TruthBook Religious News Blog

25 Jun 2008

Witnesses for creative peacemaking from member churches of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Burundi, Brazil, Greece and the United States will travel to Germany, 27 June - 4 July, for an exchange of experiences in overcoming violence.

The visit is part of a "living letters" process whereby teams of people from different parts of the world offer personal and practical support and inspiration to one another.

The peace building efforts of churches in Germany are legion, say observers. They train youth in nonviolent ways to handle conflicts. They encourage Christians to welcome strangers and to get to know their neighbours of other faiths. They keep alive the memories of victims of war and persecution and work for reconciliation.

These and other activities will be in the spotlight during the WCC delegation's visit. The visitors, who like their hosts are engaged in the churches' Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV) in their part of the world (see list below), bring along prayers and greetings from their own churches.

While these encounters lend themselves to an exchange of good ideas and mutual encouragement, they are also intended to kick-start the reflection on the ecumenical declaration on just peace to be adopted at the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in 2011.

The Living Letters blog on the DOV website will provide with regular updates on the 27 June to 4 July visit of the ecumenical team. Two team members will share their impressions, personal reflections, observations, experiences and photos. http://www.overcomingviolence.org/

The visit is hosted by the German ecumenical organization ACK (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Christlicher Kirchen in Deutschland).

Labels: Germany, peace, peacemaking, World Council of Churches

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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Theologian Küng: Christianity Gets on Many People's Nerves

For Catholic theologian Hans Küng, religion has again become a power factor. While Islam and Buddhism are getting more popular, Christianity isn't. The controversial theologian spoke to DW-WORLD.DE about the reasons.

Born in 1928, Catholic theologian and church critic Hans Küng made his mark as a promoter of dialogue between religions and as president of the Global Ethic Foundation. In 1979, the Vatican withdrew his license to teach after the Swiss native questioned the infallibility of the pope. In the fall of 2005, Pope Benedict XVI invited Küng to a private meeting.

DW-WORLD.DE: Professor Küng, people -- and not only in Germany -- are again enormously interested in religious issues. Can we speak of a return of religions?

Hans Küng: "Return of religions" -- that is an ambivalent term. Religion never disappeared. Just like music, religion is something that stays, even if it is suppressed for some time. It is true, that since the new awakening of Islam, since the creation of the Islamic republic of Iran in 1979, Europeans have realized that they don't rule the world by themselves. For a long time, secular Europe had not realized that it was an exception, and that elsewhere, religions is a power.

"No peace among the nations, without peace between the religions! No peace between the religions without dialog between the religions!" Those are two central sentences of your World Ethic principle. In a time of globalization, there are many undreamed-of possibilities for communication on the Internet. The access to knowledge is easier than ever before. Can this development improve the dialog of religions?

In principle, I would say yes, even though this brings many problems. It's a positive thing that today we can know a lot about other religions. A different question, of course, is whether we do want to be in the know. There are people who don't -- they already know everything, without studying the Islam.

Who doesn't want to know?

For one, the fundamental Christians who take everything the Bible says literally and say they don't need any other religions. Then there are the very secular people, dogmatists of laicism. They get worked up simply when the word religion is mentioned, and they think that we should not talk about it in schools. They have issues with the fact that religion, again, is a powerful factor in world history.

According to a survey, not Christianity but Buddhism is the most likeable religion for Germans. How do you explain that?

Buddhism, in the West, is perceived as being free from dogmas, as a religion without many rules. It is a religion that's turned to the inside and that emphasizes meditation. It is a religion, which has no anthropomorphic, concrete picture of the last reality.

The other is that Christianity -- with its concentration of power -- gets on many people's nerves. When we have a pope, who claims that -- as theological Lord of the world -- only those who are with him are true Christians and that only his Roman-Catholic Church is the true church, it gets on many people's nerves. Even though they don't protest publicly, they will turn away and say they don't want to have anything to do with that.

Labels: Buddhism, Christianity, Germany, Global Ethic Foundation, Hans Küng, Islam, religion