Churches Pray For Unity To Overcome Challenges

Meeting during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Christian Churches prayed they could overcome mutual challenges including an anti-conversion bill and the ongoing violence in Sri Lanka.

(From left to right ) Anglican Bishop Duleep de Chickera of Colombo, Catholic Bishops Cletus Chandrasiri Perera of Ratnapura and Valence Mendis of Chilaw pray with members of other churches during the ecumenical worship service for christian unity at the Salvation Army church on January 19.

“At this crucial time we need unity,” Catholic Bishop Valence Mendis of Chilaw stated during the Jan. 19 ecumenical service in Colombo. The worship service was held at William Booth Memorial Hall of the Salvation Army, in a commercial area of the capital.

The 200 participants came from the Anglican Church, Baptist, Catholic and Methodist Churches, Church of Ceylon, Church of India, Pentecostal Mission and Salvation Army. They included Anglican Bishop Duleep de Chickera of Colombo and Catholic Bishop Cletus Chandrasiri Perera of Ratnapura.

Participants prayed for the challenges they face because of the 26-year-old ethnic conflict and other violence. “Help us to be instruments of your reconciliation,” they asked.

To symbolize the unity of the Churches, they put together a map of Sri Lanka from separate pieces.

That event launched a weeklong series of worship services across the country to strengthen ecumenical relations, and to prepare for challenges posed by the draft anti-conversion bill and a Buddhist commission´s recent recommendations for strict control over building worship venues and a ban on evangelizing.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, observed Jan. 18-25 in many places around the world, came following the submission in December of a revised Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion bill for parliamentary debate in February.

The bill, originally presented in 2005, says no person shall convert or attempt to convert anyone, directly or otherwise, to another religion. Christian organizations challenged the law´s constitutionality before the Supreme Court, which gave an opinion saying changes would have to be made in order for the bill to pass without amending the constitution.

A political party formed by Buddhist monks, Jathika Hela Urumaya, revised and presented the draft bill to the parliament in December. Some Christians saw it as a part of extensive propaganda by Buddhist monks as they mark 2,550 years of Buddhism this year.

Also recently, the Commission on Unethical Conversion, appointed by the All Ceylon Buddhist congress, released a report complaining about activities of 384 organizations it said were either Church groups or organizations with a religious background.

Christy Nesaratnam, 56, a Methodist school director who is familiar with the report, spoke about it during a prayer service at the end of the unity week. He said the commission demanded that any newly registered religious body give guarantees it would engage in religious work only among already established followers, and not convert people of other religions.

According to Nesaratnam, the commission also demanded that any building project for a place of worship — whether a temple, church or mosque — must have written approval from a local state official.

Bearers of sections of a map of Sri Lanka put the map back together in a gesture of reconciliation and unity during the ecumenical worship service at Salavation Army church hall in Colombo on January 19.

Fear caused by the phenomenon of rapidly multiplying new churches is behind the push for new rules and laws, he said.

“So they justify their bill against forcible conversion and proselytizing,” he added, saying Christians need a united approach and unified protests to meet these challenges. He worried, however, that “differences in sacraments and rites still divide Catholics and Protestants.”

Colombo alone has more than 30 evangelical denominations.

“Creating unity is a challenge,” Anglican Reverend Jayasiri Peiris, general secretary of the National Christian Council, acknowledged at the Jan. 19 ecumenical service in Colombo.

Bishop Mendis, who gave the sermon, maintained that Christian unity “is not an option but an obligation.” The Catholic prelate said human rights violations, deterioration of morality and, in some cases, the arrival of new Christian groups are major challenges to the unity of Christians, in addition to the ethnic war.

Christianity has spread rapidly to the extent that churches are seen in almost every village, he noted.

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