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Following a successful pilot project in the spring of 2021, the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey is inviting applications for a renewed version of the 10-week online course entitled “Together Towards Unity. Being Church in a Fragmented World” in 2022.

Conversations at the World Council of Churches (WCC) exhibition booth at the Kirchentag showed there is a growing interest in ecumenical movement among German churches. The topics of a particularly high interest were the Thursdays in Black campaign and studies at the Ecumenical institute in Bossey.

On Monday 3 June the WCC hosts a half-day seminar on the legacy of one of ecumenism’s leading figures, archishop Nathan Söderblom, followed by a discussion on today’s ecumenical challenges.

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.

Rev. Prof. Dr Rudolf von Sinner, professor of Systematic Theology, Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue as well as moderator of World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical Education and Formation Commission, offered a public lecture on 13 April at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva as part of the WCC’s ongoing observance of its 70th anniversary this year.

“We’ve seen in the case of refugees, how the church takes a strong standpoint in welcoming those who have fled. But it isn’t always so easy in the congregations. There are many who feel fear, as we receive not only refugees but sometimes also people of other faiths. In this case, we can see a gap between what the church says, and what is actually lived.”

"Ecumenical work is not nostalgia nor superficial use of metaphors. It is the hard work we do in mutual accountability to one another,” says WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit in his introduction to the WCC Annual Review 2016, which is now available in print and digital form online.

Twenty-seven international students from the Bossey Ecumenical Institute, Switzerland, are embarking on a future of ecumenism, dialogue and unity that began with months of intense study and fellowship.

The Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe and the WCC have published a revised and updated edition of their joint study, Mapping Migration: Mapping Churches’ Responses in Europe. The 2016 text explores challenges and changes in the European church landscape in light of international migration.

“Christianity in China” forms the theme of 14 articles published in the March 2015 issue of The Ecumenical Review, a quarterly journal of the WCC. According to guest editors Xiao Ping Sun and Dietrich Werner, “Although early issues of The Ecumenical Review devoted some attention to the developments in Chinese Christianity and the need for better understanding and dialogue, in recent years the journal has published few articles” describing expressions of faith in China.

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.

On 1 November, in the exhibition hall at the WCC 10th Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea, former general secretary of the WCC Rev. Dr Konrad Raiser discussed his book Religion, Power, Politics. Raiser is a theologian from Germany and author of many works in the area of political ethics and public theology, including For a Culture of Life: Transforming Globalization and Violence.