5. The being (esse) of the church is at stake in the justice, peace and integrity of creation process. It is not sufficient to affirm that the moral thrust of JPIC is only related to the nature and function of the church. More than this is at issue. It can be described from two directions at once, the experience of JPIC as a conciliar process and the experience of the church's nature itself. Koinonia is an apt term for both. It is, for example, an empirically verifiable observation that commitment to and working for particular moral causes creates community among people. The experience of JPIC again and again has been that people have been gathered into a fellowship which can be described as koinonia. Involvement in these struggles of human community generates this koinonia and often enlightens doctrine. An "ecclesio-genetic" power is at work here, frequently moving participants to rich liturgical expression and raising deep religious questions for them, questions of faith and commitment. The power of the Holy Spirit is present here — this is the testimony.

6. At the same time, faith has always claimed the being of the church as itself a "moral" reality. Faith and discipleship are embodied in and as a community way of life. The memory of Jesus Christ (anamnesis), formative of the church itself, is a force shaping of moral existence. The Trinity is experienced as an image for human community and the basis for social doctrine and ecclesial reality. Such explication could continue, but need not, since it all comes to the same point: the church not only has, but is, a social ethic, a koinonia ethic.

7. Yet a number of complex qualifications must be made in treating the JPIC process and the church as, at heart, moral realities.
 

7.1. To participate in a particular moral cause does not necessarily signify entry into or belonging in the church. To claim that all approved moral action by non-members somehow makes them church members ("latent" or "anonymous" Christians) is a form of ecclesiastical imperialism. We affirm, however, the experience of fellowship and shared witness which extends beyond the boundaries of the church.

7.2. The church, it must be said, is not constituted by or dependent for its ongoing existence upon the moral activities of its members. Its origins and ongoing life rest in the lavish grace and patience of God. However, moral lapses on the part of the members of the church may and often do threaten the credible witness of the church. At this time the church is called to the kind of resistance to the threats to life which JPIC sought to help accomplish. In any case, it is not too much to say that the holiness of the church means the constant moral struggle of its members.

7.3. Given the ambiguity and complexity of so many concrete moral challenges, it is not to be expected that all the members of a particular church, or all church organizations in a particular region, will arrive at the same moral decision in each particular situation. Christian freedom encompasses sincere and serious differences of moral judgment.

7.4. This observation is not an opening of the door to wholesale moral relativism, however. There are boundaries, and it will always be the case that certain decisions and actions are in contradiction to the nature and purpose of the church and the central teaching of the gospel. Instructive past instances of this are those German Christians who uncritically pledged allegiance to the Nazi state, and those South African churches which supported apartheid. In both cases those concerned excluded themselves from the church of Jesus Christ. They were guilty of what Visser ‘t Hooft described as "moral heresy". Here the being of the church is at stake. It should be added that heavy caution is in order when the stakes of moral judgment are this high, since the boundary is one which draws the line between true and false church. What is both safe to say and important is that serious moral struggle over life issues is always required of the church by its very nature.

7.5. Not all moral concerns carry equal weight, of course. We believe that the church is now called to respond above all, as JPIC did, to threats to life as a moral imperative. Given its role as God's co-worker in the created order and as the proclaimer of the gospel of salvation, the church is bound by its nature and purpose to act decisively when life itself is threatened by whatever forces — economic, political, military and through damage to the environment. Issues of survival are the most compelling for the church.

7.6. Moral issues and struggle often represent the line between "cheap" unity and "costly" unity. Cheap unity avoids morally contested issues because they would disturb the unity of the church. Costly unity is discovering the churches' unity as a gift of pursuing justice and peace. It is often acquired at a price. Consider the struggle for independence in Namibia or the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa. Forces tried to play off Roman Catholics against Lutherans, Anglicans against Methodists, and indigenous African churches against historic denominations. Genuine unity was discovered in joint struggle, often breaking new ecumenical ground (witness the Kairos document and its ferment). In other cases costly unity is precisely to transcend loyalty to blood and soil, nation and ethnic or class heritage in the name of the God who is one and whose creation is one. It is the unity of the church accomplished on the way of the cross, paid for by the life of Christ and the lives of the martyrs, whose witness inevitably included moral witness. This is unity which, by God's grace, breaks down dividing walls so that we might be reconciled to God and one another. JPIC as a process has often borne testimony to this costly unity. Its enemy is cheap unity — forgiveness without repentance, baptism without discipleship, life without daily dying and rising in a household of faith (the oikos) that is to be the visible sign of God's desire for the whole inhabited earth (the oikoumene).

8. These comments about moral struggle and unity made, we go on to say that the threats to life today only intensify gratitude to God for the gift of life itself. All creation bears the stamp of holy things. The church, in its whole bearing, should, as a moral community, help foster a "sacramental" orientation towards life, just as the church understands itself, its being, its mission and witness on a sacramental and eucharistic basis. There is no better place to begin than with the moral meaning of the sacraments themselves. Baptism, for example, is at the heart of the church insofar as the baptized become the effective witness — martyr — to gospel values in the world. Questions of faith and moral and social questions are inseparable from the act of Christian witness that baptism mandates. Eucharist as a sacrament of communion, to cite a second example, is real food for a scattered people in their moral struggle, to heal the brokenness of human being and community. The church sees both its inner unity and solidarity with others as expressions of sharing the bread of life. The sacraments as person-shaping rites can lead us into sacramental living.

9. From its side the efforts for justice, peace and creation have so very often pointed to the essential place of worship and spirituality in our life together. Community is nurtured, hope is sustained, forgiveness is offered, bread for the journey is shared, new energy is discovered. We find a bridge between ecclesiology and ethics in our experience of worship and the deepening of spirituality.

10. The eschatological dimension of both the unity of the church and of JPIC must be affirmed. While the requirements of each will finally be met in God's time and in God's way, that does not invite passivity on our part. On the contrary, our active participation in the concerns for the unity of the church and for justice, peace and the integrity of creation align us with God's final work of fulfilment, just as that final fulfilment prods us to battle the threats to life and claim life itself as the treasure entrusted to us.

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