We have met in Debrecen, and in the historic Great Church, the scene of so many courageous acts and declarations over the centuries in defence of the Reformed faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. We have been deepened by our contact with the people and leadership of the Reformed Church in Hungary: constant in faithful witness, impressively growing in strength today.

As this general council draws to a close, we recall once again Isaiah's words (58.6):

Is not the real fast I have chosen: to break the chains of injustice,
to unfasten the leather straps of slavery's yoke,
to release the crushed to freedom
And pull off every single yoke? (trans. Arthur van Seters)

We respond to the word of God, bearing witness to God's covenant of grace which frees us joyfully to play our parts in God's household of life. Were it not for the grace of God in Jesus Christ, the struggle for justice would be another hopeless burden. In Jesus Christ, we have been liberated to live, not for ourselves alone, but for God and for our neighbours. We have prayed together for the discernment to recognize the moral urgency of this moment in history. We have been moved by the articulate messages of the pre-council conferences for women and youth. We have been alerted by words from churches oppressed by majority regimes or racked by political or ethnic violence. We have heard from representatives of cultures threatened with extinction. We have attended to the words of delegates concerned with a multitude of particular pressing issues.

We do not all live at the same point in the unfolding of historical experience. Issues on one continent or in one culture are not necessarily simultaneously alive for others. By no means have we always agreed with one another. At times our struggles among ourselves have resembled the forms of strife in church and world so much the objects of our concern! But we know that we are all moving together toward a single twenty-first-century global civilization - dominated by technology, universal communications, and a global market system - which threatens to marginalize specific traditions of life such as our own. Christian discipleship today has to do not only with personal conduct - with family and congregational life - indispensable as these arenas are to our integrity and credibility. Discipleship also has to do with social justice in such a world. It has to do with creating conditions for the continuation of life on earth, with the integrity of creation itself.

It is by no means assured that global disaster can be avoided along the present course of human development. The findings of scientists concerning the degradation of the environment are all too clear. The warnings of economists about the sustainability of present market trends are insistent. There is no guarantee of human progress: no promise that threats to life on this planet can be managed by our human institutions. Neither is it clear that we Christians are prepared to face these problems or even make a useful contribution to their solution. We acknowledge that we have contributed to several of the cultural attitudes - individualism, ethnic particularism, racism, the domination of women by men - that burden the world today. We are beset by culture wars which polarize and divide our communions and congregations. We struggle with differences of theological interpretation and divergent moral perceptions.

Our council themes - unity, justice for all creation, partnership in God's mission, together with all their associated subtopics - have proved to be deeply interconnected. No single theme can be pursued apart from the others. It is only as we read the reports of the 23rd general council together that we see both the balance and the special direction and force of what we have done together. We are struck by the predominance of issues of practical import. Virtually all our questions in the end come down to one: How shall we live? And, of course, this question implies others. How do our ways of living bear witness to faith? How do we move from theological conviction to ethical insight? How can Christian congregations not only hold ethical convictions but actually be communities of practice which further God's purposes for a just world?

With such questions in mind we address the churches of our own confessional family, other Christian churches, and the cultures, institutions and religious communities of the world.

To Reformed churches throughout the world, both members and non-members of the Alliance

At the centre of our faith stands a gospel promise which propels us into the world to seek justice. Justice is not only something derived from faith or implied by faith. Doing justice is itself a means of confessing faith in Jesus Christ. We must both pursue this conviction vigorously and, at the same time, try to understand better what it means. We need to understand ourselves as a community of joyful obedience to God in face of the threats to life today. We have a long history of confessing the faith in documents which represent understandings of God's word at different times and places. We have never succeeded in confessing the faith together for a particular moment in the world's history, or indeed felt much need to do so. But the need for a common understanding of our faith is greater today. This is not likely to be accomplished by reiterating themes our confessional documents already adequately cover. It will be done, rather, in new ways, including processes by which we seek clarity on particular moral issues and covenanting acts through which we, by God's grace, undertake to live in the world in ways consonant with the truths we believe and discover. We commit ourselves to a common effort to understand - through actions as well as in words - the relation between the faith as we have historically understood it and the urgent necessities of life in the twenty-first century.

To the Christian churches of the world

We reaffirm our commitment to the apostolic faith we hold in common and to vigorous participation in the ecumenical movement. We ask, in spite of the differences which still, in some cases, keep us from having communion with one another, why we should not seek together to articulate the practical obedience to the gospel needed for witness in this world. On the way to that end, would it not be useful to compare the ways in which our different faith-traditions move from theological conviction to ethical insight? We invite other Christian churches, drawing upon their own insights and terminology, to explore these questions with us and help us where our own insights are incomplete. We recognize that no ecumenical consensus yet exists on these matters, much less a consensus among churches of the Reformed faith. If plans go forward for marking the turn of the millennium by committing ourselves to a future universal council, the question of the relation between our understandings of faith, God's grace in Jesus Christ, and obedient life in God's household should be high on the agenda.

To the human world, its religions, cultures, and institutions

We are fellow citizens, with all other human beings, of this planetary community. We are ready to make common cause with those of other faiths, and those of no faith, in resisting evil and seeking to promote what is good for the world of which we are a part. Many of our own members play significant roles in the basic institutions - economic, political, professional, academic and others - of the contemporary world. We want these people and institutions to know of our deep concern about the idolatrous spirituality which drives this world's characteristic preoccupations, particularly in the economic realm. We are ready to walk together with those who sense that something is wrong in our world, but feel they have no way within their institutional settings to act on such spiritual promptings. We are ready to learn from those who may be further along the road of moral discernment than we. We have the deepest respect for the witness maintained by our Jewish brothers and sisters. We can learn much from the work of secular ethicists who have laboured long to define the meaning of human rights, of justice, of human community as such. We also respect the ethical visions inherent in other religious traditions. Despite differences of ultimate commitment, there is no reason to withhold cooperation when we see that the practical consequences of different visions can coincide. There is no iron law that says things in this world must remain the way they are. We believe they need to be changed.

Let us make a beginning, here and now. The issue behind all the other issues has to do with illusions of power and mastery. It has to do with possessions. What, or whom, do we think we really own, dispose of, or control? Ourselves? Other people? The course of history? The future of the earth? Or did John Calvin speak the truth when he undercut all this from the start, writing again and again, "We are not our own"?

We have addressed our words to others. Now we must speak for ourselves. We, participants in the 23rd general council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, hereby commit ourselves to the declaration of Debrecen. We have put our signatures to it. We urge our member churches and our congregations to do the same.