Exploring Ecumenism

More about Memory and Imagination

At a presentation a few weeks ago, I made a suggestion.  The presentation was about a change of approach, undertaken by PCTs (Primary Care Trusts), to their work in communities.  There is a move from a needs based approach to an assets based approach.  It's not too important for my argument what these approaches mean but to aid understanding: needs-based approaches identify and attempt to meet the needs of communities, whilst assets-based approaches focus on the assets already present in the community.

One school of thought is demonstrated in diagram A.  Here there is a simple transition from a needs-based to an assets-based approach.

The speaker suggested a more helpful approach would be diagram B.  Here both needs and assets are identified, leading to a means to map the community in terms of its needs and assets.  So, a community might be low in terms of some needs but have the means to address them because it is high in certain assets.

I'm a bit sceptical about these types of approach.  Both are assessments made by outsiders, on their terms to meet their own targets.  To understand what is going on in a given community, perhaps we need a model like diagram C.  Here the PCT might have been using the needs-based approach with (lets be generous) a degree of success.  But over time, there are diminishing returns and so it is appropriate to introduce a new assets-based approach.  Similarly, this might start out as effective but over time becomes less so.  As each approach delivers fewer returns, there will be a need to develop new approaches.

What any community will experience as projects progress through their life cycle, is a sense of stuckness.  Circumstances will improve to the extent people have the imagination to develop a next step.  To do this they need to move outside the mindset of the current models (needs, assets or what-have-you) and find a new paradigm. 

The thing is people remember.  They remember the old projects and the old models.  Any new movement will be successful to the extent to which it acknowledges past experience in the neighbourhood.  Old models can weigh heavily on a community, where the people have seen it all before.  The new worker is at a disadvantage because she does not remember, the residents are at a disadvantage because they do. 

This is the problem with any experience of stuckness.  Memory reminds us of all the things that have been tried (and failed) and so undermines imagination.  But without memory, imagination cannot grapple with the reality of this specific place and time.

But being stuck, in a community or in church relationships, is a good place to be.  It's a good place to be because it is where God is to be found.  Our mindsets are full of assumptions that have to be addressed to enable us to become unstuck.  Old methods, for example, faith and order approaches, no longer work because they have become constraints on our imagination.  We need to remember but also step outside our old assumptions.

Memory and Imagination

Image via Wikipedia

It's all very well suggesting the way out of the ecumenical winter is to by-pass formal conversations.  But is it possible to be more specific?

A commonplace objection to ecumenism is, unity means uniformity.  The aim of ecumenism is to kill diversity.  Here's a typical statement from a blog post by Harriet Baber, There's no point in interfaith:

Ecumenism as practised during the latter half of the 20th century and into the new millennium was not only wasteful: it was positively pernicious. In order to "draw closer in sacred things" it promoted liturgical uniformity. And this meant less choice for laypeople.

Let me make three points:

1. Superficially, it is true this has been the ecumenical endeavour, at least for certain Protestant churches.
2. Very few ecumenists understand this type of unity to be the goal of ecumenism
3. Many non-ecumenists would agree with this statement.

The problem is a failure of memory and imagination.  We do not appreciate how deep divisions are or how valuable they are. 

There is a failure of memory.  Full visible unity has been successful but with the failure of the 1982 English Covenant, it was over as a goal.  This was recognised in the Swanwick Agreement of 1989 but the Faith and Order debate has continued as if nothing has changed.

The narrow confines of Faith and Order work may seem comfortable and safe but does it remember the roots of our divisions or the nature of the progress that has already been made?  As churches move closer, they find progress is slower.  They are repelled as they realise their distinctions are of value.

And so we also need an imaginative practice, moving outside of formal conversations, which pictures a global church, united and diverse.  In winter as the land covers in snow, it loses its distinctive features.  The ecumenical spring will sharpen the landscape and many new flowers will bloom.  For the winter we need clothing to help us, more than survive, revive out imagination.

