WCC NEWS: Racism today: churches reassess their commitment

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World Council of Churches - News

RACISM TODAY: CHURCHES REASSESS THEIR COMMITMENT

For immediate release: 24 August 2010

Churches’ attitudes and responses to racism today will come under
scrutiny at a conference, organized by the World Council of Churches 
(WCC)
in partnership with the United Church of Christ (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=90200d8bdf6de785e249 ) (UCC) 
and Dutch missionary
and diaconal agency Kerk in Actie (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=c56fbd6f342747fadb5a ), in 
Cleveland, Ohio, United States, 26-29
August.

While the struggle against racism has been a formative and highly 
visible
priority for the ecumenical movement, beginning with the US Civil 
Rights
movement and then South African apartheid, there are now diverging 
views
as to the role churches should play in combating racism that operates 
in
many subtle ways.

While some say the work on racism is mostly done, others say it is 
time for
the churches and ecumenical organisations to re-engage with racism and
other forms of discrimination and exclusion.

Increasing tensions and fragmentation caused by large scale migration,
economic disempowerment of many marginalized communities and the 
continued
practice of caste-based discrimination that involves about 250 million
Dalits in South Asia and elsewhere all point to the fact that the
instruments of discrimination are not the same as they were 40 years 
ago.

Today racism is a global phenomenon touching the lives of many 
vulnerable
communities with the combined challenges of poverty, injustice, 
violation
of human rights, violence both direct and structural.

“Exposing and challenging racism is a way of affirming human dignity,
striving for social justice and celebrating diversity,” said the Rev. 
Dr
Deenabandhu Manchala, WCC programme executive for Justice and 
Inclusive
Communities and one of the organizers of the conference.

The Cleveland conference, which is a follow-up to a 2009 conference,
commemorating 40 years of WCC work under the Programme to Combat 
Racism,
has two foci, he said.

First, the theological basis for churches’ continued engagement with
initiatives and struggles that confront racism and related forms of
discrimination will be explored. The conference will ask why the 
churches
should be involved and what they would lose if they gave up on their
involvement.

The second focus is to reflect on the concept of just peace from the
perspective of those struggling against the violent cultures of 
racism and
casteism. This reflection will contribute to the drafting of the
Declaration on Just Peace that the WCC sponsored International 
Ecumenical
Peace Convocation (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=47a33e6990e65a8ce2f4 ) 
(IEPC), in Kingston, Jamaica, in
May 2011, is expected to issue.

“The ultimate objective of this theological reflection is to see how 
best
the churches can be and promote just and inclusive communities in a 
world
that is increasingly disempowering and excluding many,” Manchala said.

Participants in the conference will be coming from most WCC member 
churches
in the United States and Canada, from churches in Brazil, Peru, 
Nicaragua,
Europe, Africa and India.

Media contact at the conference: Rev. J. Bennett Guess, UCC,
+1-216-736-2173, guessb[at]ucc.org (Link: guessb@ucc.org );
Rev. Deenabandhu Manchala, WCC, +41-76-34.48.964, dem[at]wcc-coe.org
(Link: dem@wcc-coe.org )

More information on WCC work for Just and Inclusive Communities
(Link: http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=fbe96840b8986d59d6e3 )


The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, 
witness 
and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship 
of 
churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 349 
Protestant, 
Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 
million 
Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the 
Roman 
Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Olav Fykse 
Tveit, 
from the [Lutheran] Church of Norway. Headquarters: Geneva, 
Switzerland.



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