It is not yet quite clear what the 23rd general council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches will be called. The Warc Executive Committee, meeting at Pittsburgh this July, failed to agree, splitting evenly between 'Break the chains of injustice', based on Isaiah 58.6, and 'Righteousness and peace embrace', based on Psalm 85.10.

What has been clear for some time is that the council, to be held in Debrecen, Hungary, from August 8 to 20 1997, will focus on justice, and on economic justice in particular. Regular readers might have guessed as much: justice has been our Leitmotiv in recent issues.

In this number, Warc general secretary Milan Opocensky looks at the connections between creation, justice and peace. He asks, provocatively, if the present situation of world economic injustice does not constitute for Reformed churches a status questionis. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, who until this summer gave distinguished service to the World Council of Churches in its economy, ecology and sustainable society team, writes on the theology of life: his article is both a personal testament and a challenge to the Alliance. And Gerishon Kirika deploys the simple theological notion that we are made in the image of God in a comprehensive critique of African economies.

Dorcas Gordon calls for the exercise of a dialogical imagination in the encounter between Christians and between cultures. Her brief paper was one of those read in April at the first joint meeting of Aipral and Canaac: the Association of Presbyterian and Reformed Churches of Latin America and the Caribbean and North American area council of Warc.

Richard Adams' article came to us unsolicited, as a straw in the wind. Reformed spirituality has not featured prominently in these pages. And yet it is clear that we will need to renew and deepen our spirituality, if we are to wrestle with the profound problems of our world. Theology is essential in this effort. Social, economic, political, and ecological analyses are indispensable. Even more than these, however, we need to rediscover, in contemporary and practical terms, what it means for us as Reformed Christians to walk humbly with our God and with our neighbour. We would welcome further writing on this topic. Adams recalls us to our roots: the grace of God and the gratitude of the redeemed. The task now is to help the plant grow.

Páraic Réamonn