In his first travel to Moscow as WCC general secretary, Tveit will meet with Patriarch Kirill on Monday, 28 June. The Patriarch is the head of the WCC member church with the highest number of members. They will have conversations on the calling and the role of the WCC in response to Christ’s call to be one, focusing on the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the WCC. Recent developments in the ecclesial and the ecumenical landscape will be also on the agenda, especially with regard to the churches’ common Christian witness and interreligious dialogue, among other issues.

“I look forward to this important meeting with His Holiness and the Russian Orthodox Church and with the Russian society, and to learn more about the mission and the vision of the Russian Orthodox Church, particularly concerning their contribution to the ecumenical movement and as member of the WCC,” said Tveit in advance of the visit.

The programme of the visit includes, among other activities, attending Divine Liturgy at the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin, meeting the chairman of the Department for Church Charity and Social Services the Very Rev. Arkady Shatov, a visit to the St Dimitry School of Sisters of Charity, and encounters with officials of the Russian government.

Patriarch Kirill has been deeply involved in the ecumenical movement since his youth. As a 22-year old delegate, he participated at the WCC 4th Assembly in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1968. From 1971 to 1974 he was representative of the Moscow Patriarchate to the WCC. Between 1975 and 1998 he was a member of the WCC central and executive committees. As the chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department for External Relations between 1989 and his enthronement as patriarch in February 2009 Kirill played a key role in the advancement of a variety of ecumenical initiatives.

Tveit will be accompanied by the WCC deputy general secretary Georges Lemopoulos, as well as WCC staff members Rev. Dr Dagmar Heller (ecumenical theological education), Rev. Sabine Udodesku (spirituality and worship) and Fr Dr Daniel Buda (church and ecumenical relations).

Following the encounter of the two leaders, the Russian Orthodox Church will host the annual meeting of the Permanent Committee on Consensus and Collaboration which has the responsibility for continuing the dynamic of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC.

The Russian Orthodox Church joined the WCC in 1961 and became its largest member church. Five of its representatives currently sit on the council’s 150-member Central Committee.

Closing Celebration - Edinburgh 2010.The closing celebration of Edinburgh 2010 held at Assembly Hall, the venue for the 1910 World Missionary Conference..Arch Bishop John Sentamu speaks at the closing celebration.. Photo: Gary Doak

Archbishop John Sentamu issued a reminder at the closing worship service of “Edinburgh 2010”. Jesus told his followers, “You are my witnesses.” The Anglican archbishop of York appealed on behalf of “the crucial importance of Christian witness.”

EDINBURGH: Alluding to the gospel account of Peter’s denial of Christ, Sentamu added: “Jesus today is on trial in the court of the world by our lips and lives. Jesus and his gospel are being judged.”

Encouragement to exercise loving hospitality towards others and humility in Christian outreach formed the refrains of Edinburgh 2010’s closing celebration and of the meeting’s Common Call in which delegates expressed “full awareness that God resists the proud, Christ welcomes and empowers the poor and afflicted, and the power of the Holy Spirit is manifested in our vulnerability.” As Archbishop Sentamu put it in his sermon, “Human activity only begets human activity. The prophetic Word and the Spirit make us live.” His voice echoed with an evangelising passion that recalled preachers of the past who spoke in the same space.

In June 1910, a groundbreaking World Missionary Conference drew delegates from churches and mission societies throughout the earth to the Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland, set on The Mound near Edinburgh Castle and St Giles Cathedral. One hundred years later, on the afternoon of Sunday 6 June, more than a thousand worshippers gathered in the Assembly Hall to mark the end of the Edinburgh 2010 conference surveying world Christianity and the potential for common witness to Jesus Christ in the 21st century. Among participants in this closing celebration were the nearly 300 delegates from some 60 nations and a broad range of Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Evangelical, Pentecostal, independent and uniting churches.

A “Common Call” to renewed commitment, affirmed by this year’s conference, was addressed to the Christians of this era and affirmed at the climax of the closing celebration.

