher than being a pastor." Watkins said the most effective ways of influencing public policy are "those that take the most care and time" -- e.g., a personal phone call is more effective than an email, a handwritten letter carries more weight than a phone call, and a relationship with the addressee is more productive than a letter. "Laughter," Watkins added, "is the grace of God."

* Frederic W. Bush, a senior professor of Ancient New Eastern Studies at Fuller Seminary, who said Zionist Israelis' "invasion" of Palestine and "removal of the residents of Palestine ... mostly by brutal violence" is a violation of the Palestinians' "absolute right" to a homeland. He said the Israelis have created more than 700,000 Palestinian refugees and imposed "de facto apartheid" on parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip by allowing Palestinians to have "local autonomy but no real sovereignty," and have created "a buffer" intended to "prevent the creation of a Palestinian state." Bush also said he was "appalled and sickened" by what the United States has done to Iraq through its continuing economic sanctions. While the policy has not loosened Saddam Hussein's hold on power, he said, it has caused "an average of 5,200 preventable deaths per month from 1991 through 1998." "We are crippling an entire generation of people," Bush said, "and the United States government is almost totally responsible."