Exploring Ecumenism

Reflections on Cleveland in the 1980s

I intend to return to Dark Holy Ground in the future but this will be my last post about it for a while (until I find the paperwork).  I want to reflect on ecumenism in the light of what happened in Cleveland over 20 years ago. 

1. RESPOND! and Dark Holy Ground were ecumenical projects - they were conceived as such from the outset and the spirit of collaboration was largely unimpeded by the usual concerns about unity.  I am not saying these concerns are unimportant; merely that they did not in any way impede this work.
2. A great deal of ecumenical work is of this type.  An issue is identified and the relevant churches get together to address it.  This happens to such an extent that it seems there are almost two ecumenisms; that of formal conversations and that of informal collaboration.  To a large degree these continue independently of each other.  This is equally true between national churches and between local churches.  For now I simply make this observation.
3. The experience of Dark Holy Ground raises other questions about ecumenism.  The exercise of listening to marginalised people changed the lives of those people.  It brought people at the margins of the churches into the mainstream of the lives of the churches; to the extent that a range of church leaders were able to speak to government ministers on the behalf of the marginalised.  It could be asked whether churches could have enabled direct conversations between the government and long term unemployed but for its time this was a radical departure.
4. Dark Holy Ground presented the churches with the image of the dark face of God and this is something the churches together still need to hear and experience.  There is a great deal of talk of sharing the treasures of our traditions and perhaps too little willingness to explore the dark places in relationships between churches.  Even churches that are habitual close collaborators at times find themselves facing darker dimensions to their relationships.
5. And what of relationships where one potential partner refuses to recognise the other as Christian?  Such debates, or sometimes confrontations, quickly lead us all in dark places.  (If you don't recognise me and my tradition, how can I possibly recognise you and yours?)  These confrontations are not peripheral and sometimes reach the very core of our mainstream churches.   

Ecumenical blogs

I have been searching for ecumenical blogs and have found an interesting post about how ecumenism might be carried forward through discussion about religions on blogs.  The blog is Something New in Ecumenism: Blog-level Ecumenism. 

This was posted in May 2007 and I wonder how the author views his work 18 months later.  The blog is from an American context (so far I haven't found any British blogs about ecumenism, although I'm still looking).  My impression is that most blogs about ecumenism from the States originate from a Catholic or Orthodox background which suggests a rather different context to my experience in Britain.

I have maintained that blogs and web2 applications generally have a role to play in ecumenism as an adjunct to face to face conversations and so I have some reservations about blog-level ecumenism.  However, one major advantage is the potential for conversations between people who would not otherwise meet.

Dark Holy Ground

Dark Holy Ground was a course run by RESPOND! during the 1980s.  Robert Gallagher, one of the 3 course leaders had a gift for listening.  He made loads of notes on scraps of paper and so one evening after the course the 3 leaders took them to a pub in Guisborough.  Over a few pints they set them in  order, with much debate, which must have been loud because after they finished they looked up to find their table surrounded by people fascinated by what they were discussing.  I have that booklet somewhere and when I find it I will quote from it on this blog.

I met Robert, to interview him for my only ill-fated article for the Teesside Advertiser.  As the participants shared their experiences, the long term unemployed spoke of how they thought their unemployment was their fault.  Then by hearing each others stories they discovered that others felt the same way, soon they came to see unemployment as not their fault but something to do with society.

Frequently they spoke of how they had come to see unemployment as the best thing that happened to them, something that has to come from the heart of those who have experienced it.  This experience of the power of sharing stories was repeated many times as groups of long-term unemployed formed across the county.

Soon , they came to speak of darkness - how God had a dark face but was still somehow God.  The pain and burden of unemployment remained but somehow recognising God in the darkness made a difference.  They began to see their estates as dark holy ground.

And then they turned to the psalms and found people who lived 3000 years ago had experienced what they experienced.  One particular example was particularly powerful.  Psalm 139: 11.12 reads (New RSV):

If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night', even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

They read these verses and someone noticed that at the end it is still dark.  The darkness is not dark, the night is as bright as the day but it is still dark; still night.  To find common ground with the psalmists in Cleveland's estates was empowering even though the pain remained. 

The Christian faith does know joy but to focus on joy to the exclusion of suffering is to deny people's experience of the dark face of God.  Many dark places are empowering, the image of light needs to give away to the equally empowering image of darkness.  When we acknowledge the pain in people's lives a real transformation begins.

