wfn.org | WCC NEWS: Lenten Fast from Violence: resource guides available

["WCC Media" <Media@wcc-coe.org>]

World Council of Churches - News Release
Contact: +41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org

LENTEN FAST FROM VIOLENCE:
BIBLICAL AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE GUIDES AVAILABLE

Lent provides an important opportunity to focus on the challenges of
working together to overcome the violence in our culture. The US Committee
for the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV) invites Christians to enter into
the Lenten season with a focus on the growing violence in our world and
the need for peace and reconciliation.

Members from the US Committee for the DOV prepared 'Lenten Fast from
Violence' resource guides highlighting responses of people of faith to
overcoming violence with non-violent means. These guides have been
organized into six weeks corresponding with the weeks of Lent starting
Sunday, February 13, 2005 through Sunday, March 20, 2005.

The topics for the foci are as follows:

- Week One: Violent Video Games
- Week Two: Violence in Creation
- Week Three: Violence Against Women [includes trafficking]
- Week Four: Militarism
- Week Five: Iraq
- Week Six: Partial Lenten fast focused on local violence caused in
individual communities by poverty (or structural violence)

Each weekly resource guide offers biblical reflections, prayer, educational resources, advocacy tools and non-violent responses to the particular
theme highlighted for that given week.

The weekly Lenten Fast resource guides are available from the DOV website
at:
http://www.overcomingviolence.org

The Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches seeking Reconciliation and Peace
(2001-2010), is an initiative of the World Council of Churches (WCC). It
calls churches and ecumenical organizations to work together with
communities, secular movements, and people of all faiths for peace,
justice and reconciliation. It also highlights efforts to overcome
violence in its different forms, and provides a space for networking and
sharing.

Additional information: Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363
media@wcc-coe.org

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The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches, now 342, in
more than 120 countries in all continents from virtually all Christian
traditions. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member church but works
cooperatively with the WCC. The highest governing body is the assembly,
which meets approximately every seven years. The WCC was formally
inaugurated in 1948 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Its staff is headed by
general secretary Samuel Kobia from the Methodist church in Kenya.