wfn.org | WCC focuses decade of attention on violence

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

July 25, 2000 News media contact: Linda Bloom*(212) 870-3803*New York 10-71B
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By Adeyemi Oshodi*

NEW YORK (UMNS) -- A new World Council of Churches (WCC) program is
encouraging churches to work together to rise against the world's violence. 

The Decade to Overcome Violence will be officially launched Feb. 4, 2001,
during the WCC Central Committee meeting in Berlin.  It will run until 2010
and coincides with the United Nations' "Decade for a Culture of Peace and
Nonviolence for the Children of the World."

Jan Love, a United Methodist who is coordinating the Decade to Overcome
Violence, said the program will highlight effective anti-violence programs,
encouraging churches to join in existing efforts. Other church groups will
become models for working programs in their areas.

"We are convinced that Christians are engaged in dynamic, interesting and
creative work to overcome violence where they are. Our hope is to pick that
information up and share it with the world," said Love.  "We want to be a
place where churches can find other like-minded folks and stimulate their
work."

According to a framework document created during the 1998 WCC Assembly in
Zimbabwe, the decade makes anti-violence projects a priority for churches.
The initiative, it says, will  "...move peace-building from the periphery to
the center of the life and witness of the church and build stronger
alliances and understanding among churches, networks, and movements which
are working toward a culture of peace...."  

Though the Decade to Overcome Violence is new, anti-violence work has long
been a WCC priority.  Previous efforts, such as the Program to Overcome
Violence and Peace to the City Campaign, showed that peace is realistic and
grows at the grassroots level.  The decade initiative combines those
programs with other ideas and WCC work in areas such as small arms trade and
the banning of child soldiers to create a global network of information and
action.

"We're building on initiatives launched by the WCC," Love explained. "We
really want this to be a decade for the churches, and we see our role as
both continuing our ongoing efforts, and, more importantly, communicating
and helping churches to communicate with each other."

Engaging churches, seminaries, and other theological institutions in
theological reflection is intended to help them acknowledge their roles in
the perpetuation of violence.

"We want to push the churches really hard to examine their theologies, their
biblical understandings or curriculum to say, 'How are we complicit in
violence by what we teach, and who we are'," she said. "Religion can
sometimes promote violence as well as peace.  Part of our priority is not
just to look at the positives but to see what can we together as churches
say about overcoming the spread of violence."

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*Oshodi, a journalism student at Miami University of Ohio, is a short-term
intern for United Methodist News Service in New York. 

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United Methodist News Service
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