In the Swedish context, churches are commemorating the centennial of the 1925 Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work in Stockholm, a milestone gathering leading to one of the main streams that culminated in the founding of the World Council of Churches in 1948. The year 2025 also marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. Churches in Sweden, with and through the Christian Council of Sweden (CCS), have dubbed 2025 “an ecumenical year” under the theme “Time for God’s peace.” It is a year full of opportunities to witness and celebrate together across the 27 member churches that make up the council, as well as with international networks and partners. Highlights of the year include the recent Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, joint celebrations in local congregations at Pentecost, as well as an Ecumenical Week in Stockholm in August alongside a major youth gathering under the theme “Reach Peace," which the council describes as a “Festival of youth in ecumenism 2025” with the expectation of thousands of young Christians in attendance. For CCS general secretary Rev. Dr Sofia Camnerin of the Uniting Church in Sweden, the ecumenical year has in many ways already been a success. “We see so much mobilization among our member churches, and we see so much joyful energy around this,” she observes, noting a particular buzz this year around the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. “We’ve worked very hard strategically to build engagement for 2025 as an ecumenical year,” Camnerin explains. As a small secretariat, it has been vital to grassroot these efforts, working with the wide array of member churches but also specifically with local ecumenical councils around the country, Camnerin explains. She highlights in particular the importance of the youth gathering: “Since 2018, we’ve worked long-term particularly towards the vision of revitalizing youth engagement in the ecumenical movement in Sweden, and we can now rejoice in how far we’ve come. There is now a large group of passionate young ecumenists, and our hope is of course that this will continue to give ripple effects in and among the churches.” Encountering each other, strengthening efforts for peace in war-torn worldFor Jonas Thorängen, who serves specifically as project coordinator for the Ecumenical Year 2025 at the CCS, an ecumenical year at the scale now celebrated in Sweden has come both with blessings and the need for creative thinking in building engagement and structure for the wide range of events. Across the churches, some 10 different working groups encompassing some 50-60 people are currently engaged in the planning and realization of different aspects of the year. “For a lot of people, the ecumenical year is something that inspires us to take a more careful look at each other and our different traditions. Naturally, we often feel safer in our own churches, but we’ve seen some beautiful examples already of people discovering things about other church traditions and how we live out our faith in different ways,” Thorängen reflects. The theme for the year, “Time for God’s peace,” serves as an expression of the need for peace in the present day. “But it is also an imperative,” Thorängen says, “to all of us and for those we encounter, to take the time to work for God’s peace. We may not be able to celebrate peace as such at this time, but we can certainly celebrate the engagement and effort people make for peace to become a reality everywhere, peace across all its many dimensions: among countries, with Creation, with God and with ourselves.” Looking ahead to the programme planned for Stockholm in August this year, general secretary Camnerin says she hopes that the concept of peace can become both more deeply grounded and widely reflected upon during the week, which is set to engage participants through some 75 seminars, book talks, movie screenings, dramatic performances, a variety of ecumenical prayer services, interreligious encounters, and public events in the Stockholm city centre. Herself a former member of the World Council of Churches central committee, Camnerin underscores the vital importance of both local and global ecumenical engagement in the church’s witness to a world marked by injustice, conflict, and war. “My engagement rests so much on the foundation of what I have learned and received from the ecumenical movement worldwide. It has offered me completely different perspectives on what the churches are called to be, and not least the strong focus in the World Council of Churches on responding together to a world in such dire need. The questions are too big for any one church to be able to respond to them alone,” she says. Recalling the historical impact of the Life and Work conference in Stockholm 100 years ago, the CCS is also releasing dedicated book on the topic on 12 February. Camnerin concludes: “Our hope is that today, like in 1925, we can make visible the church as a force that contributes to the making of peace, from the highest global level and throughout all the grassroots. All the world’s conflicts can be grasped, touched, impacted by the church, and this is such a crucial resource.” Ecumenical Year in Sweden, 2025 Ecumenical Week in Stockholm, August 2025 | 
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