The case for ecumenical collaboration and engagement
By Rod Benson
Public theology has a future wherever Christians take responsibility for the public consequences of their faith. Its task is to bring theological convictions into critical conversation with the institutions, practices and assumptions that shape our common life. This includes public policy, but extends to the moral imagination through which societies understand dignity, belonging, responsibility and hope.
In Australia, the question is how churches may contribute faithfully and credibly within a society whose citizens hold diverse religious and nonreligious convictions. Ecumenical collaboration offers a promising response, provided it combines theological substance with intellectual humility, institutional accountability and sustained attention to people whose experience is easily overlooked.
The NSW Ecumenical Council could advance this work by convening a sustained program of reflection and engagement involving theologians, church leaders, practitioners and community partners. Ideally, this would be coordinated by the Council’s Theological Reflection Taskforce. Such a proposal accords with the Council’s stated commitment to common Christian witness and service.[1] Its value would lie in bringing different traditions and forms of knowledge into a disciplined conversation about shared responsibilities.
A successful initiative of this kind would encourage member churches, and other churches, to examine their own conduct, strengthen public understanding and develop practical responses to identifiable needs. It would also require clear limits. For example, the Council cannot presume to represent every Christian, and a gathering of theological experts cannot substitute for participation by the communities whose lives are under discussion.
A changing public vocation
Christian reflection on public life long predates the modern field of public theology. Biblical prophecy, traditions of social teaching and debates about political authority all belong to its wider inheritance. The contemporary terminology became prominent during the 1970s, including Martin Marty’s discussion of Reinhold Niebuhr and David Tracy’s account of theology as public discourse.[2] Public theology should remain connected to the worship, convictions and practices that give Christian speech its substance and its voice. Its distinctive contribution is neither an ecclesiastical claim to govern society nor the repetition of accepted civic values in religious language. It offers a reasoned, self-critical account of what Christian faith illuminates, challenges and requires in our common life.
That vocation now takes place across multiple, unequal public settings. Parliamentary debate, universities, workplaces, local communities and digital platforms have different conventions and distribute influence differently. Religious language may be unfamiliar or contested in one setting while commanding considerable authority in another. Claims that Christianity has simply disappeared from public life obscure this unevenness, as do assumptions that churches retain an automatic right to a hearing.
The practical task is to understand each audience, communicate intelligibly and accept reciprocal scrutiny. Churches should offer reasons others can assess without requiring prior Christian belief, while explaining the theological commitments that inform their judgments. Public accessibility need not entail theological silence.
The Australian conversation must also remain open to voices beyond its familiar institutional centres. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander theologians, migrant churches and Christian communities shaped by poverty, displacement or religious minority status may identify questions that established institutions neglect. Engagement with such perspectives should influence who sets the agenda, how problems are described and what counts as relevant knowledge. A public theology concerned with reconciliation must allow First Nations participants to frame the discussion and challenge the churches’ understanding of land, history and authority. Otherwise, the language of inclusion may leave existing distributions of power largely intact.
Theological depth and public trust
The theological basis for this work requires more than a general appeal to cooperation. Christian belief in creation affirms the worth of persons and the interdependence of creaturely life. The incarnation directs attention to embodied existence and particular histories. Jesus’ announcement of good news to the poor and his teaching about neighbour-love challenge indifference to suffering and exclusion (Lk 4:16–21; 10:25–37). The cross exposes destructive uses of power, including religious power, while resurrection sustains hope beyond the apparent finality of injustice. These convictions give public theology reasons to scrutinise institutions, defend human dignity and ask whose flourishing is being secured at whose expense.
An ecumenical approach draws on the confession of the triune God and the churches’ calling to unity in Christ, without treating divine communion as a ready-made political constitution. The prayer for unity in John 17 connects the relationships among Jesus’ followers with their witness to the world. Yet Christian unity does not establish the truth of every collective judgment, nor does it remove the need for evidence and argument. Catholic social teaching, Orthodox reflection on communion and creation, Protestant accounts of vocation and responsibility, and the practices of peace churches can enrich shared discernment. Their contributions overlap, and each tradition contains internal disagreements. Ecumenical depth develops through patient examination of these differences rather than their suppression.
Public credibility must also be earned through repentance and accountability. Churches cannot address justice persuasively while avoiding the abuse of power within their own institutions. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse made this challenge unavoidable in Australia.[3] Responsible engagement requires safeguarding, transparent governance and serious attention to survivors, alongside scrutiny of Christian involvement in colonial dispossession and exclusion. Acknowledging these failures does not exhaust the churches’ public vocation, but it changes its posture. Public theology should ask what churches must repair, relinquish or learn as well as what they should recommend. Institutional reform is itself a form of public witness.
Ecumenical breadth may strengthen an argument, but it does not confer automatic legitimacy. Churches may agree about human dignity while differing over its implications for particular policies. They should distinguish foundational convictions, ethical judgments and proposals that depend on contested evidence or predictions. Where agreement is possible, common witness can carry considerable weight. Where disagreement persists, a careful account of competing reasons may serve the public better than an ambiguous consensus. Any Council initiative should distinguish contributions by individual participants, statements endorsed by participating churches, and positions formally authorised by the Council. Such clarity protects conscience and renders collaboration more trustworthy.
