Alexander Dietze

Alex Dietze, 39, grew up in a Christian home in Germany where no one mentioned the Second World War, let alone the Holocaust. Alex mainly knew of the war from history classes at school, books and films. But on his 28th birthday something changed.

“My grandfather came to me and wanted to give me as a gift the Nazi war medal he earned for his contribution to the war effort,” Dietze told Ynet. “I was in shock. Previously for me, the Holocaust was a matter of general history and not something personal. I could not believe that my grandfather was among those who took part in the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. My world turned upside down.”
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“I became interested in the Holocaust and subsequently the State of Israel, and to my astonishment I discovered that hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors live there,” he continued. “My wife Cecilia and I became curious to meet these people. As Germans, we understood that we need to make amends and go to Israel. We had our honeymoon there and we fell in love with the country.”
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Sofia, 78, is one of the survivors with whom Alex and Cecilia volunteer. She was born in Ukraine and as a baby and a little girl during the Holocaust, she survived by being smuggled from place to place. She immigrated to Israel from Latvia in 1991, and says the German volunteers make her very happy. "They give me health and beauty, when I'm told they're coming, I feel 25 years younger. It's like it's cold and suddenly it's warm, it's so good. The older the person is, the more vulnerable they are and can use a good word. Their good warms us; they are surely messengers of God. Their children see the good that they do and perhaps they will carry on this good, not towards Holocaust survivors but to other people who will need it."

Source: Ynet News  -  "Nazis' descendants delight in volunteering with Holocaust survivors"
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5453594,00.html

Protestants & Catholics Teaching Each Other

Perhaps, I thought, these good Protestant people could worship like angels, but I could not. Then I realized that they couldn't either. Their ears were using crutches but not their eyes. They used beautiful hymns, for which I would gladly exchange the new, flat, unmusical, wimpy "liturgical responses" no one sings in our masses—their audible imagery is their crutch. I think that in Heaven, Protestants will teach Catholics to sing and Catholics will teach Protestants to dance and sculpt.

Source: Peter Kreeft  -  Hauled aboard the Ark, http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/hauled-aboard.htm

Herrnhut!!

By now everyone was sensing God was doing something new.  Pastor Rothe invited the whole community to the Lord's Table on Wednesday, August 13.  Zinzendorf visited each member of the community to prepare their hearts for the first time of communion since the months of discord.

Even as Pastor Rothe began the service, some started praising and weeping.  God the Holy Spirit was clearly present in a deep and special way.  Confession and forgiveness flowed.  And when the service officially ended, clusters of communicants continued to fellowship together, savoring God's presence.  'From this day on', wrote one historian, 'Herrnhut became a living congregation of Jesus Christ.'

The new unity was expressed in a community lifestyle of worship, servanthood, love feasts, foot-washing ceremonies, and a 24-hour prayer chain began and was unbroken for over one hundred years!  The Herrnhut residents began to receive in prayer a big vision of God's heart for the unreached peoples of the world.

Five years later, this small community of refugees began to send out missionaries to the Caribbean and Surinam, to Lapland and Greenland, to Morocco and South Africa, to Russia and Turkey, to Georgia and Pennsylvania.  By the time [their leader] Zinzendorf died in 1760, it is said that this revived Moravian Church had done more for world missions than all the other protestant churches combined.

Source: Jeff Fountain  -  From "The Little Town That Blessed The World", pp. 39-40

Pray for Other Churches ... by Name

I heard another great prayer idea by Southern Baptist Pastor Dean Anderson from Trenton, KY.  He offers this advice:  "Pray by name for the other churches in town."  Here is an example of how he does this:  "I pray that the Father will bless them, use them and grow them to build His Kingdom."  This can be added to your individual and community prayer intentions.

Source: Dean Anderson  -  Southern Baptist Pastor from Trenton, KY, as quoted by Frank Lesko, "The Traveling Ecumenist", in his blog post "Lenten Practices for Christian Unity", 17 February 2015, http://travelingecumenist.blogspot.com/2015/02/lenten-practices-for-christian-unity.html

An 104-year-old Repents

There was a touching moment with my 104-year-old mother the day before she died, when she asked my forgiveness for something.  We had found it necessary to put her in respite care over the Christmas holidays  For some time she had been having brief spells of dementia, probably linked to an earlier stroke.  Now she imagined me to be the enemy, since I was the one who made the decision.  But the Spirit of the Lord and of the deep places of her life showed her that she was being harsh in her judgment of me.  One of her final acts at the end of a loving life was this:  to reach out and ask forgiveness for judging me harshly.  She simply said, several times over and over, "I've been wrong; I've been wrong."  Would I have had that kind of grace in a moment of such extremity?  Could I turn, and ask forgiveness?  I hope so.  She was still learning to love - right to the end of her remarkable life.

