Editorial: Seeking a witness to what is good

The past year has been full of the kind of ‘signs of the times’ to which a public theology responds. The most obvious has been the Covid-19 pandemic which has caught the whole planet in its grip. The storming of the United States’ Capitol on the 6th January 2021 left other democracies around the world stunned. For those of us in Australia the period immediately prior to the arrival of Covid-19 via a cruise ship was preceded by widespread mask-wearing in response to hazardous air, wildlife devastation and unprecedented fires. Now that has been replaced with unprecedented floods and all the while the climate emergency deepens. At the time of publishing NASA declared 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record1 – though that status has been hidden away behind news of further Covid-19 surges and the politics of vaccine roll-outs. It was a year which also bore witness to the global flows of the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter. This period of time was crowded with matters of concern for a public theology. It invites a consideration of how a public theology can bear witness to the good, variously construed, in such challenging times.