Liberation and Orthodoxy

This hard-hitting volume probes the way in which the members of the World Council of Churches and other Christian world communions have carried on dialogue with member and non-member churches, and questions whether the canons of doctrinal orthodoxy that have prevailed are adequate. How do these criteria for judging ecclesial authenticity stand up to third-world churches' canons of "orthopraxy"? As the world church becomes increasingly the church of the Thirld World, what is the future of the ecumenical movement? According to Tesfai, third-world Christians demand that ecumenism be judged by its contribution to the struggle for liberation in a hostile world. He shows convincingly that the weight given to canons of theological orthodoxy makes much of the ecumenical dialogue of the past fifty years unappealing to Christians in the Third World. Here the criterion becomes how dialogue and ecclesial life direct the followers of Christ to open up to a broader ecumenism that seeks to overcome injustice and to realize the full freedom promised in the gospel.