It is a joyful moment for me to see the first number of our E-Bulletin appear on your screens. In three years the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation will take place in Kingston, Jamaica. So it is high time to offer you relevant materials in order to become engaged in this unique event.
The Last General Assembly of the World Council of Churches (meeting 2006 in Porto Alegre, Brazil) decided to have a Peace Convocation in 2011, both as a "harvest festival" of the Decade to Overcome Violence and as a "planting season" for fresh initiatives. Why did they chose "peace" to be the positive counter-term to violence? This edition of our e-bulletin and those that are scheduled to follow during the next years are meant to provide answers.
Violence is a universal phenomenon, a vicious and disastrous abuse of human power that reaches into every corner of our lives, from the most intimate to the most global. Violence works like a downward spiral that sucks human beings, social institutions, economic and political structures and not least the Earth herself into a murderous embrace. This is such an overwhelming reality that many human women and men take it to be the law by which the world is run.
The motto that we have chosen for the Convocation affirms a counter message: "Glory to God and Peace on Earth" - these words from the well-known Christmas story open up a different horizon. The motto insists that the peace of God is the energy that keeps the world going.
God's Peace has many faces, and comes in bits and pieces. We have singled out eight thematic areas, and you will be reading about them in this journal.
Violence in Theology and Theology Against Violence; Peace at Heart; Peace Begins at Home; Peace in the Virtual World; Peace to the Streets; Peace on Earth is Peace with the Earth; Peace in the Market Places; Make Peace, Not War [read more...]
Our work in these areas needs your support, your comments and proposals. Hence we hope that this can also become something of a forum and a base for networking. We also plan to offer Bible studies, such as the one in this issue by our Reference Group Moderator Fernando Enns, on Luke 2, 1 - 21. You will find short reports about the Living Letters, the ecumenical team visits that take the ecumenical peace agenda to the churches around the globe.
It is my hope that this bulletin will become a useful and inspiring instrument to connect our efforts in the service of the divine "prince of peace".
Dr. Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz
One of the main streams that will feed the process leading to the Convocation in 2011 are expert consultations. Experts from different par of the world, from different background and from different confession gather to reflect on several issues related to the 8 main IEPC themes. So far, the following consultations have taken place:
Glory to God and Peace on Earth! This is the theme of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) that aims at witnessing to the Peace of God as a gift and responsibility of the oikumene. The IEPC seeks to assess and strengthen the church's position on peace, provide opportunities for networking and deepen our common commitment to processes of reconciliation and peace.
[more]The 2nd Consultation on Orthodox Peace Ethics will take plce at the St. Christophoros Patriarchal Monastery at the Antiochian Conventions Center in Saydnaya (near Damascus) Syria, 18-22 October 2010.
[more]The objectives of this consultation are the following: i) To explore the new challenges and questions for a sustained ecumenical response to racism in the world today; ii) To discuss the need and possibility of an ecumenical anti-racism network/collective; and iii) To reflect theologically on the meaning and implications of Just Peace from the point of view of those victimized by two prominent violent cultures, namely racism and casteism.
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This consultation intends to explore how violence is fostered by media and entertainment games with specific reference to the degradation of persons and women in particular, how media and electronic games encourage violence and ways in which violence is celebrated and valued and the question of whether the portrayal of violence in media and entertainment games can be therapeutic or reinforces violence.
[more]The aim of this colloquium is to attempt an objective reading of a set of key-texts, biblical, patristic and liturgical pertaining to the issue of the People of God, trying to discover a way to translate these traditions in adequate terms addressing the believers today. It also aims at finding a way to reduce the confusion resulting from the use of the term "People of God" and parallel terms in different semantic fields. The main question of the colloquium’s problematic is: if a Biblical term used in Liturgy and Theology comes to have a...
[more]Nuclear weapons with their related technologies, production, deployment and use, are incompatible with the life of living beings. Yet they were developed, deployed and used by the United States in1945 to kill the people and destroy the life of living beings in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan. It was truly a fatal moment in the history of the earth.
[more]This is a training workshop that is co-organised by the Global Network of Religions for Children (GNRC) and the World Council of Churches (WCC), in collaboration with the Interreligious Council on Ethics Education for Children.