I had two conversations with Robert.  During the second he asked how I thought he felt as he listened as a pastor to someone pour out the story of their pain.  This was of course a rhetorical question; his answer was 'joy'.  I didn't understand.  'Because', he said, 'it is there in the pain that I feel closest to God'.   

RESPOND! (Churches Response to Cleveland's Industrial Crisis)

This time I've checked Google first and I can find no trace of RESPOND!, so it is down to my unreliable memory.  RESPOND! (Churches' Response to Cleveland's Industrial Crisis) grew out of Impasse and also the work of Teesside Industrial Mission (TIM).  During the 1980s it was independent of TIM but I think it returned to the care of TIM in the nineties.  I left Middlesbrough in 1989 and so my knowledge of what happened after that date is hazy.

In 1983 when I moved to Middlesbrough, RESPOND! was a small group set up by TIM to address the Industrial Crisis (I don't think it was called RESPOND! in those days) but it was in 1984 (I think) when RESPOND! obtained funding, that the work took off with the appointment of Keith Lindsey.  Keith had previously founded a youth work project in Stockton called the Ravens.

One major dimension to the work was the opportunity to speak directly to government ministers.  RESPOND! prepared reports for the Church Leaders who were able to call government ministers to Cleveland.  The reports were written with the participation of unemployed people across the county.  So, this process, which was repeated several times, enabled the views of the long term unemployed to be heard directly by the government.  The first included the idea that Cleveland could be designated as an experimental area to try out new ideas for work with the unemployed.  I don't remember how or whether the government responded but the truth was Cleveland was an experimental area in its own right.  Impasse and a variety of copycat projects, some inspired directly by RESPOND!, were springing up all over the place.  For a couple of years in the late 80s I wrote articles for RESPOND! about unemployment projects for the local free paper .  There was never any shortage of places to visit.

Keith made lots of contacts with groups of unemployed people all over the county and these led to a training course called Dark Holy Ground.  This was led by Keith, Robert Gallagher, who at the time was vicar with the Local Ecumenical Partnership in Coulby Newham, and the Catholic Priest at the Catholic Cathedral in Middlesbrough - I'm afraid I've forgotten his name.  The courses were a mix of long term unemployed and people in employment.

The impact of these courses was phenomenal.  They were the topic of the only article for the free paper I had rejected!  I will write about the findings in future posts.

Middlesbrough Impasse

During the late seventies and early eighties, Revd Bill Hall (he may have been a Canon) was Chaplain to Arts and Recreation for the Durham Anglican Diocese.  He started to meet with long-term unemployed people and at some stage asked the question, if you set aside a wage, what else do you gain from employment?  His group of unemployed people brainstormed answers and found 6 or 7 practical advantages to being employed besides income.  I'm not sure I can remember them all but they included a structure to the day, friendships, opportunity to use or develop skills and so on.

The next step was to ask why should the unemployed lose these opportunities as well as an income by virtue of being unemployed?  And so Impasse was born.

There were several Impasse centres mainly around Teesside.  The biggest was on the main street in Middlesbrough.  There people could spend the day practicing car maintenance or needlework, making furniture  or preparing economic meals which were on sale at low prices.  Skilled workers taught the less skilled and people were enocuraged to find work to do for themselves. 

This idea was copied around the county (Cleveland) and during the period I lived there (1983 -89) there were several Impasse centres and other copycat centres.    Bill saw this as revolutionary, he used to say the unemployed were the vanguard of the revolution.  However, it was another project RESPOND! - Churches' Response to Cleveland's Industrial Crisis which really addressed and more about that another time.

I wrote these few paragraphs and then thought to Google Middelsbrough Impasse and I'm delighted to find it (and Bill Hall) were still going strong in 2001.  Comparison between this article and my memories above may illustrate how time dilutes memory!

