News
"The ecumenical movement is only faithful to the Gospel, if it is a movement of hope confronting itself with the reality of the severe threats to life that people are facing in today's world", said the World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia in Lunteren, the Netherlands, on Friday 11 April. Those threats include "the deadly scandal of poverty, diseases such as HIV and AIDS, the devastating and destructive consequences of climate change, and war - including the re-emerging danger of the use of nuclear weapons".
Addressing the General Synod of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, Kobia spoke of the role of the ecumenical movement and of the WCC in a world "deeply divided" in many respects, in which "religious, cultural, ethnic, economic and political tensions and conflicts bring many people to despair". "It is vital for the WCC that the member churches themselves engage in the search for new methodologies and new patterns of relationship that are required for vital ecumenism in the 21st century", Kobia said.
More information on the Protestant Church in the Netherlands
