Roots of religious violence in the Middle East.
Gill, Theodore A., Jr.
Since the 10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in
the autumn of 2013, many players in the ecumenical movement have been
lending support to "the pilgrimage of justice and peace"--to
which all persons of good will were invited by the Message of that
Assembly. Each year, a general theme is being explored and a
geopolitical region emphasized as foci of the pilgrimage.
In 2016, the general theme for our pilgrimage is "religion and
violence," and the geographical centre stage is being given over to
the Middle East.
At the heart of this quarterly edition of Ecumenical Review is a
series of articles that touch on both key topics of this conversation:
the roots of religious violence in the Middle East.
Religion and violence in the Middle East will be discussed by the
central committee of the WCC during their meeting at Trondheim, Norway
in late June 2016, and in mid-October there will be a youth engagement
in Cairo, Egypt on religion and violence, an interfaith initiative
organized jointly by the World Council of Churches and the Egyptian
Muslim Centre Al Azhar mosque and university.
We are grateful to Michel Nseir of the WCC programme on solidarity
with churches in the Middle East. Michel suggested the papers that make
up the core of this discussion, taken from presentations and responses
stretching back eight years, the product of consultations and symposia
in Europe and the Middle East on contemporary Christian witness in the
lands of the Bible.
The three major conferences in this sequence took place at the
University of Bern, Switzerland; the University Of Balamand, Lebanon;
and Hoffgeismar Evangelical Academy, Germany. The appearance of these
examples serves as a foretaste of a more extensive volume from WCC
Publications scheduled for printing and distribution in 2017.
The present journal includes a three-fold ecumenical overview of
the state of the churches and their wide-ranging partnerships. These
observations come from Reformed theologian Jurgen Moltmann of Germany,
the WCC's general secretary Olav Fykse Tveit, as well as
inter-religious coordinator Clare Amos.
DOI: 10.1111/erev.12215
Editor
Theodore A. GILL, Jr.
