PRAYERS FOR PEACE IN KOREA

As tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated again towards the end of 2017, the World Council of Churches (WCC) launched a campaign for a north Asian region and a world free of nuclear weapons.

The WCC’s social media campaign invited people all over the world to extend ‘a light of peace’ for the Korean peninsula and the world.

“The situation on the Korean peninsula continues to be tense”, said WCC general secretary, the Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, as peace-lovers scrambled to find diplomacy as a means of de-escalating tensions in the region.

“As a Christian fellowship we must raise our voices against nuclear proliferation and express our solidarity with peoples living under the threat of armed conflict”, he said.

The campaign was accompanied by common prayers for justice and peace for the peoples of Korea.

It coincided with the Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony in Oslo on December 10, when the WCC’s longtime partner, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) received the award.

From December 3-9, the National Council of Churches Korea held a candlelight prayer gathering at Seoul’s Gwanghwamun square early each evening. Churches in South Korea also held prayer gatherings from December 3 -7 and on December 9 at the YMCA in Seoul. (WCC)

PC(USA) CONDEMNS TRUMP JERUSALEM RECOGNITION

The Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Rev J Herbert Nelson II, issued a statement on December 6 from the Holy Land – where he was travelling with a delegation of PC(USA) leaders – criticising President Donald Trump’s decision to officially recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to instruct the US State Department to begin planning to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Nelson’s statement was similar to one issued by the National Council of Churches, which had been in contact with him earlier. In its statement, the NCC praised the witness of the PC(USA) delegation and asked for prayers for its safety.

Nelson’s statement said that moving the embassy to Jerusalem ‘would be a grievous mistake’. He said: “For Christians concerned with peace and justice, Jerusalem must be a city shared by three faiths and two peoples.

As long as Israel occupies East Jerusalem and restricts Palestinian human rights, to designate Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is to endorse the violation of international law. “We pray for ‘the peace of Jerusalem’ as Christmas approaches, but peace is not achieved by unilateral claims or annexation. There is a profound moral stewardship of the holy sites in Jerusalem that requires the shared decision-making of Christian and Muslim Palestinians as well as Jewish Israelis. Behind the many General Assembly statements affirming Jerusalem to be a shared city is the conviction that Jesus still calls us to be peacemakers.”

He added: “Claiming Jerusalem as the capital for one people not only damages hope for peace between Israeli and Palestinians, but deepens religious tensions among Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

Each of our religious traditions has a long memory. Back in 1947, the original UN plan for two states called for Jerusalem to be an international city, so that religious co-existence there could be a model for tolerance around the world. The nations of the world have respected that good vision by keeping their embassies in Tel Aviv until a just peace can be achieved.

“For the US government to act alone in the interests of one side is to end any claim that we can be an ‘honest broker’ in a peace process to end the occupation of Palestine. It is for these reasons that we go on record as a church to express our deep disagreement with this action by our government. In this year of painful anniversaries for the Palestinians, it would be another betrayal to abandon the equal claims of both the Palestinians and the Israelis to Jerusalem, a city of historical and spiritual significance shared by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.”

(PC(USA))

DISCRIMINATION CONFERENCE

Christians are the victims in 80 per cent of acts of religious discrimination, despite only accounting for 30 per cent of the global population, a conference in Washington heard on Tuesday December 5

The statistics, from the International Society for Human Rights, were presented at the 3rd International Conference on Religious Freedom – an annual event initiated by Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew of the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2014 to highlight the situation of Christians in the Middle East.

“Freedom of thought and belief are underpinning of the most innovative and vibrant economies in human history”, US Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, told the conference. “That is at least partially why it is troubling to see a resurgence in the persecution of Christians in recent years.” (World Watch Monitor)

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