Member Church News: Symposium, Manual Scavenging, Awards and many more

On Tuesday, 9 May (Europe Day), the three cathedrals of Utrecht, Netherlands (both Protestant and Catholic), will collaborate on a symposium on the future of Europe. The symposium will make a constructive contribution to the public debate on the future of Europe as a carrier of a community of values.

Remembering Armenia: Australians paused on 25 April to remember the sacrifice of the ANZACs in the First World War. The Uniting Church in Australia formally acknowledged the Armenian Genocide at its 14th Assembly meeting in 2015. One day before ANZAC Day, Armenians remember the martyrs of their nation, victims of a Genocide which took the lives of 1.5 million people in 1915. They also remember the ANZACs who saw the injustice suffered by victims of the Armenian Genocide and stopped to help them.

Magsaysay Award winner Mr. Bezwada Wilson, was inaugurated at the CSI Synod Centre, Chennai on 24th April 2017. Wilson works for the manual scavenging community to which he also belongs to, challenges the Indian Church to wake up to fight against Caste-ism and manual scavenging, which is a by- product of it. During his inaugural speech at the National Consultation on “Ecumenical Accompaniment and Advocacy. Towards Abolition of Manual Scavenging” national seminar. He intensely argued that “Combating Caste-ism is a great challenge for the church”.

Nepal Two years on after the earthquake: As Christians, we are called to follow Jesus’ leading – to bring light into dark places. In the two years since the earthquake World Renew has walked alongside communities in the district of Nuwakot, demonstrating the love of Christ and being a reminder that they have not been forgotten.

Alvin Plantinga, an American scholar whose rigorous writings over a half century have made theism—the belief in a divine reality or god—a serious option within academic philosophy, has become the 2017 Templeton Prize Laureate.

The Cross in Contexts: Suffering and Redemption in Palestine. A book Co-authored by the Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb and the Rev. Dr. Suzanne Watts Henderson

An appraisal of the Council of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe “we reiterate that we can no longer conceive and imagine Protestant Church life in Europe without our community of churches from all over Europe. In the Gospel we are called to be not afraid, and to engage in a peaceful living together (John 14,1; Matthew 5,9). “Unity in reconciled diversity” has become the self-understanding of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe. This is a theological and spiritual insight, but in its praxis it has also socio-political significance. We are firmly convinced regarding the political Europe, that falling back solely upon nations, however they are defined, holds no future for peaceful and beneficial co-existence in Europe and beyond. The challenges we face – climate protection, neighbourly relations with the other continents and their developments, handling globalization, among many others – call for European solutions”.