BWA General Council Resolution 1992.2

The General Council of the Baptist World Alliance, meeting in Montego Bay, Jamaica, July 4-12, 1992:

THANKS the Union Bautista Latino Americana (UBLA) for the guidance they have provided the Council on what a Christian response should be to the Fifth Centennial of the coming of Columbus and the Europeans to the Americas, and the beginning of a different way of live and thought for the people of the hemisphere;

REGRETS that the poly-cultural environment created, though rich in diversity, has sadly contributed to a history of continual confrontation and conflict within the region;

ACKNOWLEDGES that our family includes those who share the legacy of both conquerors and conquered;

as conquerors, we often perpetuate the violence of the situation, seen in the abuse, the genocide, the cultural aggression, the rape, the plunder and the corruption of aboriginal peoples;

as conquered, we have shed our blood at the hands of foreign conquerors; we have suffered the dispossession of what was authentically ours, and still suffer economic exploitation which continues to put our lives at risk in the world today;

REPENTS of our failure to uphold the Biblical imperatives of justice and reconciliation in our lives in our relationships, on which basis, we both as those who have been sinned against, FORGIVE those who have hurt us and impeded our proper development, and as those who are sinners, SEEK AND RECEIVE the forgiveness that the gospel offers;

COMMIT ourselves to a new obedience to scripture in respecting one another as those made in the image of God, so that his reign may become a reality among us; and,

RESOLVES to commemorate the Quincentennial with prayerful reflection and study, with actions of healing and in its programs of education and mission to cast aside every trace of ethnocentrism, declaring that only in Jesus Christ is to be found genuine liberation, true peace and authentic justice.

Citations

Original Source Bibliography: Lotz, Denton, editor. Baptist World Alliance 1992-1993 Yearbook: Minutes of the General Council Meeting and Directory. McLean, VA: Baptist World Alliance, 1992.

Original Source Footnote/Endnote: Denton Lotz, ed., Baptist World Alliance 1992-1993 Yearbook: Minutes of the General Council Meeting and Directory (McLean, VA: Baptist World Alliance, 1992), pp. 171-172.

Online Document Full Citation: BWA General Council Resolution 1992.2 Fifth Centennial of the Coming of Columbus and the Europeans to the Americas; https://baptistworld.org/resolutions.

In-text Online Document Citation: (BWA General Council Resolution 1992.2).