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The South African Council of Churches is calling on the De Klerk Foundation to retract and apologize in the wake of a 14 February statement issued by the foundation amplifying the position that apartheid was not a crime against humanity, but a Soviet propaganda ploy.

Churches across southern Africa are publicly saying #EnoughIsEnough,” with many denominations and congregations continuing to issue strong statements, arrange special prayer events, and speak out against rising levels of violence.

Both the Dutch Reformed Church and the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa (UPCSA) have been discussing gender justice and how to keep the momentum going on the unprecedented public demand for change.

The World Council of Churches, working with the Jamaica Council of Churches and Caribbean and North America Council for Mission, offered a training in Jamaica to help people cope with violence against children, particularly sexual violence, gang-related violence, and gun violence.

After a visit to Israel and Palestine on 21 February through 1 March, a delegation of South African and African-American church leaders, released a Group Pilgrimage Statement on Israel and Palestine.

World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit will visit Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Antigua from 29 September-9 October. Tveit will be preaching, meeting with religious leaders and visiting communities.

World Council of Churches leaders spoke on the theme “Hospitality: On a Pilgrim’s Way of Justice and Peace" at a symposium on 23 August at the Protestant Theological University Amsterdam.

An international consultation will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women (1988-98), 1-6 October in Kingston, Jamaica.

World Council of Churches (WCC) deputy general secretary Isabel Apawo Phiri offered a keynote speech on ecumenical diakonia during the Africa Diaconia and Development Conference.

Most South Africans know of Brigalia Bam as chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), where she served from 1999 to 2011. Previously secretary general of the South African Council of Churches, and already an IEC commissioner, she was chosen by then-President Nelson Mandela from the list of parliamentary nominees for this critical role. In a country that had recently been on the brink of racial civil war, she guided South Africans with humour, tolerance and impartiality along the path of inclusive democracy.

In 2018 we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches. In order to create a lively firsthand account of the ecumenical fellowship and of our shared journey, member churches have contributed stories of people, events, achievements and even failures, all of which have deepened our collective search for Christian unity. This story was written by Olle Eriksson, a Namibian who worked for 35 years (1968 – 2003) with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia, Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission and Lutheran World Federation.

The huge impacts of businesses on the communities in which they operate often bring benefits, but companies can disregard and even harm people’s rights in pursuit of economic gain. The WCC, ACT Alliance and the Lutheran World Federation hosted a side event at the 6th United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva on 28 November, in this context.

Reconciliation was once primarily seen as a message of the church but is now used by secular leaders trying to establish peace in communities torn by conflict and war, the WCC president for Africa, the Rev. Mary Anne Plaatjies van Huffel, has said at a major Protestant gathering in Germany.

More than five decades after the relationship between the WCC and the South Africa-based Netherdutch Reformed Church of Africa (NHKA) was broken, the first approach towards the church resuming its WCC membership was taken with an informal meeting between the NHKA leadership and the WCC staff member in charge of membership matters.

Students of communication and theology will address questions of media and globalization and then explore how these relate to the theme of religion in mass media, as part of a global summer school held from 23 to 31 July in Jamaica.

Hope in a Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace formed the integral thread for proceedings at the meeting of the Central Committee of the WCC in Trondheim, Norway this week. The 2016 meeting took place 22-28 June, the second gathering since the Central Committee was elected at the WCC 10th Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea in 2013.

Women of African descent have been a force within the global ecumenical movement for decades but are still not well recognized for their contributions. It is time for that to change, say the organizers of a network of pan African theologians, laywomen and clergy within the WCC.

Forty years after the Soweto uprising, leaders of churches in conflict-torn countries gathered in South Africa to study the ways of peace and reconciliation.

Forty years after pupils in South Africa’s largest black township, Soweto, took to the streets to protest an inferior education system and set in motion the demise of apartheid, the release of Nelson Mandela and democracy, disillusion has replaced hope.