wfn.org | WCC NEWS: Churches to pray for peace on 21 September

["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
For immediate release - 08/08/2005

21 SEPTEMBER: CHURCHES TO PRAY FOR PEACE IN ASIA AND THE WORLD

In 2005, for the second year running, churches representing over 560
million Christians world-wide are being invited to mark the UN International Day of Peace, 21 September, as an International Day of Prayer for Peace.

Launched in 2004 by the World Council of Churches in the framework of its
Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches Seeking Reconciliation and Peace
(2001-2010), the initiative calls on Christian churches all over the world
to arrange for services or vigils on 21 September, as well as to include
prayers for peace in their services on the Sunday before or after that
day.

The theme for this year's International Day of Prayer for Peace is
"Building communities of peace for all". Churches from Asia, the region
chosen as the special focus of the Decade to Overcome Violence during
2005, have proposed this theme.

The theme conveys a "spirit of celebrating diversity," says Hope S.
Antone, executive secretary for Faith, Mission and Unity of the Christian
Conference of Asia. In that spirit, she adds, "we Asian Christians would
no longer see the other as the mortal enemy, or as the unsaved doomed for
hell, or as the poor heathen to convert. We would instead look at them as
brothers, sisters, partners, whom God also loves, to whom God has also
revealed truths, from whom we can learn about life, living and relating,
and in whom we can also find the image of God."

Christian churches world-wide are therefore invited to include especially
Christians and faith communities in that vast and diverse continent in
their prayers of intercession on that day.

More information and prayer resources are available at
www.overcomingviolence.org/peace2005

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 347, 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.