Search results

A refugee aid cooperation initiative backed by Christians, Jews and Muslims backed by the Federal German Government dubbed “Do you know who I am?” ("Weißt du, wer ich bin?") has launched in Berlin.

A celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, called the “European Reformation Roadmap,” will begin in November 2016 in Geneva, then tour across sites of significance through May 2017.

Sitting in a tent at the Souda camp, on the island of Chios in Greece, a Pakistani family of 12 recalls the lives they had in their home country. They had everything except safety. Muhammed and his wife, Asia, along with their 10 children, fled their home country in search of a place where they weren’t constantly fearing for their lives.

The leadership and representatives of the World Evangelical Alliance and the WCC met in the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, Switzerland to explore and discuss possible areas of future cooperation.

Starting preparations for a Global Ecumenical Theological Institute in the context of the 2018 World Mission Conference in Africa was a tangible result of a meeting of 20 ecumenical educators from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific. They met from 22-24 May in Halle (Germany) at the invitation of the World Council of Churches project on Ecumenical Theological Education.

Women and children figure prominently as refugees in mass movements of people in recent months and their rights will be at the forefront of a summer school organized in Greece by the Conference of European Churches.

Three times a week refugees are invited to Luthergemeinde - or Luther Parish - in central Halle, Germany to visit with parish members. Sometimes they cook and sometimes they just meet to talk and get acquainted. This initiative is a creative effort to integrate some of the 400 refugees that have been placed around the vicinity of the parish.

During the 29 years Virgine Nasrawi has worked in the Talbiah refugee camp, located 40 kilometers south of Amman, the Jordanian capital, she has witnessed many changes. And the sudden influx of refugees from neighbouring Syria, caused by the devastating civil war in that country, is the most dramatic.

On the 28th Quadrennial Assembly of the National Council of Churches in India, held in Jabalpur from 27-30 April, Rev. Dr Sang Chang, WCC president for Asia, urged Indian churches to commit themselves afresh to the task of building just and inclusive communities.

The Evangelical Church of Greece has been helping immigrants for more than 20 years, but has grown its effort to unprecedented levels in the past few years, months and even every day.

Some 3,000 people answered a call by Berlin’s Protestant church to march for “openness and tolerance” as a response to a demonstration in the German capital by extreme rightwing groups.

At the Wider Outlook Works Festival, as people observed the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the WCC general secretary spoke about repentance and a change to a better direction.

In the Czech Republic, “HateFree” zones have been established as places for a fair approach toward every person — and expressions of solidarity poured forth from the world this week to help these zones stand strong in the face of vandalism.

“We had heard that racism continues to be an issue in the United States,” said Dr Agnes Abuom, moderator of the WCC Central Committee. “But we did not expect to find it so deep, so wide and so pervasive.”

What has contributed to the idea of a “European identity?” And, within a broad-minded vision of secularism, how can churches and other religious communities contribute? In this context, what is the role of Switzerland?

Following the EU-Turkey refugee agreement, effective 20 March 2016, the Greek islands are again a changed place. Where refugees have arrived in great numbers in the past years, and where they have engaged a whole community of local, national and international aid workers and volunteers, the situation is now dramatically different.

Pope Francis, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece met on the Greek island of Lesvos on 16 April to demonstrate their concern for the situation of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers who have come to Europe fleeing from situations of conflict and, in many cases, daily threats to their survival.

The World Council of Churches Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network (WCC-EDAN) will flourish and become a source of increasing education and dialogue, said the programme’s leaders at a meeting in Kenya on 10-15 April.

In the Washington DC region on 18 April, Jim Winkler, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, welcomed a contingent from the WCC who, with others, will be spending 18-25 April on a WCC-sponsored racial justice listening and support visit to several US communities which have suffered violent incidents related to race.

Canadian church leaders issued a joint statement endorsing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and promising to implement its principles. Doreen Spence, an aboriginal Canadian who was one of the architects of the declaration, welcomes the move.