Local and Global Ecumenism

Reading about the Global Christian Forum  has helped me think about local and national ecumenism in Britain.  It appears local ecumenism has more in common with global ecumenism than the national  ecumenical work of the denominations.

It seems local and national ecumenism have had less in common in recent years.  Think back to the English Covenant in the early eighties and then the 'Not Strangers but Pilgrims'  process in the late eighties.  The latter involved many local churches in meeting over Lent 1986 to discuss the future of ecumenism in Britain.  This process led to the Swanwick Agreement  and the new ecumenical instruments.

Today I detect a degree of perplexity amongst local Christians who, whilst they are still committed to working together, find the preoccupations of the national church offices bewildering.  One example is the Anglican Methodist Covenant.  This still has popular support but the complaint is little progress seems to be being made.  What many saw as a stepping stone to full visible unity seems to be bogged down in issues like interchangeability of ministry, the common cup, the single loaf and a host of issues around types of ministry. 

To some degree the problem is on both sides. Often the achievements of these 'faith and order debates', as they are known, are undervalued.  In the past, local concerns have set the agenda, and the resultant conversations between senior theologians have led to changes that have encouraged further progress in local churches.  Today, it feels as if the national churches have lost touch with experience on the ground.

National and local churches have probably always used different languages to do their theology.  A common complaint is that what is preached locally does not do justice to the theology taught in the colleges.  But the divergence in language is long established and goes deeper.  For the national churches theology deploys a certain specialist language and is codified in academic texts with references and footnotes.  Local theology is carried out in terms of people (organisations), property and finance.

Obviously some people speak both languages but there is a tendency to think inside both boxes and not connect the two.  This has been going on for a long time but has been reinforced by other recent developments, which seem to be moving local ecumenism into an entirely different place.

The first, I shall call 'World Church in Britain'.  There is a British Methodist usage for this term which covers part of what I mean.  They mean the presence of members of other Methodist Churches in the UK.  But this is only part of a wider phenomenon, as a range of migrant communities have taken residence in the UK and brought their churches with them.  Many of these are members of the new Pentecostal and Evangelical Churches but there are others.  For example, there have been increasing numbers of Russian members of the Russian Orthodox Church and that has had a major impact on the hitherto anglicised version of the Russian Orthodox Church. 

Further, we have had Pentecostal churches in the UK for many years but now they are working out of a context of being the fastest growing churches in other parts of the world.  So, they are more confident and more willing to work with Christians from other traditions.  Some of these churches, often conservative theologically, are establishing larger congregations, sometimes but not always Black Majority Churches, with huge memberships, over 2000.  There are three in Sheffield, all within walking distance of my home.

The second big change locally is lack of interest and support for formal ecumenism amongst younger people.  Many are members of fresh expressions of church (illustrated), sometimes growing out of mainstream churches and sometimes independent.  But it is not just a change in ecclesiology but also a change in the ecumenical spirit.  They think nothing of working with other Christians, ignoring denominational differences.  This view is strengthened as younger people seem less willing to join churches and identify with one tradition.  They move between traditions to find worship where they feel most comfortable.

At this stage I simply note these changes.  There is a need to examine them more closely and to challenge some of the assumptions being made.  The point is though these changes are happening and they echo aspects of the Global Christian Forum.

Increasingly, local churches are working with a range of churches that do not have national offices or have national offices in other countries.  Their conversations with small local groups of charismatic, evangelical or fresh expressions have no parallel nationally because these churches do not exist nationally.  But similar churches exist globally and engaged with the Global Christian Forum. 

Similarly, whilst it is inadvisable to generalise, it is nevertheless true local churches are learning to work participatively.  This is immediately obvious with reference to fresh expressions who use methods such as Open Space Technology  and World Cafe .  But it must also be true where local churches wish to engage together in mission and have little interest in formal agreements.  Similarly, the Global Christian Forum has naturally adopted participative approaches because some of the participating churches are wary of traditional ecumenical conversations.

I have stated many times in this blog that the faith and order conversations need to be reframed.  This implies both methodological and content changes to these conversations.  A first step, might be for national church offices to support local churches in their conversations with an increasingly diverse local global church.

Comments

[Daniel Berman]

So in terms of reframing our theology of ecumenism, how might we do so in real life terms for the average person in the pew?

[Chris Sissons]

Good question and a difficult one to answer. Each local Christian community will have its own approach. Mission is the key to closer relations between the churches. I'll give this more thought as I walk through the snow and address it properly in a future post.