Letter requesting input to the Ecumenical Declaration on Just Peace

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:

It is my pleasure to share with you the "Initial Statement Towards an Ecumenical Statement on Just Peace". This is the title that the drafting group has chosen in order to underline three basic points:

1. What you have before you is a conceptual framework meant to facilitate a process of reflection in the WCC’s member churches - and beyond - on the meaning and practice of just peace in today’s violent world. It is hoped that these initial considerations will inspire and provoke you to offer your reactions and suggestions. Therefore, you will find questions at the end of each of the three main chapters.  

2. Your input is central to the second step in developing a genuinely “Ecumenical Declaration on Just Peace”. Please use all of 2009 to elaborate your contributions and share them with the Coordinator of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC), Ms Nan Braunschweiger. Her address is listed at the end of the Statement. On the basis of your comments a second drafting group will elaborate a new version of the Ecumenical Declaration on Just Peace which will then be brought to the Peace Convocation to take place from 17–25 May 2011 in Kingston, Jamaica. 

3. Primarily, our work for an ecumenical declaration on just peace is not about academic concepts and theological theories. It is directed towards practical steps and exemplary practices that are being developed in our churches. There is a lot of meaningful peace work going on of which the wider ecumenical family and the world at large are not aware. Please share with us such stories, give us the names of committed groups and contribute to the creation of peace-building networks for the flourishing of life on earth as widely as possible. 

I call on all our member churches, their ecumenical officers, theological seminaries and faculties, action groups and ecumenical initiatives at all levels of the churches’ life to rally around this project. Let this be an example of our discipleship to God who sent the Son as the Prince of Peace in our midst. 

With my prayerful greetings,

Samuel Kobia

General Secretary
World Council of Churches