EKKLESIA IS PLEASED to be launching its new website for a new year – our twentieth in operation as a pioneering think-tank (and now change network) on beliefs, ethics and politics.
This is the fourth redesign since we appeared on the web in 2002. It also marks a transition to what we hope will be a simpler and more visual approach.
So we are making a fresh start here, but all our previous material (over 30,000 pages – including 1,000+ articles from 200 or more contributors and over 100 policy or research reports) can be found at http://old.ekklesia.co.uk/. Existing links to previous material should also operate as before.
We are immensely grateful to Sean Reilly of CanMarket for enabling this transition to a new site, and the switch from our previous operating system, Drupal, to a new one, WordPress.
Equally, we could not have done this without the help and support of our Production and Publishing Consultant, Bob Carling.
Thanks are also due to our previous hosts and web presence managers, Netuxo – a fine cooperative who we would throughly recommend in relation to your own web solutions.
A new look for Ekklesia online includes websites for Ekklesia Publishing, and for a new imprint we are partnering, Siglum.
This website comes with other changes in the way Ekklesia will be operating in the future – including new foci for our work, new and renewed partnerships, an income generation effort, and a broadening of our base of engagement and support.
Ekklesia began in 2001/2 as a gathering point for those influenced by the radical and left-leaning ‘peace church’ tradition within Christianity. Over the years we have picked up allies from different quarters, both expected and unexpected.
For example, we helped launch the Accord Coalition on inclusive education (specifically the reform of faith schools) with the BHA (now Humanists UK) eleven years ago.
Equally, we have been keen to develop ecumenical and interfaith partnerships, to pursue academic links (including the Critical Religion network), and to collaborate with those working on peace, justice, environmental sustainability, alternative economics, political ethics, social change and more – many of whom come from different traditions of belief and practice, both religious and non-religious.
In all of this, our advocacy for transformative ideas/actions and our opposition to systems of domination (whether they be imperial religion, corporate capitalism, white supremacy, ableism, racism, sexism, the military-industrial nexus, or any other form of concise and exploitative control) remains firm.
‘Ekklesia’ is a term which has both political and spiritual implications. It is about a shared public square, popular power, mutual responsibility, and being ‘called’ out of domination systems.
That is the path we continue to tread, both in our inherited think-tank form, and in the fresh impetus of being a ‘change network’, as well as continuing to discharge some functions associated with being a think-tank.
In short, we are an association of people committed to changing the world for the better, with a particular emphasis on the lived experience of people on the margins, people disabled by society and economy, a planet threaten by the climate crisis, refugees, and others whose voices should be central to a shared future.
Thank you for joining us in that journey! We will say more about how you can go on doing that shortly.
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© Simon Barrow is director of Ekklesia and managing editor of Ekklesia Publishing.