Exploring Ecumenism

Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change

The idea is that today, Thursday 15 October 2009, over 7000 blogs around the world will cover the topic of climate change.  Each blog will approach the topic from the perspective of its specialism and so mine will be from an ecumenical perspective.  In addition it is anticipated over 10 million readers will participate in Blog Action Day 2009 .

Last week I helped lead a consultation for Methodist and Anglican Ecumenical Officers from across Britain.  We were looking at the Edinburgh 2010 mission conference , which is to be held to commemorate the Edinburgh 1910 mission conference , usually recognised as the beginning of the modern ecumenical movement.

Hope in God's Future

It is easy to get frustrated at the churches' lack of urgency about climate change.  I have raised the issue a few times in ecumenical meetings and the sense I get is that many do not see the relevance of climate change to ecumenism or indeed church life in general.

It is most encouraging to find the Joint Public Issues Team of the Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Churches have produced a report Hope in God’s Future: Christian Discipleship in the Context of Climate Change.

A Question of Christian Ethical Priorities

We're straining at gnats and swallowing camels.  As I've explored ethics over recent posts, it seems as if the churches will focus time and energy on any ethical issue so long as it is not about the use of wealth to exploit other people and the environment.  (The Eleventh Earl of Mar's photo says it all.)  Indeed, the appetite amongst some Christians for these peripheral ethics is to the extent that it sometimes feels as if issues are being invented as further distractions.  Whilst a few verses in the Bible about sexuality are blown up into a major issue that threatens the integrity of the churches, exploitation, an issue present on almost every page, can go unacknowledged in a month of sermons.

Hard Issues 6: Climate Change

Of course, this issue is well known and so I will not go into a lot of detail about the science.  In three posts I will attempt first to scope the issue, then reflect upon its theology and finally to look at what the churches might do to address it.  Many organisations and websites provide more detail; this is as always broad brush strokes.

This issue is born entirely out of affluence.  This affluence has been a great achievement.  For the first time in human history, millions of people can live in a degree of wealth undreamed of in the past.

Debt in the Gospels

In the story at the beginning of Mark chapter 2 a paralysed man is carried to Jesus but his four friends cannot negotiate the crowds.  He is taken onto the roof and lowered through it.  The picture, from sacred destinations, shows a golden mosaic of the healing of the paralytic in the Basilica di San Marco, Venice.   

Then things become a bit strange.  Seeing the faith of the friends, Jesus does not heal the paralysed man but forgives his sins.  This causes some of the scribes to question how Jesus has taken upon himself the authority to forgive sins.  To prove he has the authority, Jesus heals the man.

Hard Issues 4: Debt

The Gillray cartoon speaks to our times, showing the wealthy (George III and William Pitt) raking in the cash.  So far, so obvious.

Margaret Thatcher was an ideologue, her faith was monetarism and against all reason she deregulated the markets during the 1980s.  I have never bought the idea that markets mysteriously regulate themselves.  Whatever Adam Smith meant by his invisible hand I am certain he didn't mean what we have seen over the last couple of decades.

Hard Issues 3: Ordination of Women

A couple of days ago, I mentioned The Marriage of Figaro.  Beaumarchais' play, upon which Mozart's opera was based, was banned in Austria at the time because it mocked the aristocracy.  The driver of the plot is that although the Count has publicly renounced his right to the servant women on his estate, he is (as it were) prepared to make an exception in the case of Suzanne, Figaro's intended.  However, he has not reckoned on Figaro's cunning and neither he nor Figaro have reckoned on Suzanna and the Countess, who join forces to stop the Count.

My point was that this is a small illustration of the power play around women's sexuality and how marriage is potentially a means to enable women and men to make their own choices publicly.

The Ethics of the City

This photo, taken by Charlie Phillips, shows the fallen statue of King Ramses II, mistakenly thought to be a mythical king called Ozymandias, immortalised by the 19th century English poet Percy Shelley. 

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Shelley's poem highlights the illusory nature of power.  Illusory but at its greatest, power can be anything but illusory.  It infiltrates all our lives to the extent that we believe this type of power is the only reality.

Neoliberalism and the Decline in Diversity

I want to return today to an old theme, the global economic problems.  I came across an article, A last chance, in an old edition of the New Statesman, dated 10 November 2008.  The article, by Paul Mason, was written in anticipation of a meeting of the G20 leaders on 15 November 2008.  He argues that the issue facing the G20 was not a simple debate about neoliberalism's rights and wrongs, matters have gone beyond that - neoliberalism has 'brought the world to the brink of an economic nuclear winter'.  This is not an accident but a flaw in its central mechanism. 

Fundamentalism and Ecumenism

I'm not attempting an in-depth analysis of the current economic crisis.  My focus in this post is as always the implications for relationships between the churches.  They are profound for two reasons.

First, the churches are compromised themselves.  The mainstream churches have investments and participate in the same markets as everyone else.  Absolutely, stipends and pensions have to be paid but this does raise questions about where the interests of the churches lie.  For some churches, aware of the criticisms, the stance is of quiet embarrassment.  For others, wealth is evidence of God's favour and so should be shouted about.  So, we hear about American mega-churches which include shopping malls, branches of McDonald's, etc.  We also hear from time to time of instances of corruption as TV evangelists are found out.

Which brings me to the second problem.  Whilst the emphasis of formal talks tends to be upon (broadly) Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, these are not the divisions in the church I really feel.  I can live without sharing communion with my Catholic friends because we can share in other things and when I see them take communions I see fellow Christians declaring their faith as I do when I take communion.  I appreciate some people have more of a problem with this, eg interchurch families, but this is how I feel - a consequence of my history.  What I find difficult to accept is the fundamentalist praxis of some Churches.

My problem is not with their politics so much as their theology.  When I read their words or learn of their activities I see a fantastic interpretation of scripture which places our disparate understandings of communion in the shade.  We might not be able to agree about communion but broadly we can agree about right and wrong.  There are Christians who I believe call evil good and good evil.  I'm sure they feel much the same about me.

If only it were as simple as saying these people are not really Christians and so do not need to be included in the one church.  The problem is this is exactly what they are saying about me and the other mainstream churches.  We don't accept their partial reading of scripture and so we are the ones who are damned in their eyes.  How does it help if I believe the same about them?  Fundamentalism is premised on the rejection and marginalisation of others. 

Our vision of one church comes adrift on this issue.  Do we abandon marginalised people in order to embrace fundamentalist Christians?  I think not.  So, what can we do?  Especially compromised as we are.

The criticisms from atheists will be different.  They seem to be saying Christians are all the same.  They do our ecumenism for us!  But even though we are compromised, we are not the same. 

Take the Church of England.  A major problem for some Christians in the English ecumenical movement is that it is an established church.  Undoubtedly it is compromised in terms of its investments but I think it unfair to take this critique too far.  This church does not accept there is one reading of scripture.  Historically it is a compromise between many theological perspectives from Catholic to Evangelical, taking in various streams of liberal and radical theology.  Further, its relationship with the state is expressed through its parish system which in principle makes it the voice of everyone in the country.  It is as representative as any church can be not of the state understood as government but of the state understood as the people.  Just like Dr Johnson's observation of the dog walking on its hind legs, the point is not that the Church of England does these well so much as it attempts to do them at all.

These pillars of the Church of England and wider Anglican movement are under attack.  This is expressed through those who will not compromise on their theological positions, eg women priests or sexuality.  Also those who would erode the parish system in the name of mission.  These enthusiasts should take note of the words from the song 'you don't know what you've got till it's gone'.