Diversity was clearly on display in the ecclesiastical vestments and national dress worn by worshippers in the Assembly Hall. Prayers were led in several of the world’s languages, and hymns were sung from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania as well as disparate cultures of Europe. Indian dancers from Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham and an African choir were among the many forms and voices that animated the proceedings.

Historians imagined what a delegate from 1910 would make of this year’s deliberations. Among other things, they noted, it would have come as a shock that the current celebration was being video-streamed live throughout the world. On the other hand, how would a delegate from 2010 transported to an earlier time survive without the capacity to e-mail? The presence of two direct descendants of 1910 delegates from Asia was acknowledged: the granddaughter of Yun Ch’iho from Korea and the grandson of John Rangiah who had represented the Indian community in South Africa. Bishop Devamani of Dornakal, Church of South India, read excerpts of the speech given in 1910 by a young V.S. Azariah, later the first bishop of Dornakal.

Further presentations stressed the need for mutuality in mission: westerners have much to learn from Christians of the east, and northerners must discover how to show greater humility and a willingness to learn from the global south.

Archbishop John Sentamu’s sermon followed a reading of Ezekiel’s prophecy that brought new life to a valley of dry bones. “As leaders in mission,” said the archbishop, “we must help our churches by acting prophetically, speaking out for freedom against injustice. Our forebears have done so in the past against slavery and more recently against apartheid, world debt and poverty. We must continue to speak out against injustice shown to asylum seekers and all in need.”

He continued, “As we do this, we must remember that speaking prophetically is not the same as condemning other people’s failures, but rather helping us all towards the acceptance of common goals which uplift the heart. To help lift up the heart of a nation is an exciting challenge, and it is one which we can do together, because it is what God has called us to as part of our mission and discipleship.”

The previous evening, a final discussion session at the conference reviewed the study processes leading to 2010 and the deliberations undertaken in small groups and plenary conclaves on the Pollock Halls campus of Edinburgh University.

“This is probably the most comprehensive mission gathering since 1910,” remarked Vinoth Ramachandra, a Sri Lankan leader of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. Like other speakers, Ramachandra recognised many promising developments in the 2010 gathering yet expressed disquiet at the high percentage of religious and academic professionals compared to the many lay workers present a century earlier. He called this a “blind spot” in contemporary church gatherings, a failure to realize that “the primary work of mission takes place in the daily lives of ordinary Christian men and women”. The next such world-wide event, he said, will profit from an attempt to include more members of the laity, women, youth and representatives from the southern hemisphere. Existing boundaries need to be “deconstructed, though not destroyed”. In particular, “the artificial boundary between clergy and laity needs to be deconstructed”. The essential thing in these times, Ramachandra said, is that “boundaries of all kinds must be eroded.”

Opening Plenary Session - Edinburgh 2010. Dr. Dana L. Robert gives the opening plenary speech 'Mission in the Long Perspective'. Photo: Gary Doak

Professor Robert is co-director of the centre for global Christianity and mission at Boston University School of Theology in the USA. She addressed nearly 300 delegates and 100 other participants on the topic “Mission and Unity in the ‘Long View’ from 1910 to the 21st Century”. Edinburgh 2010 marks the centenary of a mission conference held in the Scottish capital in June 1910, an event considered a milestone in the missionary movement that is identified with the birth of the modern ecumenical movement towards closer inter-confessional cooperation. The theme of the 1910 gathering was “evangelising the world in this generation”, while the 2010 theme is “witnessing to Christ today”.

Within the lifetime of some members of her audience, Robert observed, “Christianity has undergone one of the biggest changes in its two thousand year history. It is now a multi-cultural faith, with believers drawn from every inhabited continent.” It has begun to reflect the vision of Revelation 7:9 in which the faithful constitute “a great multitude” of believers “from all tribes and peoples and languages”. She continued: “Participants in the World Missionary Conference a century ago attempted to evangelise the world in their own generation. We who are alive in 2010 must bear witness to our own generation.”

