Editor EMILIO CASTRO

Managing Editors T. K. THOMAS MARLIN VANELDEREN

Editorial Assistant JOAN CAMBITSIS

The quarterly of the World Council of Churches

Editorial The theme chosen for this issue of The Ecumenical Review emerged from the

WCC’s Sixth Assembly in Vancouver in 1983. In highlighting what the Council should do in the coming years, delegates from the member churches urged that priority be given to engaging the churches “in a conciliar process of mutual commitment (covenant) to Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation”. How to do that has been the subject of extended discussion since Vancouver both in the WCC governing bodies and staff and among member churches. Some of the fruits of that reflection are offered in the essays which follow.

Obviously the call for churches to join together in costly commitment to a common struggle against the numerous manifestations of injustice, war and destruction of creation in our world is not addressed only to the 310 churches in more than a hundred countries who are affiliated with the WCC. Just as obviously, none of these issues is a new item on the ecumencial agenda.

The process which is now going on within the World Council of Churches has been and will continue to be enriched by many parallel initiatives being undertaken worldwide. Because many of these efforts are small by the standards of the media, unnoticed and unknown by more than a handful of people outside of the places where they are happening, a major contribution which the ecumenical movement has to offer is the linking for mutual support, solidarity and enrichment of persons participating in such local and regional efforts.

It goes without saying that the subject matter delineated by the terms “justice, peace and the integrity of creation” is extremely vast. Consequently, a collection of essays under this theme cannot pretend to provide anything approaching complete coverage of the subject. But if the contents of this issue of The Ecumenical Review do not present a definitive ecumenical word on covenanting for justice, peace and the

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integrity of creation, we hope that the way in which the writers have addressed key facets of this ecumenical process will help to clarify the issues at stake and in turn to stimulate the further discussion that is needed.

Four general observations may help to set these essays in context.

The concreteness of the challenges The primary accent should fall on justice, peace and the integrity of creation and

o n the specific ways in which they are being threatened in our world. Each of these terms evokes literally hundreds of concrete challenges .- oppression, violence. degradation of the environment - being faced daily by our fellow human beings. Each calls up images of numerous situations in which Christians are making a costly witness to their faith in God’s love as manifested in Jesus Christ. And that witness in turn reminds us of the many similar situations in which people are still waiting to hear that kind of Christian testimony.

The point of giving priority emphasis in this ecumenical process to justice, peace and the integrity of creation themselves is to insist that we may not allow internal theological or ecclesiological difficulties to be an obstacle to Christian participation in concrete struggles for justice, peace and integrity of creation.

To make this point very specifically, this is a call for Christians to be involved, because of what they confess, in creating a climate of trust between the power blocs of this world, a climate in which conversations about disarmament could have a chance of success. I t is an insistence that again and again the church as church must plead with the parties in conflict situations to come to the negotiating table. It is a claim that the churches’ decades of struggle against the scandal of apartheid - and their conviction against all evidence that reconciliation with justice is possible even in a situation so desperate as that of Southern Africa - is an essential part of their witne acknowledgment that when Christians take on their own lips the Psalmist’s confession that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof’, they are committing themselves to loving care for this fragile planet, pledging t o take a stand against the killing of forests and the polluting of oceans and the fouling of the air.

The list is long of areas in which the churches and public opinion need to be mobilized, so that they - so that we - see more clearly the moral and ethical dimensions of problems too often classified as “mere” political conflicts and power struggles. In many o f these areas the churches have long been sensitive and active; in some their awareness is of more recent vintage. One example of the latter is the massive foreign debt of many countries in the South and the intolerable human suffering which those mind-boggling and abstract figures daily exact from millions of poor people.

In every part of the planet we are witnesses of injustice. In the cries that rise to heaven from the poor and oppressed we must hear the Spirit calling Christians to be present, to incarnate justice, to show solidarity. All over the world, homeless people fleeing for their lives present vivid reminders that the permanent vocation of the pilgrim church is to be on the side of the persecuted and to offer solidarity and protection.

