Vol. 5 No. 1 (2024): Ecclesial Futures

With this fresh issue of Ecclesial Futures, we pass an initial milestone for our new journal of having published fifty articles since we began with our first volume in 2020. It has been quite a journey and we might stop here, rejoice for a moment and look back on our achievements so far. We have created a journal that is finding its place within World Christianity. In a recent survey of where our website is visited from, many thousands of times per year, we might have expected the UK, USA, Australia and Germany to feature in the top 10 places – yet South Korea, the Philippines, South Africa and India were also present (alongside 57 other countries).

In the issue we continue this diversifying trend with seven articles authored from seven different countries on at least three continents representing a wide range of ecclesial traditions. We have an important article from the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, addressing head-on the crises the churches there face and then two articles which illustrate and respond to those dilemmas from an Orthodox perspective in the UK and an Episcopal church in the USA. Two articles are then placed side-by-side which engage with faith and religion in the digital world, through Artificial Intelligence and online worship. Presenting a public theology of peace-making in in the Reformed Church of Japan is a new departure for the journal in the sixth article. The articles conclude with four different contributors from last year’s International Consultation on Ecclesial Futures (ICEF) writing a Conference Report together. We also include three extended book reviews on important topics in our field to complete the issue.

Nigel Rooms, Co-Editor, Ecclesial Futures