BWA APPOINTMENTS

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BWA Reorganizes its

UNITED NATIONS WORK

The Baptist World Aliance has reorganized the way it fulfills its mission through the United Nations (UN). The organization has expanded its partnership with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) to facilitate the coordination of its UN initiatives.

BWA’s and CBF’s main objective is to maximize the potential for advocacy in defense of human rights and justice through the instruments available at the UN. Their partnership has led to the appointment of Earl Marcus Wiggs III as BWA liaison to the UN. Wiggs, an attorney at law from the US state of Mississippi, has served

Earl Wiggs III, new BWA liaison to the UN

as chair of the Baptist Joint Committee, based in Washington, DC, and co- chair of the Religious Liberty Council, which has offices in Florida, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Wiggs will supervise BWA UN work. This includes coordination of

the contribution of the current BWA appointed representatives at the UN: Darrell Armstrong, Joseph Oniyama, Raimundo Barreto and Phyllis Boozer in New York; Ronald Shane McNary and Christer Daelander in Geneva, Switzerland; and Dietrich Fischer-Dörl in Vienna, Austria. These volunteers play a vital role in BWA’s networking and advocacy through the UN. Since 1974, the BWA has had Special Consultative Status at the UN

through the Economic and Social Council. BWA is also a member of the Conference of NGOs, and enjoys consultative relationship with the UN Committee of Nongovernmental Organizations (CoNGO), an international membership association. The global organization has access to 41 influential NGO committees in New York, Geneva and Vienna. The international umbrella organization for Baptists is also accredited as

an NGO through the UN’s Department of Public Information (DPI), which enables it to participate in briefings and receive announcements from DPI; is a member of the Committee of Religious NGOs; and collaborates with the Ecumenical Working Group that provides a forum for common work on issues of concern to UN representatives of Christian World Communions. In recent times, the BWA has increasingly engaged the Universal

Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, presenting alternative human rights reports on particular UN Member States. At Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil in 2012, BWA co-sponsored side events and submitted documents contributing to the focus of the discussions there. Through the BWA Women’s Department, it has actively participated in the annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women.

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BWAAT THE SYNOD by Valerie Duval-Poujol

was invited to represent the Baptist World Alliance as “fraternal delegate” during the extraordinary synod of bishops held by the Catholic Church in the Vatican from October 5-19, 2014. The synod on “The pastoral challenges of

the family in the context of evangelization” has been extraordinary, not only because it was its canonical designation but also because of the liveliness and depth of the debate, the impact in the media and the reactions throughout the world. Also invited alongside 183 synodal fathers (bishops and cardinals) were several experts, including eight fraternal delegates, four Orthodox and one each from the Lutheran, Reformed and Baptist traditions. During Vatican Council II in the 1960s, non-

Catholic Christians who had been invited were only called “observers.” The designation of “fraternal delegates” shows the improvement of the relationships between the Catholic Church and other Christian traditions. It emphasizes the spiritual fellowship that we all try to achieve to echo Jesus’s prayer: “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them” (John 17:23). During these two weeks I truly have shared in

the joy of this spiritual fellowship expressed in the words of the psalmist, “How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity” (Ps 133)! I met Catholic leaders from all over the world who eagerly sought to share the good news of Jesus Christ to this generation. Although some major differences remain between our denominations (for instance, as far as family