Join us for an online conversation between Ruth Harvey, Leader of the Iona Community, and Alison Webster, General Secretary of Modern Church.

How do we form communities of resistance to counteract the forces of atomisation in our world? What are the material and economic influences at work, and how can our spirituality give us a different focus? What urgent challenges face us today, and what could our response be?

“As a community of faith we live within a framework of hope. We recognise that the context in which many of us live can seem to be, and for many is, hopeless. And yet we choose life, we choose hope. We remain convinced that the community we seek must be lived out in the community that we practice. Our hope is in a living God who chose a time and a place to live alongside us in creation, to stand with us in our suffering, and who models what it means to speak out and speak up for all with no voice and little power. So we choose to find hope within the despair. And we ask: how must we live, what is ours now to do, to live out this hope within community?” – Ruth Harvey

The Iona Community is an international, ecumenical Christian movement working for peace and justice, the environment, the rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship. It has a dispersed, worldwide membership that shares in the rhythms and responsibilities of a Rule of Life that is central to this witness and binds through mutual accountability.