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Advocacy statement on situation of migrants and refugees in Europe, 22 September 2020.

It is with great pleasure that we have received your invitation to the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) biennial General Assembly scheduled to be held on 28 and 29 August 2020. Today, due to the global lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic which has taught us a new way of being church, a new way of being Christians and a new way of responding to our challenges and our society, the Council is holding this Assembly in a unique way.

In the reign of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, in 597 BCE, Babylonians attacked and carried the king and the elite into exile, alongside the articles or sacred utensils from the temple. An utterly humiliating experience like this could hardly be interpreted as being the will of God.

As a wide coalition of faith-based communities from around the world, we have committed to speaking
with one voice that rejects the existential threat to humanity that nuclear weapons pose. We reaffirm that the presence of even one nuclear weapon violates the core principles of our different faith traditions and threatens the unimaginable destruction of everything we hold dear.

Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, WCC interim general secretary letter to the Presbyterian Church of Colombia on the occasion of the 164th anniversary of the church.

Tribulation” is certainly an appropriate description for the previously unimaginable scale of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has affected almost everyone around the world, whether through the direct impacts on our health or the health of our loved ones, the sudden restrictions on all our movements, or the fear of the virus arriving in our lives.

The Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches, meeting by video conference on 20-24 July 2020, takes special note of a number of situations of concern that have been brought to its attention in Nigeria. Nigeria is one of the WCC’s priority countries in the context of the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace, and Africa’s most populous nation, with many diverse communities of faith, and a vibrant church and ecumenical life.

Dr Agnes Abuom - "Trends and Developments during the past six months of 2020
and their Impact on Church Life and Communities"

Human Rights Council 44th Session (30 June-17 July 2020) - Joint statement submitted by the World Council of Churches on behalf of the
Geneva Interfaith Forum on Climate Change, Environment and Human Rights (GIF). "States must protect human rights in the wake of Covid-19 and the climate crisis"

From the Old Jerusalem to the New: Lamentations to Blessings, Bible study in times of COVID-19 by Annika Mathews

The heart’s conversation with God online - A reflection by Marianne Ejdersten, director of Communications for the World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland. The article published in the Norwegian Magazine for pastors in June, 2020.

Facing the Red Sea: Overcoming Fear by Using Your Gifts, Bible study in times of Covid-19 by Joy Eva Bohol

Statement on the Role of Churches in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Love, Steadfastness, Hope and Courage by the World Council of Churches Executive Committee, Video Conference, 1-3 June 2020

Healing the World: Sorrow without Fear, Bible study in times of Covid-19 on Psalms 42 and 43 by Benjamin Simon

WCC ambassadors of the Thursdays in Black campaign are standing behind a joint statement that urges both awareness and protection from the “dual pandemics” of COVID-19 and gender-based violence.

Sermon of the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches at the Farewell prayer meeting with the WCC staff

This document brings some of the questions the faithful may face and answers from two World Council of Churches (WCC) medical practitioners, Dr Mwai Makoka and Dr Manoj Kurian.

The 6^th reflection of the Seven Weeks for Water 2020 is by Athena Peralta and Dr Manoj Kurian, programme executives of the World Council of Churches Economic and Ecological Justice programme and Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, respectively. In this reflection, they are focusing on the perils of cash crops such as sugarcane, produced primarily for exporting, threatening to impact the freshwater levels of Fiji. Over-dependency on food import for its sustenance is not a sustainable practice.

The fifth reflection of the Seven Weeks for Water 2020 is by Dinesh Suna, coordinator of Ecumenical Water Network, World Council of Churches. He is a Lutheran and comes from India. In the following reflection, he explores the importance of “hand-washing” in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic while this basic facility is not available to millions of people, particularly to children. He dedicates this reflection to World Water Day which is being observed on 22 March with the theme “Water and Climate Change.”

The fourth reflection of the seven weeks for water 2020 of the WCC’s Ecumenical Water Network is by Rev. Dr. Donald Bruce Yeates, a minister of Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church of Suva, Fiji and a consultant chaplain at The University of the South Pacific. Bruce has been active in the Pacific since 1975 as an academic in social work, community development and social policy having served at the University of Papua New Guinea and The University of the South Pacific. In the following  reflection he underlines the importance of human right to water and the onslaught of privatisation in the backdrop of  world’s most famous bottled water which comes from his home country, the “Fiji waters”.