In contrast to the diversity of delegates today, participation in the 1910 event was overwhelmed by the percentage of white, Protestant men from Europe and North America. Among more than 1,200 delegates then, only one was a black African and an estimated nineteen were Asian. Even so, there was a vision for a different future. In the words of V.S. Azariah of India, a future bishop who was still a young man in 1910, “The exceeding riches of the glory of Christ can be fully realized not by the Englishman, the American and the Continental alone, nor by the Japanese, the Chinese and the Indians by themselves – but by all working together, worshipping together and learning together the perfect image of our Lord and Christ.”

Edinburgh 1910 raised another issue that has informed the churches’ journey over the past 100 years, an issue that Robert calls the challenge of “diversity within unity”. A report asked the question, “How is it possible to attain that unity for which our Lord prayed and yet to leave free play for the diversity which alone will give to the unity comprehension and life?” Robert described this issue as central to the interplay between unity and mission in 20th-century theology. In 1963, discussion on this point led to a World Council of Churches statement: “We therefore affirm that this missionary movement now involves Christians in all six continents and in all lands. It must be the common witness of the whole church, bringing the whole gospel to the whole world.” For Robert, this “marked the symbolic beginning of a postcolonial framework for mission – its liberation from captivity to western Christianity.” Evangelical mission theologians in the Lausanne Movement, too, have endorsed the formulation of “the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world”.

Robert sees the churches today engaging in a global conversation, with an assumption of common witness deeply embedded in Christian consciousness. It is widely understood that proclamation and justice go hand in hand, that ministry to the “whole world” includes a concern for the preservation of God’s creation, that economic and technological globalisation poses new responsibilities and that rapid change in the world sets Christians to periodically re-conceptualising the methods of their participation in the mission to which the Triune God calls them. She concluded: “Even as we ask, ‘How long, O Lord, how long?”, united in praise, we confidently embrace God’s mission.”

Responses, affirmations and appreciations followed Prof. Robert’s presentation, offered by Bishop Brian Farrell of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Professor Tinyiko Sam Maluleke of the University of South Africa, Metropolitan Dr Geevarghese Mor Coorilos of the World Council of Churches’ commission on world mission and evangelism and the Rev. Bertil Ekström of the World Evangelical Alliance’s mission commission.

Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, speaking at the opening worship

Edinburgh 2010 takes as its theme “Witnessing to Christ Today” and welcomes Christians from a variety of church traditions: Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Evangelical and Pentecostal. It is an occasion to review the history of faith over the past century and to look toward the future of world Christianity.

In opening remarks on Wednesday evening 2 June, the assembly heard from representatives of local sponsoring organisations: the University of Edinburgh, the Church of Scotland, Action of Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS), the Roman Catholic Church, the Scotland Evangelical Alliance as well as the general council of Edinburgh 2010.

During opening prayer on the following morning, reflections were offered by the leaders of two international sponsors of the conference: the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA).

The Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC, affirmed that “mission and unity belong together. To be one in Christ is to witness together to Christ.” Discipleship, he said, demands the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen for human salvation: “This means that if there is to be a witness to Christ, there must be a mission movement of the cross. This means that if there is a will to be one in Christ, there must be an ecumenical movement of the cross. Nobody needs triumphalistic movements.”

Acknowledging and celebrating the diversity of his audience, Tveit continued: “It is important to keep a healthy dialectic and creative tension between the many dimensions of our calling. To witness to Christ is both evangelism and the prophetic stand for Christ’s will for justice, peace and care of creation.”

The Rev. Dr Geoff Tunnicliffe, international director of the WEA, warned that despite advances of the past century “there is no corner of the world where the mission of the church is complete. God’s calling to the whole church is to take the whole gospel to the whole world, and that call comes anew to us in every generation.” Some people have yet to hear the gospel of Christ, he explained, while in some other regions including Europe “re-evangelisation is desperately needed.”

