Exploring Ecumenism

Ecumenism and Science 2: Telling Stories in a New Cosmos

Newtonian Cosmology underlies modernism and also modern theology.  This context for ecumenism may account for the drift since the 1910 Edinburgh Mission Conference (which linked mission and ecumenism) to a strong emphasis on structural unity, culminating in the 1982 failure of the English Covenant.  The Newtonian view sees ecumenism as a problem to be solved rather than as a way of life.

Scientists visit Heaven

An Orthodox friend told me the following story.  Is it true?, our atheist friends will wish to know.  Of course it is, I reply.

Edward Vansittart Neale

E V Neale is one of my heroes and apparently unknown to Wikipedia!  He was a barrister (and a Christian Socialist) at the time of the founding of the first retail co-operative at Toad Lane in Rochdale in the mid 1840s.  At that time he drew up the first Industrial and Provident Legislation, which meant that co-operative organisations were recognised in law.

During the 1870s and at the age of 65, Neale took on the role of first secretary of the Co-operative Union for a total of 18 years.  This was a federation of co-operatives and attempted to weld together retail and worker co-ops into a single movement.  Neale traveled extensively in Europe and reported each year on his observations of the potential of worker co-operatives and his vision for an alternative economy based upon co-operation.  Apparently, at the annual meeting of the Co-operative Union, he always received a standing ovation for his inspirational addresses.

Not so, his rival of a kind, JTW Mitchell, chairman of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, who was running a vast business enterprise and always spoke to the annual statistics about what was in the interests of the company.  The thing was that when everyone went home they followed Mitchell rather than Neale.

A journalist observed several of these annual conference and her name was Beatrice Potter.  She took a long hard look at worker co-operatives and concluded that they were no way to address the capitalist system.  She could find little evidence in Britain of the success of worker co-operatives (this may have been as a result of an adverse legislative environment as they have always seemed to do better in mainland Europe), finding that the owners would buy out the co-ops if they showed any sign of becoming succesful. 

Potter concluded that retail and worker co-ops were in competition as it is in the interest of workers to increase wages and of consumers to reduce them.  She concluded consumers were best protected by retail co-ops and workers by trade unions.

Some of my non-readers will be sad to note Potter did not hallucinate animals in waistcoats, instead she married Sydney Webb and with others went on to found the Labour Party to safeguard the interests of workers.

So, was Neale a hopeless idealist?  It is interesting to ask why worker co-ops did so poorly in Britain.  They have been and remain more successful in Europe but they often do so in a legislative environment which supports them.  To this day common ownership is not adequately supported in legislation. 

One of the purposes of this blog is to equip churches with not only issues but also some answers.  Whilst I firmly believe mutuality is an approach which the churches should advocate I tell this story as a warning.  Simply having a good method is not enough.  We also need to read the signs of the time and explore how any approach might best be used.  Mitchell was not charismatic but he could see what worked and how best to support it.  He was part of a wide and successful movement of which CWS was only a small part.  We need to take note of this movement and its successes but also of its failures.

On the Meaning of a Simple Story

Some years ago, at a conference for County Ecumenical Officers, an aid agency led a session.  It's a long time ago and I can't remember the name of the agency or the theme of the talk.  However, they told a story and I do remember that.

Somewhere in Africa, food was scarce and a woman had no meat to feed her children.  She had a large clay pot with a lid and filled it with water.  She picked some herbs and placed them in the water, put the lid on and set the pot on the fire.  She told her children the pot was full of meat and so they were not to touch it and that she was going to look for some herbs.  She placed another pot on her head and set off.  Soon she came to a clearing and found a dead buffalo.  It was freshly killed and she knew that because a lion was eating it.  She hid in bushes and considered what to do.  She took the ring of plaited grass she wore on her head to carry the pot and threw it a long way into the bushes.  The lion distracted, ran after the disturbance and the woman quickly threw dirt on the buffalo.  Lions will not eat dirty meat and so after it returned the lion soon left the meat.  The woman waited and then cut off the meat she needed, washed it in a nearby stream and placed it in her pot.  Upon returning home she added the meat to the pot on the fire.  There was more than enough meat for the meal and so she also fed all the childrenin the neighbourhood.

The aid agency asked what we thought the story was about and the usual sort of conversation followed where the lion was taken to be the West and so on.

It was only after the session that the meaning of this story dawned on me.  That is why I have remembered it.  The point of the story is in the very last few words.  The woman finds meat after considerable adversity and then gives most of it away.  Why?

The answer is self-interest, not altruism.  Tomorrow, another woman might be lucky enough to find a lion.  She will do the same and feed all the children.  This is the mutual sharing practiced by communities that survive.

A Vigorous Protest Against Pietistic Individualism

 'Rosa Parks sat, so that King could walk, so that Obama could run, so that our children can fly'. 

Yesterday, I quoted this at the end of my post.  Afterwards, when pondering the next step in my argument, I realised I could see it in that quote from our local King / Obama celebration last night.  The action of one woman, her determination to make a stand for justice by sitting, has had a ripple effect - she is known and is an inspiration to many in her own time and through to this day.

I read somewhere that our moods are affected by friends of our friends' friends.  The moods of people three friendships away can still affect us even though we do not know them.  So, perhaps it is possible that perfection (whether or not entire) has an incalculable impact, conscious and unconscious.

Theodore Runyon in The New Creation writes, 'One of the reasons Wesley is such an interesting figure is that he combines both an early stage of ... pietistic individualism and a vigorous protest against it.'  (Page 103)  It seems individualism emerged from pietism, reducing religion to what happens between the individual and their personal experience of God.  'Trinitarian spiritual energy not only constitutes the church but is its continuing dynamic.  Human beings participate in this power and are incorporated into its dynamic ...' 

