CEEAMS annual conference: Polycentric mission and the Nicene Creed
The year 2025 marks the anniversary of the so called First Council of Nicea (325). The Nicean Creed originates from this council and some churches has been using it in their church services and liturgies ever since. Other church traditions have long forgotten or never learned this creed. As an ecumenical and international association, the Central and Eastern European Association for Mission Studies (CEEAMS) takes this historical reference to frame the theme of its annual conference: polycentric mission.
About the conference
Throughout the last seventeen hundred years, church leaders and scholars have been analyzing and interpreting the contents and the contexts that affected the formulation of the Nicene Creed. The creed has also informed churches about how they related to other faith traditions and how they shaped their own.
Polycentricity was part of the process of the formation of the Nicene Creed. The process involved a set of narratives confronting “heresy,” bringing about unity and harmony, establishing cohesion to describing God as Trinity. This process also implies a competing set of narratives that depict a battle for power to normalize a specific theological doctrine, with the danger of producing an “elitist” theology, which can be imposed on but hardly internalized by people. The struggle for the control of theological “orthodoxy,” which is inextricably linked to relationships of power (political and/or ecclesiological), reflects a repeated pattern in the history of Christianity worldwide. Studies in the history of Christian missions reveal the pattern of how “the right teaching” was moderated through socio-cultural prisms and implemented by the power of empire and political dominance both from the West and the East.
Whilst certainly not a new concept in mission studies, the term “polycentric mission” has been theorized in different ways. One such theory uses the term to describe the change in perception regarding the diversity of Christianity worldwide: Christianity has been diverse at all times and in all places. Such a theory is a needed conversational course correction; a helpful critique to the prior cultural and theological dominance held by mission agencies and churches from the West “to the rest” and/or the orthodoxy of the Eastern churches. However, it is naïve to think these two issues—controlling orthodoxy and underlying power relations—are now dispelled by mission being recognized as “polycentric,” “from everyone to everywhere.” Rather, critical reflections are needed and critical questions must be asked both at the level of academia and church-praxis.
Guiding the conversation
The call for the conference sees at least three interrelated areas of interrogation which could guide the conversations during the conference. Firstly, in relation to Christianity worldwide, what are the new ways through which power relations and normative theologizing manifest? Secondly, in relation to the Church worldwide, what does unity —intersecting with theories of polycentric mission, theological diversity, and background currents of power—mean in discourses on and practices of mission? Thirdly, in relation to Christianity worldwide and the Church worldwide, what is the relationship between histories of urbanization and manifestations of Christianity with their urban power-centers? How could theologians, mission studies scholars, church leaders, reflecting practitioners and theological educators critically examine urbanized forms of Christianity and the socio-political and cultural realities they entail? What kind of theologies contribute to life-bearing societies in the midst of mismanaged migration, wars, climate change and similar problems?
The conference will critically address the theme of the construction of narratives, ideas, and identities from the perspective of various Christian traditions and schools of thought. This will be done, inter alia, by exploring the issues of power dynamics and concepts such as empire, urbanization, unity in diversity, and World Christianity. The respective sections of the conference, introduced by thematic keynote papers, will focus on areas such as mission theology, historiography of mission, urban mission, theological education, and Christian leadership. The overall aim of the conference will be, therefore, to challenge the structures and systems that deny life and to explore the potential of the ideas and venues that enable life offered to humankind and creation by the Triune God.
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