Hiroshima Day - A Time For Remembrance And Prayer

Programme Review and Programme Direction

Two key deliberative sessions during the 15th CCA General Assembly are the Programme Review and Programme Direction sessions.

The Programme Review and Programme Direction sessions will both be conducted in three groups relating to the CCA’s programme areas, namely, (i) General Secretariat (GS), (ii) Mission in Unity and Contextual Theology (MU) and Ecumenical Leadership Formation and Spirituality (EF); and (iii) Building Peace and Moving Beyond Conflicts (BP) and Prophetic Diakonia (PD).

Assembly participants will have the option to join one of three groups for both the Programme Review and Programme Direction sessions. For the sake of coherence, the assigned group will remain the same for both sessions.

General Secretariat

The General Secretariat oversees the coordination of programmatic, administrative, and financial activities of the organization. The GS comprises various departments such as church and ecumenical relations, relations with ecumenical partners, finance, administration, and communications, which provide crucial support and services for the implementation of programs and contribute to the overall functioning of the CCA.

Programmes: Relations with member churches and councils, ecumenical partners; advocacy at the United Nations; ecumenical responses to emerging issues in solidarity; income development and finance; and communications.

Mission in Unity and Contextual Theology (MU) and Ecumenical Leadership Formation and Spirituality (EF)

Under the MU programme area, the CCA accompanies Asian churches to strengthen their mission and witness in multi-religious contexts, revitalise and nurture church unity and the Asian ecumenical movement, and develop contextual theological foundations.

Programmes: Asian Movement for Christian Unity (AMCU); Congress of Asian Theologians (CATS); Asian women doing theology in the context of wider ecumenism; contextualisation of theology in Asia and ecumenical theological education.

The EF programme area focuses on nurturing and developing ecumenical leaders in Asia. The programme aims to enhance spiritual formation and theological understanding, enabling people to actively engage in ecumenical dialogue and collaboration.

Programmes: Ecumenical Enablers’ Training in Asia (EETA); Asian Ecumenical Institute (AEI); Youth and Women Leadership Development; Ecumenical Spirituality and Nurturing of Contextual Liturgical Traditions; Asia Sunday

Building Peace and Moving Beyond Conflicts (BP) and Prophetic Diakonia and Advocacy (PD)

The BP programme area is dedicated to promoting peace, justice, and reconciliation in Asia’s diverse contexts. Through training, advocacy, and dialogue, the programme addresses the root causes of conflicts, empowers communities, and fosters sustainable peacebuilding initiatives.

Programmes: Pastoral Solidarity Visits; Churches in Action for Moving Beyond Conflict and Resolution; Young Ambassadors of Peace in Asia (YAPA); Ecumenical Women’s Action Against Violence (EWAAV); Eco-Justice for Sustainable Peace in the Oikos.

The PD programme area focuses on promoting justice, human rights, and social transformation in Asia. Through advocacy, capacity-building, and raising awareness, the programme addresses systemic injustice, empowers marginalised communities, and advocates for prophetic actions and meaningful change.

Programmes: Human Rights advocacy; Migration, Statelessness, and Trafficking in Persons; Asian Ecumenical Disability Advocacy Network; Asian Advocacy Network on the Dignity and Rights of Children (AANDRoC); Ecumenical Solidarity Accompaniment and Diakonia in Asia (ESADA); Health and Healing; Good Governance; Action Together to Combat HIV and AIDS in Asia (ATCHAA).

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06 August 2015
christian conference of Asia, Asia christianity
The 70th anniversary of Hiroshima Day was observed on 6 August 2015 in Hiroshima’s peace park, near the epicenter of the 1945 attack. More than 55,000 people stood in silence at 8:15 a.m., marking the moment when the atom bomb exploded over the city, thrusting the world into the nuclear age. Dozens of doves were later released as a symbol of peace.

As we pause to remember and recall the horrors and sufferings of that day and the subsequent bombing in Nagasaki, we cannot but think of the million-plus Japanese survivors classified as “hibakusha,” or atomic bomb survivors, in the postwar years. Only about 183,000 are still alive. Many are still fighting illnesses and injuries traced to the bombings seven decades ago. Time has not eased the burden. Decades after the bombings, survivors can be diagnosed with cancer and others illnesses linked to radiation.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, an employee of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, was on a business trip to Hiroshima and sleeping comfortably in a guesthouse that fateful day when the atomic bomb fell, barely 2 km away from the epi-center of the blast. His skin was badly burnt, palms were blistered, hair was singed and hearing lost, but miraculously he survived. He spent the night in a relief camp and after basic medical treatment limped back 180 miles to his hometown to join his wife and children. On August 9, the second atomic bomb struck the quiet town of Nagasaki. But Yamaguchi survived once again, perhaps to tell the story to the generations to come. Atomic blast survivors are called Hibakusha in Japanese. But there are very few who are niju Hibakusha (double survivors). Yamaguchi was one of those. But the best of him came out when he was invited to deliver a speech on nuclear non-proliferation in the United Nations, where he talked about disarmament but emphasized a philosophy of malice or grudge towards none, despite the fact that he was suffering from an incurable gastric cancer. He died on 4th January  2010.

The greatest risk the world faced was from forgetting Hiroshima, said Mikiso Iwasa, Chairman of the Japan confederation of atom bomb sufferers’ organizations. A survivor himself,  Mr. Iwasa said  “The fact that the world is still bristling with 15,000 nuclear weapons, means that anyone in the world could become a hibakusha (survivor of the bomb) at any time.”

On Hiroshima day let the lives of the survivors and the painful memories and sufferings of the innocent victims of the first atomic bomb, deter us from war and the deadly effects of nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

Let us choose life, not death…

Photo: Plaque advocating peace from nuclear weapons

Photo Credit: Internet sources