NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES CALLS ON SPEAKER PELOSI TO ACT FOR ADOPTION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION
/PanARMENIAN.Net/
22.05.2009 19:41 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The National Council of the Churches of Christ,
a broad-based coalition representing over 100,000 congregations,
has called on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to work for passage
of the Armenian Genocide Resolution, H.Res.252, the Armenian National
Committee of America (ANCA) told PanARMENIAN.Net.
In a letter, dated May 20, 2009, the Council’s General Secretary,
Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, restated the organization’s 2007 resolution
that found it "unacceptable" that the U.S. government continues to
refuse to use the term genocide to describe the events of 1915. The
highly regarded church leader then urged, as a step toward true
Armenia-Turkey healing, that all parties, the White House and Congress
included, use "the proper term under international law to classify
the event for what it was: a genocide."
The Council’s President, Archbishop Vicken Aykazian, has publicly
noted his own deep disappointment with President Obama’s avoidance
of the word genocide in his April 24th statement. "I speak on this
issue as a person who lost 50 percent of my family to the Armenian
genocide in Turkey," Aykazian said in a letter to Kinnamon and the
NCC Governing Board.
Since its founding in 1950, the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the USA has been the leading force for ecumenical cooperation
among Christians in the United States. The NCC’s member faith groups
from a wide spectrum of Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical,
historic African American and Living Peace churches include 45 million
persons in more than 100,000 local congregations in communities across
the nation.