Ecumenical Conference Debates Churches' Response to Cruelty

A theological consultation on cruelty has been held by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in partnership with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), 5-8 December 2006, in Puidoux, Switzerland.

Those participating at the conference emerged with the clear testimony: "The cross calls us not to glorify, but to attend to the suffering in the world and to struggle for its elimination."

Issues tackled at the conference included: sex trafficking of women and children, walls going up in the name of security, new justifications for the torture of human beings - and other forms of cruelty.

Twenty-five theologians and social scientists attended the four-day conference. In reflecting on such structural and institutional forms of cruelty as patriarchy, racism, casteism, and xenophobia, the participants noted that as well as being inherently cruel in and of themselves, such structures and institutions also legitimise and perpetrate cruelty against the vulnerable and the disempowered.

"For over two thousand years we have talked about cruelty. It is an ugliness that implicates us and tears the fabric of our societies," said Dr Michael Trice of the ELCA, whose theological study provided the theoretical framework of the consultation.