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Serving a Wounded World in Interreligious Solidarity

A Christian Call to Reflection and Action During COVID-19 and Beyond

The World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) released a joint document, “Serving a Wounded World in Interreligious Solidarity: A Christian Call to Reflection and Action During COVID-19.” Its purpose is to encourage churches and Christian organizations to reflect on the importance of interreligious solidarity in a world wounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. The document offers a Christian basis for interreligious solidarity that can inspire and confirm the impulse to serve a world wounded not only by COVID-19 but also by many other wounds.

Healing the World

Eight Bible Studies for the Pandemic Era

The global coronavirus pandemic, which has brought death to hundreds of thousands and serious illness to millions more, also poses profound spiritual questions and real challenges to Christians everywhere.

The pandemic itself has become a fundamental test of our faith in God and God’s providence, and it urges us to earnest re-examination of our relationship to God, each other, and the natural world.

In Healing the World, the World Council of Churches offers these eight Bible studies to facilitate our coming to terms—as individuals, groups, and communities of faith—with the loss, fear, and confusion engendered by the pandemic, and the bracing prospect of building the world anew.

Climate Justice with and for Children and Youth in Churches

Get Informed, Get Inspired, Take Action
Research & Coordination: Frederique Seidel
Research assistant: Virág Kinga Mezei

This toolkit provides resources for churches, church-run schools, and summer camps to support intergenerational climate and environmental justice and promote care for children by stopping further global warming. All churches are encouraged to promote education and action to address climate change, reduce CO2 emissions, and protect the environment in their activities for and with children and youth.

Collaboration with Children and Adolescents in the Implementation of “Churches’ Commitments to Children"

Suggestions, Background Materials, and Templates for Consultations

Within this guide you will find:

  • Information about how to prepare for a consultation;
  • Important details/suggestions for ensuring we accurately document the young people’s recommendations;
  • Various group activities to support discussion, learning, and team building;
  • Ideas relating to next steps and follow-up;
  • A template to share the results from the consultation with children with the WCC and UNICEF

Treatment Adherence and Faith Healing in the Context of HIV and AIDS in Africa

Training Manual for Religious Leaders

This series of manuals emerged out of the realization that exclusive claims of faith healing in the context of HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa are compromising adherence to antiretroviral therapy. It recognizes that religious leaders are strategically placed to promote adherence (following through on the use of medication as suggested by a treating doctor) to antiretroviral therapy and to challenge stigma and discrimination.

The manual consists of practical, user-friendly units designed for use with faith communities, theological institutions, and theological education by extension. It is a living document and is adaptable to different contexts.

Positive Masculinities and Femininities

Handbook for Adolescents and Young People in Faith Communities in Nigeria

Continuing its mission of providing practical pastoral resources to counter HIV and AIDS, WCC’s Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Advocacy and Initiatives (WCC EHAIA) has published a half dozen manuals for addressing key concerns of those most affected by the disease. Context-driven and language-specific, the six pieces yet tackle topics pertinent to the whole of Africa and beyond and can be employed to structure workshops and to inform resource persons themselves. 

Healing Together

A Facilitator’s Resource for Ecumenical Faith and Community-Based Counselling
Fulata Lusungu Moyo

Up to 80 percent of Africans are estimated to be traumatized as a result of violence, poverty, disease, natural disasters, and other causes. As a continent where the majority of the population are young people, Africa’s adolescent population is particularly affected. Along with common causes of trauma, youth also experience many other struggles related to growing up. But this trauma often goes unaddressed, not only because sexual and gender-based violence become normalized, but also because of the lack of specific services and awareness. 

This book addresses this lack. It is an important gift to enhance the role of churches to provide wholeness.

Health-Promoting Churches Vol 1

Reflections on Health and Healing for Churches on Commemorative World Health Days
Mwai Makoka

This booklet includes 15 reflections on international commemorative health days from Dr Mwai Makoka WCC Programme Executive for Health and Healing, who emphasises that he is not a theologian, but “ a lay Christian who is a medical professional and keen to promote health and healing from a Christian perspective.

I Belong: Biblical Reflections on Statelessness

Biblical Reflections on Statelessness

A dozen theologians from across regions and confessions offer Bible studies for individuals, groups, and congregations to understand and address the vital personal, social, and religious concerns raised for and by stateless persons and their plight.

Multilateral Ecumenism. Sixty Years of Experience From the Perspective of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity

In the field of multilateral relations, the major partner of the Catholic Church is the World Council of Churches (WCC). Founded in 1948, it is the broadest and most inclusive ecumenical organization, bringing together 350 Christian denominations including Orthodox, Lutherans, Reformed, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists as well as United and Independent churches. Altogether they represent over 500 million Christians worldwide.

Latest issue of International Review of Mission addresses health as well as wider issues

The new issue of International Review of Mission includes a variety of articles, ranging from post-colonialism to public theology, and from mission models to Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation. Two of the articles are specifically concerned with healing, which is a pertinent theme at this current period of the coronavirus. These two articles clearly indicate that the biblical concept of health consists as it does of the welfare, health, and prosperity of the individual person as well as of communities as a whole. Individuals are always part of the communities they belong to.

Dr Beate Jakob: "We are one body."

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has newly released an online publication, "Health and Hope: The Church in Mission and Unity," a collection of previously published articles that resonate with the worldwide struggle amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In conjunction with this resource, WCC communication is sharing personal perspectives from faith-based health experts across the world. Dr Beate Jakob is a consultant for health and healing with the German Institute for Medical Mission.