The Vision Before Us
The Kyoto Report of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations 2000-2008 Rowland Jones, Sarah, ed., Anglican Communion Office, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-9558-2616-0
Key stakeholders in a new inter-religious centre in Nigeria have met to plan for the centre and its work, set to launch in March 2016.
The meeting was held at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland, 27 to 28 September.
Institutions represented were the Jordanian Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought (RABIIT), the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Christian Council of Nigeria (CCN) and Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI).
The project has developed as a result of a high-level international inter-religious visit to Nigeria by representatives of the WCC and RABIIT in 2012. … Read more »… lire la suite »
What has contributed to the idea of a “European identity?” And, within a broad-minded vision of secularism, how can churches and other religious communities contribute? In this context, what is the role of Switzerland?
A panel of religious leaders, policymakers and journalists met on 20 April at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva to discuss these questions and others. Thoughts were also fielded from the audience. The event was organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Focolare Movement, an international organization that promotes the ideas of unity and universal brotherhood.
Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, WCC general secretary, spoke about how the WCC’s pilgrimage of justice and peace links the work of churches with the roots of their faith. “We see the pilgrimage as an openness, a willingness to move,” he said.
Tveit recently returned from an ecumenical advocacy event in Washington, DC, where he met with Christians from a wide constituency of US churches to define racism in our time.
“Racism is tearing the United States apart,” he said, citing a conversation he had with Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners and author of “America’s Original Sin,” a book about racism. Tveit then raised the question: “If you ask the same question of Europe — what is Europe’s original sin?” … Read more »… lire la suite »
“We had heard that racism continues to be an issue in the United States,” said Dr Agnes Abuom, moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC). “But we did not expect to find it so deep, so wide and so pervasive.”
Abuom spoke at a closing conference of the WCC’s US racial justice accompaniment visit, which she led from 19 through 25 April on an itinerary that included the cities of Charleston, South Carolina; Ferguson, Missouri; and Chicago, Illinois.
The team of WCC visitors who made the journey will now collaborate in preparing a report on their experience and findings, with recommendations for the next steps in a renewed and reinvigorated response to the sin of racial hatred, violence and discrimination in the early 21st century. The report will be submitted in May to the WCC Central Committee for consideration at its June 2016 meeting in Trondheim, Norway.
After due deliberation, the Central Committee will determine appropriate action for the WCC and its partners in the United States and throughout the world. … Read more »… lire la suite »
After travelling to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv in the last week for a climate justice meeting, World Council of Churches (WCC) staff and partners were detained or deported in a manner that WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit terms both unprecedented and intolerable.
“The WCC protests the excessive, unreasonable and wholly unwarranted treatment by the Israeli authorities of these representatives of WCC member churches and staff travelling to engage in discussions on climate change and environmental stewardship, at the invitation of and hosted by WCC’s member churches in the region,” he said.
Members of the WCC’s Working Group on Climate Change from as many as 13 countries reported they were held for hours of interrogation, including tough intimidation and detention in prison-like conditions for up to three days — a very difficult experience, Tveit said. “We react in different ways emotionally to experiences like this. For all of them, I think it was totally unexpected and very disturbing, for most of them shocking, as they have never experienced anything like this before.”
Although there have been small incidents in the past, there has been nothing approaching this level of intimidation, Tveit added. … Read more »… lire la suite »
The 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 should be a profoundly ecumenical, as well as European and international celebration, according to Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD).
“With this clear distinction from all other commemorations of past centuries, we are sending a signal of reconciliation and a new beginning,” Bedford-Strohm said at a 9 May press conference in Berlin announcing events leading up to the anniversary on 31 October 2017.
The commemoration marks the day in 1517 on which Martin Luther is said to have posted his 95 theses denouncing church abuses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.
Luther’s actions set in motion events that led to the Reformation and the division of western Christianity into Roman Catholic and Protestant churches.
