What else could your family, your parish, your community do to respond to the needs of migrants and refugees arriving in your country? Representatives of many different churches met in Rome in September to discuss that practical question, as well as respond to the broader challenge of how people of faith can combat the rising tide of racism, xenophobia and nationalist policies that increasingly target vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers.
The fifteenth of March 2017, marks the sixth year since the start of the Syrian war.
Lebanon, being a small Middle Eastern country facing constant political and national unity challenges with a population of approximately 450,000 Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, has been the shelter for more than 2 million registered Syrian refugees since 2011.
Expressing concern regarding recently announced US measures related to refugee admissions and entry into the US by seven Muslim-majority countries, the World Council of Churches (WCC), ACT Alliance (ACT), and The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) affirmed that faith calls all Christians to love and welcome the stranger, the refugee, the internally displaced person - “the other.”
Churches in Europe have a crucial role to play in responding to the arrival of refugees in Europe, Germany's interior minister has told a gathering in Geneva of governments, United Nations agencies, church and faith groups and civil society organizations.
In the midst of a mounting climate of fear of refugees and immigrants, the WCC is calling on Christians to be true to the Biblical imperative to “welcome the stranger”.
Reduction in and prevention of statelessness, and the protection of stateless people in the Middle East provided the focus of a workshop organized by the WCC and the Middle East Council of Churches in Beirut, Lebanon.