Source: Betty Pulkingham  -  "This Is My Story, This Is My Song", Ch. 14, p. 131

One Vision of The Path to Unity

In the meantime, among the desert hills of Jericho, the Christians were devoting themselves to fasting and prayers. On the evening of the fourth day, Professor Pauli and nine companions, mounted on asses and taking with them a cart, stole into Jerusalem and, passing through side streets by Haram-esh-Sheriff to Haret-en-Nasara, came to the entrance to the Temple of the Resurrection, in front of which, on the pavement, the bodies of Pope Peter and Elder John were lying. The street was deserted at that time of night, as everyone had gone to Hasam-esh- Sheriff. The sentries were fast asleep.

The party that came for the bodies found them quite untouched by decomposition, not even stiff or heavy. They put them on stretchers and covered them with the cloaks they had brought with them. Then by the same circuitous route they returned to their followers. They had hardly lowered the stretcher to the ground when suddenly the spirit of life could be seen reentering the deceased bodies. The bodies moved slightly as if they were trying to throw off the cloaks in which they were wrapped. With shouts of joy, everyone lent them aid and soon both the revived men rose to their feet, safe and sound.

Then said Elder John: "Ah, my little children, we have not parted after all! I will tell you this: it is time that we carry out the last prayer of Christ for his disciples - that they should be all one, even as he himself is one with the Father. For this unity in Christ, let us honor our beloved brother Peter. Let him at last pasture the flocks of Christ. There it is, brother!" And he put his arms round Peter.

Then Professor Pauli came nearer. "Tu est Petrus!" ("You are Peter!") he said to the Pope, "Jetzt ist es ja grundlich erwiesen und ausser jedem Zweifel gesetzt." ("Now it has been thoroughly proven and put beyond any doubt"). And he shook Peter's hand firmly with his own right hand, while he stretched out his left hand to John saying: "So also Vaterchen nun sind wir ja Eins in Christo." ("Now, then, dear father, we are now one in Christ.").

In this manner, the unification of churches took place in the midst of a dark night on a high and deserted spot. But the nocturnal darkness was suddenly illuminated with brilliant light and a great sign appeared in the heavens; it was a woman, clothed in the sun with the moon beneath her feet and a wreath of twelve stars on her head. The apparition remained immovable for some time, and then began slowly to move in a southward direction. Pope Peter raised his staff and exclaimed: "Here is out banner! Let us follow it!" And he walked after that apparition, accompanied by both the old men and the whole crowd of Christians, to God's mountain, to Sinai ...


Source:  Vladimir Soloviev  -  A Short Tale of the Anti-Christ

Salzburg, Austria

In the 17th century Salzburg’s Archbishops drew out every Protestant believer; often they had to leave their children behind, who were brought up by Catholics then - imagine!

in 1956 their successor on the Salzburg seat wrote to the Lutherans to ask their forgiveness and they thanked for his letter;

Now 50 years later, in 2016, the Lutheran bishop of Austria accepted the bid! He took part in the journey by the way, as did high officials of the Catholics.



Source:  Personal (unofficial) report on the Reformation Commemoration Tour of Austria, August 16-26, 2016

From a Church of Christ Scholar

For all the good that the sixteenth-century Protestant movements may have brought to the Western Church in the way of doctrinal reforms, there was at least one outcome that wrought inestimable damage—namely, schism. It is not that there were no schisms before the sixteenth century. Neither is it the case that the early Protestants desired schism; in fact, they made a fairly strong case that it was the Roman Church’s doctrinal innovations and resistance to reform that caused and perpetuated the schism. It is also true, however, that Protestants, almost as soon as there were Protestants, exhibited a persistent inability to get along with one another.

From the 1520s on, Protestant history includes stories of disagreements over baptism, the Lord’s Supper, liturgy, free will and predestination, the relationship of the church with civil government, and biblical interpretation, which in many cases was the source of the disagreements. It did not take long for Protestants, as well as Roman Catholics, to draw up new confessions of faith that distinguished their own particular groups. Despite the occasional lone voices calling for unity, by the end of the sixteenth century, instead of one unified church in the West, there were now Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and a number of Anabaptist and “radical” churches, each with its own confessional standard. Thus began denominations in the West.

These initial breaks were only the beginning, though, as the disputes and divisions continued. Once Pandora’s box was opened, once the precedent was set that any doctrinal disagreement could justify starting a new church, the horrific possibility of schism that was realized in the sixteenth century evolved into the accepted habit of schism in the seventeenth and eighteenth. Debates ensued now over the interpretation of the new confessional standards—including what subscription meant and whether it was even necessary—all of which led to further contentions and divisions.

This habit of schism, transferred from the Old World, became compulsive in the New World. In American soil, nourished by autonomous freedom from old traditions and by optimistic visions of finally making the church what it was supposed to be, the seeds of schism proliferated, grew, and flourished. Implicated in this guilt were, among many others, the Presbyterians, whose Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechism served as confessional standards. Throughout the eighteenth century, a significant number of Presbyterians had various reservations about signing on to these standards, and many simply refused to subscribe at all. Aside from the doctrinal teaching of the Westminster standards, in the wake of the evangelical revivals in England and especially the Second Great Awakening in North America, Presbyterians further divided over their openness to the revivals (so-called “Old Lights” versus “New Lights”).


Source: Keith D. Stanglin  -  "The Restoration Movement, the Habit of Schism, and a Proposal for Unity", by Dr. Keith D. Stanglin, in Christian Studies, Volume 28, August 2016, http://austingrad.edu/Christian%20Studies/CS%2028/Proposal%20for%20Unity.pdf

A Quiet Peacemaker

Bishop Daly had discerned that a qualification in ecumenism was “more relevant to the situation” that Martin would be facing back as a newly-ordained priest in divided Belfast than the two year licence in Biblical theology that he had set his heart on, partly because he had grown to love Rome and the Irish College.

Source: Martin O'Brien  -  "A Quiet Peacemaker", The Irish Catholic, 11 Dec 2014, http://www.irishcatholic.ie/article/quiet-peacemaker

Austin Callaway's Lynching, Part 2

Thursday's event marks the start of the healing process, Hart said. What's next? The need to save troubled African-American men in today's communities, she said.

Topics such as poverty, incarceration and equal access to education bubbled up at various points in the ceremony, with less fanfare. It's easier, perhaps, to build consensus around reconciliation and healing than it is for systemic issues.

"I believe the will is there," she said, "We need to keep working together."


Source: Emanuella Grinberg, CNN  -  "'Justice failed Austin Callaway': Town attempts to atone for 1940 lynching", Emanuella Grinberg, CNN, 28 Jan 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/index.html

Austin Callaway's Lynching, Part 1

"Some would like to see us bury the past and move on," Thornton said. "Until we have a full and complete acknowledgment of the past we can never heal."

As one elected official after another took the pulpit, delivering moving apologies to the African-American community and pledges to do better, the tone evolved from somber to reverent to hopeful.

As Troup County State Court Judge Jeannette Little proclaimed to applause and cheers, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."


Source: Mayor Jim Thornton  -  Jim Thornton, Mayor of LaGrange Georgia, as quoted in "'Justice failed Austin Callaway': Town attempts to atone for 1940 lynching", Emanuella Grinberg, CNN, 28 Jan 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/index.html

Somewhere in the Middle East

… She and I went to the first day of ecumenical prayer week for Christian Unity together. It was my first experience of a Greek Orthodox service. It was such a joy to be invited into another expression of the church. The week continues and I hope to get to one more service. ...

Source: <Name withheld>  -  As quoted in a ministry eNewsletter from the Middle East in 2017 (name withheld due to sensitivity)

9 Dead Children

In spring 1998, Carroll and Doris King - old family friends - traveled to Iraq with a human rights delegation to examine the effects of UN sanctions there.  While in Baghdad they met Ghaidaa, a woman who had suffered more than any mother I had ever heard of, but was still ready to forgive.

Ghaidaa lost nine children in the destruction of Al Amariyah, a massive, reinforced concrete shelter in Baghdad that was penetrated by American "smart bombs" during the Gulf War.  More than one thousand Iraqi civilians were incinerated in the bombing, most of them women and children.

Today, Ghaidaa leads tourists among the shelter ruins, hoping that those who see its horrors - among other things, ghostly silhouettes were left wherever human bodies shielded the walls from the extreme heat - will speak out against future bombings.  After taking one of Ghaidaa's tours, Carroll and Doris, stunned, asked her to forgive them for what America had done to her family and people.  A former Air Force officer who had flown bombing sorties over Europe in World War II, Carroll especially felt he bore a share of the guilt.  Shaking his hand, then hugging Doris and bursting into tears, Ghaidaa cried, "I forgive you."

Ghaidaa will never find "justice" on human terms. How can one ever replace nine dead children?  She will certainly never be able to forget them.  But in finding the hearts of two people who asked her to forgive them, she has found peace - something that no one can put a price on.


Source: Johann Christoph Arnold  -  Why Forgive?, pp.30-31

Abbé Paul Couturier

In 1935, Abbé Paul Couturier, a priest of the Archdiocese of Lyons, sought a solution to the problem of non-Roman Catholics not being able to observe the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity. He found the solution in the Roman Missal as the Association for Promotion of the Unity of Christians had done seventy-eight years earlier in England. Couturier promoted prayer for Christian unity on the inclusive basis that “our Lord would grant to his Church on earth that peace and unity which were in his mind and purpose, when, on the eve of His Passion, He prayed that all might be one.” This prayer would unite Christians in prayer for that perfect unity that God wills and by the means that he wills. Like Fr. Paul Wattson, Abbé Couturier exhibited a powerful passion for unity and had sent out “calls to prayer” annually until his death in 1953.