Noting the promise of theological conversations among Evangelicals, Orthodox, Catholics and member churches of the WCC, Tunnicliffe admitted that “there have been many things that have divided the different streams of the church. We would be foolish to think in these few days all those often deeply-held and painfully fought-over differences could be resolved. But I hope that we can listen to one another with love and respect, build bridges rather than create chasms, pray together, learn together, discover new friendships.”

Olav Fykse Tveit and Geoff Tunnicliffe dialogue at the beginning of the Edinburgh 2010 conference in Scotland. Photo: Juan Michel/WCC.

The international gathering commemorates the hundredth anniversary of the 1910 World Mission Conference which took place in the same city and is widely considered the symbolic starting point of the modern ecumenical movement.

“One hundred years after the Edinburgh conference in 1910 we are challenged to launch together a new beginning for common mission in the 21st century”, the World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit told conference participants on 3 June.

Tveit was one of two speakers expressing hopes and expectations for the conference before some 300 delegates from over 60 countries and virtually all Christian traditions at the opening celebration.

The other speaker was Rev. Dr Geoff Tunnicliffe, international director of the World Evangelical Alliance. He said he hoped that the Edinburgh 2010 conference will help participants to achieve a “renewed commitment to bear witness to Christ with the love of the Father and in the power of the Holy Spirit in every corner of the globe”.

The WCC general secretary emphasized the need for contemporary Christian mission to reconcile evangelization and prophetic witness. “It is important to keep a healthy dialectic and creative tension between the many dimensions of our calling”, Tveit said. “To witness to Christ is both evangelism and the prophetic stand for Christ’s will for justice, peace and care of creation”, he added.
Tveit also highlighted that mission and unity are inseparable: “Mission and unity belong together. To be one in Christ is to witness together to Christ.”

Tunnicliffe said that although it would not be realistic to expect historical differences to be solved in a few days, he hoped “that during the conference participants will be able to “listen to one another with love and respect, build bridges rather than create chasms, pray together, learn together, establish new friendships”.

“We come to celebrate the progress of world Christianity over the last 100 years”, Tveit said. Amongst some “difficult lessons” that have been learnt during that period, he mentioned “the links between mission and colonialism”, “shameful power struggles” and the fact that “mission is a challenging theme in our relations to people of other faiths”.

Tveit acknowledged that “many more sectors of world Christianity now take their inspiration from the deliberations of the 1910 Edinburgh conference than those who actually participated in the event”. Therefore he emphasized: “Nobody needs triumphalistic movements and churches. The world needs faithful disciples of Christ, always carrying the cross in love and solidarity with the world for which Christ died.”

Christian diversity gathered in one place

The 1910 World Mission Conference brought together some 1,200 representatives mainly linked to the Western missionary movement. In addition to its focus on evangelism, the historic gathering emphasized cooperation and unity.

The Edinburgh 2010 conference gathers with the theme “Witnessing to Christ today” and is hosted by the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. The World Council of Churches (WCC) supports its organization, together with partners in the ecumenical movement, within and beyond the WCC fellowship.

The wide spectrum of churches, denominations and mission traditions united around the project makes it one of the most representative of the diversity of world Christianity today. This spectrum includes Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, Methodist, Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, Roman Catholic, Evangelical, Pentecostal and Independent traditions.

The conference will end on Sunday, 6 June, when participants will join members of the local churches and gather at the 1910 Assembly Hall for “a significant celebration”, the organizers have announced.

Over 10,000 people are attending the World People's Conference on Climate Change, many of them from indigenous peoples. Photo: The City Project

The 19-22 April conference in Cochabamba is hosted by Bolivian president Evo Morales. Over 10,000 people are attending, according to media reports, many of them from indigenous peoples and environmentalist networks.

The closing session will be held on International Mother Earth Day, 22 April. This yearly event was introduced by the United Nations General Assembly in 2009, adopting a Bolivia-led resolution.

“Climate change is the product of a human mentality which regards nature as an object of domination, exploitation and manipulation and the human being as its owner and the measure of all things,” the ecumenical declaration states.

