The World Council of Churches’ executive committee has invited member churches to find opportunities to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the start of the transatlantic slave trade, to ask God’s forgiveness for ancestors who were involved in the enslavement of African people and to recommit to the “struggle against racism and for racial and economic justice and reparations”.
The statement, one of a number issued by the committee as it met in Bossey, Switzerland, between 22nd and 28th May, said the practice of enslaving African people “laid the foundations for the systematic disenfranchisement and disempowering of people of African descent for 400 years in the United States and around the world”.
Noting that it celebrated the “spiritual resistance of African Peoples throughout these 400 years” since the first slave ship sailed from Angola to Jamestown in Virginia in 1619, the committee acknowledged the part black churches founded in the US played in the founding of the WCC in 1948.
“They brought their theological priorities and ecclesial legacy that envisioned a more inclusive ecumenical vision of koinonia to the formation of the WCC and thereby contributed to the foundations of the WCC’s commitment to addressing racism,” the statement said.
“Indeed, the first global ecumenical forum on racism was convened in 1939 by Rev Dr Benjamin Mays, son of enslaved parentage, mentor of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, and later a WCC central committee member representing the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc, following the WCC First Assembly in 1948.”
The committee also noted that the WCC has acknowledged that “racism is a church-dividing issue and has underlined the importance of continuing the discussion on restorative justice to people of African descent and Indigenous peoples”.
The statement concluded with an invitation to “all WCC member churches to find opportunities to commemorate this historic moment, to ask God’s forgiveness on behalf of our ancestors who were involved in the enslavement of African people, and to recommit to the struggle against racism and for racial and economic justice and reparations.”
In another statement released this week, the WCC executive committee condemned attacks upon and persecution of Christians in Asia.
“In some contexts Christian communities are unfairly or mistakenly linked to the colonial histories of their countries, and/or not acknowledged as indigenous to the countries in which they have always lived,” the statement said.
“They are frequently scapegoated in the context of prevailing geopolitical and religious undercurrents and narratives of retaliation, and their dignity and freedoms violated, often with impunity. And they are increasingly targeted in brutal violent attacks.”
Noting that the attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday were a “particularly shocking expression of the extremist threats facing Christian communities”, the committee called on all governments in Asia as well as elsewhere around the world to ensure equal citizenship status and rights for all citizens and to guarantee religious communities free access to holy sites and places of worship.
It also called for religious leaders to promote peace among different religious groups and for governments to revise blasphemy laws and the way they are implemented “so that that they do not contradict international obligations with regard to human rights especially the rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression”.
