Search results

Preceding the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, the World Council of Churches is hosting, on 29 November, a webinar entitled “The New UN Forum on People of African descent: realising the promises of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action?”

When the World Council of Churches (WCC) launched the Programme to Combat Racism after years of in-depth theological reflections and prayer in 1971, South Africa's insidious racist apartheid policies were in full throw. The programme brought the WCC into the world's spotlight. Yet racism did not start 50 years ago. And it did not end with the casting out of apartheid at the end of the 20th century. During that era, figures such as Nobel Peace Prize laureates Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela fought racism in society and the church.

Dr Agnes Abuom, moderator of the World Council of Churches central committee, will address participants at this week’s “Act Now to End Racism” march and rally in Washington, D.C.

As more people face famine today than any time in modern history, the WCC together with the All Africa Conference of Churches and a range of faith-based partners and networks invite a Global Day of Prayer to End Famine on 21 May 2017, in response to the hunger crisis.

With less than a week before hotly contested local elections, church leaders in South Africa have appealed for calm and asked political leaders of all political parties to help contain dissent. The run-up to the elections on 3 August has been marred by recurrent bouts of violence, intimidation and even political assassinations.

The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), at its meeting in Trondheim, Norway, 27 June 2016, has elected a new executive committee with 11 new members.

“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.”

Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance negate the essence of human beings by negating their origins and identities. This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa.

The WCC has condemned the mass killing at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, United States.

At a place called Antietam, 23,000 soldiers died in the bloodiest day of the American Civil War. More than 150 years later, 20 different religious traditions will gather on this battlefield in Maryland, United States as part of the 2012 International Day of Prayer for Peace commemorations to share prayers and songs of peace. Â

By Marcelo Schneider (*)

In Liberia, Sierra Leone and South Africa, churches have played a major role in reconciliation between groups who had been in violent conflict with each other for decades. Two international ecumenical teams sent by the World Council of Churches (WCC) will visit the three countries during the next two weeks.

Amid ongoing fighting and humanitarian crises in several regions of Sudan, and risks of failure in implementing the 2005 peace agreement that ended two decades of civil war between north and south, the Sudanese people and churches face "tremendous tasks and challenges", an international ecumenical team of church representatives was told at the beginning of an eight-day solidarity visit to the country.