Everything the Alliance does, said CS Song in his presidential address to the WARC executive committee, needs to be rethought in the light of the 24th general council's theme of life in fullness for all.

"If church unity is at stake, it is because life - not just the life of the Christian church, but the life created by God - is at stake. If the prevailing economic practices give rise to injustice in the world, injustice is done to life - to human life and to life as a whole. When inequality, bigotry and intolerance are justified on the ground of culture and religion, life and relationships that sustain life are seriously endangered," Song contended.

"We must continue to strive for unity," Song said, "but we need to ask what kind of unity we have to seek today - not unity for yesterday, for four centuries ago, for fifteen hundred years ago."

"Is it not this the change of terms that we should bear in mind as we undertake the assessment of theological dialogues, bilateral or multilateral? Should we not re-establish life as the heart of the dialogues, especially the life that two-thirds of humanity lives in deprivation today?"

The Alliance has directed "our concerns over economic injustice" to member churches and to international Christian and nongovernmental organizations, Song said. "Now individual Christians need to hear from us not generalities but concrete ways in which they can play a responsible part, even a small part, in economic justice."

This should "inspire us to take action, beginning with our own life, then extending to our church, and to the community in which we live."

The Alliance has been good at exploring the historical, social-political and cultural-religious causes that contribute to "inequality, discrimination, violence and abuse" between men and women. But in many churches and societies "discrimination has gone underground" where it continues to cause conflict "not only in society but within the Christian community."

"We have yet to begin the stage of reconstruction, engaging men and women in the church to begin constructing alternative male-female relationships, family bonds, church structure, and social order."

"Ecumenical organisations are in trouble spiritually," Song told ENI's Laurie Spurr in an interview afterwards. Particularly disturbing was the perception that ecumenical bodies were "stressing social and political action without spiritual strength". The perception might not be accurate, but "why do we give that impression?"

In his address he argued for a radical spirituality, rooted in the practice of a Jesus who "reshapes and rebuilds what the religious authorities held as sacrosanct, on the basis of the reality of life with all its implications."

He concluded by arguing that the Alliance can move forward if it

is willing to take seriously the life people live in the real world;
pulls its resources together in leadership development; and
helps equip the Reformed family in self-understanding as churches and Christians in the world today.