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Home / Union Chapel to hold major conference on migration

Union Chapel to hold major conference on migration

By Press Office
February 14, 2019

Union Chapel Church is organising a major event entitled Those who dream, to examine Christian responses to the complex issues surrounding migration in Europe.  Bringing together activists and concerned churchgoers, the conference will hear from some of the key players in an area where churches are taking a major role in providing for some of the most vulnerable people in Europe today.

 As the UK prepares to leave the EU, one of the many issues not yet addressed is how the UK will contribute to fair treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.  As the factors which cause forced migration show no sign of going away – civil conflict, human rights abuses, war, poverty and climate change – both the EU and UK will continue to face pressures to find solutions.  In the meantime, churches across Europe are providing refuge and hospitality.  They need a theology which enriches their action and which shapes policies based on justice.  Those who dream is an optimistic quote from Psalm 126, imagining a transformation of exile into a homecoming.

 Speakers at the event include: the Chair of the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee Claude Moraes MEP; leading theologian in the field of migration, Professor Dorottya Nagy of the Protestant University of Amsterdam; the President of the Evangelical Church of Spain who has been working with new arrivals across the Mediterranean, as has fellow speaker Vasileios Meichanetsidis of Greece;  Jerry Kramer is working with Christian victims of ISIS persecution;  Zimbabwean biblical scholar Tsaurayi Mapfeka and Spurgeon College’s Simon Jones will also make presentations.  Alongside them will be key activists from church and faith based initiatives making the whole event topical and stimulating.

Union Chapel Minister, the Rev Vaughan Jones, said: “This event is timely in a crisis-ridden world in which faith responses become ever more important.  It is exciting to have so many inspirational speakers coming to the Chapel and I am confident that we will all be enriched in our thinking and more focused in our pastoral action and political demands as a result of the day.”

 * Details:

* Union Chapel https://www.unionchapel.org.uk/

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