Its signatories “recognize that a certain interpretation of the Judeo-Christian tradition has contributed to fostering this kind of anthropocentrism and merciless exploitation of nature, misinterpreting the responsibility of being a ‘caretaker’ and advocate for the creation, entrusted to humanity by the creator.”

The declaration goes on to call for a new spirituality of respectful co-existence, to be forged in a dialogue among the peoples of the earth. It is part of the contribution a coalition of Christian organizations brought to the conference.

The coalition also organized panels on religions – especially Christianity – and climate change and the presentation of recent publications on the topic. It includes the World Council of Churches (WCC) and its Bolivian member churches as well as the Latin American Council of Churches (CMI), and is coordinated by the Andean Ecumenical Higher Institute of Theology (ISEAT).

“The People’s Conference was an opportunity to listen to those who will be most affected by climate change,” said Dr Guillermo Kerber, WCC programme executive on climate change. “The WCC sees it as an instrument to build a global consensus on climate change and put forward the perspective of actors who have not been heard enough in the United Nations negotiation process – such as the indigenous peoples.”

Metropolitan Bishoy of Damietta, from the Coptic Orthodox Church, and other members of the WCC executive committee express words of blessing during the installation of the WCC general secretary the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit.

GENEVA: “To be one, the Church must go back to its common basis. Nothing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified”, the World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit has said. The cross is not just a sign of religious identity, he added, but a “reality check” for both the churches and the ecumenical movement.

Tveit was preaching at a service in the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva on 23 February. During the service, the WCC Executive Committee formally installed Tveit as the Council’s general secretary. A pastor and theologian from Norway, Tveit, 49, was elected as the WCC’s 7th general secretary in August 2009 and began his term on 1 January 2010.

“Seen in the perspective of the resurrection”, Tveit said, “the cross becomes the sign of God’s victory over sin and evil” and of “God’s unconditional love to all human beings”. It is also at the root of any possible Christian unity: “We are one as Christians because we receive the same gift” of God’s “being with us and for us” through the cross.

“It doesn’t sound like very diplomatic language”, acknowledged Tveit in his sermon, referring to the statement that the cross is “the symbol of what the churches have to give to the world […] nothing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified”. Nevertheless, he affirmed that such a statement offers “substance and direction to the ecumenical movement”.

“How shall we, then, best give shape to the ecumenical movement of the cross in our time?” Tveit wondered. “And how can the ecumenical movement be a movement of the cross – the tree of life?”

Following early teachers of the church, Tveit suggested that “when Christ stretches out his arms at the cross, he is stretching out to the whole world, embracing everybody”. The uniqueness of the cross “is precisely that it is inclusive”, he said.

For Tveit, the call of the ecumenical movement goes beyond successes and failures. “Whether we are heard or not, our call is to carry the cross with one another”. This may entail walking in the shoes of the poor and oppressed, suffering distress when agreements are not reached, overcoming disappointment when problems are not solved.

However, Tveit said, the call to “carry the cross in our search for unity” remains. “And we shall do it together, never alone.”

The service of installation of the new WCC general secretary was led by the moderator of the WCC central committee Rev. Dr Walter Altmann. Participants included a large number of representatives of churches, ecumenical and international organizations, and members of the diplomatic corps based in Geneva.

After the service, greetings were presented by Mr. Jens Petter Johnsen, director of the Church of Norway national council; the Rev. Thomas Wipf, president of the Council of the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches; Mr. Alain Stehlé, president of the Association of Churches and Christian Communities of Geneva; the Rev. Dr. Setri Nyomi, general secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches on behalf of the ecumenical organizations in the Ecumenical Centre; Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations; and Ms Bente Agell-Hansen, Norwegian ambassador to the United Nations and other international organizations.

The WCC executive committee is meeting in Bossey, near Geneva, from 23-26 February.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit has expressed condolences and solidarity with the people of Haiti after the earthquake there and has called for prompt support in the relief efforts.

