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Methodist bishops stand vs political killings

BAGUIO CITY (July 11) — Three bishops of the United Methodist Church (UMC) signed a letter of appeal for the faithful to “journey with the church in the campaign to stop the killings and persecution of people who have chosen to speak for the poor, powerless and oppressed peoples”.

In a letter distributed during a meeting of the multi-sectoral Taripnong para iti Kappia (Taripnong or Gathering for Peace) in Baguio City on July 11, Bishop Benjamin A. Justo of the UMC Baguio Episcopal Area, Bishop Solito R. Toquero of Manila, and Bishop Leo A. Soriano of the Davao Episcopal Area noted that the United Methodist Church has not been exempted from the persecution of churchworkers and political dissenters.

Their episcopal letter entitled Bishop’s Appeal, a product of the Philippine Central Coference of the UMC College of Bishops, said that the number of extra-judicial killings in the Philippines has reached alarming proportions. .

“This brazen disregard for human life is a blatant affront to God’s plan of peace based on justice,” the bishops said.

The letter quoted part of the UMC social principles to wit: We hold governments responsible for protecting the rights of the people to free and fair elections, and to freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, communications, media, and petition for redress of grievances without fear of reprisal; to the right of privacy; and to guarantee the rights to adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care.

The UMC statement came two weeks after the United Church of Christ of the Philippines (UCCP), another member-church of the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), launched a dialogue with the military right in the city church. UMC earlier launched its own church-military dialogue in January, with the victims’ families and government officials in attendance.

Despite the dialogue, however, UMC notes that even innocent honest-to-goodness pastors doing pastoral work in remote villages were persecuted. During the peace meeting, a pastor recalls that a Nueva Ecija pastor clad in Barong Tagalog was mercilessly shot and the military claimed he was killed in a military encounter with rebels.

“The fact that the church is in the list of enemies of the state, is absurd, if not senseless,” a local bishop here told the peace gathering. Imagine equating the word “ideology” with “communism”, he continues saying that many people are missing the message.

The military is on a church-hopping to show a power point “So the church may know”, a derivative of the “Knowing the Enemy”, which listed NCCP and its member-churches as enemies of the state.

The letter of appeal named seveal pastors and layworkers throughout the Philippines who are either killed, abducted, tortured, and implicated as members of a rebel group. The UCCP claims that of the 18 church workers killed, 15 are UCCP members. # Lyn V. Ramo for Nordis

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