From proximity to agency: what Chiang Mai is asking of the ecumenical movement

From proximity to agency: what Chiang Mai is asking of the ecumenical movement

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Mon, 10/12/2026 - 11:01

I came to Chiang Mai expecting a week of conversations about ecumenical social ethics, diakonia, climate justice, migration, and decolonization. I expected some difficult conversations. I also expected, frankly, to hear language I had heard before.

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Plenary on rearticulating ecumenical social ethics for a multipolar and post-colonial world, in Chiang Mai during the WCC Joint Biennial Commissions and Reference Groups Meeting on Life, Justice and Peace.

Photo: Sean Hawkey/WCC

What I did not expect was for one question to keep following me from one conversation to the next:

Who actually gets to decide?

It came up while listening to people from the Pacific talk about climate change. They were not asking simply to be heard as people facing a crisis. They were speaking from knowledge formed over generations—knowledge about land, water, relationships, survival, theology, and community.

It came up again during a visit here in northern Thailand, listening to people whose own families had come…