Related articles

• WCC General Secretary meets the Pope (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• On Being Stuck (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

On Being Stuck

Image by Bonita Sarita via Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the last couple of posts, I wrote about the Anglican Covenant debate.  I could also mention the recent meeting between Olav Fyske Tveit, General Secretary of the WCC and Pope Benedict XVI.  Tveit gave the Pope a pair of gloves, as there is a need for the right equipment to address the problem of the ecumenical winter.  'The Norwegians have a saying, '"In Norway there is no such thing as bad weather just bad clothing".'

I am currently re-reading Robert M Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  In chapter 24, he writes of what happens when you need to unscrew a plate to access the insides of a motorcycle.  The screw sheers off, what do you do?  There is nothing about this problem in any manual.  The screw is a tiny cheap device which is normally taken for granted.  Once it sheers it prevents any progress whatsoever.  So, what do you do?

You could throw the motorcycle over a cliff.  Momentarily, this might feel good but really - throw away a good motorcycle for a little screw?  There has to be a better way.  The problem is that where the manuals run out of advice you need to take a wider view.  The motorcycle is part of a larger system than the one the manual deals with.

So, for example, it must happen frequently in the life of someone who mends motorcycles for a living.  Ask a mechanic and she might reply, something along the lines of ... ' well, I try something and if that doesn't work I try something else until I get the screw out'.  This might not sound satisfactory but what else is there?

Ecumenism (and the Anglican Covenant) are both intractable in their own ways.  Part of the problem is the Faith and Order approach.  Its problem is its successes.  Theologians have developed a significant body of material that has reconciled communions despite their differences. 

Sometimes there's an arrogance; all these local churches working together are not enough they argue.  We need formal conversations to move ecumenism forwards.

The problem is once you get stuck, more of the same is not enough.  The bigger picture needs to be considered and new approaches tried until the system becomes unstuck.

Related articles

• WCC General Secretary meets the Pope (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• The Ecumenical Landscape (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)

The Anglican Covenant Debate

Image via Wikipedia

This post needs to be read in the context of the last one.  My aim is to explain why I think the current debate about the Anglican Covenant is important to ecumenical relations and indeed to the wider community in Britain.

The Anglican Covenant derives from the worldwide Anglican Communion's (in blue on map) debate about sexuality.  Some provinces in the West have ordained gay Bishops and other provinces, primarily in Africa do not find this acceptable.  The position seems to be the former group have been excluded from conversations within the communion, whilst the latter have more or less absented themselves because they do not feel the former have been excluded enough.

So, the idea is to agree that if any province wishes to make a decision outwith the agreed criteria of what it means to be an Anglican, their decision cannot be implemented until it has the approval of the communion as a whole.  It seems there will be panel whose role will be to agree what is Anglican and whether a new proposal meets these criteria.

I cannot see how this could possibly work.  If we consider the historic compromise between the three main branches of Anglicanism in the Church of England, there has never been an overall authority to which they have to go to justify their particular doctrinal emphases.  That is how catholicity works, it cannot happen if it depends upon some formal authority.  (The Roman Catholic Church is perhaps an exception.  It is a single worldwide church.  I suspect it is the nature of Anglican catholicity that it cannot form a single worldwide communion.  The intricate balance between traditions within a single Anglican province is not robust enough to work on a global scale.)

The problems started because the General Synod made decisions in recent years that some cannot accept, primarily about the ordination of women.  When both sides threaten to take their bat home should the other win, you have a problem.  However, as far as I'm aware this isn't the real situation.  Those opposed to the ordination of women are threatening to leave, whilst I have not heard of those in favour making an equivalent threat. 

In the light of the quote from Volf, a couple of posts ago, we can see the danger.  Once the polarity of the debate becomes more important than unity, the established arrangements fall apart.

