SIESC / SIESC

Editions of SIESC - Today

Nr. 46, July 2010

Editorial

Called to move

If migration has become a crucial question for most of the countries, it also has effects on us personally. Globalisation concerns each of us. We all are more or less nomads, in respect to professional careers, the places of living and even the family status; the Bologna process facilitates the mobility of students, teachers and researchers.
Geographical changes of location can lead us to meeting human beings representing different outlooks on life, images of man and attitudes, rich in values of different religious or secular traditions. Opening yourself to dialogue allows discovering other values without renouncing to one’s own fundamental position, while strengthening the consciousness of one’s own identity by creating relationships with others in the midst of a peaceful and tolerant community.
Yet, the priority given to economy in our society effects a devaluation of spiritual life. And you may regret that the Bologna process prefers a formation in accordance with the logics of market economy to a comprehensive formation. But shouldn’t education most of all envisage “allowing the human being to be more and not only to have more”? It is still left to know how to abandon antiquated methods for various more effective means.
Events can force us to move: thus a situation deeply perturbed imposes on us to renounce to the organisation of the summer meeting. Most often options are possible: Should one reject or accept the reforms proposed by the governments or the European institutions? We must not stand still at a first stage of reflection. It is always necessary to inform ourselves, sometimes to contest the status quo, but we must also pluck up the courage to support or to invent.
It has never been easy to be a teacher, but that must not prevent us from recognizing the wisdom and the love of the Creator to the human being, every life being included in the design of God’s love. In order to educate and evangelize the youths, we must “meet them where they are and encounter them in their way of living”. Will we belong to those who stand up to discard habits and structures in order to answer the message of the Beatitudes?
- Agnès ROSE
100 Years of Ecumenical Movement at Edinburgh

In June 1910, for the first time 1200 delegates of a multitude of Protestant and Anglican missions met at Edinburgh. Almost all of them coming from the West, they were conscious of the fact that the separation of Christians and the competition of the missions was a dangerous negative sign of a Christianity expanding since the end of the 19th century. Catholics and Orthodox churches still stayed far away; but that meeting inaugurated the beginning of the ecumenical movement.
The word “ecumenical” in its modern meaning was first used in 1846 at the foundation of what was to become the Evangelic World Alliance in 1951. It was not generally used in this meaning in the Protestant areas until the 1920s, while the Ecumenical
Council of Churches was created with the participation of Orthodox churches in 1948; it did not fully enter into the Catholic vocabulary before Vatican II. In the 19th century the preoccupation with unity had already been present in each of the branches of Christianity, but they then could only think it as a return to unity in each one of them, which was called unionism.
In June 2010 from among the delegates only 250 are truly representatives, with a great number of invited delegates. 60 % of the delegates come from South America, Asia, Africa and Oceania; Catholics and Orthodox churches take part; an equal number of men and women is intended. During 3 years regional meetings were organised and coordinated by a group of 20 representatives of the principal Christian traditions in order to emphasize those 100 years later.
What marked this conference most, is the participation of the Evangelicals, who have disturbed the ways of working quite a bit. The so-called historical churches have for years adopted a practice of ecumenical dialogues, which the greater part of the Evangelicals are just discovering; both sides have to move away from reciprocal misconceptions. It was the first time that the responsible persons of the Evangelic World Alliance worked together with members of the Ecumenical Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for the Unity of Christians: a new challenge for the ecumenism which is always open to unity “when and how God wants it”, according to P. Paul Couturier’s prayer.
The 100th Anniversary is doubtlessly a turning point in the worldwide ecumenical movement with regard to the place the Evangelicals take in its full growth.
- Yves CALAIS

SIESC - European Federation of Christian Teachers

Editions of SIESC - Today