Sexuality as an Integral Part of the Church's Being and Mission

The article draws on the experience of being part of the Reference Group on Human Sexuality and other debates on sexuality in the World Council of Churches to discuss the “Message of the 11th Assembly.” It makes explicit how issues of sexuality have been avoided and how they ground the understanding of theological perspectives and the church's being and mission. Finally, it presents alternatives to reclaim sexuality and make the movement of reconciliation grounded in a transformative and queer spirituality more concrete and truthful to people's lives – a sexy movement.     

Christ's Love and Borders

This article is a keynote address given at the Global Ecumenical Theological Institute (GETI) held in Karlsruhe, Germany, August-September 2022, on the theme “Christ's love (re)moves borders” and organized in conjunction with the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches. The article argues that around the world, political borders are being cemented by populist nationalisms even as pandemics, capital flows, and climate change ignore them. If Christians are to resist such ideologies, they must recover a robust incarnational theology and their fundamental identity as members of the worldwide body of Christ. Simultaneously, even as borders between people are being reinforced, the border between people and machines is blurred by transhumanist and posthumanist agendas. Such paradoxes will continue to abound in an intellectual landscape where what is distinctively human is obscured by technological hubris and philosophical naïveté.     

Love and Eschatology

Abstract : This article reflects on the connection between Christian hope for salvation and Christian praxis today. Following a discussion of Christian approaches to hope, salvation, and reconciliation, the eschatological potential of love is explored in conversation with significant theologies of love in Western Christianity. It is argued that love, properly understood, offers the most adequate and dynamic horizon for approaching God's coming reign and for being transformed in the process.     

Christian Mission,Politics, and Socio‐Economic Development: The Contribution of Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation

This article considers the contribution of the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation to the political and socio‐economic development of Zambia. First, the introduction and growth of Christianity in the mining areas of the Copperbelt are explored. Next, the article traces the formation and development of the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation. In the third place, it analyzes the role played by the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation in the politics and development of Zambia during the first decades of its formation, including its participation in Zambia's struggle for independence. After political independence, the foundation continued to fulfil a major part in facilitating reconciliation between blacks and whites. The article argues that the participation of the church in God's mission in the world cannot be divorced from socio‐economic and political realities.     

De-Religionizing the Missio Dei

The message of the World Council of Churches' 11th Assembly invites the global Christian family “to act together” – a call that is based on Christ's love urging us (2 Cor. 5:14) toward reconciliation and unity. This is the missio Dei of the church of all ages. In considering the relevance of this message and call, this article endeavours to hermeneutically problematize (to “de-religionize”) them through biblical, theological, and missiological lenses in the present global context from the perspective of those who are marginalized, victimized, and in need of this gospel message.     

Pan‐African Women of Faith and a Vision of Inclusive Global Theological Education

This article provides an introduction to the Pan‐African Women's Ecumenical Empowerment Network (PAWEEN), formally established as a network in 2015, but which traces its origins back to the 10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Busan, the Republic of Korea, in 2013. PAWEEN provides an opportunity for a mutual invitation to deep listening and concerted engagement to make the realities of past and present living, of faith and agency visible. It is one example of a network under development, grounded in the liberating gospel message and committed to the aim of a transformative theological education, which extends this invitation to all who share this common concern and vision.     

A Call to Act Together

This is the text of the message issued by the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, meeting in Karlsruhe, Germany, from 31 August to 8 September 2022. In their message, delegates stated that all are called by Christ's love to repentance, reconciliation, and justice in the face of war, inequality, and sins against creation.     

Message from the Ecumenical Youth Gathering

This is the message of the Ecumenical Youth Gathering held in advance of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, which met in Karlsruhe, Germany, in August–September 2022. In their message, the youth voiced a series of laments, and recognized and prayed for justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation of the wounds the church has inflicted and continues to inflict in the world, and they called on the WCC to provide a meaningful space for an equal representation of young people in all its processes.     