Those who support the Anglican Covenant see this and are attempting to hold the communion together with a written document.  And it is perhaps those people who need to look at how this debate has been conducted and whether their emphasis on unity has been the right one.

In some parts of the world, LGBT people are persecuted.  The attitude of the church has contributed to this persecution in some places and opposed it in others.  Attempts to hold together a communion under these differences are doomed to failure because self-evidently these concepts of justice are incompatible.  Without reconciliation there can be no progress.  A document that papers over the cracks cannot do the job.

This is a tragic situation because what was at one time a debate between two incompatible ethical understandings of what is God's justice has become a struggle over the heart of the Anglican communion.  I fear the Anglican Covenant is a much greater threat to Anglican integrity than a split in the communion would be.  

The history of the churches is a history of such splits and perhaps it would be more honest for the two sides to go their separate ways.

There is however a ray of hope.  I read somewhere that the stand against non-heterosexual sexualities is primarily amongst the Bishops.  The clergy in those provinces have other priorities, such as poverty and Aids.  Sexuality is far down their list of priorities and surely it is ultimately for all ministers a pastoral matter, rather than a political or ecclesiological one.  As always the response of people with power to a problem is to legislate.  Perhaps it would be best if the response came from people on the front line, unencumbered by the pronouncements of those who seek purity, sexual or ecclesiological.

But it is also an ecumenical issue and the Anglican Communion perhaps needs to turn to its ecumenical partners for help.  Volf writes: Other cultures are not a threat to the pristine purity of our cultural identity, but a potential source of enrichment (page 52).  The other cultures I mean here are outside the Anglican communion.  Perhaps through their ecumenical relationships, Anglicans can find new perspectives on their own communion. 

Volf goes on to write on page 53: In the battle against evil, especially against the evil in ones own culture, evangelical personality needs ecumenical community.  The church does not belong to any one faction and what I believe Volf means here is that whilst the fervour of those who believe they have the truth has value for the church, it does so only where it is tempered by understanding the faith as wider than any one faction.

What worries me is reconciliation needs to take place not only between the members of the communion but also between the communion and LGBT people.  As the fervour of ecclesiological conflict dominates the discourse, it is easy to forget those who experience practical discrimination day after day.  A church that should be on the side of the persecutor has turned persecutor.

Those who argue on behalf of the persecuted are not in a position to forgive because they are not the ones who are being persecuted.  This means the issues cannot be addressed until those who favour the persecution of people with different sexualities repent of their sin.  I am sure this will happen in time.  Whether it happens in time to save the Anglican communion is another matter.

Why The Anglican Covenant Debate is Important

Image via Wikipedia

This is the example promised in my last post.  I write as a Methodist looking into a troubled sister communion.  It is time I addressed this issue because it has profound implications for English ecumenism. 

The Church of England, and indeed the worldwide Anglican communion, has made a tremendous contribution to ecumenism.  This is largely due to their catholicity.  It is hard to imagine (or at least it used to be) Anglicanism without their brand of catholicity.  For many decades, if not centuries, Anglicanism has functioned as a compromise between Catholics (outside the Roman Catholic Church), evangelicals (who can be traced back to the seventeenth century Puritans) and a liberal tradition which seems to have arisen through eighteenth century latitudinarianism, although it may go further back than that.

These traditions were held together by an ingenious system which included the Book of Common Prayer and was embedded in the structures of the church.  From time to time, groups could not be contained and, around the start of the nineteenth century, perhaps the most serious split was with the Methodists.

To me, as an outsider, the loss of this catholicity amounts to the loss of Anglicanism.  Some might respond with 'good riddance' but I think this response needs to be examined carefully.  I have written about how my own Methodist tradition contributed its organisational approach to the rising working classes from the impoverished industrial poor in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In a similar way, the Church of England, has had an immense influence on a state which has itself been a compromise between many traditions.  Secularism in England is based upon the historic Anglican compromise.  Different Christian traditions and indeed other faiths today, co-exist and their coexistence is based upon the Anglican catholic compromise.