The major earthquake that shook the Caribbean nation of Haiti overnight has become yet another in a series of natural disasters to hit this already vulnerable nation, the poorest in the western hemisphere.

The temblor, which registered 7.3 on the Richter scale and struck the area in around the capital Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, 12 January, around 5 p.m., caused heavy damage knocking down buildings and power lines.

“On behalf of the fellowship of churches of the World Council of Churches, I express our condolences and solidarity with the people of Haiti, as they once again experience the great burdens of anguish, damage, and death because of a natural catastrophe,” said Tveit. “They already have carried many burdens of political instability and poverty.”

In 2004 more than 3,000 people died because of Hurricane Jeanne which passed over the northwest city of Gonaives. This same area was hit again in 2008 when four tropical storm systems passed through the region.

In 2004 political instability led to the ousting of the President Jean-Baptiste Aristide. And in November 2008, a school collapse which was blamed on poor construction killed 90 people. Nearly 80 percent of Haitians live in poverty.

“The people of Haiti should now experience the prompt support and help from others,” Tveit said early Wednesday morning. “Also through the work of the ACT Alliance there will be given support as expression of the actions of churches together worldwide.”

“Let us keep our member churches in Haiti and all affected by the earthquake in our prayers and thoughts,” he said.

Officials with Action by Churches Together (ACT), a global alliance of churches and related agencies working to save lives and support communities in emergencies worldwide, said ACT member churches are already involved in responding to the earthquake. The ACT secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, is now coordinating a global response to the catastrophe.

photo© WCC/Peter Williams

What does the Bible say about climate change? What are the theological insights churches can offer to a world facing an unprecedented ecological crisis?

These questions, addressed at a public seminar on “Creation and the climate crisis” attended by church representatives to the UN climate summit in Copenhagen on 15 December, seem even more urgent after the summit’s failure to reach the fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement that millions around the world had hoped for.

“There is no evident relation between the gospel and climate change”, said Jakob Wolf, head of the Department of Systematic Theology of the University of Copenhagen, which co-hosted the seminar with the National Council of Churches in Denmark.

However, to the extent that climate change is a consequence of human activity, it falls within the imperative of ethical principles, because human beings are responsible for their actions. The ethical demand to love one’s neighbor applies here, as “planet Earth has become our neighbor”, said Wolf, and one that is “vulnerable to human activity”.

According to Wolf, a theological view of the planet and of the life in it as God’s creation confers them an intrinsic value, therefore raising “respect and love”. “The more we love life on Earth the more we are ready to act unselfish”, Wolf said.

Here lies the contribution of Christian faith and theology to fighting climate change: a motivation that is comprehensive, deep and “much more vigorous” than if it were based on “cool calculations and cold-hearted duty”. This is crucial, because humanity has “all the tools at hand” to take action on climate change. “It is only the will that lacks.”

Not apocalypse but hope

Biblical scholar Barbara Rossing, professor at the Lutheran School of Theology of Chicago, United States, agreed with Wolf in that “the Bible does not say anything about climate change”. But she believes Christians can base their response to climate change on the Bible.

Rossing’s point of departure is the question: “Where is God in this crisis?” She rejects the notion that God is punishing humanity and rather sees God “lamenting with the world”.

According to her reading of the Book of Revelation, “God is mourning on behalf of the earth rather than cursing it”. The famous plagues are not predictions, but threats and warnings, wake-up calls, projections in the future of the logical consequences of human actions if their course remains unchanged.

However, for Rossing, the Book of Revelation does not announce the end of the world, but the end of the Empire. So in spite of the current unsustainable patterns of consumption and carbon-based economy, Rossing finds in it a message of hope: “Disaster is not necessarily inevitable; there is still time to change.”

This “vision of hope for today” is an essential contribution that Christian theology and faith can make to global efforts to address climate change.

