News and stories

It is with great distress that the World Council of Churches received the news that the Israeli naval forces stormed a Gaza-bound vessel carrying humanitarian aid in international waters before dawn on Monday, killing at least 10 civilians and injuring many more.

Initiators of a World Week for Peace have urged Christians to pray and act for a just peace in Palestine and Israel. The call is "timely", they said, as peace activists have reportedly been killed after Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip this morning.

Although it is often portrayed as a religious conflict, the crisis in Nigeria's Central Plateau State is of social and economic nature, the country's foreign minister told church representatives. The church delegation advocated for government action to develop the area and to bring to trial those responsible for an outburst of communal violence last March.

A World Council of Churches (WCC) Living Letters team has appealed to Nigeria's religious leaders to encourage people belonging to different ethnic and faith groups to take initiatives to promote lasting peace and harmony in violence-affected communities.

In 2010, this year just as at the time of the first Pentecost, Christians throughout the world, in their respective churches, will celebrate Pentecost in hundreds of different languages and will sing hymns in their own languages giving praise to the Lord.

It was a deeply moving experience for the Living Letters team visiting Nigeria on behalf of the World Council of Churches (WCC) when they gathered to pray around a mass grave in Dogonahawa, near Jos, in the Central Plateau State on Tuesday. About 323 locals murdered last March have been buried at the site.

The World Council of Churches has lamented the "intolerable loss of life" in Thailand and asked for all parties to abandon violence and return to negotiations.

During a meeting with a Living Letters team visiting Nigeria on behalf of the World Council of Churches, the governor of the Plateau state, Jonah David Jang said that “religion is used to cover up all conflicts, although other factors also exist”. While explaining certain reasons for the conflicts, the governor admitted that “I am a committed Christian. As governor of this state, I am elected by the people and God gave me the mandate to direct...

"Our commitment to peace as churches and as Christians is something we have inherited at birth, or, indeed, from the birth of the baby of Bethlehem," said Bishop Dr Martin Schindehütte of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) at a day preparing for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation.

A Living Letters team travelling on behalf of the World Council of Churches (WCC)was welcomed to Abuja by Nigerian church and ecumenical leaders during an ecumenical celebration organized by the Christian Council of Nigeria, (CCN) on Sunday 16 May.