This is what the Anglican Covenant debate is about.  If the Anglican communion were to disintegrate, the implications in Britain and all over the world would be profound.  In my next post I will write about what I understand is happening.

How do Christians Understand Justice?

Image by knowtown via Flickr

I want to take the theme of reconciliation forward, through a few posts based upon the book by Miroslav Volf (illustrated), Exclusion and Embrace.  I first mentioned this book in January 2009, in the post Distinct and Related.  At the time I said I was reading the book and would write a few more posts later.  It's taken me a long time to finish it!

This is from page 198:

The question is whether Christians who want to uphold God's universal justice can judge between cultures with divine infallibility.  The answer is that they cannot.  For one, Christians stand inside a culture, inside a tradition, inside an interest group.  Unlike God's knowledge, their knowledge is limited and distorted.  Their judgements about what is just in concrete situations are inescapably particular.  Hence Croatian Christians can disagree as much with Serbian Christians as they do with Muslims about whether a particular political stance or military action was just.  Inversely, Croatian Christians may agree more with, say, Croatian atheists on what is just than with Serbian Christians.  Second, well-meaning Christians disagree profoundly about the nature of justice.  Western Christian fundamentalists disagree with Liberation Theologians about the very notion of justice, they claim that their account of justice is true because it is God's justice notwithstanding.  And nonWestern conservative Christians may agree more with Liberation Theologians than  with Western fundamentalists.  We must therefore distinguish between our idea of God's justice and God's justice itself.

So, our knowledge of God's justice is limited and compromised.  It is our failure to grasp the nature of our compromises with the world that I understand to be sin.  All of us pick up cues, often unconsciously, from our own culture.  What is just therefore seems obvious to us and so we respond to others, from different cultures, by projecting our evil onto them.  Volf writes on page 53:

The images of communal survival and flourishing our culture feeds us all too easily blur our vision of God's new creation - America is a Christian nation, we then think for instance, and democracy the only true Christian political arrangement.  Unaware that our culture has subverted our faith, we lose a place from which to judge our own culture.

Whilst I try to be aware of the prejudices I bring to conversations, it is entirely possible I am not conscious of the compromises I make.  This is why humility is so important.  Humility is understanding my justice is compromised; I cannot rely entirely upon my own judgement.

John Wesley in his sermon 'The Catholic Spirit', makes a similar point.  Because of sin, I know what I believe to be true will in some respects be false.  The problem is there is no way I can know for certain which beliefs are in fact false. This is a difficult truth to catch hold of if it is understood to be a form of moral relativism; it this is not to believe some or all views are equally valid.  Perhaps it would be closer to the truth to argue no views are valid. 

Perhaps the way to approach this is to examine the consequences of taking absolute positions and I will follow up with a contemporary example in my next post.

Related articles

• The Mission and Unity Problem (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Ecumenism and Culture (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

Humility

Image via Wikipedia

The problem is the overwhelming sense of being in the right many people have when they believe they are in possession of God's truth. 

This is understandable but enthusiasm for a single tradition betrays lack of faith (illustrated).  Let us consider faith for a moment.  No-one ever makes an enthusiastic response to the undoubted fact the sun will rise tomorrow.  It's true, there's no denying it.  But I don't need to persuade anyone of the fact. 

However, where I'm not persuaded myself, I have to be enthusiastic.  The claims I make for the truth of my beliefs compensate for my own doubts. 

As confidence grows, so enthusiasm falls away.  I can have confidence in the faith into which I have been formed within my own tradition.  This is why formation is so important.  Without formation, I will not grow in confidence and so remain absolute in my beliefs.

Christopher Jamieson writes in his book, 'Finding Sanctuary', about humility.  Humility is not denial of truth but demonstrates growing confidence in it.  It means I can listen to others without feeling threatened or getting angry.  I find as I listen to others' views, I grow in faith within my own tradition.

