Search results

A reflection originally shared at the "Working Together" meeting between the World Council of Churches and specialized ministries, convened 3-4 May in Bossey, Switzerland. 

Our successful visit to Rome with various ecumenical deliberations itself testifies that ecumenical engagements can move forward despite the pandemic. The launch of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity document “Ecumenism in a Time of Pandemic: From Crisis to Opportunity,” followed by an ecumenical panel discussion, helped us to understand how different churches have approached the pandemic. 

With the death and burial of Prince Philipp, Duke of Edinburgh, and husband of Queen Elizabeth II, of the English and the British Commonwealth throne, a kind of Orthodox Christian witness came into the fore, in the form of Christian Brotherhoods, quite unknown to Greece and the entire Orthodox world. Very few till now in Greece had known that there is also another kind of Orthodox Christian witness, that of the socially oriented and pastorally significant Brother- (and Sister-) hoods, especially in periods of crisis.

‘Resist with all your heart and soul any attempt to substitute power for truth’ – so exhorted the late and widely lamented Jonathan Sacks in his most recent book, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times (2020). Lord Sacks, who died on 7 November at the untimely age of 72, served as chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013, and subsequently as chief rabbi emeritus. 

Last September I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the first time as part of my sabbatical year. How does one encounter these two places that are such containers of pain, suffering and for me, as an American, complicity? To be a tourist feels wrong and I ended up contemplating the World Council of Churches (WCC) model of pilgrimages of justice and peace as a way to be in a space of suffering, and as a way to practice accompaniment, commitment and perhaps even hopefulness.

A spacious square in front of the sea: this was the place chosen by the Uruguayan Council of Christian Churches to produce a video message during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Respecting the physical distancing measure, eight religious leaders gathered at Plaza Virgilio.

‘We call upon all the churches we represent to denounce antisemitism, no matter what its origin, as absolutely irreconcilable with the profession and practice of the Christian faith. Antisemitism is sin against God and man.’ This unambiguous WCC declaration in 1948 has been regularly re-stated over the last 70 years. In the same spirit, the annual commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day is an opportunity to be welcomed. It focuses a widespread commitment not to forget the Holocaust of the Jewish people (while not excluding remembrance of other genocides) and to help prevent such atrocities in the future.

When it comes to the stance of churches towards the so-called conflict between Israel and Palestine, it is useful to understand it as a process of grief. The theory of the five stages of grief from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is a creative way to describe the “dying” and “mourning” process of the churches and international community. The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was seen by the Western world as a sign of justice for the suffering Jewish people after the Holocaust and centuries of persecution of Jews in Europe. Two elements played a major role in this initial excitement: the historical guilt of Europeans and the fulfilment of biblical prophecies related with the reestablishment of Israel.

Last year in September 2016 the Grand Imam from Al-Azhar University in Cairo visited the WCC in Geneva and the Bossey Ecumenical Institute. This time it has been the turn of the WCC to visit the Al-Azhar University with the Grand Imam and the Muslim Council of Elders.

As my year as an intern in the Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation team in the WCC draws to a close, it is time to ponder the changing face of the interfaith movement during the turbulent year of 2015. It is clear that in Europe at least the climate concerning different faiths and Islam in particular took a turn for the worse.

Peace will not come by itself. We have to work for it. That is the reason for hundreds of people to join the Walk of Peace on the 20th of September 2015, which will be held in The Hague. The Hague is a symbol of justice and peace because of the Peace Palace, where the international court of justice does its work.

"This is the year to act. We, the people of the world, need you, the world’s religious leaders, to motivate your communities, to advocate and persuade others to take the necessary, if difficult, decisions." This was the message from Ban Ki-moon and many high-level scientists yesterday, as we met in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome to discuss sustainable development and climate change.

Pilgrimages are familiar to many of us from The Canterbury Tales or The Pilgrim’s Progress. In both of these classics of Western literature pilgrimages feature prominently. You might remember that Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories represented as part of story-telling contest between a group of pilgrims journeying to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize being a free meal at the Tabard Inn in Southwark on the return journey. The Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory about the life of a protagonist named “Christian” whose journey through the story represents the pilgrimage or journey that is the life of the Christian.