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.
Kobia will be installed this week at a worship service in Geneva’s
Ecumenical Center. The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk
of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a member of the WCC search
committee that called Kobia, will preach.
“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 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, 2003.
“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 inter-religious 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 of last year 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 recently 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.
Sudanese peace talks continue in Khartoum. |