A search for ecumenical resources

Time for a break from conversations, to explain more about this blog.  It can be too easy to be bogged down in ecumenical conversations and activities and so I hope to include ideas for churches and ecumenical groups.  I don't in any way wish to portray ecumenism as an activity that is not worthwhile but it can come across as worthy and, well, dull.  It shouldn't be this way and so one of my responses will be to gather in one place resources for ecumenists.  There will be loads of reflection, much of it theological, because it interests me and also because I want to encourage debate about why we do ecumenism.  Here are some examples of other things I would like to collect:

1. Stories - some maybe contributed by committed ecumenists, along the lines of why I am still a ..., others will be stories I add in from time to time from various sources.
2. Neighbourhoods - most ecumenical work is done in neighbourhoods - I hope to add posts showing how churches have developed work in their neighbourhoods.
3. Images - apart from logos and pictures of groups of people posing during some ecumenical meeting, ecumenism seems short of images.  Is there any exciting stuff anywhere? 
4. Worship materials - for use in any worship not just joint services.
5. Humour - there must be some ecumenical humour out there somewhere - I've rarely encountered any - there must be some - surely?  If you have any examples, please ensure they are funny before sharing them!

If you have resources to share, directly or through a link, I would be delighted to add your material, acknowledged and with due regard for copyright restrictions of course. 

Three corners of ecumenical conversation

First, the obvious type of conversation is the conversation between people.  In one sense we converse when we are involved in any exchange of information through signs such as words, pictures or gestures.  These conversations can be with people in the past, present and future.  When I read a novel or manuscript written by someone long dead, I can build a picture of their world; this glimpse of their reality might lead me to new thoughts and insights.  As I write, I can imagine the future reader and how they might respond and this to a degree forms what I write.  Of course, not all exchanges of information are fruitful.  There is an element in a fruitful conversation of hearing the other, seeing the world from their perspective.  As our perspectives mesh, perhaps new insights will emerge from the interstices; the gaps between our worldviews.  When we fail to listen our views may become entrenched or defensive, the possibilities close down.

The second type of conversation is through prayer.  Prayer can take many forms but all true prayer must be based upon listening, watching or perceiving.  Some will claim prayer is a conversation with God if that is so, it leads us to an odd conclusion.  The point of conversation is change.  Just as in human conversation, nothing happens unless perceptions change; so with God prayer implies change in God as well as in me.  I find this an exciting idea and will explore it further in future.  The thing is to resist the temptation to rush in and protect God against change.  The question is how does prayer change God; in what sense can change and God go together?  I leave it there for now.

The third conversation is between humanity and the universe.  The work of the scientist comes first to mind.  To ask questions of the universe demands answers that build up a dialogue between the scientist and the world.  The artist does much the same thing: if I make this change to  these materials what do I have now? 

All three of these conversations demand human involvement.  I will at some stage explore non-human conversations but this will wait for the future.  What I want to assert is that to be human, conversation is essential.  Where there is no conversation, humanity is thwarted.  Repression destroys freedom to converse.  People under repressive regimes quickly lose the ability to converse.  Only controlled exchanges are permitted and often this is policed by the people themselves.  Similar regimes can be found in workplaces where people fear for their jobs and of course in churches where freedom of thought is frowned upon.

What of ecumenism?  Oikoumene is a form of the word ecumenism sometimes used when we mean the reconciliation of the whole cosmos to God, rather than the narrower meaning of relationships between churches.  This is the dimension of ecumenism I want explore further.  The understanding that is too often lost when conversations take place between traditions.  This type of ecumenism is a three cornered conversation between humanity, God and the universe - it is the context in which conversations between church traditions take place.  We need to understand this context.

Conversations: cosmic and prosaic

So, why insert conversation for word when translating logos?  Generally, word is the accepted translation.  I think yesterday's exercise points up the meaning of word; clarifies our understanding of it.  I'd always thought of it as something static - a noun.  In the beginning there was the word - plonk!  Conversation implies something dynamic and participative.  And so does word.  What is the point of a word if it is not to communicate?  In context, word must mean more than a word on the page or in speech.  It implies a response.  Word implies conversation, at least in this context.

Let's not be diverted into asking who the conversation was with.  It is however interesting the refrain in the opening verses of Genesis is that 'God saw that it was good'.  Again this implies some sort of conversation or response.  If God knew it was going to be good, if God had embarked on an enterprise with a definite and clear outcome, why say this?  God acted (spoke?) and received a response, checked to see it was good before moving onto the next stage.  God saw it was good because God was seeking a response to her/his actions.  It admits the possibility it might not have been good.  If there were not that possibility - why look, let alone remark upon it?  The pattern is act, check, act.  The process any creative artist might adopt.

This implies a universe not created by a pefectionist who pre-determines all things from the beginning.  But a universe where the outcome is predetermined but the means to the outcome are not predictable at the outset.  I will return to this in more detail at some later date.

