Editor EMILIO CASTRO

Managing Editors THOMAS F. BEST JEAN STROMBERG MARLIN VANELDEREN

Book Review Editor THOMAS F. BEST

Editorial Assistant JOAN CAMBITSIS

The quarterly of the World Council of Churches

Editorial

It is appropriate that conversion should be the theme for this last issue of The Ecumenical Review to be edited by Emilio Castro. During his distinguished career of Christian service, the World Council of Churches’ general secretary, who retires at the end of 1992, has been an insistent and articulate voice calling the churches and the ecumenical movement to hold together concern for the unity of the church and concern for its mission. In the foreword to A Pussionfor Unity (WCC Publications, 1992), a collection of Castro’s essays on ecumenism published to mark his retirement, JosC Miguez Bonino observes that his long-time friend and colleague “cannot think of a unity that is not centred in a gospel which has to be confessed, witnessed, enacted and proclaimed. This evangelical passion makes it necessary at every point to continue to speak of a personal faith, of personal transformation, to make preaching a permanent invitation.” No one who has heard Castro in the pulpit could doubt the strength of that conviction.

So it was no surprise that he should have entitled his final report to the WCC central committee in August “A Call to Conversion” (reprinted in this issue). Describing conversion as “the permanent experience of living in relation to the events of God in Jesus Christ and being called by those events to respond in faith and obedience”, Castro links the call to personal conversion with the call to conversion that is addressed to the whole people of God: “Conversion as the revolving of my life around the axis of God’s revelation in Christ is not intended in the first place for my own salvation, for my own benefit. Rather, it is always an incorporation into the saving and liberating mission of God in the world.” Most of the address is then devoted to exploring concrete ways in which the WCC can “manifest the faith and obedience” required at this moment in history.

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But conversion finds its way onto the ecumenical agenda not only because of the role played by the missionary movement in the birth of modem ecumenism. Conver- sion, with its connotations of turning, of change, of renewal, is at the very heart of the ecumenical movement. “There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without interior conversion,” said the Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council. Over the past twenty years, conversion of the churches has been a leitmotifof the work of the Groupe des Dombes, whose most recent document, Pour la conversion des Eglises (1991), is introduced in detail by Alain Blancy in this issue.

But if the theme of conversion links the unity of the church with the churches’ efforts to fulfill in obedience their common calling, and if ecumenism itself is a clarion call for churches to turn away from old habits of separation and division, one may also identify a third way in which conversion is an ecumenically significant topic: it is a reality of which the understanding is enriched by the mutual exchange of ideas and insights which is one of the greatest values of ecumenism.

In this issue of The Ecumenical Review, a documentary survey by Ans van der Bent, the transcript of an extended conversation about conversion and essays from various parts of the world display many of the facets of how conversion is understood. Different Christian churches place the accent differently as they articulate their understanding of the call summed up succinctly in Jesus’ words recorded in the first chapter of Mark’s gospel: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15).

Those complementary emphases may be seen in the articles in this issue: conver- sion is a radical turning, yet it must be an ongoing process; conversion is an individual step, but it may never be reduced to something individualistic, for it can thrive only with the nurture of a Christian community; conversion satisfies that restlessness of heart eloquently identified by St Augustine, yet it calls us not to rest but to discipleship and obedience; conversion is a supremely spiritual reality, the very work of the Holy Spirit, yet it is lived out in everyday commitment to the neighbour and to justice; conversion is to be proclaimed, yet we go badly wrong if we fail first of all to hear the call to conversion addressed to ourselves; conversion is urgent, yet in calling others to conversion we must leam to “move into the space of others” and “recover the delicacy of touch” of God’s dealing with humankind.

It is an unhappy reality of ecumenical life that these different facets of how conversion is understood are often the source of tension rather than mutual enrich- ment. Several participants in the “round-table” conversation speak of a painful gulf in their context between Christians who identify themselves as “converted” or “born- again” and those who see themselves as “ecumenical”. We have not yet achieved complete convergence of understanding about the relation between conversion and interfaith dialogue, a subject raised at several points in this issue.

But the sharpest conflict today among Christian churches in the area of conversion is no doubt around the issue of proselytism. It is not a new issue: the 1920 encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarch calling for a worldwide “koinonia” of churches already spoke of it in anguished terms. But as a discussion during the August 1992 central committee meeting made clear, it has taken on new urgency with the rebirth of religious freedom in the formerly socialist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Representatives of the churches there have pleaded for ecumenical counsel and support as they face a wave of well-funded (and sometimes well-intentioned) ministries from

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Europe and North America, coming to “convert” their members at this time of special vulnerability.

The articles in this issue also remind us that the dark side of conversion is more than a matter of doctrinal disputes and suspicions of heresy or unfaithfulness. In this year in which the five-hundredth anniversary of the voyage of Christopher Columbus has drawn attention to the links between colonialism and evangelization, Elsa Tamez urges facing up to “the unadorned truth about what has been done in the name of Christianity” and “bringing the Christian religion”. Hers is an eloquent call to self- criticism, to repentance and to the fruits of repentance in solidarity.

Finally, discussions of and debates about conversion have their limits. A partici- pant in the round-table conversation recorded here recalled Kierkegaard’s sardonic warning that, given the choice, more people would enter a door marked “lecture about conversion” than one marked “conversion”. Ans van der Bent proposes that “the time is ripe to move beyond ecumenical discussion of conversion to a greater emphasis on living out together our individual and collective conversions”. In his short essay, Ion Bria urges us to “liberate our hearts to feel the love of God. After that we can regulate our theological vocabulary”.

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Koinonia has become a key word in recent ecumenical discussion. Next year’s fifth world conference on Faith and Order will focus on it; and it will be the theme of the January 1993 Ecumenical Review. Meanwhile, we call your attention to three relevant articles in this issue: the moderator’s report presented by Archbishop A r m Keshishian at the central committee meeting in August, Lukas Vischer’s reflections on the Canberra assembly statement on “The Unity of the Church as Koinonia”, and Kjell Nordstokke’s exploration of the ecclesiological self-understanding of the Lutheran World Federation as a “communion of churches”.

MARLIN VANELDEREN

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