PAN Senator Jorge Ocejo stressed that for Christians political action is a duty, and that a democracy is sustained by religious freedom and pluralism.<\/p>\n
The President of the Christian Democrat Organization of America (ODCA), Senator Jorge Ocejo, when inaugurating the Political Participation by Christian and Reformed Democracy Symposium, stated that \u201cdemocracy is sustained by citizens exercising their freedoms, especially their freedom of expression and religious freedom, and pluralism.\u201d<\/p>\n
The forum, at which evangelical Christians\u2019 position with regards to political participation was formulated, saw participation by the members of more than 200 churches: Presbyterians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Neo-Pentecostals and others. The forum was organized by the ODCA, Family Ministries International, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Mexico\u2019s PAN: Partido de Accio\u0301n Nacional (National Action Party).<\/p>\n
The President of the ODCA noted that \u201cthe participation of Christians in policy is not an option, but rather a duty, due to their twofold status as Christians and citizens.\u201d He stressed the contributions of Christians and humanists to the development of contemporary democracy, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the generation of a political, economic and social culture designed to achieve the comprehensive development of the human being.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carlos Cebreros, president of the Ministries for the Family Network, a world-wide group made up of evangelical Christians, underscored that the forum was meant to raise awareness amongst evangelicals of the fact that they ought to be more politically active.<\/p>\n
Cebreros, who participated on a panel with churches at the start of former President Fox\u2019s six- year term, clarified that nobody was seeking to force evangelicals to vote. \u201cThe aim is for evangelicals to exhibit greater political participation, learn about the different political positions, and identify those that coincide with our values, like the right to life from the moment of conception, religious freedom, and respect for Christians\u2019 model of the family.\u201d<\/p>\n
In reference to the Symposium\u2019s conclusions, Rodrigo Iva\u0301n Corte\u0301s, Secretary of International Relations for the PAN, stated that \u201cin the same way that Germany and Europe were able to reconstruct themselves after World War II, with evangelicals and Catholic Christians working together, in Mexico and America they can join forces for the reconstruction of the social fabric, including the defense and promotion of human dignity, the family, and religious freedom, which form part of Christian democracy\u2019s precious legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The forum, held at the Hotel Sevilla Palace, featured Roy Clouser, a professor at Redeemer College (New Jersey); Jim Skillen, with the Center for Public Justice (Washington); Manuel Go\u0301mez Granados, ex-president of the Mexican Institute of Christian Social Doctrine (IMDOSOC); Eduardo Ferna\u0301ndez, Vice-president of ODCA (Venezuela); and Adolfo Garci\u0301a de la Sienra, Director of Philosophy at Veracruzana University.<\/p>\n
The Symposium, closed by Frank Priess, a representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, addressed the following topics: \u201cFoundations for Christian Politics,\u201d \u201cChristian Social Doctrine and Political Participation,\u201d \u201cPublic Justice,\u201d \u201cChristian Democracy in Latin America\u201d and \u201cReformative Politics for Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PAN Senator Jorge Ocejo stressed that for Christians political action is a duty, and that a democracy is sustained by religious freedom and pluralism. The President of the Christian Democrat Organization of America (ODCA), Senator Jorge Ocejo, when inaugurating the Political Participation by Christian and Reformed Democracy Symposium, stated that \u201cdemocracy is sustained by citizens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-ct"],"acf":{"pdf_url":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idc-cdi.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idc-cdi.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idc-cdi.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idc-cdi.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idc-cdi.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/idc-cdi.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idc-cdi.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idc-cdi.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idc-cdi.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idc-cdi.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}