WHAT IS CONVERSION IN AUGUSTINE'S CITY OF GOD?.
As Christians and people of faith in the God of life, we are called to make some urgent ethical choices. A social conversion towards the common good of all in our society "locally and globally, and towards harmony with mother earth and the environment is necessary. What is becoming clear to us as we understand better the root causes of social and ecological injustice at a global scale, is the violence embedded in our economic, political and cultural systems. These social systems of violence translate into interpersonal violence, which we experience at many levels. .
New voices from our churches and faith communities continue to reiterate the call for a radical social transformation; there are serious ethical problems at the root of our political and economic choices as a society which need to be addressed.[1] The problems are structural, at the heart of the systems, and what we need is a radically new social vision. We need to re-think our way of life and reverse the systems of social violence. This call for radical social transformation I name as social conversion. .
The term "social conversion" as such is not frequently used in religious or theological language. In dictionaries of Christian social thought, the term does not exist as a developed concept, and it is not identified as a common experience or praxis. We find in the social Christian literature of the recent years frequent reference to "social evil" and "sinful structures," "but not to "social conversion." The term "conversion" is commonly used in Christian tradition to denote a radical personal transformation and change of direction in life; making a radically different choices as a result of a divine revelation which opens one's eyes to a different and new vision of life. This new revelation leads to a radical change in the way of thinking and living. I chose to use the same concept to talk about social change in society at large.