GC40 Reviewing Partnership in the Context of Empire for December 2010

The United Church of Canada has been engaged in global partnership for over 150 years. Significant shifts have happened throughout that history, redirecting both the practice and theology of partnership to allow it to more fully engage the context of its day. Recent articulation of the nature of empire and the call to live faithfully in resistance to its forces, which are so destructive to the world and its peoples, has resulted in this most recent review. Partnership, the review proposes, is grounded in the relational nature of God, who calls us into right relationships with one another, with all of creation, and with God. Partnership leads us to form communities of right relationships, committed to resisting the forces of empire. To speak of partnership in this way requires that the whole church at all levels be invited into lived experiences of global partnership.