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The Ecumenical Review, in addition to publishing a selection of documents from the assembly, includes several articles that discuss different aspects of the assembly,
In the issue’s first article, Dietrich Werner writes that the “assembly showed the potential of the churches for common action for peace, ecological transformation, and human rights work, as well as the shortcomings and continuing tensions and conflicts within the church that reflect a dramatically fragmented world torn apart by the forces of war, racism, and serious injustice.”
In her reflection on the assembly’s Unity Statement, Orthodox theologian Dr Marina Kolovopoulou writes that it has “a pastoral character as a response to the common wounds of humanity we are experiencing, revealing the need to repent, to support the value and life of humanity, as well as the need for mutual solidarity and respect in the light of our Christian identity.”
Other articles in the issue include an account of the Bible study organized during the pre-assembly on the Just Community of Women and Men, and a keynote address from the Global Ecumenical Theological Institute (GETI) held in conjunction with the assembly, which gathered about 100 younger theologians who explored the theme “Christ's Love (Re)moves Borders.”
International Review of Mission takes as its starting point the assembly message, “A Call to Act Together,” with a series of articles from various perspectives outlining, expanding, and critiquing the message.
“The assembly message surveys in brief our ecumenical heart in Christ, our fallen and falling ways of moving together, and resolves in a call to go into the whole world, reminding and resetting this next phase of the ecumenical movement’s life in mission,” writes editor Rev. Dr Peter Cruchley, director of the WCC’s Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, in the introduction to the issue.
“At the heart of this text was an appeal to live out our ecumenical calling as people moving, urged by the love of Christ, to act together and move together,” he continues.
In her reflection on the assembly message, Dr VethaKani Vedhanayagam from India writes that the assembly message demands a missiological shift of the global ecclesial community “to be ever more transformed into Christ's new creature, demonstrating reconciliation and unity in a world of social, economic, religious, gender, class, and linguistic power and oppression.”
The issue also includes articles by scholars working in spaces beyond the WCC and its recent assembly, offering a range of conceptual and contextual reflections that echo important dimensions of reflections on common witness.
The Ecumenical Review is published four times a year and International Review of Mission twice a year by Wiley on behalf of the WCC. The latest issue of International Review of Mission is the first to be edited by Cruchley, who succeeded Rev. Dr Risto Jukko as CWME director in January 2023, with missiologist Isabella Novsima as the new book reviews editor.
In his editorial, Cruchley paid tribute to the commitment to the mission scholarship and ecumenical engagement of the outgoing editorial team of Jukko, managing editor Rev. Dr Benjamin Simon, and book reviews editor Dr Wanjiru M. Gitau.
Table of Contents: The Ecumenical Review, issue 75:1.
Table of Contents: International Review of Mission, issue 112:1.
Open Access articles from The Ecumenical Review:
Dietrich Werner: “And Yet It Moves”: Dream and Reality of the Ecumenical Movement
Sarojini Nadar, Paulo Ueti, and Johnathan Jodamus: Toward Gender Justice
Open Access articles from International Review of Mission:
James Butler: Human Agency in the Missio Dei and the Problem of Discipleship
