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Amid rapidly rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula over the past few weeks, the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK) released a statement entitled “Hope for the Korean Peninsula from the heat of war to coexistence with the warm breeze of peace.”

In a “Global health and wellbeing” statement, the World Council of Churches (WCC) executive committee noted that the terrible experience of COVID-19 awakened us all to the real and continuing threat of pandemics in our hyper-connected and over-exploited world.

Declaring that “there is no justification in either faith or science for the racism, xenophobia and discrimination that we are witnessing in the world,” the leadership of the World Council of Churches (WCC) central committee adopted a public statement that condemns these social forces.

The statement was prepared by the Public Issues Committee at the WCC 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany.

From 31 August to 8 September, thousands of Christians converged on the German city of Karlsruhe for the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, the first in Europe since Uppsala in 1968.

In a letter to H.E. Zbigniew Rau, OSCE chairman-in-office, and minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, World Council of Churches acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca and Dr Jørgen Skov Sørensen, general secretary of the Conference of European Churches, jointly appeal for urgent action by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to promote a just and sustainable peace in the Caucasus, following renewed violence in the region in which more than 100 lives have already been lost.

A statement from the World Council of Churches (WCC) 11th Assembly, “War in Ukraine, Peace and Justice in the European Region,” denounces “the illegal and unjustifiable” Russian invasion of Ukraine and renews the call for a ceasefire.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) 11th Assembly elected eight new presidents, six regional and two from Orthodox churches, in a vote on 5 September with 574 delegates present.

As Bishop Heike Springhart, bishop of the Landeskirche in Baden, looked out over the streets of Karlsruhe just before the World Council of Churches (WCC) 11th Assembly began, she shared a sense of excitement. “The world is coming to Karlsruhe!” she said.

As the World Council of Churches (WCC) focuses on final preparations for the upcoming WCC 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe, WCC moderator Dr Agnes Abuom offered some personal reflections on her leadership role within the WCC, the importance of ecumenical work, the loss of ecumenical luminary Metropolitan Gennadios of Sasima, and the most vital part of her own Christian faith.

During the recent solidarity visit in Ukraine, a World Council of Churches (WCC) delegation has met with various state institutions working with religious issues, listening and learning from the victims of the ongoing war and asking for support in giving permission to the members of the delegation of Ukrainian Churches to leave the country and attend the WCC 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe. 

Special thematic issues of the three World Council of Churches journals – The Ecumenical Review, International Review of Mission, and Current Dialogue – with a focus on the WCC’s 11th Assembly are available free to read online until the end of September.

The latest issue of The Ecumenical Review, the quarterly journal of the World Council of Churches (WCC), looks toward the WCC’s 11th Assembly, opening in Karlsruhe, Germany, at the end of August, with a set of articles produced in collaboration with the German journal Ökumenische Rundschau.

Rev. Dr Hanns Lessing, from the Evangelical Church of Westphalia, is acting general secretary of the World Communion of Reformed Churches. He moderated a confessional meeting of reformed and united churches at the meeting of the  World Council of Churches (WCC) central committee. Below, he shares highlights from the meeting.