The World Council of Churches has condemned the use of “religious language” to justify the war in Ukraine, while the statement itself did not directly condemn Russia’s invasion.
The World Council of Churches “declares that war, with the killing and all the other miserable consequences it entails, is incompatible with God’s very nature and will for humanity and against our fundamental Christian and ecumenical principles, and rejects any misuse of religious language and authority to justify armed aggression,” reads a public statement published on the organization’s website.
The WCC also called Russia’s war against Ukraine a “terrible failure of diplomacy” and an “illegal invasion.”
“We are in Christian solidarity with all those who suffer in this conflict. Our hearts grieve that, after eight years of unresolved crisis and conflict in the eastern regions of Ukraine, on 24 February 2022 the Russian Federation launched an illegal invasion of its neighbour, a sovereign state. This tragic development represents a terrible failure of diplomacy, responsibility and accountability to international law,” the statement said.
The World Council of Churches also stated that the conflict was accompanied by a massive proliferation of weapons in the region, but weapons could not provide a solution to the crisis; the only real solution is to “seek peace and pursue it.”
“The effects of this conflict also threaten to tip many millions of already food-insecure people into famine in several countries around the world, to provoke widespread social and political instability, to destroy the post-World War II international security architecture, to provoke a new global arms race, and to accelerate our trajectory towards climate catastrophe at a time when the nations of the world should finally be uniting to confront this common existential threat in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C.”
