Twenty-six delegates and participants from the Council for World Mission’s (CWM) European regional member churches and ecumenical partners gathered for the 2025 Europe Member’s Mission Forum (MMF) held 17-20 February at the Conforti Centre – a conference facility at the Xaverian Missionaries Centre in the United Kingdom.
The second in the series of six Member’s Mission Forums that will take place within each of CWM’s missional regions, the Europe MMF saw its attending church representatives and members of the Europe’s faith communities casting their eyes on the plight of the Palestine conflict that has killed and displaced thousands of the local Palestinians.
With the genocide as a backdrop, the Europe MMF this year transformed into a platform where robust dialogue and discussions were held as to how the church can engage in further collaboration towards challenging the injustice that is going on in Palestine.
Normalising anger as a force for good
CWM Moderator, Dr Natalie Lin, graced the event and in her address to the European member church representatives and partners, she spoke of her own Christian faith and service, the importance of the missionary movement to the Taiwanese Church and the ongoing struggles for self-determination which mirrored the plight of the Palestinians.
Lin’s points on self-determination in her address were further cemented by Palestinian theologian, Yasmine Rishmawi, who was one of the two keynote speakers at the MMF.
Her keynote speech, delivered in the form of an interview with CWM Mission Secretary of Discipleship and Dialogue, Rev. Dr Graham McGeoch, included reflections of her background as a young Palestinian theologian.
Rishmawi reflected that the belief of neutrality being the best way to promote peace was a perspective that could exacerbate injustice.
She also further noted that churches and Christian leaders often call for peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation but this call does not address the root causes of injustice.
In her address that was full of references to settler colonialism, righteous anger, and liberation, Rishmawi set out a Palestinian vision that was radically different from the kind of “peace” that simply meant being conflict-averse.
Rishmawi challenged churches to act justly in support of Palestine, and to ponder over the instances when anger is a force for good especially in the face of the oppression in the Palestinian state.
Denouncing Christian Zionism
Luciano Kovacs, Area Coordinator for the Middle East and Europe, Presbyterian Church (USA), followed Rishmawi’s presentation with a sharing on the work of PCUSA in combating Christian Zionism, a belief that sees modern-day Jews as the descendants of the biblical Israelites and heirs to the land of Israel.
In his keynote speech, Kovacs said that Christian Zionism has caused many to confuse the modern state of Israel with the biblical Israelites, thus directly supporting the harm that is being inflicted on the Indigenous inhabitants of Palestine who themselves belong to diverse faith communities.
“The modern state of Israel is not the biblical Israel. This is a distortion, hijacking, and weaponizing of the biblical promises for political ends in support of a highly militarised and oppressive state structure, the State of Israel,” declared Kovacs.
David Livingstone Birthplace
Participants also visited the David Livingstone Birthplace (DLB) in Blantyre, Scotland. CWM presented the Centre with a digitised framed copy of David Livingstone’s application to the London Missionary Society (LMS).
