News
Organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in partnership with the Church of Christ in Thailand, the interreligious training programme is named “YATRA”—a common term for pilgrimage in many contexts and languages.
This intensive training programme seeks to equip young Christians between the ages of 20 and 35 to be actively engaged in interfaith ministries of justice and peace in their own contexts. This week, they are engaging in Bible studies, academic lectures, exposure visits, and the cross-cultural experience of living together and learning from each other.
Dr Abraham Silo Wilar, WCC programme executive for Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation, reflected on the excitement and active interaction he witnessed as YATRA began.
“This is a demonstrative call for churches to be faithful in equipping their young ones with knowledge and skills related to advocacy and religious literacy, not only of the Christian faith but other religious traditions,” he said. “Because, working together, they can help reduce conflicts and injustices caused by religious illiteracy, corrupt governance, abuse of religions, greed, and ecocide.”
Wilar added: “YATRA is enabling young people in the churches to battle problems together with their peers from other faiths, and to be fruitful and present as light and salt amid the world’s acute problems.”
The YATRA programme helps young people analyse the complex intersections between religion and politics in contemporary contexts, and also helps them build a peer network of young enablers who can sustain and strengthen each other in interfaith engagement for justice and peace.
Joy Eva Bohol, WCC programme executive for Youth Engagement in the Ecumenical Movement, expressed joy that an in-person YATRA is possible. “A key objective of the programme is to encounter people of other faiths in their sacred spaces,” she said. “In doing so, we break prejudice and fear of the other.”
The programme invites the participants to be in seemingly uncomfortable places—with very positive results, observed Bohol.
“Our hope is that at the end of YATRA 2022, young people will continue to see themselves as strong advocates of human dignity with an interreligious perspective, ask more critical questions, seek more dialogue and cooperation, and fight for justice and peace.”
Participants are discovering new possibilities for living and witnessing in a multi-religious world by learning from the rich theological and spiritual resources offered by different religious traditions.
The course has two components, an online learning session that was held 1-7 October, and a residential learning session in Thailand from 23-31 October.