Thursday, February 17, 2011

God's Time


KAIROS is a Greek word which refers to a different way of regarding time -- God's time -- rather than by-the-clock CHRONOS. Kairos is also the name of an interchurch organization which has offered effective support to marganlized people around the world for more than thirty years. The United Church is one of the participating denominations. It has been so effective that is received strong funding from the federal government until the $7 million (over four years) recommended by CIDA was mysteriously denied a year and a half ago.

We now know that Bev Oda, Minister of International Cooperation overruled this recommendation without any word as to why, either to CIDA or to Kairos. And we know that Ms. Oda lied to a parliamentary committee and to the house of commons about her role in this. She admits it, yet the government is insisting that her actions were acceptable. The situation makes my blood boil. Granted, we do have a history here. More than seventy members of the St. Paul's congregation signed a letter in 2009 asking that the funding be reinstated. Although she is our MP and her constituency office is minutes away from the church she did not respond for six months and even then it was a blah, blah, blah political letter. Now this.

Our Oshawa presbytery of the United Church has called for an apology from Ms. Oda and asked for her resignation. She has betrayed her responsibility and it looks as though her original decision was not based on any obvious criteria, other than perhaps a perception that Kairos was somehow opposed to policies of our current government.

Have the issues and back story been clear to you? The strange "upside" to all of this is that Kairos is receiving a lot of attention -- so much so that it has crashed their website. Should Minister Oda do the honourable thing and take responsibility for her actions? It seems that the time is right for her to do so.

3 comments:

roger said...

I don't know the details about this, but I do know that her credibility has gone out the window. She has lied before Parliament and others; if I lied to my organization, I would expect some pretty severe consequences.

IanD said...

You really sum the issue up well, David. To withdraw funding on discernible reasons is one thing. This (and the backpeddling) is quite another.

This will be one to follow in the next few weeks.

Deborah Laforet said...

I was shocked when I heard the news, but it is great to hear that KAIROS is getting some free advertising. I sent a letter a couple of days to the office of Bev Oda. I encourage others to do the same. I look forward to hearing whether Oshawa Presbytery's demands will get some response.