Dialogue with consequence
Public theology must clarify what it means by the common good. The phrase can conceal assumptions about whose interests deserve priority or whose losses are acceptable. A credible account should attend to the conditions that enable everyone to participate and flourish, especially people exposed to deprivation, discrimination or preventable harm. It should recognise the inalienable dignity and rights of each person while examining the relationships and institutions through which these are upheld. Religious freedom belongs within this framework alongside freedom of conscience, including the freedom to hold no religious belief. Christians strengthen their public witness when they defend these freedoms consistently, including for those with whom they profoundly disagree.
Dialogue should be open to correction and capable of producing change. This requires engagement with other faith communities, secular organisations and relevant professional disciplines as partners with knowledge and agency of their own. Cooperation on housing insecurity, for example, should involve people experiencing homelessness alongside service providers, researchers and policymakers. Their accounts may expose weaknesses in both theological assumptions and proposed solutions.
Listening does not require the suspension of Christian conviction, and collaboration need not await agreement on ultimate beliefs. It requires a willingness to explain judgments, test them against evidence and revise conclusions when warranted. Shared action may deepen understanding precisely because participants approach it from different commitments.
Nor should dialogue become an excuse for avoiding conflict. Some public questions involve entrenched interests and harms that polite conversation alone will not remedy. Public theology needs the capacity to identify wrongdoing, support nonviolent advocacy and recommend changes that powerful institutions resist. Its criticism should remain proportionate, well evidenced and open to challenge. Independence from party allegiance matters here: Christian judgment should be able to affirm or criticise policies across the political spectrum. The aim is faithful discernment about justice and human flourishing. Political labels, including “progressive” and “conservative”, cannot perform that work on the churches’ behalf.
A method grounded in practice
Methodological renewal begins with a disciplined movement between experience, evidence, theological interpretation and action. An ecumenical group addressing housing insecurity should hear affected communities, examine reliable research, consider the relevant theological resources and assess possible responses. It should then revisit its judgments in light of outcomes. This approach guards against treating a biblical text as a complete policy prescription or assuming that professional expertise can settle questions of moral purpose. Public theology contributes by clarifying ends, examining assumptions and sustaining accountability. It also needs the practical competence to recognise costs, competing goods and unintended consequences. Moral urgency is compatible with careful analysis.
Narrative, art and worship also shape public understanding. Stories make suffering and responsibility visible in ways that statistics alone cannot, although personal testimony should not be made to bear more evidential weight than it can sustain. Poetry, music and visual art can help communities imagine reconciliation or recognise losses that official language overlooks. Worship forms habits of attention, gratitude, lament and hope that may influence civic conduct. These practices give public theology a life beyond conferences and publications. Local congregations can become places where people learn to disagree responsibly, support neighbours and connect theological reflection with decisions about employment, property, consumption and care.
Digital culture requires similar attention to formation and power. The question concerns both what churches communicate and how communication systems shape attention, authority and judgment. Public theology should examine the ethical implications of algorithmic influence and artificial intelligence, including whose interests their deployment serves and who bears its costs. It should also model responsible practice through accurate sourcing, correction of errors and resistance to dehumanising rhetoric. Formation for public leadership must therefore include media literacy alongside theological learning and the ability to interpret evidence. Emerging leaders need opportunities to practise these skills with experienced mentors and communities capable of offering candid feedback.
From forum to sustained engagement
A feasible Council initiative could begin with a twelve-month pilot focused on one shared public concern, selected with community partners. Housing insecurity or the social consequences of climate change would provide substantive possibilities, although the choice should follow consultation. A small coordinating group could connect theological expertise with relevant professional knowledge and lived experience, including First Nations and younger voices. Membership should take account of the churches’ cultural diversity and differing resources. The group would need an agreed purpose, modest budget, administrative support and transparent arrangements for approving public statements. These provisions would make the proposal workable while respecting the Council’s responsibilities to its Member Churches.
An opening forum could establish relationships and sharpen the chosen question. Subsequent listening sessions and working meetings could produce a carefully researched discussion paper, a public conversation with respondents from outside the churches, and a resource for congregational use. A policy submission would be appropriate where there is a relevant opportunity and sufficient agreement. Rather than measuring success by the number of events or publications, the pilot should assess the quality of participation, what participants learned, whether partners found the work useful and whether it contributed to practical change. An honest evaluation would inform decisions about continuation and help prevent the network becoming another unfunded expectation placed on busy volunteers.
The future of public theology will depend partly on the churches’ willingness to become communities of responsible public learning. Ecumenical cooperation can deepen that learning by bringing different theological resources into sustained relationship with knowledge gained outside church institutions.
The NSW Ecumenical Council has an opportunity to convene this work without claiming either comprehensive representation or privileged authority. Its contribution would be strongest where theological conviction is joined to accountable practice, and where concern for unity strengthens the courage to address injustice. Such public theology offers a recognisably Christian form of attentiveness to neighbours, answerable for the judgments it makes and sustained by eschatological hope.
Rev Dr Rod Benson is General Secretary of the NSW Ecumenical Council and a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia serving at North Rocks Community Church in Sydney.
References
[1] See https://nswec.org.au/who-we-are/ and https://nswec.org.au/membership/
[2] Martin E. Marty, “Reinhold Niebuhr: Public Theology and the American Experience”, The Journal of Religion 54 (4), 1974, 332–359; David Tracy, “Theology as Public Discourse”, The Christian Century, 19 March 1975, 280–284.
[3] Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Final Report, Volume 16, Religious Institutions(2017). https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/religious-institutions
Image source: Kirby Laing Centre
