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Thanks to a new digital tool, you can experience the World Council of Churches’ (WCC) 11^th Assembly online - whether you were present in Karlsruhe or not.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) executive committee closed its meeting after convening from 12-17 November, leaving with a sense of hope, even while publicly expressing grave concern over many global injustices facing the world today.

Journalist and theologian Michel Kocher is a director at Médias-pro, a Swiss company that produces audio-visual materials with a spiritual flair. Below, Kocher reflects on how his team produced a new 360° tour of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Chapel.

As a symposium on digital justice drew to a close on 15 September, participants  were weighing their vision for the future in a landscape fraught with injustice. Those taking part in the symposium—be they theologians, church leaders, politicians, students, journalists or professional communicators—are all in fact, “digital communicators,” and this broad array of people who care worked to hone their collective thoughts into recommendations they believe can help the world.

Participants at a symposium exploring challenges and opportunities for a more just digital future held a lively discussion on and offline on how the digital era has changed the notion of public space.

If digital social justice begins with connectivity, perhaps it ends when that connectivity is usurped by oppressive regimes, extremists, fake news and hate speech. A “press club”-style conversation on 13 September found theologians, politicians, church communicators, activists and journalists from around the world weighing in on the short but exceedingly complex question, “Digital instruments – Blessing or Curse?”

Besides the dangerous monopoly structures in the digital economy, there is a danger for liberty and justice as they are crucial for pluralistic democracies in the digital world, says Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. Bedford-Strohm is also chairperson of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany and was a keynote speaker at the opening of the symposium exploring challenges and opportunities for a more just digital future, in Berlin on 13-15 September, and co-organized by the EKD.

As a teenager growing up in East Germany in the 1980s, Dr Ellen Ueberschär learned of freedom of speech in her church parish and believes that fundamental digital rights will not prevail on their own or through voluntary commitments by corporations.

Media and communicators are invited to an online “press club” event during which they can speak candidly on the theme “Digital instruments – Blessing or Curse?”

A one-of-a-kind international symposium—“Communication for Social Justice in the Digital Age”—will offer a chance to explore new visions for digital justice, public space, and actions that will make a difference. 

In a world crying out for justice and peace, the theme of the 2022 assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC), “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity,” speaks of hope for a future in which resources are shared, inequalities are addressed and all can enjoy dignity, according to a new publication reflecting on the assembly theme.

As the global ambassadors for Thursdays in Black gathered online, they looked ahead at what they can accomplish together, as well as ways to deepen their commitment even more to ending gender-based violence.

Auf seinem ökumenischen Weg hat Georges ,Yorgo‘ Lemopoulos unter fünf Generalsekretären für den ÖRK gearbeitet; für drei von ihnen als stellvertretender Generalsekretär. Er war außerdem Co-Koordinator für die Feierlichkeiten zum 70-jährigen Bestehen des ÖRK. Lemopoulos macht sich Gedanken dazu, wie wichtig es ist, die Dokumente der ÖRK-Leitungsgremien zu digitalisieren und wie die Digitalisierung dazu beitragen kann, uns alle besser über die reichhaltige Geschichte eines globalen ökumenischen Pilgerwegs aufzuklären.