Member Church News: Rights, Responsibilities, Reflections

The Christian Reformed Church in North America and Reformed Church in America Disability Concerns have a new offering for churches who want to be more hospitable toward people with disabilities and foster more inclusive ministry. Everybody Belongs, Serving Together is a handbook with insights, tips, and testimonies—stories from people with lived experience of disabilities—designed to help churches embrace people with disabilities as partners in ministry.

Between Saturday, August 7 and Friday, August 13, it will be possible to participate in “Nos Contamos,” an initiative promoted by Fundación Protestante Hora de Obrar and Servicio Evangélico de Diaconía (SEDi), which seeks to create spaces for critical reflection on hegemonic gender roles, inequality and justice in faith communities.

Women’s rights: This weekend, Switzerland celebrates not only its birthday, but also 50 years of women’s suffrage. In her “Pled sin via,” pastor Cornelia Camichel Bromeis shows that already 2000 years ago women fought for their rights.

Cláudio Carvalhaes urges Earth Care audience to “respond to the needs of the land:” Speaking with the urgency of a man whose house is on fire, Carvalhaes issued a wake-up call for everyone to notice the precarious state of the environment and everything living in it, from birds and trees to humankind.

This week marks the 76th anniversary of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On Friday 6 August many across the world will observe Hiroshima Day, which has become both a day of remembrance and of action for nuclear disarmament. The Wellspring Community of the Uniting Church in Australia shared a liturgy for use in worship.

The United Reformed Church (UK) will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2022 in a number of ways.

Prayers lift up peaceful elections in Zambia: During National Ecumenical Prayers for Peaceful Elections in Zambia, held 1 August, religious and civic leaders gathered in-person and online to pray for peaceful elections in the nation, which has been coping with a rise in violence during the lead-up to 12 August voting.

“EMW” now “Evangelical Mission Worldwide”: The umbrella and professional German association of evangelical works, churches, and missionary organizations has become the “Evangelical Mission Worldwide eV” but has retained the acronym “EMW”.

One year after Beirut blast, churches are accompanying survivors seeking justice.

As COP26 approaches, “Climate Sunday” calls on churches to focus on creation: With less than three months until the United Nations climate change conference begins in Glasgow, Eco-Congregation Scotland is renewing calls for churches to commit to action before talks begin.

Video resources from Conference of European Churches’ 8th Summer School on Human Rights are available. The videos feature keynote speeches and panel presentations addressing the theme “Ensuring Security of Worship Places and Religious Communities” in a series of webinars.

Health and wellness offer a clear path towards healthy aging, and physical health is foundational to meeting emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual needs, affirmed experts of modern and traditional medicines at the Christian Conference of Asia’s online Symposium on “Family Life and Family Values: Transition from Tradition to Modernity.”

_{Image: In 2015, a delegation of Eco-Congregation Scotland took a baton to Paris, to express the demands of churches in Scotland that negotiators at COP21 agree to a deal that promotes global climate justice. The baton, which passed around churches in Scotland throughout the summer of 2015, carried the hopes and aspirations of Christians across Scotland for climate justice. Photo by Marcelo Schneider/WCC.}