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Wounded Visions: Unity, Justice & Peace in the World Church after 1968

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

The first thing to say about this book is don’t let the title or subtitle put you off. I was pleasantly and delightfully surprised as to how interesting and engaging a read this book was. The author offers a fascinating survey of the ecumenical movement (and especially the World Council of Churches) and the shifting patterns of influence and emphasis that it has had from 1968 to the present. The author has worked within these circles for over forty years. He is adept at charting political, economic, sociological and theological change during this period. He recognises that, after some heady days in the 1960s, the movement substantially lost its way in its pursuit of a ‘secular ecumenism’ and in the developing shift of influence of the church form north to south and from imperial to local models. He recognises the growing influence of what he calls ‘the fourth church’, a flourishing evangelical/Pentecostal movement which has kept its distance from ecumenism for political and theological reasons.

Although Jonson is an ’insider’, he asks pertinent and critical questions about the future shape of ecumenism – not least the challenge of inter-faith encounter and the ever-changing groupings and attitudes of different strands of Christendom (not least that shown by different Popes over the past forty years).

While the book is a translation from the original Swedish, the author has been very well served by a translator who has worked in a very easy and accessible style. Offering a global perspective from a non-British standpoint is refreshing, although it would have been interesting to have had Jonson’s take on the British ecumenical scene. A book of this length can only deal in broad brush strokes and, as long as that is accepted, it provides a very good introduction to the subject (and a full bibliography helps to fill in some of the gaps. There are extensive unobtrusive footnotes which also give clues to finding further information). For anyone seeking a first mapping out of the subject, this would be a very good place to start.