(Vatican Radio) Can music serve as a common language to promote unity amongst the
divided Christian Churches? One Methodist minister, who firmly believes it can, is
Pastor Roe Nall from Georgia in the United States, who was here in the Vatican last
week meeting with officials at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
Back in 2007, Pastor Nall brought a choir to Rome to mark the 300th
anniversary of the birth of Charles Wesley, one of the founding brothers of the Methodist
movement in England. Following on from the success of that visit, Nall is planning
to bring a group of praise dancers and singers to Rome next spring to share this worship
tradition from his African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. That Church today numbers
close to one and a half million members, mainly in North and South America, Africa
and the Caribbean. Vatican Radio’s Philippa Hitchen sat down with Pastor Nall
to find out more about the origins of this Church and about the ecumenical vision
he was bringing here to the Vatican …..
Listen:
“Our office
today is based in Charlotte, North Carolina…….years ago, blacks and whites worshipped
in segregated conditions in New York where there was discrimination against black
clergy and even at the baptismal font…..
It is my desire to be as ecumenical
as John Wesley was…….Wesley saw the world as his parish and he wanted to make things
better for everyone in the world, to do all the good he could by all the means he
could in all the places he could for as long as he could….
I believe a common
denominator is music and I think it’s one of the great ways to establish unity among
the Churches….and one of the things I hope to do this spring is to bring some praise
dancers to present our dance culture here…..”