wfn.org | World's Conflicts Set to Increase in 21st Century, Says Raiser

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

26-August-1999 
99282 
 
    World's Conflicts Set to Increase in 21st Century, Says Raiser 
 
    by Stephen Brown 
    Ecumenical News Service 
 
GENEVA - Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches 
(WCC), warned today that "confrontations and conflicts" were likely to 
increase as the 21st century begins. And he laid part of the blame for 
widespread violence and conflict on Christian churches. 
 
    "We cannot treat the challenge of violence only as a problem in the 
world around us," Dr. Raiser told the 158 members of the WCC's central 
committee on the first day of their 1999 gathering in Geneva. "We must 
acknowledge that our theological traditions and the structures of power 
within our own communities have helped shape the world's attitudes, and 
therefore they may themselves be part of the problem which we are trying to 
address." 
 
    He called on the world's churches to engage in "prophetic witness" 
against violence, the "most powerful force destroying human community 
life." 
 
    In his report to the central committee, Dr. Raiser singled out the 
Ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence, which will begin in 2001 and end in 
2010. The proposal to hold the  Ecumenical Decade, which will be a major 
project of the organization, was approved last December in Harare, 
Zimbabwe, at a meeting of the WCC's assembly. In a number of ways, the 
decade is a sequel to a previous WCC initiative, the Ecumenical Decade of 
the Churches in Solidarity with Women, which ended last year. 
 
    The proposed Ecumenical Decade to Overcome Violence is, according to 
Dr. Raiser, not merely "one more major social and political program of the 
WCC."  Describing the need to overcome violence as an "essential part of 
what it means to be the church in the 21st century,"  Dr. Raiser said: 
"Violence in the homes and on the streets, between ethnic and religious 
groups, within and between societies, is the most powerful force destroying 
human community life." 
 
    However, the proposed decade, Dr. Raiser said, would also "oblige us to 
enter into a self-critical assessment of those theological, ecclesiological 
or cultural traditions which tend to justify violence in the name of 
defending order and enforcing obedience." 
 
    He stressed that violence against women was a "reality in many of our 
churches which is often justified with theological or cultural arguments." 
 
    The churches had now "arrived at a decisive moment in the long and 
controversial ecumenical debate on violence and non-violence, war and 
peace, justice and reconciliation." 
 
    In recent years, the WCC's commitment to the peaceful resolution of 
conflicts had been severely tested, Dr. Raiser said, referring to the 1994 
genocide in Rwanda, in which more than half-a-million members of the Tutsi 
community and moderate Hutus were killed, the practice of "ethnic 
cleansing" during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, most recently, the 
Kosovo conflict and Nato's military intervention. 
 
    (During the Kosovo conflict, the WCC, and many of its member churches, 
called repeatedly for a halt to Nato's military intervention and on all 
parties to the conflict to end violence.) 
 
    "This intervention [by Nato] clearly violated international law, but 
was officially justified as necessary to defend the human rights of the 
Kosovo Albanian population who had become the target of the policy of 
'ethnic cleansing' by the Serbian authorities," he said. 
 
    But he added: "Violence cannot be overcome by imposing superior power 
and enforcing obedience and submission, since violence is itself an 
expression of the war logic of power." 
 
    "Too often the appeal to justice and law has been used as a political 
instrument to punish those perceived to be enemies instead of promoting 
justice as the cooperative effort to heal the wounds of history." 
 
    At a press conference after his speech, Dr. Raiser said that churches 
needed to find a new way of "looking at our ourselves to learn how our 
churches and Christian traditions may have contributed to establishing a 
culture at least of implicit violence." 
 
    He also suggested that dialogue between Christian churches and other 
faiths might play a role in the movement to overcome violence. 
 
    "Religions need to overcome the stereotypes with which they have 
treated each other historically," he said. "We as Christian people and 
churches have to be very humble and listen to the witness of Eastern 
religions, in particular Buddhism, that have preserved the witness of 
non-violence much more strongly than any Christian tradition, perhaps with 
the exception of the historic peace churches." 

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