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The annual interreligious summer course opened in the World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical Institute at Bossey on 25 July, ushering seven students from six different countries into an exploration of the theme “Health and Wholeness of Life in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.”

The deadline to apply for the Bossey Ecumenical Institute’s 2022 Certificate in Advanced Studies – Interreligious Studies is 1 May.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim students who attended the World Council of Churches (WCC) 2018 Interreligious Summer School at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey said that learning to break down prejudices about the other was a lasting impression from the six-week course.

As young people earned an interreligious studies certificate at the World Council of Churches Bossey Institute, they completed their three-week course with unified thoughts on promoting peace. In a communique issued on 13 July, they identified themselves as Jews, Christians and Muslims - children of Abraham - with a unique openness.

Father Mikhail Gundyaev grew up in St Petersburg at a time the city was known as Leningrad and when religion was still frowned upon in the then Soviet Union, so studying at Bossey in 1994 and 1995 opened new horizons for him. “It was a valuable and precious experience to meet people from different churches and from many different cultures,” said Gundyaev. “I saw people from Africa who had never seen someone from the Orthodox Church.”

Seventeen students completed a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Interreligious Studies in August at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey. The six-week course, credited by the University of Geneva, is evenly split between distance learning and a residential experience.

Encouragement, inspiration and storytelling animated the plenary discussion of the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.

Amidst the reality of tensions often fueled by religions, a group of Christian, Muslim and Jewish youth has formed a multi-faith community. As part of an interfaith summer course sponsored by the WCC, this community wants to work for the protection of creation – a concern they say is common to all faith traditions.

“Before God and our communities, we are responsible to Jews for the historical and ongoing realities of anti-Semitism, to Palestinians since the Nakba, to Muslim neighbours in the light of Islamophobia, to persons who are vulnerable, and to victims of colonial conquest, among others," said participants of a World Council of Churches (WCC) sponsored conference.

Religious diversity is an unavoidable reality today – and an opportunity, according to the participants of an interfaith seminar held in July at the World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical Institute at Bossey outside Geneva, Switzerland.

By Annegret Kapp*