“Oxford Responsibility” and the Promise of Ecumenical Social Ethics

Abstract A concept of “Oxford Responsibility” shaped ecumenical social ethics at the Oxford Conference on Church, Community, and State of 1937. Organized by the Life and Work movement, the conference drew on the thought of Christian realism. Its social method comprised a unifying ecclesiology encompassing political and missional concern; an understanding of human freedom and dignity rooted in divine creation over against the modern project; and the dialogical social method of the middle axiom, providing provisional guidelines for action within particular historical and cultural contexts. This article uses the term “Oxford Responsibility” to refer to a society whose members and institutions act in accordance with human value and freedom, in obedience to the will of God, toward the achievement of justice within the limits and contingencies of human finitude, culture, and history. Having emerged in the global crises of the 1930s, the conference's method offers resources for the church in contemporary society.