WCC calls for solidarity amid anti-Christian violence
The WCC Central Committee on Wednesday, 2 September adopted a minute on the responsibility of churches for communities enduring anti-Christian violence. Numerous central committee members brought the concern to the body's public issues committee.
"We have noted a decline of religious freedom in many parts of the world and an increase of religious intolerance," the minute says. Many Christians in those areas, it says, "find their governments unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibility to protect".
The minute challenges member churches to hear the cries of all "sisters and brothers in Christ enduring violence, threat and intimidation", to act in "costly solidarity" with them and to "engage in public witness challenging their own and, when appropriate, other governments to protect the lives of citizens". Those efforts, it notes, are "more credible" when they occur regardless of the religious identity of those involved.
WCC leaders are also asked to "stand in the forefront of the witness for religious freedom" and to organize ecumenical visits of solidarity.
