Religions for Peace and Ring for Peace with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office, hosted the Conference of the World Council of Religious Leaders on Faith and Diplomacy: Generations in Dialogue, which was held in Lindau, Germany, from 4-7 October 2021. The World Evangelical Alliance was represented by its Secretary Generals as well as by the General Secretary of its African region, the Association of Evangelicals in Africa. The 2021 hybrid conference had about 150 participants on-site, and around 900 participants from 90 countries connected virtually.
The Secretary General of WEA, Thomas Schirrmacher, who also serves as Vice-President of Religions for Peace, arrived directly from the dialogue event in the Vatican and gave his presentation on the role of religions in combating violent conflicts.
He agreed to what Alice Wairimu Nderitu from Kenya, UN’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, said: “There are no atrocities that are not preceded by hate speech. To combat violent conflict, firstly let us work together against hate speech.“
Religions have often been a source of conflict. But the worldwide Religions for Peace movement seeks to change that, by galvanizing interreligious dialogue. The New York-based movement, which turns 60 this year, describes itself as the world’s largest interreligious nongovernmental organization, and has a network in about 70 countries. The RfP aims to consciously advance peace work through interreligious dialogue. To that end, with the German government’s funding, the association has since 2019 organized a large annual conference in Lindau, a city on southern Germany’s Lake Constance that has for decades enjoyed a reputation for high-level dialogues between Nobel Prize winners.