Source: Rev. Thomas Orians, S.A.  -  "BACKGROUND: Brief History of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2017", by Rev. Thomas Orians, S.A., Associate Director of Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute, http://geii.org/week_of_prayer_for_christian_unity/background/brief_history.html

The Filioque Controversy

A core issue leading to the schism revolved around the Nicene Creed, formulated at the First Ecumenical Council in 325 in Nicaea, not far from today’s Istanbul, still referred to as Constantinople by the Orthodox community. This creed clarified the church’s beliefs concerning the Trinity, and thus definitions of heresy concerning non-Trinitarian teachings such as Arianism.
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This creed is the bedrock of the worldview through which European peoples came to view reality as the story of Jesus spread from the Mediterranean up through the European peninsular to the islands of Britain, Ireland and Iceland. It is the creed that verbalised Europe’s common heritage, a belief in the Triune God, the original and ultimate expression of unity-in-diversity towards which the European project still strives. It is the creed that made such a dream possible. It is the creed that gave Europe a fundamental unity.
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However, the ‘filioque’ controversy catalised the final rupture in 1054. The Western church first added this phrase as early as 589 to the section of the creed concerning the Holy Spirit ‘who proceeds from the Father’. Translated ‘and the Son’, its inclusion was meant to show that both Father and Son were fully God. But the Western church did not consult the Eastern church about this addition.

The resulting 900-year broken relationship, with mistrust, name-calling and even the sacking of Constantinople by Crusaders, profoundly shaped historical developments of the second millennium, including paving the way for the Ottoman conquest.

Source: Jeff Fountain  -  Weekly Word eNewsletter, 8 April 2019, "The Creed That Unites And Divides"
https://us9.campaign-archive.com/?e=0b86898e11&u=65605d9dbab0a19355284d8df&id=0e080f28cf

Austen Ivereigh quotes Peter Hocken

Francis’s outreach to Pentecostals and evangelicals has been marked his insistence that the “current of Grace” represented by the Renewal is fruit of the one Holy Spirit calling the Christian Churches into unity, not through proselytism or purely intellectual dialogue but in revealing their oneness in diversity.
Under Francis, the conciliar and the charismatic renewals are being brought together, Hocken says, in a “Kairos moment of great opportunity.”

Source: Austen Ivereigh  -  "Jubilee in Rome highlights charismatic fruits in Francis’s Pentecost papacy", Crux, 3 June 2017, https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/06/03/jubilee-rome-highlights-charismatic-fruits-franciss-pentecost-papacy/

Abbot Gregory of Conception Abbey

Many remember [Abbot Gregory of Conception Abbey] for his exceptional leadership during the shooting at the abbey in the summer of 2002. A man upset about his divorce went on a rampage at the abbey, killing two monks and seriously wounding two more. Steady during this trauma, the abbot led his community to forgiveness and greater spiritual health.

One incident in particular comes to mind. When it was time to transport the bodies of the monks and the shooter, who had killed himself in the basilica, the trooper asked whether or not the deceased should travel in the same vehicle, the abbot simply responded, “Why not? They are all children of God.” Years spent praying the Psalter had so formed his mind and heart that he could not respond any other way. This is the kind of Christian I aspire to be.


Source: Molly T. Marshall  -  "Can a Baptist be a Catholic?", Baptist News Global, 13 September 2016, https://baptistnews.com/article/can-a-baptist-be-a-catholic/

Unsettled by Disunity - and Grateful

John, your impact on my life has been transformative and challenging. You started me thinking in terms that have moved beyond my sense of denomination to see the terrible fragmentation (disunity) of the whole body of Christ. This has been unsettling and life-giving. I now hope the congregation I serve will partner with a another congregation to do ministry. The other church is in need of a building and we are in need of partners to do the kingdom work God has given to us. We are a very old urban church but we are not too old to still dream. This is a slow process and the road ahead is not one I would have been able to walk 20 years ago. But when your eyes are opened to a bigger vision of the Kingdom, joined with a richer understanding of the church and the centrality of love for our neighbors, then you know you must be on the right track. For me, much of this started in my classes at a little seminary years ago where you taught me. That experience has produced some amazing and unexpected fruit.  I still don't have a real clear sense of where this journey is going even though it will be hard to walk. Thank you brother for speaking into my life when you did. And thank you for your enduring friendship.

Source: Anonymous Pastor  -  Edited version of email sent to John Armstrong, quoted in John's Friends letter, 9 Sept 2020, and used by permission