Theirs are the real human stories behind the general terms -justice and injustice, peace and war, integrity and destruction of God’s creation. Empowering the poor, proclaiming the justice of God’s kingdom, announcing the shulom of God’s peace,

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understanding what Christ’s death and resurrection imply for the whole cosmos, the gospel call to a discipleship of concrete participation in struggles for peace and justice and for full acceptance of responsibility as stewards of creation - all these are elements of the invitation to an active search for concrete solutions and concrete proclamation.

Covenanting and unity In acknowledging that our point of departure is concrete awareness of, reflection

on and engagement in the struggles for justice, peace and the integrity of creation, we are saying that we must not use these conflict areas in the world as grist for our theological and conceptual mills until we have immersed ourselves fully as churches and as Christians in attempts to participate in overcoming those problems, until we have affirmed the hope of the kingdom in the daily lives of human beings. Van- couver’s call for a process of mutual commitment or covenant was an explicit invitation to reaffirm and rediscover our Christian roots as we commit ourselves in various ways to the encounter between the dynamics of the kingdom and the tragic realities of history. Once immersed in this conflict, we are pushed to search more deeply into our motivations, our very being. It is there that we are sent back to the concept of covenant.

An insight which the stirring experience of worship at the Vancouver Assembly made vivid to many people was that the radical situation of the world demands a strength, an endurance and a hope which we cannot produce from our own resources, but that the depth of our faith in God enables us to go beyond those human limitations. It is from a similar awareness that the accent on covenant takes on its importance.

Covenant is an acknowledgment that what we are doing takes its meaning as a response to God’s own calling and decision, that we are living by grace, strengthened by God’s gracious decision to provide salvation and liberation. The biblical material in the articles in this issue of The Ecumenical Review points to how our human alliances could be offered to God within his own covenant as offerings in response to the manifestation of his gracious will. To link together for peace and for justice, to care for the whole inhabited earth - these are integral components of our Christian identity, because they belong to our response to God’s will as manifested in the old covenant and confirmed in the new covenant in Jesus Christ.

Theologically, we understand that our being as ecclesia - an assembly called by God - is at stake in how we respond to the pressing needs of the world, because it is there that God’s grace is to be fully recognized and manifested. Ecumenically, we discern a widening manifestation of our church unity in Jesus Christ in bonds of solidarity, in covenants, in the responsible reaction to human needs. Because God has made a covenant of shalom, because he has promised to reunite all things in Jesus Christ, we are called to unite our forces to be witnesses to God’s saving will in particular situations of crisis and in the preservation of all of creation.

People who are suffering, communities who are entertaining hope against hope for tomorrow are entitled to count on the solidarity of Christians and churches every- where. For in God’s gracious covenant we belong together. We are already one. From the centre of our faith in the holy communion, “the new covenant in Jesus’ blood”, we are sent out to serve in the world. But in our attempt to serve there we encounter Christ in the child and in the poor, and we are sent back to the table of gratitude to express in

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thanksgiving our belonging to the gracious covenant of God. Reflection on specific, concrete covenants will help us to discern in depth our unity in Christ, our belonging together at the table of the Lord.

Programme and urgency Inevitably, one will hear the term “WCC programme” being used to describe the

process of covenanting for justice, peace and the integrity of creation. Such a description is in fact inaccurate: the process is more correctly described as a “programme emphasis” or “priority” - a focal p i n t for encounter, discussion and action within the churches of the world, facilitated by the WCC and drawing on the ecumenical insights and experience emerging from its programmes over the years. Seen thus, the emphasis will incorporate much of what the churches have been doing over the years, both individually and with each other in various ecumenical configura- tions, including the activities which they have asked the WCC to undertake. In the coming years many ongoing programme activities of the WCC will be set in the context of the justice, peace and integrity of creation emphasis.

But the problem with the term “programme” in this context is not only that it is formally incorrect. It also risks implying limitations on the scope of what is being attempted. “Justice, peace and the integrity of creation” must be far more than a slogan, far more than an administrative rubric under which to subsume a vast number of continuing activities. What is also essential is a passion, growing out of an awareness of how urgent the human situation really is. Calling the churches to join in a worldwide mobilization of all Christian forces to confront the pressing issues of the day demands that kind of sensc of urgency.

