Registrations are open for a World Council of Churches webinar on 19 January that will launch the first volume of a major new history of ecumenism produced by a team of academics and scholars coordinated by the Italian-based Foundation for Religious Studies(FSCIRE).
The fourth of a series of five webinars promoted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) Pan-African Women’s Ecumenical Empowerment Network (PAWEEN) was held on 18 February, providing reflections on inclusion of both African culture and tradition into theological reflection.
Thirty years ago, on 9 November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, the Nicolaikirche in Leipzig had gained a reputation as a gathering point for events signalling the end of an era of communist rule in what was then East Germany.
The regional presidents of the World Council of Churches sent special greetings to churches around the world celebrating Pentecost. “To prophesy is to tell the truth,” reads the message. "No rank or class, no race or club, no gender, nor even any religion, has a monopoly on the truth.”
The latest issue of The Ecumenical Review, the quarterly journal of the World Council of Churches, opens with an article by WCC general secretary the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, “Freedom, Love and Justice,” reflecting on the theme for the WCC's 11th Assembly in 2021, “Christ's love moves the world to reconciliation and unity.”
A conference in Berlin has recalled how in 1989 an ecumenical assembly mobilised dissent in the former East Germany in the run-up to a peaceful revolution that led to the collapse of communism and the end of the Berlin Wall.
A special locomotive bearing the motto of the 2019 Kirchentag, Germany’s biggest regular Protestant festival, will travel the length and breadth of the country as a “rolling ambassador” for the event that takes place this year in June in the western German city of Dortmund.
The World Council of Churches’ rich history of promoting understanding and cooperation among Christians worldwide is being celebrated this week in Amsterdam, the site of the movement’s founding assembly.
When the World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary, Olav Fykse Tveit, first visited Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in December 2010 he took with him a pair of warm gloves as a gift for the pontiff.
Pope Francis has praised the ecumenical atmosphere of his visit to Geneva to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), and has said work by churches for peace is a mandate from God in a world threatened by crises.
Pope Francis has arrived in Geneva on what he has described as a “voyage towards unity” to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches, which brings together 350 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries.
Advocacy for women’s rights and the fight against gender-based violence is not only a concern for women but crucial for the whole of humanity and more men need to get involved. This was one of the key emphases at the annual advocacy training for faith-based organizations (FBOs) at the Ecumenical Center in Geneva.
With the aim of monitoring how the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace is unfolding and to develop suggestions for its various initiatives and activities, with a special focus on the Africa region in 2017, the World Council of Churches (WCC) convened a meeting of the reference group of the pilgrimage in Nigeria from 20-27 February.
The latest edition of the quarterly WCC journal features a discussion of the roots of religion and violence in the Middle East. Five presentations drawn from three WCC-sponsored conferences of recent years explore aspects of the religious concepts of “promised land,” the “theology of land” and how to go about “reading the Hebrew Bible in solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
“The Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace,” a conceptual framework for the future work of the WCC, receives critical elaboration and reflection in the latest issue of the WCC quarterly journal, The Ecumenical Review.
