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A seminar in Chiang Mai, Thailand, “Ecumenical Diakonia, Churches’ Response to Sustainable Development Goals in Asia,” is taking place 24-26 October. Jointly organised by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Christian Conference of Asia, the seminar is the third in a series of eight taking place across Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.

The first face-to-face GEM School held since 2019 has opened in Berlin, Germany, with a focus on ecological and feminist economics.

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.

The Inaugural Symposium on Faith and Flourishing: Strategies for Preventing and Healing Child Sexual Abuse is taking place from 8-10 April, and features  73 speakers from 23 countries around the world.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is commemorating the life of Constance (Connie) Elizabeth Gates, who passed away on 19 October in North Carolina (USA).

The year 2020 is one etched forever in our memories. The unimaginable happened when a virus seized the world. Vulnerability became the norm, and fiction became a reality. Overnight life became more precious for all of us, the world’s billions. Normality took a break; frustration set in. Everything we took for granted went on hold.

The new issue of International Review of Mission includes a variety of articles, ranging from post-colonialism to public theology, and from mission models to Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation. Two of the articles are specifically concerned with healing, which is a pertinent theme at this current period of the coronavirus. These two articles clearly indicate that the biblical concept of health consists as it does of the welfare, health, and prosperity of the individual person as well as of communities as a whole. Individuals are always part of the communities they belong to.

The World Health Organization has published “Practical considerations and recommendations for religious leaders and faith-based communities in the context of COVID-19,” a document and risk assessment tool for religious leaders, faith-based organizations, and faith communities in COVID-19 education, preparedness, and response.

Have you ever thought of composing an oratorio about the ecumenical movement and dedicating it to the World Council of Churches?

Rt Rev. Dr Samuel Amirtham, an internationally renowned theologian, bishop and ecumenical leader, passed away on 26 September at the age of 85. Amirtham was a multifaceted and charismatic teacher, pastor, leader, and revolutionary, inspiring and accompanying many lives, from remote villages to universities, to the corridors of power.

Climate justice isn't a policy that can simply be thrown away by any president - it’s a moral decision that affects the well-being of millions of people and future generations across the world. Thousands of people are communicating this message via statements, posts and tweets on social media, and even with earnest conversations with their neighbors. Many are from the WCC fellowship, humanitarian groups, churches and communities, and they are bringing a clear - and unified - voice of justice after US President Donald Trump announced on 2 June that his nation would leave the Paris climate accord.

Recent developments in the global finance sector are imperilling food production and the vision for life-enhancing agriculture, say economists in a two-year study.

The globalization of the world economy has not been an even process, and in many ways governance for the protection of capital has overtaken governance for the protection of human well-being. A recent Ecumenical School on Governance, Economics and Management for an Economy of Life addressed this very asymmetry.

Getting more people tested and treated for HIV, caring for the sick, helping people understand how to care for themselves —these are the tasks of faith-based organizations (FBOs) helping people with HIV in local communities.

Migrants are reduced to mere commodities, traded and exchanged in the global market, according to a declaration issued by churches calling for an end to this gross violation of human dignity. The declaration was issued on the occasion of the Second United Nations High Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development in New York City, USA.

WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit met in Egypt on Sunday, 21 April, with Pope Tawadros II, patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, discussing post-revolution developments in Egypt, the situation of Christians in the Arab world and ways to strengthen Christian-Muslim relations.

"Water should be for everybody, because it is the blood of Mother Earth." These were the words of Peruvian Congresswoman María Sumire during her speech at the conference on "Water for Life and Creation", held in Lima, Peru, 23-25 November.

By Dr Manoj Kurian (*)

West Papuans have yet to recover from the trauma of human rights violations. At the same time continuing in-migration is threatening to marginalize them in their resource-rich province, an ecumenical team from the World Council of Churches (WCC) told top-level Indonesian government officials.

Churches working for peace in Indonesia - a country which over the last decades had to cope with repeated outbreaks of ethnic and religious conflicts, the integration of internally displaced people as well as refugees from outside its borders - will receive a solidarity visit of an international ecumenical delegation sent by the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 17 to 24 July. The delegation members (see list below) will learn about peace-building projects by Indonesian Christians and share experiences made in their own churches in Australia, USA, Germany, Korea and Sudan. After a general introduction in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, the delegation will split into two groups in order to visit different regions. While Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population, has a tradition of tolerance, the regions of Central Sulawesi and the Moluccas have been the scene of Muslim-Christian fighting after 1998. Meetings on 18-20 July in Poso (Central Sulawesi) and Ambon (Moluccas) , including an encounter with Muslim leaders, will be an opportunity to learn about initiatives to tackle radicalism. From Sulawesi, the first group will travel on to Kupang in the western part of the Timor island, capital of the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. The province has seen a considerable influx of refugees and deportees following the independence referendum in East Timor in 1999. Meanwhile, the second group will pay a visit to West Papua , where tensions between the traditional Christian majority and Muslim migrants arriving from other Indonesian islands have led to "the emergence of new, exclusivist groups in both religious communities", according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group. Over the past years the WCC has also repeatedly expressed its concern over human rights violations against the indigenous people of Papua . On 24 July, both groups will be back in Jakarta for an evaluation session with the executive board of the Communion of Churches in Indonesia (PGI), who hosts the visit. The ecumenical delegation is sent to Indonesia as "living letters" to express the solidarity of the WCC fellowship, which comprises 349 churches worldwide. Until 2010, several Living Letters visits take place each year throughout the world in the context of the WCC's Decade to Overcome Violence in order to prepare for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in 2011. Indonesia, the world's 4th most populous nation, is also the country with the biggest number of WCC member churches, 27 in total. Group visiting Poso and Kupang: