On 4th to 8th August, the German Evangelical Alliance held its annual faith conference. As part of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), the General Secretary of the WEA, Gary L. Edmonds, attended the event and addressed the participants about the works of the WEA.
A huge advancement of the WEA in recent years has been the its expansion. In 1951, believers from 21 countries officially formed the World Evangelical Fellowship. Today, 50 years later, it has becomes an internationally recognised Christian umbrella organisation that represents approximately 400 million evangelicals in 123 countries.
This achievement has allowed the WEA to make more use of its official consultative status with the United Nations, and the status allows evangelicals to enjoy the same recognition as the ecumenical World Council of Churches (WCC) or the orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, according to the general secretary.
Apart from strengthening churches, Christian leadership and unity in Christ, the WEA also supports global Christian movement to bring a transforming force in all levels of society for growing righteousness, increasing justice, decreasing poverty, and the sharing of resources to meet human needs. This close affiliation and relationship with the United Nations could prove to be very useful when carrying out its work.
The WEA Religious Liberty Commission (WEA-RLC) is a commission specifically set up for promoting freedom of religion for all faiths worldwide, especially protestant Christians. Working in accordance with the scripture, the commission is bases itself on Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights.
General Secretary Edmonds reported that by making use of the alliance’s status with the United Nations, WEA has been instrumental in making sure that Protestant Churches enjoy the same rights in the new constitution as the Roman Catholic Church.
As the representative of the world’s evangelicals, Edmonds reaffirmed the characteristic of evangelicals and the major distinguishing factor from ecumenical organisations. He expressed the opinion that whilst ecumenical organisations emphasised inter-religious dialogue and tended to stray from biblical standards on some issues of ethics, the WEA focused on mission and evangelism. Therefore, he urged Christians sharing the theological vision of the Evangelical Alliance to also support its humanitarian efforts.
Edmonds lamented that WEA’s humanitarian efforts are as yet relatively unknown in Europe. He stated that WEA has been urging the Sudanese government to make access routes to the crisis region of Darfur safe for humanitarian transports. WEA also supports evangelical organisations in Chad providing Sudanese refugee camps with food, medicine and clothing.
