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Joseph's Dream in the Stable, by Rembrandt.

Joseph's Dream in the Stable, by Rembrandt.

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The experience of his father’s fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938 and then living alien and stateless in Sweden provides biblical theologian Hans Ucko with the touchstone of his writing about stateless persons.

This week the WCC is offering a second short biblical reflection for individual or congregational use to facilitate Advent reflection through awareness of the vulnerable persons.

Commissioned and edited by WCC programme executive Semegnish Asfaw, Ucko’s is one of a dozen biblical reflections being published next month by WCC Publications in I Belong: Bible Reflections on Statelessness.

Hans Ucko is an ordained minister in the Church of Sweden and was a longtime staff person there before serving as WCC programme executive in the area of interreligious relations and dialogue 1989-2008. He has written extensively on interfaith encounter, especially Jewish-Christian relations.

Roughly ten million persons in the world are stateless, says Asfaw. “Stateless people — that is, sisters and brothers who have been marginalized and rendered vulnerable because they lack any legal link to a state — are among those communities on whose struggles the pilgrimage of justice and peace aims to shed light, bringing them back to the centre.”

Bible study on statelessness by Hans Ucko for download

Prior Bible study by Duleep de Chickera

More information on I Belong: Biblical Reflections on Statelessness is already available at amazon.com and at amazon.co.uk.