The Central Committee meeting
of the World Council of Churches got underway on Wednesday with
statements of concern regarding the Middle East and a renewed pledge
from the leadership to continue dialogue with the wider church.
In his address to the Central Committee, WCC Moderator the
Rev Dr Walter Altmann said the WCC had been “surprised” by the wave of
civil protests in Arab countries, saying that they had highlighted the
“risk of policies that affront human dignity and oppress whole
populations”.
He said recent developments revealed once again the “pressing need”
to achieve peace and protect the rights of people in the Middle East.
“The inability of the nations involved to achieve this essential aim
is not only due to the complexity of the situation and the large numbers
of actors involved, but also to a persistent lack of political will to
make the concessions that are essential in order to attain it”, he said.
“It is therefore right for the WCC to place even more intensively on
its agenda our concern for the Middle East, especially for the Holy
Land, by seeking out opportunities for dialogue and occasions for
encounter between Jews, Christians and Muslims.”
In his report presented to the Central Committee, WCC General
Secretary the Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit said that the call of churches “to
be peacemakers” and the call to be one could be brought into a “new
agenda”.
He said the challenges in the Middle East were “particularly
pressing” but added that the mass demonstrations in Egypt “were a
miracle and an encouraging sign for all of us that justice and freedom
can be established through peaceful and non-violent actions”.
He also paid tribute to the church in Egypt for its message of love
and peace in the days
following a deadly bomb attack on a church in
Alexandria.
“The churches should be part of discussions on how to protect
everyone from violence and how to overcome injustice, how to build a
just peace for the future,” he said.
The pursuit of a just peace will form part of the discussions at the
WCC’s International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Kingston, Jamaica,
in May.
Dr Tveit continued: “There is an important role for us [as] a
fellowship of churches to continue the reflections on and give our
contributions to democratic processes and to building sustainable
justice and peace.”
He noted that churches also had a role to play in developments in
Sudan, where he congratulated the people of Southern Sudan on the
“dignified process” by which they had recently voted to secede from the
North.
The General Secretary went on to address the ongoing conflicts in the
Holy Land, where talks between Israelis and Palestinians have stalled.
He strongly denied the suggestion that the WCC was an “anti-Jewish
organisation”, saying that there was much more the WCC could do with its
Jewish partners to promote peace for all in the region.
He maintained, however, that there was a need for a “sustainable peace
without occupation” in the Palestinian territories and that Jerusalem
should be shared by the three faiths.
“Jerusalem is a holy city for Jews, Christians and Muslims,” he said.
“The three religions should share this city and have equal free access to the holy sites within it.
“The faithful in all three religions need to find ways of living
together in justice and peace so that the cradles of our religions can
be a sign of hope for the whole of humanity.”
Turning his attention to the question of church unity, the General
Secretary spoke of an improvement in relations between ecumenicals and
evangelicals, noting his recent address to the Third Lausanne Congress
on World Evangelisation in Cape Town last October - Dr Tveit was the
first WCC leader to address a Lausanne Congress.
He said: “I see a convergence that is definitely different from 35
years ago. The distance between Lausanne and Geneva is not felt to be
that far anymore.
“We have convergence in agendas. Most of what has been on our agenda
for decades is also being actively addressed by evangelical
institutions (e.g. advocacy work, human rights, peace building,
environmental issues and relations to people of other faiths).”
He also acknowledged his invitation to the address the Pentecostal
World Conference and joint efforts between the WCC and the World
Evangelical Alliance on the issue of conversion.
The Central Committee of the WCC is meeting in Geneva until next
Tuesday.
Also on the agenda is the theme of the next General Assembly
in Busan, South Korea, in 2013, the ongoing governance review of the
WCC, and relations between women and men in church and society.