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Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby addressed the World Council of Churches 11th Assembly on 7 September.

The 5th Ecumenical Pilgrimage for Climate Justice from Poland to Glasgow crossed the English Channel from IJmuiden in the Netherlands to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England on 11 October. They were given a warm welcome on site. 

The Climate Sunday initiative is inviting local churches across Great Britain, Ireland and across the world to hold a climate-focused service on any Sunday before the United Nations climate change conference (COP26) begins in Glasgow on 31 October-12 November.

With less than three months until the United Nations climate change conference begins in Glasgow, Eco-Congregation Scotland is renewing calls for churches to commit to action before talks begin.

As the ecumenical family celebrates Season of Creation, churches across the world are showing their strong passion for climate justice and caring for the Earth. In London, this passion has been in evidence this week as church leaders and lay people joined marches, peacefully advocating for change even despite the threat of being arrested.

In the ten months leading to the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26), faith-based organisations, including Christian Aid, ACT Alliance, and Lutheran World Federation are inviting people to a period of intense prayer for the climate.

A photo series by Sean Hawkey on the recent “Extinction Rebellion” in London is being featured by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in order to lift up Christian participation and example in climate change protests.

Christian leaders visited the House of Lords in the UK on 17 April to challenge government inactivity on tax justice reforms and to demand action. Beginning the initiative “Church Action for Tax Justice” (CAT), president-designate of the UK Methodist Conference, Rev. Michaela Youngson, joined Lords Rowan Williams and Richard Harries, Dame Margaret Hodge and Quaker leader Paul Parker to demand an end to corporate tax evasion, greater transparency and a change to the negative narrative around tax.

Climate justice isn't a policy that can simply be thrown away by any president - it’s a moral decision that affects the well-being of millions of people and future generations across the world. Thousands of people are communicating this message via statements, posts and tweets on social media, and even with earnest conversations with their neighbors. Many are from the WCC fellowship, humanitarian groups, churches and communities, and they are bringing a clear - and unified - voice of justice after US President Donald Trump announced on 2 June that his nation would leave the Paris climate accord.

As Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby condemned antisemitism in an article for the Holocaust Educational Trust, he and other religious leaders underscored the importance of working together to seek the flourishing of all. In an essay entitled “Vigilance and resolution: Living antidotes to an ancient virus,” Welby refers to antisemitism as “an insidious evil.”

Global security has been a key concern of the ecumenical movement for more than a century, and was in many ways integral to the very formation of the WCC in the mid 20th century. On 6 April, WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit addressed this very issue in a contribution to York Minster’s lecture series Global Security and the United Nations: 70 years on.

World leaders will meet at the crucial United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris from 30 November to 11 December. Faith groups around the world are building awareness of the importance of reaching a binding and ambitious agreement at the talks. In October, WCC members have taken part in climate activities in Germany.

Meeting from 17 to 24 June, the newly reconstituted Commission on Faith and Order of the WCC has begun to define its principal trajectories for ecumenical study and common activity from 2015 until the next WCC Assembly in 2020.

Four weeks of negotiations on nuclear weapons came to a close on Friday 22 May, as the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ended without a formal agreement. Despite the outcome, a bright new prospect towards a world without nuclear weapons has emerged in the form of a Humanitarian Pledge, now endorsed by 107 states, which promises “to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”.

Anglican and Reformed member churches of the WCC have taken significant new actions toward climate justice.

In order to build on its work for the protection of climate refugees, the WCC joins an innovative campaign “Postcards from the Frontlines” aiming to achieve urgently needed recognition and protection for climate refugees around the world.

In a call to celebrate Time for Creation, Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, encouraged the churches to pay attention to the “human interventions impacting the ecological balance”.