"We do not set out on this decade as starry-eyed idealists dreaming of peace and reconciliation and refusing to acknowledge reality," says Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches. Raiser made the point during a day-long series of events in Berlin to launch the decade to overcome violence: churches for peace and reconciliation (2001-2010).

The day - February 5 - began with a worship service in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in central Berlin, most of which was destroyed by Allied bombing in the second world war. A new sanctuary has been built next to the original tower, which is all that remains of the former structure.

At the conclusion of the service, each worshipper was given a cross fashioned from a bullet casing which was created by George Togba, a former member of a rebel armed force in Liberia who is now a Christian peace activist.

As Berlin's Protestant bishop, Dr Wolfgang Huber, noted, the day marked the 95th anniversary of the birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran theologian who joined the resistance to Hitler and was executed shortly before the end of the second world war.

The initiative calls on the WCC's 342 member churches to work together with local communities, secular movements and people of other faiths everywhere to overcome all forms of violence and to build a culture of peace.

The launch of the decade was troubled, however, by a week-long debate in the WCC's central committee - meeting in nearby Potsdam - over the use of armed force as a last resort.

WCC central committee, Potsdam 2001: opening worship

The moderator of the central committee, Catholicos Aram I of the Armenian Apostolic Church, suggested in his report that violence might be an "unavoidable alternative, a last resort" for people living "under conditions of injustice and oppression, where all means of non-violent actions are used up". This provoked strong reactions, not all of them favourable.

Representatives of the historic peace churches - primarily in northern Europe and North America - and other participants also objected vociferously to a paper presented to the central committee on January 29 with the title "The use of armed force in support of humanitarian purposes".

The paper was hastily taken away and rewritten, changing its focus from a consideration of when - if ever - armed intervention may be appropriate to "the protection of populations when violence is being used against them".

The revised paper, now titled "The protection of endangered peoples in situations of armed violence: towards an ecumenical ethical approach", will be sent to member churches "for further study, reflection and use as they deem appropriate".

The turbulence in Potsdam indicates the difficulties that lie ahead as churches grapple with one of the world's most pressing yet most intractable ills.

WARC general secretary, Setri Nyomi, was one of many Reformed Christians participating in the Potsdam meeting. He told Update that he welcomed the opportunity to meet central committee members from the Reformed family and "to have a rich sharing on where we are as Reformed people". Particularly interesting to him were the links between global economic problems and systemic violence and the potential connections between the decade to overcome violence and WARC's church process on covenanting for justice in the economy and the earth.