Rome (NEV CS / 70), November 30, 2019 – Anti-Semitism will be the theme for the next week of freedom. This was decided by the Assembly of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy (FCEI), gathered in Rome last November 16th.
Every year around February 17 – a date that recalls the grant of civil rights to the Waldensians in 1848, a few days before the Jews themselves obtained the same freedoms – Italian Protestants observe the Freedom Week addressing issues related to rights, secularism and social commitment.
The decision was taken in the belief that “anti-Semitism, which is never dormant, is on the contrary rekindling in Europe and also in Italy”, states the agenda approved by the Assembly and continues: “We share with conviction and concern the need to be vigilant and active against anti-Semitism and against all forms of racism, xenophobia, sexism and discrimination of every minority”.
What according to the FCEI Assembly should not be forgotten is that “the history of modern Europe and even more the contemporary one teaches us that the words and actions of hatred against the Jews are the first sign of a freedom-destroying drift and of an attack on the principles on which our constitutional democracies are based, founded in reactions to the horrors that swept Europe in the last century”.
“As churches – the text continues – we cannot avoid dealing with the weight of a centuries old anti Judaism of Christian matrix, of which we became aware after the Shoah and with respect to which we wanted to turn into a path of conversion and renewal”.
The Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy (FCEI) gathers almost all the historical denominations of the Italian Protestantism: the Baptists, Waldensian, Methodist, Lutheran churches, the Salvation Army, the Communion of free churches, the Italian Apostolic Church and the St. Andrew’s Church of Rome, an English-speaking Protestant church belonging to the European Presbytery of the Church of Scotland. The Union of the Seventh-day Adventist Churches (UICCA) and the Federation of Pentecostal Churches (FCP) participate in the FCEI as “observers”.
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