| GENEVA —
Interfaith dialogue will be a top priority for the World Council
of Churches during the tenure of the Rev. Sam Kobia, a Kenyan,
who on Jan. 1 became the first African to head the World Council
of Churches, as general secretary.
“I feel strongly that the world council is the best place
to provide a platform for global dialogue of different faiths,”
Kobia told ENI in his first interview since taking the helm of
the WCC, a grouping of more than 340 Protestant, Anglican and
Orthodox churches from more than 100 countries.
Born in 1947, Kobia is an ordained minister in the Methodist
Church in Kenya and succeeds the Rev. Konrad Raiser, of the Evangelical
Church in Germany, who served as WCC general secretary for 11
years before retiring on Dec. 31.
“I think there is no other organization that has that
mandate, or even capacity to do it [facilitate dialogue]. So I
would like really to work towards a global symposium on religious
dialogue, interreligious dialogue and interreligious cooperation,”
said Kobia. “Religion is now playing a very important role
in the search for identity for many people.”
Kobia referred to the historic visit to the world council on
Dec. 11 by Iranian president Sayyid Mohammad Khatami who appealed
for interreligious dialogue to be seen as an alternative to religious
fundamentalism, and as a source of international peace and stability.
The WCC was founded in 1948 and has 342 member churches from
virtually all Christian traditions. The Roman Catholic Church
is not a member but has representatives on some world council
bodies and it serves with its churches on national church bodies
in many countries.
The new world council leader cited religious fundamentalism
as a peril that could be used as a source of conflict and violence
and said it was not only Islam, as is perceived by some Christians,
where this phenomenon exists.
“Religious fundamentalism, whether it is in Islam or Christianity
or Buddhism or among Hindus, as we have seen in India, can be
very dangerous,” said Kobia. “One of the ways that
we could deal with the issue is by having a dialogue of faiths,
and I am committed to really working on this.”
Kobia noted that shortly after he was elected to his post in
September he was in the presence of Sudanese Vice-President Ali
Osman Mohammed Taha, a Muslim and John Garang, an Anglican and
leader of the southern-based rebel Sudan People’s Liberation
Army.
“When I sat with them they both made a remark that I found
to be very touching because they were deeply involved in peace
negotiations. They said ‘we would want to reach an agreement
by the end of the year [2003], as our contribution to you as first
African WCC general secretary.’”
Sudanese government and rebel officials on Jan. 7 signed an
agreement on sharing the nation’s wealth, including oil,
removing an important obstacle to clinching a comprehensive peace
accord in Africa’s longest-running civil war.
In previous interviews Kobia has said that the Sudan problem
is more of a political than a religious one but, given that the
North is predominately Muslim and the South is mainly made up
of Christians or followers of African traditional religions, it
has a religious dimension as well. |
