9th Assembly: Manila, 1990

Three lectures were delivered on ‘Toward a Convivial World’, ‘Women and Men in Community: Rhetoric or Reality?’ and ‘On Being a Christian and Asian in the Present World Economic Order’. Bible Studies were conducted on ‘The Concept of Shalom in the Old Testament’, ‘Peace and the New Human Community’, ‘Called to be Peacemakers’, and ‘The Kingdom of Peace and the Ministry of the Church’.

A report from the Assembly reads:

“The facts that Christianity is an Asian religion and that it has had, since the first century AD, some roots in our soil, are often overlooked and ignored. Particularly in those countries of Asia with a colonial history, the Church (and Christians generally) are still looked upon as “vestiges” of past colonial masters and often treated with suspicion and derision. Christians, especially where they are found in minority situations, are also often associated with some covert design running contrary to the mainstream of Asian thought, aspiration, and values. It is amidst these perceptions (right or wrong) that the issue of the Asianness of the Church or an Asian Christian Identity is to continue to be a serious search for the Church in Asia.

“A genuine and sensitive ‘Asian Christian’ identity as a manifestation of the unity of the Church in Asia will contribute to the quality and the strength of the larger Asian people’s identity. The Asian Christian identity (encompassing within itself various differences in creative tension) will, in turn, be a credible and authentic component of the larger Asian perspective and reality of unity amidst diversity.”