1. We come now to the final phase of our study of ecclesiology and ethics. We have explored the common ground and needed relationships between the historic ecumenical projects representing these two areas of interest. The tasks of Faith and Order and Life and Work now continue in the work of Units I and III of the World Council of Churches, which have together sponsored this inquiry.

2. At Rønde, Denmark, in 1993, we explored the relationships between koinonia on the one hand, and justice, peace and the integrity of creation on the other. We challenged the persistent division between the search for visible unity and pursuit of the church's call to prophetic witness and service. We asserted that the ecumenical movement "suffers damage" so long as it is unable to bring these discussions and processes into fruitful interaction. We spoke of the church as intrinsically a "moral community", saying that the church not only has an ethic but is an ethical reality in itself. We argued that ways forward from these insights seemed "both possible and promising."

3. At Tantur, Israel, in 1994, we surveyed continuing efforts to promote such relationships. We looked at memory and hope as foundations for the Christian life, explored the relation of movements and action groups to the structures of the church, considered the interactions of eucharist, covenant and ethical engagement, and took up the ecumenical dimension of moral witness. This time we avoided the term "moral community" and argued instead that in the church as koinonia a constant process of moral formation takes place. We looked for new terminology and found it in the biblical image of oikos, the house or household of life, bringing together the ecological, economic and ecumenical dimensions of our lives. We said, "In the church's own struggles for justice, peace, and the integrity of creation, the esse of the church is at stake."

4. Now, in a meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, 19-23 June 1996, we have further pursued the theme of moral formation, asking what it might mean to speak of the church as a global communion of moral witnessing. The obedience to which we are called is often costly. It may require the churches to position themselves in relation to the issues of particular times and places in ways which call for courage, perseverance and sacrifice. Such faithfulness may, as it has for some of our own contemporaries, come to the point of martyrdom. In memory the church celebrates its martyrs of both the distant and the recent past. In hope it looks for the fulfillment of the reign of God for which they stood. The great "cloud of witnesses" (Heb. 12:1-2), by which we are "surrounded" and whose obedience to God we are called to remember, summons us to a koinonia more profound than any that we have yet been able to achieve.

5. To Johannesburg we brought our diverse theological backgrounds and tendencies. But we were also influenced by having met at this particular place and time and by our shared experience of worship, study, debate and fruitful encounter with local church members and leaders. We were moved to have the opportunity of visiting South Africa in the time of its transition to democracy. We were warmed by the reception we received and impressed by the persons who turned out to greet us. We were saddened to learn of the growing unemployment and violence that have already overtaken this beloved country. We sensed that a political miracle now needs to be followed by an economic miracle. The latter will be more difficult to achieve.

6. We are struck by the perilous, yet hopeful, character of the human situation in which we live. It is easier to say that our moment in history is "post"-something--post-modern, post-apartheid, perhaps post-liberal--than to say what it is. We are rapidly becoming a global community, yet a community constituted by dehumanizing economic and political relationships. We live with violence perpetrated both in the name of justice and in the name of resistance to justice's demands.

7. The planetary scale of our human struggle presents challenges beyond any the churches have faced before.1 Moral issues, formerly seen as having to do mainly with personal conduct within stable orders of value, have now become radicalized. They now have to do with the life, or the death, of human beings and of the created order in which we live. Before we can even speak of a 21st century "global civilization", life together on this planet will need shared visions and institutional expressions for which we have few really relevant precedents. As Christians we speak of an oikoumene, or inclusive horizon of human belonging, offered by God in Jesus Christ to the human race. Following the scriptures, we call this a "household of life", a "heavenly city" where justice, peace and care for creation's integrity prevail. But what may it mean to live lives in the here and now which manifest the first fruits of these gifts and act in anticipation of their fulfillment?

8. Christian faith, today as in the past, risks being captured for ethnic and nationalistic purposes. It risks being called on to help protect the privileges and ways of life of dominant classes. Our brief sojourn in South Africa has suggested to us that the former apartheid regime's theologically constructed defence of racial separation could become an unacknowledged precedent for violence by the rich nations of the northern hemisphere, facing as they do immigration pressures and economic demands from the south and the continuing threat of counter-violence from multitudes of the still-wretched of the earth.

9. If the church is to fulfill its calling to be a sign of God's reign in such a situation, it is imperative that it begin to understand itself as an ecumenical moral community. Hence the importance of the theme of moral formation. The church needs to ask how--with all its theological, liturgical and sacramental resources--it can be a community of relevant moral witness for such a world.

10. Our study of these issues is arranged in four parts:

(1) an inquiry into the meaning of moral formation in church and world;
(2) a reflection on the churches' moral failure in face of nationalistic, ethnic and economic violence together with a discussion of Christian moral testimony in the victory over apartheid;

(3) an exploration of moral formation's grounding in the liturgy of the eucharist and in the implications of baptism; and

(4) a discussion of the idea of an ecumenical moral communion and the possible role, in realizing that communion, of the community called the World Council of Churches.

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