We are the WSCF-US, the USA-based movement within the World Student Christian Federation, a global association of Christian student movements founded in 1895. For 130 years, member movements have been powered by their faith to transform their churches and societies into ones that reflect the teachings and example of Jesus Christ. Students have challenged discrimination, oppression, and unjust rulers from across the political spectrum, as these evils have manifested in their own countries and in solidarity with other national movements. The WSCF-US is radically inclusive, globally engaged, and grounded in prophetic Biblical and theological traditions.
Our mission is to empower a new generation of diverse, progressive, ecumenical young Christian leaders to transform the church and the world.
What We Believe
We believe in the Triune God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Our identity as Christians is the source of our compassion and outrage, love and despair, redemption and hope. We read the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a call to live a radical love ethic – to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love our neighbors, and to love ourselves [Mk 12:30-31]. We believe that the Gospel teaches us the radical equality of human value. Like the liberationists who have gone before us, we believe that God does not remain “neutral” in situations of oppression but actively sides with the oppressed.
Why Transformation Now?
We view American society as being in a moment of interrelated crises. One crisis is centered on formal policies at the national, state and local levels that promote oppression, discrimination, dominations, violence, and greed. An adjacent crisis is that many members of the American church insist on Biblical and theological support for these practices, culminating in Christian nationalism. At the core of and resulting from these policies and American Christian nationalism are sins such as:
This is also a time of multiple global existential crises. In a world order that has been made to center American interests we do not seek to tell other societies how to live. Rather, the WSCF-US joins friends around the world in responding to:
- Rampant economic inequality, in which human worth has come to be equated with material net worth. Poverty and economic vulnerability are growing, and shameful numbers of people live with hunger in our wealthy nation. The wealthy and powerful are eviscerating the poor in their grasp for even more money, power, and resources.
- Oppressions based on race, sexual identity, gender identity, immigration status, nationality, religion, and economic class
- Violence - physical, structural, psychological, and social, which is used to enforce many forms of domination.
- Militarism - the intersecting evils of racism, the military industrial complex, and economic exploitation.
- The ongoing processes of genocide towards Black and Indigenous communities.
This is also a time of multiple global existential crises. In a world order that has been made to center American interests we do not seek to tell other societies how to live. Rather, the WSCF-US joins friends around the world in responding to:
- The ecological crisis that threatens the extinction of our planet’s life. Today’s young people must deal with choices made by older generations, while the poor of the Earth feel the most profound effects of environmental collapse. American governments and corporations are particularly culpable, placing profit before the welfare not only of human beings but also of ecosystems.
- Weapons of mass destruction, which are not a “solved” problem of yesteryear but a continuing threat to the whole of the planet.
- Authoritarian governments which are growing in number, threatening the safety particularly of already-vulnerable communities.
- Despotism and extreme poverty that force millions of human beings to be on the move, risking their lives to cross borders in search of safety.
Our promise
|
For students and young adults:
For our church and ecumenical partners:
|
|