3. In and through the ecumenical movement the churches have learned to reflect and act together. Together they have confessed that though we live in the reality of the world we live from the reality of God, who made the situation of humankind and the wider creation his own in order to redeem and transform it. Together they have brought hope through the gospel message and witnessed to that coming kingdom which is God's promise and goal for the whole of creation.

4. Yet their continuing divisions on important matters of faith, order, life and work have often prevented the churches from offering a unified witness on crucial ethical issues. These divisions among the churches reveal the brokenness of their koinonia, and hamper their prophetic mission and service in the world.

5. Some historical reminders will serve to sharpen this point. In the 1930s the ecumenical movement was unable to bring the churches of Europe to unite in opposition to rearmament. During the German church struggle against Nazism, the ecumenical movement found it exceedingly difficult to give its unequivocal support to the Confessing Church for fear of destroying its fragile relationship with the Evangelical Church in Germany as a whole.

6. After the second world war, the establishment of the World Council of Churches in 1948 signalled the resolve of the ecumenical community both to work for the fuller unity of the church and to participate in the struggle for a new just world order. Already in 1952 the third world conference on Faith and Order at Lund had issued the following challenge: Should not our churches...act together in all matters except those in which deep differences of conviction compel them to act separately?2

Since then there have been continuing efforts within the ecumenical movement to foster the churches' common witness and action, and to relate these to the search for visible unity.

7. A notable expression of the churches' resolve to "act together" was the establishment of the WCC's Programme to Combat Racism (PCR) during the 1970s. But even then, some WCC member churches questioned the ecclesiological legitimacy of this programme. Some tried to hamper its work by arguing that it might disrupt the work of Faith and Order in its quest for the unity of the church - a view which Faith and Order explicitly rejected in the statement "Towards Unity in Tension".3

8. The need to relate ecclesiology and ethics, while long recognized within the ecumenical movement, has assumed a special urgency in recent years and has become a leading theme in recent ecumenical work. This is reflected in the meetings and texts to which we have referred in our reflections at Tantur (thus the Faith and Order/JPIC consultation at Rønde (Costly Unity- 4); the Faith and Order study document Church and World;5 the fifth world conference on Faith and Order held at Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in August 1993;6 and the seventh assembly of the World Council of Churches in Canberra.7

9. This urgency is felt, in part, because of the complexity and severity of the challenges confronting humanity and the wider creation today. The background document for the fifth world conference on Faith and Order ("Towards Koinonia in Faith, Life and Witness"8) made strong mention of new and unsettling world situations that challenge the Christian churches to witness to Jesus Christ in ways perhaps not yet even conceived. To take examples from the social and political sphere, at Tantur we recalled how in the past decade geopolitical hegemonies, especially in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, have collapsed; initially these developments had raised possibilities for peace, but were soon revealed as deeply threatening to fragile human communities which were left naked and without the moral resources to combat brutal and violent uses of power. As the same document noted, "we are witnesses of national disintegration and also of conflicting nationalistic tendencies".9 Problems have arisen not only for nations struggling to establish peace with neighbours, but also for societies seeking to build up their "moral fibre" where the churches have been repressed for decades. Similar problems face both church and society in the Middle East, in the Balkans and in the Caucasus. And in Western Europe and North America the moral influence of the churches has seriously diminished, resulting in a breakdown of those values necessary for a healthy and dynamic "civil society".

10. It is in full awareness of such situations that we have explored the relationship between ecclesiology and ethics. This relationship is not merely an abstract or theoretical matter; here we touch issues of life and death, of deep conviction and commitment. Here we deal with a fundamental vocation of the church and of Christians who work together in facing crucial issues of today. Thus we affirm wholeheartedly the call made by the churches at the WCC seventh assembly in Canberra in 1991

to recommit themselves to work for justice, peace and the integrity of creation, linking more closely the search for sacramental communion of the church with the struggles for justice and peace.10

Furthermore, the churches must commit themselves to one another, recognizing that they need each other on the ecumenical journey. Such commitment is an essential foundation for their common reflection and action. It becomes increasingly clear that the road to a costly unity leads necessarily through a costly commitment of the churches to one another.

11. Such a commitment has sustained the fellowship of the ecumenical movement, even when it has been placed under considerable strain by such issues as mentioned above. This commitment is expressed, on the one hand, in a growing consensus on the need to affirm and emphasize the ethical character of the church (over against those who were previously wary of "moral reductionism"). As stressed in Church and World, this has direct consequences for our understanding of "the unity which we seek":

The connection between unity and justice makes it necessary to ask of every expression of visible unity: "Does it promote justice in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, both within the church and the world?" and secondly, "Does it foster the engagement of the church in God's work for justice?"11

12. This commitment is equally expressed, on the other hand, by a concern for ecclesial renewal amongst those who have been more deeply engaged in ethical praxis. The situation in South Africa today is particularly indicative of this latter need. Now that the struggle against apartheid as the governing ideology is at an end, the South African Council of Churches and its member churches, who were deeply engaged in that struggle, are being forced to give urgent attention to the recovery of a concern for ecclesial unity and fellowship in the task of national reconstruction, the development of a moral society and a just democratic culture. (One sign of unity and renewal in this situation is the formation in April 1994 of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa. But far more remains to be done to manifest fully the unifying power of the gospel against the forces of hatred, fear and division.)

13. Another side of the issue is seen in the strong identification of the Armenian Orthodox Church with the Armenian people in the present conflict with Azerbaijan over the fate of Nagorno-Karabagh. In many other cases too the historical form of ecclesiastical institutions comes into tension with the evangelical mission of the church, and the preaching of a gospel that transcends ethnic particularism and eschews violence.

next