A World Council of Churches webinar held on 25 November with the theme “Racism, Xenophobia and discrimination in the Middle-East Context” drew enthusiastic participants from the broader region inhabited by 411 million people.
The 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, the nascent movement for economic justice that Martin Luther King Jr. began just before his death, has been revived and relaunched in the US at a time of heightened racial tensions and political upheaval.
Charlottesville in Virginia hit world headlines in 2017 during clashes between white supremacists and neo-Nazis who attacked protestors, including clergy, calling for the removal of a controversial statue.
The Episcopal Church in North Dakota, in an open letter dated 25 October 2016 and penned by Rev. John Floberg, called on communities of faith to converge at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, USA from 2-4 November to “stand witness to water protectors’ acts of compassion for God's creation, and to the transformative power of God's love to make a way out of no way.”
As peace advocates from around the world relayed heartrending stories of violence and oppression, they also expressed their ongoing hope that a movement of peace will prevail during the proceedings of the second day of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) being held in Kingston, Jamaica.