That a sense of urgency is appropriate needs little elaboration. A recent case in point was the April 1986 accident at the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl. For many people, this technological breakdown made it abundantly clear - far more vividly than discussions and debates and demonstrations and declarations - that in a nuclear age the question of world peace is too serious to postpone. Difficult as it is for us to come to a clear common mind about the path the churches might mark towards world peace, we have no choice but to search together for a word of wisdom that might help this present generation find its way out of the nuclear nightmare.

Even while this issue o f The Ecumenical Review was being prepared, develop- ments in South Africa have intensified the churches’ concerted action to respond in a covenanting spirit to the need for demonstrations of solidarity with Christians in that country. Similar sensitivity and concerted action will be required to overcome imbalances in trade relations or to find solutions to the foreign debt crises or to preserve creation for future generations. We cannot restrict this search to our ordinary ecumenical programme agendas or wait for regularly scheduled international occa- sions like WCC assemblies - the next one will be in 1991 - to address these problems together.

This is in no way to downgrade the extent and importance of what is already happening. Christians and churches are actively and sacrificially involved in pro- claiming the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ and participating responsibly in a search for ways to meet human needs. But the call to mutual commitment for justice, peace and the integrity of creation is an appeal to go beyond these present engagements to concerted action together, regionally and globally. Such a commitment will give a

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better chance of being heard and of realizing the potential for better contributing to solutions. Within a conviction of God’s grace and patience, we need a sense of urgency and impatience if we are to relate the liberating covenant of God to the conflict situations of today.

All the churches Far from claiming these insights as ours alone or marking out this engagement for

justice, peace and the integrity of creation as our exclusive mandate, we acknowledge with joy that these concerns are not the monopoly of the World Council of Churches. At the Assembly at Vancouver in 1983, at the German Protestant Kirchentag in Diisseldorf in 1985, from within the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Lutheran World Federation, from many other Christian bodies, a common desire has been manifested for engaging the churches in the search for a council for peace, in which they could address at the highest level a word to the whole world. We thank God for the way in which this movement of the Holy Spirit has awakened many to the importance of commonality of action. Continuation of this ecumenical consultation is absolutely necessary.

The World Council of Churches is fully in sympathy with the concern manifested in the call for a worldwide council for peace. Of course, we recognize the ecclesiologi- cal difficulties that the use of the word “council” raises. But to close ourselves (I priori to this possibility could limit us in the future.

Action groups with Christian motivation are present everywhere in the world. The challenge which they are posing to the churches must be fully recognized at the level of church authority so that those at the highest possible level of decision-making can together offer a prophetic word to the world.

We recognize as well that the need to find solutions to basic human problems concerns persons of other religious and philosophical persuasions as much as the churches. We need to cooperate with them at all levels. But as Christians and as churches, and specifically as the World Council of Churches, we are responsible for seeing that all Christian forces are mobilized on the frontiers of justice, peace and

Where this will lead, the form it will take, is an open question. The WCC Executive Committee has said that this process of justice, peace and the integrity of creation should culminate in an event in conjunction with the Seventh Assembly of the WCC in 1991. Again, it must be stressed that the point of this is not to integrate this effort into the administrative structures and needs of the WCC. Rather, it is to offer the highest authority available to the WCC, its assembly, as the crowning point of this process.

What emerges from this process and that crowning event - whatever form it takes - will be offered to the common wisdom of the delegates of member churches in conjunction with the WCC assembly. But this should not be seen only as a place in which WCC member churches receive an “official line” on the subject. Whatever wisdom has been attained must be disseminated through wider processes fully involving the churches’ participation.

What is important is to mobilize all levels of the people of God for this process, taking care to recognize the particular contribution of action groups, who are daily exposed at the frontiers of injustice, who are on the streets raising the concerns for

responsibility vis-a-vis creation.

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peace to the conscience of humankind. Thus we may hope lor a process that involves all the churches and their authorities in a common proclamation of the gracious covenant of God, which will give us a new chance for peace. a new vocation for justice. a new assurance that tomorrow will belong to God’s justice.

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Recognition should be made of the special contribution to the gathering of materials for this issue by Ulrich Duchrow, who has served ably as consultant to the WCC for setting in motion the Council’s engagement in the issues of justice, peace and the integrity of creation. From September 1986 Preman Niles of Sri Lanka will be continuing this key administrative role.

EMILIO CASTRO

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