World Council of Churches - News Release
Contact: + 41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org

For immediate release: 8 August 2005


21 September: Churches to pray for peace
in Asia and the world


In 2005, for the second year running, churches representing over 560 million Christians world-wide are being invited to mark the UN International Day of Peace, 21 September, as an International Day of Prayer for Peace.

Launched in 2004 by the World Council of Churches in the framework of its Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches Seeking Reconciliation and Peace (2001-2010), the initiative calls on Christian churches all over the world to arrange for services or vigils on 21 September, as well as to include prayers for peace in their services on the Sunday before or after that day.

The theme for this year's International Day of Prayer for Peace is "Building communities of peace for all". Churches from Asia, the region chosen as the special focus of the Decade to Overcome Violence during 2005, have proposed this theme.

The theme conveys a "spirit of celebrating diversity," says Hope S. Antone, executive secretary for Faith, Mission and Unity of the Christian Conference of Asia. In that spirit, she adds, "we Asian Christians would no longer see the other as the mortal enemy, or as the unsaved doomed for hell, or as the poor heathen to convert. We would instead look at them as brothers, sisters, partners, whom God also loves, to whom God has also revealed truths, from whom we can learn about life, living and relating, and in whom we can also find the image of God."

Christian churches world-wide are therefore invited to include especially Christians and faith communities in that vast and diverse continent in their prayers of intercession on that day.

More information and prayer resources are available at
www.overcomingviolence.org/peace2005

Additional information: Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from the Methodist Church in Kenya. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland..