Each year students from all over the world arrive at Bossey near Geneva for a three-month language training course to pave their way for ecumenical studies that follow on straight after. “The title captures the goal of the course,” says Father Lawrence Iwuamadi, the Nigerian priest who studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and is academic dean of the Ecumenical Institute.
It is time to revitalize the Asian ecumenical movement to respond to contemporary realities in Asia, according to Mathews George Chunakara, general secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia, in the article that opens the latest issue of The Ecumenical Review, the quarterly journal of the WCC.
An interreligious consultation on “Voices of Hope for a New Era” has called for enhanced collaboration between Buddhists and Christians in a spirit of humility and honesty and in service of a shared humanity.
From Paris to Pakistan, Orlando to Myanmar, Iraq to Nigeria, each day witnesses conflict and violence perpetrated in the name of religion or committed against persons because of their religious identity.
Violence in the name of religion echoed in the distance, demanding a response, through the November 2015 meeting of the 25-member Executive Committee of the WCC in Bogis-Bossey and nearby Geneva, Switzerland as it planned the work of the Council in the coming years.
Young ecumenical leaders from Asia have met in Siam Reap, Cambodia to examine how religious traditions can offer resources to overcome religious violence in a changing Asian context.
The WCC is inviting young adults from Asian churches to participate in a two-week-long training programme called Youth in Asia Training for Religious Amity. The deadline to submit applications is 31 March.
The serene air of the Metta Karuna Reflection Centre in Siem Reap is being stirred up. It is buzzing with the voices of young Christian leaders from Asia who believe that by engaging in interfaith dialogue, they can help bring justice and peace to Asia, a region where religious plurality can be both a blessing and a challenge.
Exploring realities of multi-religious societies and discovering new ways of working together as faith communities to promote justice and peace, young Christian leaders from Asia have gathered in Cambodia to take part in a two-week training programme called Youth in Asia Training for Religious Amity (YATRA).