Introduction

Abstract

It took the compelling and inescapable moral authority of the Palestinian cry for justice—a cry from within the authenticity of Christian witness in the midst of unnamable, unremitting suffering and courageous struggle, of unbearable contradictions and deep complexities—to reconnect the remnants of the prophetic movements in the churches worldwide to their prophetic tradition, and reawaken the sense of kairos in communities where the prophetic voice has long been silent. Not since 1985, with the publication of the first Kairos Document in South Africa, in the midst of apartheid’s darkest decade—and the publication of subsequent Kairos Documents in different countries—has the word kairos commanded such concentrated theological, political, and ecumenical discussion.¹