Perhaps a weakness of mission is its failure to form its converts?  If no tradition is offered, people have nothing to argue with, to learn from, to grow with.  We cannot be reconciled with other traditions if we have no tradition of our own.  We'll either be overwhelmed by the confidence of the other or seek to overwhelm them.

As the roots of our faith grow deeper into our own tradition, we are able to walk alongside members of other traditions, learn from them and possibly have something of value to pass onto them.

Related articles

• Why Unity is Essential to Mission (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Mission, Unity and Formation (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• The Mission and Unity Problem (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• The Diversity of Spiritual Direction (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Spiritual Direction (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Mission and Unity (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

Why Unity is Essential to Mission

Image via Wikipedia

Previously I suggested the formula 'Mission and Unity' is incomplete and we need to add a third leg, formation.  On deeper analysis I suggest 'Mission and Formation' would be a better pairing, as both are essential.

Unity is harder to place with the other two.  One reason for this is the experience of many churches, who find they do not need unity for mission.  It could be argued the Roman Catholic Church, is huge and so clearly able to support 1.2 billion believers' needs.  It doesn't need unity with other traditions for its success.  Similarly, Protestant churches tend to grow by splitting.  They are re-energised by splitting!

I remember as a child watching Thunderbirds.  International Rescue had five vehicles.  Thunderbird One was the frontline vehicle, which got there first and delivered immediate support and appraised the situation.  Thunderbird Two was much bigger and slower.  It followed on to supply necessary equipment.  I was always disappointed Thunderbird Four, the submarine, was carried by Thunderbird Two alongside several other machines which for some reason didn't count as Thunderbirds!  Of the five Thunderbirds, it is the only one not on the poster!

Similarly, unity is important but integral to formation.  Outside formation, what role does unity have?  Mission is possible without formation, perhaps disastrously but it is possible to perform a sort of hit and run evangelism (arguably this is worse than not doing it at all).  Unity is a step in our formation as Christians; essential but subsidiary.

Initially a convert is formed in a single tradition.  A brief exploration of Christian blogs will lead to  encounters with writers who claim their tradition is the only true church.  Some of these are Protestant, others Catholic or Orthodox.  A non-Christian encountering these competing absolute claims would face a dilemma.  How do I choose between competing absolute truth claims?

Usually converts are touched by a single tradition and formed by that tradition.  To encounter the fullness of the diversity of the Christian faith with many competing truth claims, is a step in formation.  The immature might erect fences and bolster their truth claims but sooner or later the reality is undeniable.

At the point where a tradition encounters and embraces other traditions, their formation and mission will be transformed.  It is at this point they encounter the reality of God's love in all its depth and breadth. 

For Methodists, this is part of their commitment to sanctification.  It is commonly believed Arminianism is inclusive, opens the church to all comers of every tradition.  In fact, Arminianism is more complex.  It is initially exclusive.  It invites those who wish to make a commitment to be a part of a church or class and put down roots.  As roots into the tradition deepen, then the walls come down as the people sanctified have the confidence to embrace the other.

There is a single virtue that helps them to do this and my next post will describe it.

Related articles

• Mission, Unity and Formation (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• The Mission and Unity Problem (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Spiritual Direction (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• The Diversity of Spiritual Direction (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Mission and Unity (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Ecumenism and Culture (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

Mission, Unity and Formation

Image by de la Ronde via Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Towards the end of a recent post, I suggested we need to add formation to mission and unity, in order to comprehend the three legs of the ministry of the churches.

Without mission, the Gospel will not be experienced.

Without formation, Christians are ill-equipped for mission and people who hear and respond will find little or no support and are likely to fall away.

Why is unity also essential?  The traditions are nothing if they are not lived.  I realised only recently the extent to which I have been formed by singing traditional hymns.  Hymns I remember finding incomprehensible a few decades ago make sense today.  I don't remember this happening; they have grown into my consciousness over many years.  This is why Methodist hymn books are important to my tradition, they are approved by conference after a long process to ensure they reflect Methodist doctrinal standards. 

