Ethics · Society · Theology · Mission · Sociology of Religions
During his visit to the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva on the occasion of its 70th anniversary, Pope Francis, along with many kind words, urged the WCC to once again prioritize the task of evangelism and mission.
Richard Howell and Thomas Schirrmacher hand Pope Francis reports on persecution in India, by the Global Christian Forum and by the World Evangelical Alliance
70 years ago, on August 23, 1948, the World Council of Churches (WCC) was founded. The theologian Thomas Schirrmacher talks about the history of the “World Council of Churches”, why Catholics are not members – and why he sees a missionary departure also in Germany.
As every year, the Director of the International Institute for Religious Freedom and International President of the International Society for Human Rights presented the two German Yearbooks on Religious Freedom (Jahrbuch Religionsfreiheit 2017) and the Yearbook on the Persecution and Discrimination of Christians (Jahrbuch Verfolgung und Diskriminierung von Christen 2017) to Pope Francis personally.
According to the opinion of the evangelical theologian and mission scholar Christof Sauer, the new Apostolic Letter of Pope St. Francis with the title “There is no greater love (maiorem hac dilectionem) – on the offer of life” is to be welcomed, as far as it concerns the definition of a martyr.
Changes in the Catholic Church are encouraging Evangelicals to cooperate with it. The Swiss Evangelical Alliance (SEA) has been working in Bern on a sensational working paper.
INTERVIEW This interview was published by the Austrian Evangelical Alliance after the Bishops Synod on Marriage and Family in the Vatican in 2015.