Adele Halliday, the Anti-Racism and Equity lead at The United Church of Canada, raised questions that served as touchstones for further conversation during an ongoing international conference “Berlin 1884–1885 and Anti-Black Racism: In Search of a Shared Anti-Racist Ecumenical Vision.”
At the World Council of Churches (WCC) conference in Berlin, where theologians, scholars, and faith leaders gather to reflect on religion’s role in a fragmented world, in May 2025, one of the main keynotes focused on the reframing of the perennial struggles over race, class, and power.
Yvonne Apiyo Brändle-Amolo, in a keynote speech titled “The Global Persistence of Anti-Black Racism and Role of the Church,” on 19 May, analyzed the enduring issue of anti-Black racism rooted in historical legacies of slavery and colonialism.
Prof. Hulisani Ramantswana, a scholar from the University of South Africa, offered a keynote address, “Colonial Dynamics and the Impoverishment of Africa 140 Years after the Berlin Conference,” during an ecumenical gathering, “Berlin 1884–1885 and Anti-Black Racism: In Search of a Shared Anti-Racist Ecumenical Vision.”
An international conference, “Berlin 1884–1885 and Anti-Black Racism: In Search of a Shared Anti-Racist Ecumenical Vision,” acknowledged that the deep wounds of colonialism carved 140 years ago are by no means healed—but that churches can reframe relationships in a radical, de-colonial manner.
On the occasion of the 140th anniversary of the 1884–85 Berlin Conference that institutionalized the colonial partitioning of Africa, former World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Konrad Raiser delivered opening remarks at a landmark ecumenical gathering in Berlin.
As the international conference “Berlin 1884–1885 and Anti-Black Racism: In Search of a Shared Anti-Racist Ecumenical Vision” opened on 18 May, those gathered in-person and online acknowledged that the deep wounds of colonialism carved 140 years ago are by no means healed.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) will provide both onsite and online services to accredited media in connection with two upcoming and simultaneously held ecumenical conferences in Berlin, Germany and Athens, Greece.
Commemorating the 140th anniversary of the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference that legitimized the colonial partitioning of Africa, this global event will confront the ongoing legacies of colonialism and systemic racism. At a time of growing polarization, the conference aims to offer an ecumenical and ethical framework of justice and solidarity.
140 years after the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, one of the most consequential geopolitical gatherings in modern history, the World Council of Churches (WCC) and ecumenical partners
World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay expressed profound sorrow and concern over an aerial attack on the Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) hospital in Old Fangak, South Sudan, on 3 May.
The 2025 edition of "Working Together,” an annual gathering designed to foster deeper collaboration between the World Council of Churches (WCC) and specialized ministries, will convene 28-29 April outside Geneva, Switzerland, to enhance programmatic work, planning, and reporting mechanisms related to the WCC Strategic Plan 2023–2030.
Under the theme, “Mission in the Contexts of Empire,” the World Council of Churches journal International Review of Mission examines issues of Christian mission and empire in the history of key events being marked in 2025 and the mission systems, assumptions, mindsets, and practices they created.
The Second Africa-Europe Ecumenical Forum on Migration was held 17-21 March in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, organized by the All Africa Conference of Churches and the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME).
In its most recent meeting, the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission on World Mission and Evangelism heard updates from its three working groups, and continued to map plans for a world mission conference in 2028.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) has released a seminar report entitled Indigenous Spiritualities, Land Rights, and Climate Justice. Edited by Lori Ransom, WCC indigenous peoples consultant, the report serves as a platform for the clear, urgent, and much-needed voices of Indigenous peoples to expose the climate catastrophe through which we are living.
A conference from 17-21 May in Berlin will invite global ecumenists to intentionally engage the outcomes of the Berlin conference in 1884-85, develop a response to the historic and continuing legacies of colonization, and collectively re-envision a de-colonial Africa in a concrete “Anti-Racist Ecumenical Action Plan for Decolonization and Reparations.”
The World Council of Churches (WCC) welcomed Prof. Dr Karen Nazaryan, executive director of the Armenia Roundtable Foundation, to the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva for a series of strategic meetings aimed at strengthening cooperation in ecumenical diakonia and social development.
In 1975, the WCC 5th Assembly declared “racism is a sin against God and against fellow human beings.” Fifty years later, racism – both interpersonal and systemic—and its related sins of xenophobia, casteism, and the discriminations suffered by Indigenous, Roma, Haratine, Quilombola peoples, and many others are not showing signs of waning.