Christianity is an incarnational faith, known not through words on a page (scripture, hymns, prayer books, creeds, etc) but through life experience.  As we live, we unpack and learn to use the contents of the Christian storehouse as presented to us through our own tradition and others.

So, when we consider unity, we consider relationships between several expressions of the same faith. 

We tend to make mistakes of two types.  One is to make absolute claims for my own tradition and the other is to insist all traditions should be the same. Indeed, upon analysis these are almost the same mistake.  The former cuts itself off from the others and the latter claims all should join together on negotiated terms.  Both tend to impose a single approach.

These two tendencies have been identified by Yung Suk Kim's boundary protected and boundary overcoming communities; he suggests a third approach, apocalytic community, that seeks reconciliation rather than structural unity.  I have visited these themes several times.

So, why is unity essential?  I will address this in my next post.

Related articles

• The Diversity of Spiritual Direction (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• On the Nature of Evangelism (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• The Mission and Unity Problem (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Spiritual Direction (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Mission and Unity (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• Ecumenism and Culture (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

The Diversity of Spiritual Direction

In my last post I suggested mission, unity and spiritual direction belong together and most traditions have a balance of all three.  In my next post, I will return to the theme of unity but in this one I will review the diverse approaches to formation across the traditions.  I am aware this review will be nowhere near complete and so would welcome suggestions of other approaches to formation I do not cover here.

Primarily, I am interested in formation of lay people.  Ministers, priests and religious have long periods of formation, as part of their training and continuing development.  However, my intention is to highlight how formation is an important dimension to the mission of the church.  Without the formation of laity, there will be no retention of church members.  

There are of course many formal approaches to formation.  Spiritual direction is generally available to anyone who seeks it.  It is possibly more common in some traditions.  It can be available on a one to one basis, perhaps over a limited period of time.  Retreats are another popular option.  Groups can also meet for formation.  Wesley's classes and mission bands in the 18th and 19th centuries were successful approaches to formation, where dedicated ministers were scarce.  Even today, bible study groups and some fresh expressions consciously address the formation of their members.

There are other ways in which people are formed by their churches.  Regular attendance at church services is not tribalism; it is a (perhaps residual) approach to formation.  For Methodists the singing of hymns and prayerful use of the hymn book has traditionally contributed to the formation of Methodists.

In the Catholic Church regular attendance at Mass is an approach to formation, as is their sacrament of reconciliation.  I remember facilitating a mission audit of two churches in the mid-nineties.  One was the Methodist and the other was a Catholic Church (illustrated).  They were across the road from each other and we called a joint meeting to look at the mission activities of the two churches together.

The Priest was a little apologetic before the meeting, as he believed the Methodists were far more active than the Catholics.  So, we sat down and filled a side of flipchart paper with the activities of the Methodist Church.  This was a respectable result, much as everyone anticipated.  The Catholics started rather slowly and then as confidence increased easily filled a second and then a third sheet. 

The difference between the two churches was, I suppose, the Catholics did not normally discuss their mission activities.  I suspect the work of the Priest in the formation of the people led to their missionary activity.  The Priest was not terribly interested in leading mission, he focused on formation and left the rest to God.

Some ministers, like Wesley, are able to do both effectively but it is likely the minister who focuses solely on mission, will not be as effective as the minister whose sole interest is formation.  Formation equips the church for mission.  Mission on its own is likely to be activist.

Indeed, what we have here is a restatement, perhaps in ecclesiological terms, of praxis.  This is the recognition that action and reflection are both needed for effective ministry.  And this does of course lead to the question, if action and reflection are sufficient, is unity really necessary?

Related articles

• Spiritual Direction (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• The Mission and Unity Problem (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)
• On the Nature of Evangelism (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)