Perhaps another example will help.  President Obama invited nine people to his inauguration today because he found them an inspiration.  In 1957 nine black students were enrolled into a previously all white school at Little Rock.  Eventually troops had to be called in and the Little Rock Nine had to endure months of physical and mental abuse.  They were young teenagers aged 14 and 15 and yet they persisted because they knew they were doing it for others.

This power that comes from non-violent courage; the ability to stand against evil and embody God's love, does not remain internal to individuals.  It flows into the community, not even bounded by the Christian Community.  How can it be that sanctification benefits all, not just Christians?  Evangelists speak of Misseo Dei, the discovery that God's mission has gone before them.  The mystery of the resurrection is that it opens up the possibility that the whole of humanity can participate in God's New Creation, perhaps unawares.  I think this is also what Wesley meant by prevenient grace, the grace that becomes available to all through God's love expressed through ordinary people. 

A Message to Western Churches

Receptive Ecumenism Conference - Wednesday 14 January 2009

One Australian speaker during the final plenary told a story about what people say to him during his travels around Asia and the Pacific (I paraphrase).

Why do you not express the gift of God to churches in the west?  You always talk about the decline of your churches.  We see your ecumenical behaviours.  Are you not ungrateful to God who cares for you so deeply?  Are you not being idolatrous by not receiving this gift?  Turning away is the Biblical meaning of idolatry.

Pattern Integrity: Views from art and science

Today, as a change, I'm going to offer a couple of insights tangential to yesterday's post about pattern integrity.  Both of them are videos from the TED website.  This site is worth exploring as it includes videos covering a wide range of topics, many of which will interest theologians and preachers. 

The use of hands as an example of pattern interity reminded me of the video The Art of Collecting Stories by Jonathan Harris.  When I first saw this video I was rather bored by the first half but after the first 11 minutes it takes off in a completely unexpected direction.  The artist collects fractions of stories that afford us glimpses of a range of lives that are intensely evocative and somehow transcend their specific backgrounds.

I also commented upon the dificulties attendant upon being inside a system looking out.  The video The Design of the Universe is George Smoot's account of trying to understand the structure of the universe.  Several times the video touches upon the perspective of looking at the universe from a position within it.  Just like Harris, Smoot attempts to observe the universe as it is but this time as a scientist using technology and modelling as methods.

The TED site is a creative commons that aims to share its participants' 18 minute talks as widely as possible, making a contribution to our understanding of the world.  It is worth reading about their purpose.  I have speculated as to whether an ecumenical equivalent might be a possibility.  It would be a massive undertaking but even if it never became a reality it might be a worthwhile exercise to imagine what it might achieve.

St Martin de Tours

If ecumenism were to have a patron saint (I'm sure someone will tell me it already has!) my vote (if voting is allowed in these mysterious matters) would be for St Martin de Tours.  If you follow the link to Wikipedia you will think he is an unlikely candidate, a saint favoured by men and the military.  Although he seems an odd saint for the military as refused to fight. 

My reason is the story of St Martin and the Beggar, and my account is influenced by Thom Gunn's poem of the same name which can be found in 'The Sense of Movement' (1957).

Imagine young Martin, the soldier riding his horse across marshland at night. The wind is blowing and the hail bounces off his sword.  He is stopped by the figure of a naked beggar and out of sympathy, he takes his sword and cuts his great cloak in half.  He hands half to the beggar and wraps the remainder around himself.  Later whilst eating a meal in a pub the beggar appears to him and turns out to be Christ.  (The Wikipedia account is different but makes the same point.)

'You recognised the human need/Included yours, because/you did not hesitate, my saint,/ to cut your cloak across;/ But never since that moment/ did you regret the loss.

My enemies would have turned away,/ my holy toadies would/have given all the cloak and frozen/ conscious that they were good./ but you, being a saint of man,/ gave only what you could.'

The story goes that small pieces of the cloak were placed in wayside shrines as relics of the saint.  The Italian word for cloak is 'capella' and in time these shrines became known as chapels.  (Wikipedia tells a similar story for the origins of the word 'chaplain'.)  The saint is known for this story and would be understood by those who experience mutuality as a way of life. 

Why I am still a ....

(This is my response to the question implied by ‘Why I am still a ...’ – if you read this please consider leaving your response to the same implied question as a comment.)

I’ve always believed if you’re going to be Christian you have to be something.  Christianity is an incarnational faith embodied in the meeting of believers. 

I was brought up in a family which if it was anything was Unitarian.  Once I became a Christian I drifted into Methodism, although at one time I chose between Methodism and the Society of Friends.  I can’t remember why I chose Methodism; perhaps because it was the more difficult option.

When I trained as a local preacher in the early eighties I remember being told Methodism is a part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church and whilst it has certain doctrinal emphases there are no major differences between Methodism and the rest.

It is interesting in recent years, as I have been drawn into the ecumenical scene, I have started to identify, understand and value these emphases. 

From its earliest days Methodism was a society where ordinary people supported each other in their spiritual journey.  This is how John Wesley saw his movement.  There has always been a strand of self-help, not just spiritual, but co-operative ventures supporting the whole person, particularly in the old northern chapel culture.  

Maybe these values are thin on the ground today.  Certainly, they are less understood; the spectre of the sanctimonious teetotal authoritarian Methodist still haunts folk memory alongside the genuine self-help and caring.  I hope there is a future for Methodism as a practical movement who care about each other’s relationships with God as well as the practicalities of faith.