“I have cerebral palsy spastic quadriplegia, meaning all of my limbs are severely affected by my cerebral. However, I am not defined by my cerebral palsy. There's much more to me than my cerebral palsy,” Julius Van Der Wat, a member of the Dutch Reformed Church in Pretoria, South Africa, told a recent churches’ disability conference in South Africa.
As the world marks the 16 Days of Activism on Gender Based Violence, religious leaders, human rights activists, and development partners in Tanzania joined on 5 December to discuss the human rights of girls and women, including those with disabilities, in a forum titled “Wealth of Knowledge and a Wealth of Care.”
With a close look at the “skin-whitening pandemic,” a 4 December webinar hosted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) explored the intersections of mission, gender, racism, and health.
Churches should promote disability studies in theological institutions and recruit persons into ordained ministry, youth with disabilities urged after attending the 12th General Assembly of the All Africa Conference of Churches in Abuja, Nigeria.
On 30 June, the World Council of Churches and Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe will host a conversation “remembering all victims of Whiteness, with a particular focus on “The Criminalisation of Blackness and the Toxicity of ‘Greener Pastures".
A webinar on 25 May, “Exploring the nexus between racism, xenophobia and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), and African Union (AU) free movement protocol,” marked Africa Day by focusing on the potential of faith communities, especially Christians, in bridging the gaps that continue to frustrate the free movement of people and goods around the continent.
In a webinar hosted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission on Faith and Order, speakers and participants explored the question: What does it mean to be the church within the contemporary context of world Christianity?
Gertrude Oforiwa Fefoame was elected to chair the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. She is also a commissioner for the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, as well as an active member of the Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network.
During an Africa-Europe Ecumenical Forum on Migration, held 15-19 March In Hamburg, Germany, nearly 60 people gathered to discuss, among many other issues, the negative effects of “irregular” migration, caused in part by the growth of inequality within and between countries.
At the St Andrew’s Presbyterian of Church East Africa in Nairobi, Judy Kihumba is the voice between the hearing and the deaf worlds in one of Kenya’s oldest churches.
As Christians in Africa joined the celebrations to mark the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, a Roman Catholic priest who is involved in ecumenism, stressed the unity of the churches as central to building a concrete response to poor people’s need for justice in the continent.
Bei der nächsten Sitzung des Exekutivausschusses des Ökumenischen Rates der Kirchen (ÖRK) wird ein gehörloser presbyterianischer Geistlicher aus Kenia dabei sein.