The Conference of European Churches (CEC) gave itself a new statute at a congress in Budapest in 2013. Five years later the first general assembly according to the new regulations took place. For that, almost 200 delegates of the member churches and a couple of hundred representatives of allied organisations and guests met from May 31st until July 6th, 2018 in the Serbian city Novi Sad. CoGREE members IV and ICCS are Organisations in Partnership of the organisation CEC. They were represented at the general assembly by IV president Gerhard Pfeiffer.
“You Shall Be My Witnesses” (Acts 1,8) was the motto of the major ecumenical meeting. The programme included plenaries regarding statutory matters, theological contributions about the core topics “hospitality”, “justice” and “hope” as well as working groups on strategy papers on migration, climate and environment, peace and human rights. The primary goal was to develop a vision for the future of Europe and to explore ways the churches can act in this context.
In an ecumenical spirit, the “confessional families” of Protestants, Anglicans, Orthodox and the Oriental Churches celebrated together services and a peace prayer at the shore of the Danube. It took place where just few decades ago bridges were destroyed in the war over Kosovo.
Among others, the thematic work took place in 15 working groups. The thematic reference group „Education for Democratic Citizenship“, in which ICCS and IV are represented, prepared one of the workshops. The topic of the workshop was “Democracy and Populism: the role of Education and of CEC”.
Further information about the general assembly 2018: https://assembly2018.ceceurope.org/