The Ecumenical Assembly for Justice,Peace and the Integrity of Creation

The Vancouver assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1983, in part through the efforts of Heino Falcke and the delegates from the GDR, called on the WCC “to engage member churches in a conciliar process of mutual commitment to justice, peace and the integrity of creation”. In the GDR, the high point of this conciliar process was an Ecumenical Assembly of Churches and Christians which met in three sessions in 1988 and 1989, and which, not least because of the involvement of peace, environmental and human rights groups, made unprecedented demands for the reform of the GDR and influenced the citizens' movements and political parties formed at the time of the peaceful revolution of autumn 1989. As envisaged at the Vancouver assembly, the conciliar process was intended to link the issue of peace, a priority at that time for many WCC members in the northern hemisphere, with that of global justice, an overriding concern for churches in the South. In the course of preparations for the Ecumenical Assembly in the GDR, however, the discourse of justice was applied to GDR society itself, something that was reflected in the 10,000 proposals from parishes, groups and individuals for the assembly, and in the “testimonies of concern” with which the assembly opened its first session in February 1988. In this article,¹ which comes from a conference in Dresden in April 1999 to mark the 10th anniversary of the final session of the Ecumenical Assembly, Falcke reflects on how the assembly changed from being a Christian, church gathering to becoming an emerging opposition within civil society.     

Dreaming a New Future

“Mission from the Margins” is not about the victims but about confronting the forces of marginalization. It is about naming and dismantling cultures and structures that keep the world unjust by legitimizing abuse of human beings and creation. The Ecumenical Conversation “Dreaming a New Future” was an attempt to be enriched by the yearnings for justice, freedom, and life of those who are thus pushed to the margins. It calls the churches to resist the schemes and solutions of those who occupy the centres and instead opt to be signs and symbols of God's reign by partnering with the marginalized in their struggles. As such, “Mission from the Margins” is both a subversive and a creative mission engagement. It insists that our actions of love, reconciliation and unity must critically engage with the dispensers of injustice. This essay proposes Life-centred affirmations and actions, repatterning “sentness,” partnership for justice as a way toward unity, and the need for the church to be a moral force as signposts for the Pilgrimage of Justice, Reconciliation and Unity.     

Christ’s Love amid Pandemic

In 2022, the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches is to take place in Karlsruhe, Germany, at a time when nations are searching for the strength to rise out of the ashes of COVID-19. The assembly theme, “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity,” reflects God’s vision for creation. The focus on Christ’s love and its inherent power to move the world to reconciliation and solidarity is necessary, as the assembly will gather amid perplexity, anxiety, and fundamental existential, structural, and societal questions. These questions are related to humanity’s place in creation: how we inhabit the earth and make sense of our own lives and the lives of other creatures and how we seek to develop collective human conscience to live justly and peacefully together in God’s world.     

Christ’s Love,Peace, Justice,and Freedom Seen against the Challenges of the Modern World

This is an edited version of an address given in Paralimni at the Open University of Cyprus in January 2019 during a meeting of the assembly planning committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), hosted by the Archdiocese of Constantia and Ammochostos. It is a reflection on the theme set for the WCC’s 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2021, “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity.”     

Ministering at the Margins in a Time of Pandemic

COVID-19 is having a devastating effect globally, especially among those who live at the margins of societies. Health and economic crises are impacting communities and countries, with particularly adverse effects on vulnerable populations. COVID-19’s impact is increased when we factor in racism, land displacement, and gender injustice. The marginalization and oppression experienced from racial injustice, displacement, and gender injustice increase vulnerability and intensify trauma from COVID-19 globally. Churches can respond effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic with particular focus on communities at the margins. Churches that respond to COVID-19 through ministries of evangelism, compassion, empowerment, and advocacy can demonstrate Christ’s love in the midst of the pandemic and contribute to reconciliation and solidarity with vulnerable communities forced to the margins. This article offers insights related to four themes identified by the reference group for the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace that was initiated at the 10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Busan in 2013.     

The Staurocentric Logic of Eberhard Jüngel: Pneumatology and Ecclesiology

Ecclesiology and pneumatology remain two areas of Eberhard Jüngel's thought that are repeatedly critiqued as being ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘deficient’ due to his reliance on an Augustinian grammar in describing the Holy Spirit. This article argues for a revised understanding of both Jüngel's trinitarian theology and ecclesiology in light of his commitment to staurocentrism. Jüngel's staurocentric doctrine of God, for which he is so often lauded, is only possible because of the Augustinian grammar he accepts for his pneumatology. Only as the bond of love, the relation between the relations, can the Spirit make clear how it is that the triune God, fully identified with the life of Jesus, can die. Ultimately, Jüngel builds on Augustine's doctrine of the Spirit to demonstrate two distinct, yet interrelated, theological principles: first, that the person of the Spirit is indispensible within the event of God's triune being; and second, that within the church it is the Spirit's personhood, uniquely, which makes possible ecclesial correspondence to God.     