One last point, we speak of ecumenical conversations - am I implying some common ground between these prosaic conversations and the great universal conversation which started all things and keeps them going?  Yes I am.  This might sound outrageous - my point is that the most prosaic conversations contain the seeds of the same creativity we find in God's creative act. That is all conversations are potentially creative; free conversations will always lead to the creation of new things.  This is what the Quakers mean by the spirit of the meeting.  They do not mean consensus but a new creation.  All our conversations are important.  Ecumenical conversations are a small number of the conversations that are going on - they are likely to be more effective if seen in their cosmic context.

How it all started (in the pub?)

My new word of the week is Targum.   A friend when I asked explained it is ‘is an Aramaic translation usually in the form of an expanded translation of various books or section so of the Old Testament’.  This accounts for the origin of the word but it seems to be used to mean an expanded translation of scripture.  This implies a significant hermeneutical element as it will be expanded to make or underscore a contemporary point. 

My Targum for today is an exposition of the opening verses of John’s Gospel.  Some time ago I read the word logos is usually translated as word but it can equally be translated as conversation.  I read this in a Methodist Mission Education publication in 2003, unfortunately I have been unable to track it down.  (If anyone can find it I would be grateful to see it again.)  If memory serves this article included a Targum based on the same opening verses.  So, I suppose this is my attempt to reproduce it of course with my own spin.

Tenuous as this may seem to be, it has been the start of a fruitful line of enquiry, one I intend to pursue further.

‘It all started with a conversation, God was there of course, indeed you could say God was the conversation.  God’s conversation was there from the beginning.  All things came into being through the conversation and without the conversation not one thing came into being.  Life is what came into being through the conversation and life illuminates all people.  And so life and God are in conversation and this illuminates the dark places and brings them into the conversation.’

Many years ago I heard the story of the invention of the cloud chamber (used in particle physics to show the tracks of particles, which leave a trail of bubbles in some medium).  Apparently, it was invented in the pub, where there was a salt cellar on the table and someone started to drop grains of salt in the beer and observed they left a trail of bubbles. 

I suspect many things have been invented during this type of unstructured conversation (and messing about) and so why not the universe?  There is something magnificent about the idea of the universe emerging from a pub conversation. 

If anyone thinks this is a bit too flippant I am trying to capture something of the feel of the casual way in which things come into being.  This is enormously important and I will pick up on it later.

Theological departure points

So, where am I coming from and why ecumenism?  Surely I can't fill a blog day by day solely about ecumenism?  Wherever you turn ecumenism comprises long winded documents, constitutions for Local Ecumenical Partnerships which take forever to approve, an annual cycle of events for churches who are mainly not terribly enthusiastic.

Ecumenism can be like that.  But this is not what I hope to explore.  My main interests are not in the minutiae of ecumenical conversations.  It is in the dynamic, the theology, the understanding of conversations.  Let me illustrate what I mean with some biographical data.

I studied at university first in biology and then in computer science.  I have always been interested in science although I have done no research since 1979.  Ecumenism is about the reconciliation of the whole world (or cosmos) to God - it is not in essence about reconciling denominations.  There is a cosmological dimension to ecumenism.

Since then I have been a community development worker in Tyneside, Teesside and South Yorkshire.  The presence of churches together in neighbourhoods, the building of wide partnerships, local regeneration have interesting parallels and overlaps.

In Teesside I first encountered the power of listening through a churches project called RESPOND! and its Dark Holy Ground course.  From there I have increasingly seen the importance of deep listening and the power of conversation to make a difference.

Through community development I have developed a keen interest in community enterprise and particularly in mutuals.  The economy of ecumenism is fascinating from the arrangements to share buildings to the vision of a world where economy serves the people.

I have had a long association with the Urban Theology Unit in Sheffield and from there I have followed my own path with the help of the Christian Praxis Group, a group of friends who meet to study radical theology and for support 2 -4 times a year for 25 years now.  I also studied applied theology at Westminster College specialising in mutuals and social auditing.

In recent years I have worked for the Methodist Church in the fields of ecumenism and resourcing mission.  This continues to be a privilege and of course this work will inform my writing from time to time.  But this blog is not in any way an exposition or critique of Methodist Church policy.

I suppose ecumenism will be a central thread around which I will organise my interests.  At times I might drift far away but hopefully being drawn back to my starting point from time to time will add a degree of coherence to what might otherwise by a confusing whole.