Christian Aid 80th Anniversary Service at Westminster Abbey held on Thursday 12th June 2025

Earlier this year we remembered the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe, VE Day. Following the aftermath of the horrors of the Second World War there were a lot of displaced people, prisoners of war, refugees who had fled their home country or people who had been displaced.

In 1945 Churches in Britain and Ireland joined together and started an organisation Christian Reconstruction in Europe (CRE) to address this matter and on the first Sunday after VE Day they launched an appeal and raised over £80,000 (the equivalent of £3 million today) to support and equip churches in Europe to meet the need of refugees.

Annual fundraising continued after the war and by the 1950s the work was expanded to support work in Palestine, Korea and China. In 1964 CRE was renamed as Christian Aid (CA). Every year for one week in May there is Christian Aid Week, a time for churches to focus their giving and support on the charity and its work around the world.

Christian Aid expanded its work and now supports humanitarian aid to communities suffering disasters, such as famine in East Pakistan [Bangladesh] and Sudan in the 1970s and Ethiopia in the 1980s, and political crises in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Christian Aid created the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) in the 1960s so that development agencies were seen to work together in times of humanitarian crisis. CA campaigns on racism, apartheid, the root causes of poverty, developing world debt alongside climate change and the effects it has on the poorest communities.

On Thursday 12th June Br Philip Cooper and I, as Ecumenical Officers for the Moravian Church, joined Christian Aid for a breakfast meeting to share the recent work of Christian Aid. Rt Rev Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London welcomed everyone, and we heard from Christian Aid partners from India and Kenya alongside Revd Dr Jerry Pillay, who also gave the address in the Abbey and Patrick Watt, CEO of Christian Aid.

This was followed by a special service in Westminster Abbey to celebrate 80 years of work and support by the churches. It was a beautiful and memorable occasion; a highlight of the service was a procession of placards down the central aisle representing the eighty years of humanitarian work done by Christian Aid.

The Moravian Church was one of the sponsoring churches at the beginning of the campaign in 1945 and continues to encourage congregations to support Christian Aid week in May every year.

Sr Lorraine Shorten

Minister for Bath Weston and Bath Coronation Avenue congregations, and Provincial Ecumenical Officer.