Churches in solidarity with the divided Korean Peninsula

This article explores God’s mission of reconciliation through the ecumenical efforts for peace, reconciliation, and reunification on the Korean Peninsula. It consists of three parts. The first section explores reconciliation as a means of overcoming the division system in Korea. The second section offers reconciliation as a peace process in the Korean context. The third section highlights the engagement in the reconciliation as a spiritual journey from the World Council of Churches’ global prayer campaign, which is a Christian pathway toward a peace system in the Korean Peninsula. In particular, this article demonstrates that prayer is not a strategy in our work of advocacy but a spiritual mandate and movement toward peace and justice cultivating reconciliation.     

TWO FORMS OF LOVE: The Problem of Preferential Love in Kierkegaard's Works of Love

The duty to love one's neighbor as oneself is at the core of Kierkegaard's Works of Love. In this book, Kierkegaard unfolds the meaning of neighborly love and claims that it is the only valid form of true love. He contrasts between neighborly love and preferential love (which includes romantic love and friendship) and criticizes the latter for being nothing but a form of selfishness. However, in some contexts, Kierkegaard seems to acknowledge the significance of preferential love relationships, and does not disallow them. Therefore, his understanding of preferential love appears to be confused and inconsistent. My essay discusses the tension in Kierkegaard's position regarding preferential love, and by presenting recent readings of Works of Love, it asks whether this tension is resolvable and offers a suggestion for a possible solution.     

The Imperative of Diakonia for the Church and Theological Education

This article begins by arguing that diakonia is an imperative for the church, be it at the local, national, regional, or global level. It goes on to describe how diakonia has been part of the identity of the World Council of Churches during its 70 years of existence, and highlights the struggle of diakonia and development within the fellowship and ecumenical partners. The article focuses on the document Called to Transformative Action: Ecumenical Diakonia as the most recent attempt to reflect on who we are and what we do as church. It identifies one important aspect of diakonia as reflected in the Pan‐African Women's Ecumenical Empowerment Network perspective on theological education. The article concludes by reflecting on the author's vision for a just community of women and men in prophetic diakonia.     

Lutheran Subjectivity and Costly Neighbor Love in Secular Sweden: Confronting the Refugee Crisis through Alethurgy

This article offers a constructive Lutheran theology that challenges the hegemony of secular Sweden, particularly in light of challenges posed by the current global refugee crisis. The author uses Guillermo Hanson's creative rethinking of Lutheran subjectivity to highlight a radical embodied vision of neighbor love. Retrieving Luther's claim that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, the article concludes with proposals for alethurgic practices that wed neighbor love to acknowledgement of a common God.     

An Ecclesia and Missio Crucis: Douglas John Hall's Contribution to the Missional Church Conversation

Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall's contextual analysis of the church in North America has contributed significantly to the missional church conversation; however, his own constructive ecclesiology has received less attention. This article presents and critically examines Hall's proposal of a “suffering church” and offers constructive suggestions for further developing it: expanding solidarity into accompaniment; shifting from the category of representation to reconciliation as the paradigm for the church's mission; and finally, considering the theology of the cross in more pneumatological terms.     

Mission and Reconciliation in the Orthodox Church

This article examines the Orthodox view on reconciliation as reflected in the famous patriarchal and synodical encyclicals early in the last century and in more recent official documents: the Messages of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches, the approved documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s official statements. These are looked at in reference to (i) the mission statement of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, Together towards Life, and (ii) the papal encyclicals Unitatis redintegratio and Ut unum sint. The article further examines the need for a common Christian witness and the reactions within the Orthodox world from a tiny but vocal anti-ecumenical minority. It underlines the importance of a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities along with the existing Universal Declaration of Human Rights to address the ecological problem and inequities of the current world economic system, based on the interrelatedness of economy and ecology and the consolidation of the interfaith dialogue for a wider reconciliation. The article also underlines the highest priority of the theological dialogues at all levels and by all bodies of the Orthodox ecclesial reality as a necessary step to promote reconciliation. Finally, the article assesses (i) the dialogue aiming to achieve the visible unity of the church; (ii) dialogues generally focusing on Christian unity, or even unity with other faithful; (iii) dialogues aiming as much as possible at common Christian witness; and (iv) dialogues focusing on the church’s responsibility toward society and the integrity of creation.