The Peace Church and the Ecumenical Community: Ecclesiology and the Ethics of Nonviolence

In 1998, at the eighth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Harare, Zimbabwe, a motion was tabled - and subsequently accepted by the delegates - that the World Council designate 2001 -2010 as the "Decade to Overcome Violence." In this book Enns, the delegate who proposed the motion in Harare, presents the theological foundations underlying his call for the churches of the world to work toward overcoming violence. Enns proposes that both Christian ethics and ecclesiology need to be based on a trinitarian view of God as creator of the world, incarnated in Christ, and present in the Holy Spirit, urging all Christian churches to heed the call to peace and nonviolence.

"We are indebted to Fernando Enns for providing a compelling case for the historic peace church to take up its responsibility within the ecumenical context, and for stirring our imagination to think of other contexts in which to engage the church and the world in witness to peace, justice and nonviolence." - Mennonite Quarterly Review