Main YWAM Page, or to YWAM Communications, or to Main News Digest PageA quarter of a century after a hit movie popularized the idea that "love means never having to say you're sorry", a grassroots movement arguing the opposite is rapidly gaining momentum.
Politicians, preachers and ordinary people are rejecting the Love Story philosophy in favor of accepting personal responsibility for racial and other social divisions whose roots can be traced back sometimes centuries.
Participants believe that by expressing sorrow for the wrongs of their forefathers, they can begin to see long-standing enmities and prejudices begin to be addressed. Scores of acts of "identificational repentance " - when a group repents on behalf of a larger group - have been performed in private meetings and low-key public ceremonies around the world.
Among the larger-scale initiatives are The Reconciliation Walk, a four-year effort by Christians to retrace the steps of the Medieval Crusades, apologizing to Muslims for the way the fight for the Holy Land misrepresented the gospel, and the West Africa Slave Ports project, taking American and African pastors on prayer journeys to the birthplaces of the slave trade.
Begun in churches, the reconciliation movement is now spilling over into the mainstream political and business worlds, according to the group that has played a quiet but key role in the process over the past few years.
Youth With A Mission leader John Dawson, who founded the International Reconciliation Coalition eight years ago, has addressed Parliamentarians in Canada, New Zealand and South Africa on the issue, as well as businessmen, and pastors in scores of countries.
"People want answers. Despite all our best efforts, at the end of this millennium the ability of man to hate and destroy hasn't lessened - Rwanda, Cambodia. There is a hunger for peacemakers among Christians and non- Christians alike," said IRC operations director Marty Melvin.
"We are in an age when human institutions have failed, and it seems that God is sovereignly moving around the world, challenging people to look at issues that have at their root a need for reconciliation."
In October the California-based network will gather leaders of local initiatives around the world for a global consultation assessing the development and future direction of the movement. Regional consultations are to be held in New Zealand, Israel and Switzerland next year.
The IRC offices tracks reports of dozens of reconciliation efforts - some to do with race, others relating to gender and political issues. As well as repentance, the coalition encourages efforts to put practically right past wrongs, wherever possible. "We have heard of situations where people have bought land and returned it to native peoples," said Melvin.
Once old barriers have been torn down, people can be more open to hearing the gospel, he added. "If an offense is a hindrance to our ability to bring the good news to someone, then perhaps in humility there is something we can do, by recognizing that we participate in the sins of our own generation, and that we would probably have done the same had we lived 200 or 300 years ago.
"The only ministry that the Bible says we have all been given is that of reconciliation - man to one another, and then to God in Jesus Christ."
Return to: August 1998 News Index Page
Main YWAM Page, or to YWAM Communications, or to Main News Digest Page