wfn.org | [ENS] Lenten 'Fast from Violence' resources offered through World

["Matthew Davies" <mdavies@mail.epicom.org>]

Daybook, from Episcopal News Service

February 11, 2005 - Friday Forum: Voices on Current Issues

Lenten 'Fast from Violence' resources offered through World Council of
Churches

[ENS, Source: World Council of Churches] Lent provides an important
opportunity to focus on the challenges of working together to overcome
the
violence in our culture. The U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

Martha Gardner, consultant for Environmental Ministries at the Episcopal
Church Center, has served on the DOV U.S. committee for several years.

"I think there is a lot the church can do in raising the issues of
violence
in all its forms," she said. "We are surrounded by violence, and don't
always recognize it, and it is the church's responsibility to point out
the
many ways we are violent and the alternatives."

Further information: Juan Michel, +41 22.791.6153. media@wcc-coe.org.

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