News
Lent provides an important opportunity to focus on the challenges of working together to overcome the violence in our culture. The US Committee for the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV) invites Christians to enter into the Lenten season with a focus on the growing violence in our world and the need for peace and reconciliation.
Members from the US Committee for the DOV prepared 'Lenten Fast from Violence' resource guides highlighting responses of people of faith to overcoming violence with non-violent means. These guides have been organized into six weeks corresponding with the weeks of Lent starting Sunday, February 13, 2005 through Sunday, March 20, 2005.
The topics for the foci are as follows:
- Week One: Violent Video Games
- Week Two: Violence in Creation
- Week Three: Violence Against Women [includes trafficking]
- Week Four: Militarism
- Week Five: Iraq
- Week Six: Partial Lenten fast focused on local violence caused in individual communities by poverty (or structural violence)
Each weekly resource guide offers biblical reflections, prayer, educational resources, advocacy tools and non-violent responses to the particular theme highlighted for that given week.
The weekly Lenten Fast resource guides are available from the DOV website at:
The Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches seeking Reconciliation and Peace (2001-2010), is an initiative of the World Council of Churches (WCC). It calls churches and ecumenical organizations to work together with communities, secular movements, and people of all faiths for peace, justice and reconciliation. It also highlights efforts to overcome violence in its different forms, and provides a space for networking and sharing.