The ecumenical dimension of climate change

“In a very threatening and very disturbing way, the climate crisis brings us together as one humanity, as one fellowship of believers, as one church”, said Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary-elect of the World Council of Churches (WCC).

“We are called to show a sign of what it means to be one humanity, of what it means that God loves the whole world”, Tveit said. As churches come together to offer this sign, addressing climate change “is uniting us in a very special way: as churches, as believers”.

The message that God loves the world and every creature on earth “has been the heart-beat of the ecumenical movement facing climate change”, said Tveit, recalling the long history of WCC concern with ecological matters.

In an ecumenical perspective, the concern for creation has always been linked to the concern for justice and peace. “It is not a matter of saying this is a planet for some of us”, said Tveit, “this is a planet for all of us”.

This point was also stressed by Jesse Mugambi, from the University of Nairobi and a member of the WCC working group on climate change. “The world is a world in which we are all relatives, but somewhere along the line we decided […] to treat each other as strangers”, he said.

Mugambi explained that in Africa climate change is already causing both severe droughts on the one hand, and flooding on the other.. With the help of maps he showed that those parts of the continent rich in water and cultivable land are also the areas of greatest conflict. Such a conflict “has nothing to do with ethnicity, it has to do with resources.”

For Mugambi, the role of Christian faith and religion in general – through its leaders, theologians and ethicists – is that of “bringing us back to the norms” that can contribute to address a challenge like climate change.

“We are not talking about ‘helping’ African countries”, Mugambi said. “It is not a matter of ‘help’, but of survival for all of us.”

(*) Juan Michel is WCC media relations officer.

March for climate justice. The WCC and church-realted development organizations were co-organizers of a civil society demonstration in Copenhagen on Saturday, 12 December. © WCC/Peter Williams

“With a lack of transparency, the agreement reached this past week by some countries was negotiated without consensus but rather in secret among the powerful nations of the world,” WCC Programme Executive on climate change Guillermo Kerber said.

“This has proven to be a strong strike against multilateralism and the democratic principles in the UN system,” he said.

The agreement, which is being called the Copenhagen Accord, was negotiated between five countries, the U.S., China, India, South Africa and Brazil. It maintains that the scientific thinking for keeping temperature increase below 2 degrees Celcius is important, but failed to make commitments to reduce emissions to keep the temperature rise in check.

While the accord is being framed as an “essential beginning” according to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, many non-governmental groups are saying it does little to end the damage of climate change, particularly for the poorest.

Members of the WCC delegation attending COP 15 were unanimous in criticizing the agreement and recognized that once more, the poorest people will be those most affected by this unfair deal, Kerber said.

It is urgent that negotiations among all countries are resumed with the objective to have clear reduction targets for industrialized countries to decrease 40% CO2 emissions by 2020 and an annual fund of 150 billion US to be allocated for adaptation in the most vulnerable developing countries, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu called for at the handover of the Countdown to Copenhagen signatures calling for climate justice.

“Although this is not the first time an agreement is not reached in a COP” recalled Elias Abramides, the leader of WCC delegation, “this time it was worse because of the lack of transparency and shadow negotiations by some countries without involving all.”

“Copenhagen was a missed opportunity by the industrialized countries to lead by example” said Prof. Jesse Mugambi from Kenya and a member of the WCC Working Group on climate change. “While countries like China and India came with concrete measures they have voluntarily taken to reduce CO2 emissions, they are not committed to do so as they are not members of the Annex 1 countries of the Kyoto Protocol. Most of the industrialized countries didn’t show the needed commitment to lead the whole world in an effective way to address the challenges of climate change.”

“The struggle continues” Kerber, said. “We need to build on the incredible mobilization by churches and the civil society over the next year, with prayers, bell ringing, and advocacy action, to reach a fair, ambitious and binding deal in Copenhagen which was not achieved because of the unwillingness of most of industrialized countries.”

“The ecumenical delegation as well as the whole civil society betrayed because of this outcome, but will continue to work for the needed agreement among all nations,” he concluded.