In recent years, however, Roman Catholics and Lutherans have reached agreement on the doctrine of justification, a key dividing issue between the papacy and Luther and his followers, and many doctrinal differences should no longer have a church-dividing character, said Bedford-Strohm. … Read more »… lire la suite »
More than 120 people from throughout the world have gathered in the eastern German city of Halle to reflect on how insights from the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago can contribute to transforming the world today.
“We want to initiate and encourage a truly ecumenical and global dialogue on the achievements, current challenges and new learnings about the relevance of Reformation principles,” said the Rev. Cornelia Füllkrug-Weitzel, president of the German Protestant development service Bread for the World, at the opening of the 18-22 May conference.
The Halle gathering is the second stage of a “Twin Consultation” on “Reformation – Education – Transformation” that began with a conference in São Leopoldo in Brazil in November 2015.
In advance of the Reformation Jubilee in 2017, the project aims to examine the contribution of Reformation traditions and theology to strengthening and transforming civil society to promote justice, peace, sustainability and human rights, both locally and globally, with a special emphasis on the role of education.
“2017 will not be an event that looks back historically but an occasion to reflect where reform and reformation is needed today in church and society,” the Rev. Margot Kässmann, ambassador of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) for the Reformation Jubilee, told the Halle meeting.
The idea of holding two consultations in Brazil and in Germany – with some participants attending both meetings – is to reflect on the same thematic areas in two different global contexts as a contribution to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and its impact on society. … Read more »… lire la suite »
A global gathering in the German city of Halle has called on churches to be inspired by the tradition of the Reformation to become agents of transformation.
“We came from different confessional and denominational traditions and together we sought to discover the transformative power of Reformation today, not as a past event but oriented to the future,” participants said in a statement at the end of the 18-22 May consultation.
Halle, in eastern Germany, lies in the heartland of the 16th-century Reformation of Martin Luther and his followers.
The Halle meeting gathered more than 120 people from 40 countries and was the second stage of a “Twin Consultation” on “Reformation – Education – Transformation” that began with a conference in São Leopoldo in Brazil in November 2015. … Read more »… lire la suite »
From 24 May to 21 June, the Christian Council of Norway (CCN) is promoting a pilgrimage from the Norwegian capital Oslo to Trondheim, an important Christian pilgrimage site and the location of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee meeting from 22-28 June.
CCN’s general secretary Rev. Knut Refsdal will walk the entire 29-day, 638.6-kilometer route, and is inviting local church leaders and congregations to join part or all of the pilgrimage. Several meetings and dialogue spaces are being organized at stops along the way.
“The main message we want to share along the way is that religious and philosophical leaders of each community can help promote mutual understanding and respect for shared values and therefore deplore violent extremism and hate speech,” said Refsdal. … Read more »… lire la suite »
Starting preparations for a Global Ecumenical Theological Institute (GETI) in the context of the 2018 World Mission Conference in Africa was a tangible result of a meeting of 20 ecumenical educators from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. They met from 22-24 May in Halle (Germany) at the invitation of the World Council of Churches project on Ecumenical Theological Education (WCC-ETE).
Together they discussed ways of networking to enhance ecumenical theological education, which include curriculum development, sharing of learning models and new forms of partnerships between theological institutions and churches.
The meeting was motivated by the need to strengthen ecumenical education so theological institutions do not become more inward-oriented. To make the cooperation concrete, the group agreed to start the process for the formation of a network of ecumenical educators by contributing to preparations for GETI, planned for March 2018 in close collaboration with the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) and the Mission and Evangelism team of the World Council of Churches (WCC). … Read more »… lire la suite »
The leadership and representatives of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) met in the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, Switzerland to explore and discuss possible areas of future cooperation.
The 20 May meeting featured introductions to the work of the WEA and the WCC, and participants reflected together on current developments in society and churches, and on evangelical and ecumenical movements. The WCC general secretary and WEA secretary general took part.
The two organizations shared current plans and discussed possibilities for closer collaboration on thematic areas such as “public witness and peace-building in inter-religious contexts” and “theological reflection, education and formation.”
This was the second meeting with the leadership and representatives, although it was the first meeting with both heads of the organizations present and where perceptions about both the WEA and WCC were discussed. … Read more »… lire la suite »