Sea Sunday is celebrated by churches all over the world. Many churches will celebrate it on the 9th of July but many more will celebrate it at different times during the year. Sea Sunday is the one day of the year when churches honour and pray for seafarers. It is a day of celebration and praise but also a day to reflect and be grateful for the work seafarers do.
The Global Ecumenical Theological Institute (GETI) coming to Africa in 2018 is timely and a blessing to the continent. Christian religion is booming like never before in Africa and it is a time for different denominations to see themselves as one.
What are the prospects for theology in peacebuilding? A couple of years ago this question became the springboard for my research on a textual process that was carried out by the World Council of Churches. The process towards an international ecumenical declaration on just peace resulted in An Ecumenical Call to Just Peace and the study document Just Peace Companion being published in 2011. Eventually, it formed part of the groundwork of the current Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace. My research on this process drew my attention to a couple of themes that inspire theological conversation around the very idea of a pilgrimage: the way, the movement, the process, and the fellow traveller.
Summertime in the glorious outdoors… Are we ready to rest, confident we have been caring for the garden? A summer reading recommendation of faith-based analyses and hopeful witness.
Now, perhaps more than at any time in the history of the AIDS epidemic, the world needs strong prophetic voices from Christians as well as from people of other faiths. HIV and AIDS have faded from public consciousness. For a variety of reasons, most people don’t think about AIDS much anymore. Perhaps they think the war is already over, that the scientific and medical advances of the last few decades have solved the problem. Perhaps they think that the epidemic only affects other people, people we don’t need to care about. Perhaps it’s just fatigue, with other issues pushing AIDS aside. Whatever the cause, the lack of attention and awareness may lead us to make some serious mistakes with some even more serious consequences.
The days after the Ascension are a time of waiting and expectation, a time like the earliest disciples in Jerusalem in which to reflect on the meaning both of Jesus’ life and its significance for ourselves: indeed a season of both pain and glory. That is certainly the experience these days of our brothers and sisters in those lands where Christianity first began.
I was sitting in the space reserved for media, in the back of the plenary hall, when Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, of the Roman Catholic Church, brought greetings from Pope Francis to the 12th Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in Windhoek, Namibia.
Time for reflection after my visit to Egypt. The story has etched itself into my memory. I can’t leave it behind. It comes to me every day like a constant reminder of the fragility of life, of our mortality, of the courage and faith of our fellow humans that carries us in our darkest and most despondent hours.
Last year in September 2016 the Grand Imam from Al-Azhar University in Cairo visited the WCC in Geneva and the Bossey Ecumenical Institute. This time it has been the turn of the WCC to visit the Al-Azhar University with the Grand Imam and the Muslim Council of Elders.
In face of unprecedented awareness of religious diversity, as well as the dangers of conflict, interreligious dialogue has become vital. Yet, these authors maintain, it is the commitment to think together about religious faith and our inherited traditions that genuinely moves mutual understanding to new levels.
It has often been questioned whether it is possible for Christians of different traditions to jointly commemorate historical events that have marked and traumatized the collective memory of Christianity over the centuries. The Reformation is certainly one of those events that not only changed the course of world Christianity in a dramatic way but that also ceaselessly redefines the basic concepts of Christian theology and life in ways that affect even those who do not embrace its positions.
During the night of 3-4 October 2016, Hurricane Matthew tore through the southwest region of Haiti. Powerful winds and torrential rains washed away fields, livestock, and houses. The only bridge linking the region to the rest of the country was destroyed. Suddenly farmers who had been exporting agricultural produce could no longer feed their families.
More than thirty local women as well as women from other Muslim-majority countries, including some from other faith communities, gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in early February. The interfaith seminar offered two public sessions, discussing the “Plight of Domestic Helpers: Interfaith Perspectives” and “Conflict and War: Direct Accounts.”
Never has humanity lived in a more connected, yet disconnected time! Connected by the endless notifications on our smartphones – alerting us to all the latest news and tidings in our social media, yet not connected deeply enough to respond substantially to people's suffering. Among the many tragedies are the human-made famines in South Sudan, Somalia, North-Eastern Nigeria and in Yemen.
Learning from a master: The work of Orthodox theologian and ecumenical pioneer Elisabeth Behr-Sigel still has radical implications for how we understand being church.
This afternoon is a down time. I'm sitting in the Nigerian sunshine at EYN Guest House in Abuja. It is nice to feel the warmth of the sun. But moments ago, the tranquility was interrupted by a youth group singing below my balcony.
“See I set before you today two ways in which you can walk, the way of life or the way of death, the way of blessing or the way of curse.” During the last few weeks I have listened to, and then re-read several times, the inaugural address given by one of the greatest world leaders in human history. I am referring of course to the Sermon on the Mount.
We live next door to each other. Have the same landlord. Shop in the same stores. Greet one another when we meet. We read the same Bible and pray to the same God, but have never shared divine service together. Not until now, that is.
World Interfaith Harmony Week 2017 is coming to an end and I wonder how many people are even aware that it exists, especially in my country, Indonesia. Indonesia presents a unique situation when it comes to interfaith relations. On the one hand, it’s been deemed an example of religious tolerance. On the other hand, it has seen many cases of extreme religious violence. Not to mention the fact that the government only recognizes six “official” religions, and every citizen is required to choose one of them – as it is noted down in our identity cards.
International Dialogue Texts and Agreed Statements, 2004–2014, Volumes 1 and 2
A gift to the ongoing work of reconciliation among Christians, the textual fruits of ecumenical dialogue over the last decade are presented here in complete documents. The vast yield is here collected in two volumes, incorporating bilateral and multilateral dialogues of the churches across the Christian confessions—Orthodox, Catholic, and Reformation traditions—and evinces not only agreements and disagreements but also the new insights that dialogue itself reveals.