[more]The consultation is part of a WCC study project on Poverty, wealth and ecological debt. It continues a process which was started at the WCC 8th Assembly in Harare in 1998 and became known as Alternative Globalization Addressing People and Earth (AGAPE) since the 9th Assembly in Porto Alegre. Today, the issue of socio-economic justice is no less pressing.
[more]The Inter-Orthodox consultation on Peace is a meeting of representatives from the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Church.
[more]Tensions within communities, hatred and conflict are often related to the fact, that bad memories are kept in a retributive way. The path of healing memories is only possible by human beings deeply valuing the other and recognising the divinity and sacredness of sisters and brothers even if they are enemies. The path is also paved by narratives of history and societal memories which take into consideration the perspective of the others.
[more]What is the core teaching of the Orthodox Church on peace and peaceful coexistence? Does the Orthodox Church endorse war? Is war holy? Is war a lesser evil or a lesser good? The purpose of this pan-Orthodox consultation is to explore the ethics for peace as they emerged in the history of the Eastern Church.
[more]The Pacific Conference of Churches will convene the Pacific Church Leaders Meeting (PCL 09) from the 20-24 April 2009 in Suva, Fiji.
[more]"You show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." (2 Corinthians 3:3,RSV)
Living Letters are small ecumenical teams, composed of 4 - 6 women and men from around the world and from different confessions, and who have witnessed violence in its various forms and are engaged in working for just peace. The team visits a country to listen, learn, share approaches and challenges in overcoming violence and in peace-making, and to pray together for peace in the community and in the world. [read more...]
So far, a Living Letters delegation has visited the following countries:
Sri Lanka - 4-12 August 2007 [read more...]
USA - 15-23 September 2007 [read more...]
Kenya - 30 January - 3 February 2008 [read more...]
Sudan - 26 March - 2 April 2008 [read more...]
Other visits are also scheduled for the rest of the year.
During its 9th Assembly held in Porto Alegre, members of the ecumenical adopted a statement on "Vulnerable populations at risk. Statement on the responsibility to protect", where they made the following recommendation:
h) Asks the Central Committee to consider a study process engaging all member churches and ecumenical organisations in order to develop an extensive ecumenical declaration on peace, firmly rooted in an articulated theology. This should deal with topics such as just peace, the Responsibility to Protect, the role and the legal status of non-state combatants, the conflict of values (for example: territorial integrity and human life). It should be adopted at the conclusion of the Decade to Overcome Violence in 2010. [read more...] |
Hence, the International Ecumenical Declaration on Just Peace that will be adopted at this Convocation will be one of the culminating points of the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV). With this in mind, a Drafting Group composed of eminent theologians from different confessions has been formed in order to reflect on the Declaration on Peace.
The Drafting Group will meet for the very first time in July 2008, in Nadi (Fidji). The Group is composed of the following nine people:
Dr. Benga Daniel, Rev. Dr. Wanda Deifelt, Prof. Musa Dube, Fr. Kurian Jacob, Dr. Hong-Hsin Lin, Dr. Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz (Coordinator of the Group), Dr. Muriel Orevillo-Montenegro, Prof. Larry Rasmussen and Prof. Robert Schreiter.
Exceprt from bible study on Luke 2, presented by Rev. Prof. Dr. Fernando ENNS during the WCC Central Committee meeting (February 2008)
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Glory to God - and Peace on Earth. This is the motto that has been chosen for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation, to mark the culmination of the Decade to Overcome Violence in the year 2011. In the morning-prayer we have listened to the words from the gospel of Luke: Glory to God and peace on Earth is right at the centre of the Christmas Story. Our reflections this morning should provide some orientation on our common journey towards the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation. Luke 2 contains the story that I personally remember the best from my early childhood. Having grown up in a white middle-class protestant church in Southern Brazil, it was common to organize a Christmas play with the children - every single year. Usually I did not want to be one of the angels, since they were dressed like girls. It was much more exciting to be one of the shepherds, since they looked like real boys and had long sticks in their hands. But the best choice was to be Joseph: dressed like a boy but not having to say a word on stage -no memorizing of difficult and strange words from the Bible. Just sitting there with Mary. - What I understood in those days was very basic: something very special had happened. Joseph and Mary were poor people. The shepherds were afraid of the angels, but later they rejoiced with them. And this new-born child was different from us kids, it had a strange impact on everyone who encountered it. In the end everyone was very happy and we got presents. I remember the wonderful feelings of becoming part this very special story. [read more...] |
