Exploring Ecumenism

Distinct and Related

I'm currently reading 'Exclusion and Embrace' by Miroslav Volf.  I suspect I will base a few posts around it sometime but this is a passage that caught my eye.

We are who we are not because we are separate from the others who are next to us, but because we are both separate and connected, both distinct and related; the boundaries that mark our identities are both boundaries and bridges.  ... boundaries are part of the creative process of differentiation.  For without boundaries there would be no discrete identities, and without discrete identities there would be no relation to the other.  (Pages 66 - 67, author's emphases)

If this is right, then the churches in Britain are not far from being in the right place.  They are distinct and connected.  What is unity like when the united are both distinct and related?  Is it possible the push for visible unity, is distracting the churches from what they have achieved?  Perhaps churches outside of Europe can see our achievements better than we can.

A Covenant Approach to Ecumenism

Towards the end of chapter 3 of 'The Dignity of Difference' Sacks writes as follows:

What would faith be like?  It would be like being secure in one's home, yet moved by the beauty of foreign places, knowing that they are someone else's home, not mine, but still part of the glory of the world that is ours.  (Page 65)

I have picked small fragments from a chapter that hangs together fully only if it is read as a whole.  This final fragment (for now) summarises the emotional power of ecumenism for me.  I am familiar with my own British Methodist tradition, as familiar with its weaknesses as I am with its strengths.  To experience this with a second tradition, or more than one, is a great privilege and opens up new perspectives.  But my perspective remains Methodist, because this is the lens through which I observe other traditions.

For me this has come through the Methodist Anglican (or more accurately Church of England) Covenant.  Working closely with others from another tradition has helped me to see the possibilities of covenant from another angle.  Before I worked on the covenant in a formal capacity my own local church voted against it from a perspective of commitment to ecumenism.  I still retain many of the doubts I had then but I see things in a different way now.

I have learned something of the genius of the Church of England.  It is itself an ecumenical triumph; as it grew through warfare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it became an alliance of a range of theological traditions who were prepared to overcome their commitment to their particular view sufficiently to value collaboration.  This coupled with this tradition's commitment to the nation's neighbourhood's means that in the past, despite myriad faults, this tradition has been the glue that has held English society together. 

Its tragedy is the constant struggle to hold together factions which are becoming less and less tolerant, or less prepared to allow certain views a place within the tradition.  This has weakened the church's potential for leadership; not the arrogance of some early attempts of leadership through takeover, but leadership through its capacity and resources.

I suspect many Anglicans (and Methodists) would disagree with this view.  My point is, as an outsider, I see the potential of this tradition, as well as its weaknesses, and my aim in working with it is to play a small part in encouraging it to play a part that is worthy of it.  My main aim is not to be a part of this tradition but to support it as it supports my Methodist tradition.  Covenant is this type of mutual support, each tradition respected and accepted for its contribution

I suspect all our traditions need to hear from their partners encouragement to stay with their charisms and to develop them for the benefit of all traditions.  Our unity in diversity would then grow out of each tradition contributing what it can to the common life of all together.

How do we make this a reality?  That is, in my view, the ecumenical task.  These posts are my attempt to explore how ecumenism might embrace this vision.

The Image of God

So, according to Sacks biblical morality is a tension or interaction between unity and diversity.  I think I understand local morality more as custom or culture than morality although I think I can see why Sacks favours morality and certainly morality is a part of custom or culture.  Universal morality will to a large degree be free of local custom or culture although its formulation might lead back to unspoken origins.  I'm not inclined to worry too much about this so long as there is consensus over human rights. 

More to the point, unity or diversity alone will inevitably over time lead to stagnation; each perspective challenges the other and so opens up possibilities for change.  The activity which enables systems of morality or culture to be dynamic is conversation and I will return to this.

In chapter 3 of 'The Dignity of Difference' Sacks goes on to discuss the nature of God:

As an ancient Jewish teaching puts it: 'When a human being makes many coins in the same mint, they all come out the same.  God makes every person in the same image - His image - and each is different.'  The challenge to the religious imagination is to see God's image in one who is not in our image.  That is the converse of tribalism.  But it is also something other than universalism.  It takes difference seriously.  (Page 60)

No individual therefore can know the mind of God because they are a part of it.  Indeed no community and culture can know the mind of God because they are still only a part of it.  This is why conversations are so important; the spirit creates something new out of the clash of cultures.

By way of illustration, let me make two comments.  First, theologians are increasingly recognising the importance of contextual theology as opposed to academic theology.  For the former the context of the theologian is important, not because it is therefore somehow relative, but because its context needs to be understood alongside those of other theologies.  Conversations may be less effective where the contexts of those taking part are not known.  The criticism of academic theology is where it claims to be somehow more objective.  The criticism is that the academic simply does not know his or her own context.  This is why an early post described my context.

Second, Jesus' second commandment to love your neighbour as you love yourself.  At school we were taught this as a three layer ranking of love.  God first, neighbours second, self third.  This splitting of the second commandment is of course absurd.  If God has created all people in God's image then all people are equally loved.  We have to love all including ourselves (and by extension our traditions) because all are loved by God.  This is the origin of the idea of mutuality to which I will return in future.

The Dual Nature of Biblical Morality

Sacks goes on to contrast philosophical morality and biblical morality.  To summarise, philosophical morality deals in moral absolutes, focusing upon what humanity has in common.  This type of morality underlies human rights.  It is abstract and even where it speaks of individuals it does so in terms of 'the individual' rather than by reference to real people.

Biblical morality is more complex because it adds to these universals a context bound morality dependent on history and memory.  So for each family, tribe, nation or church there will be a complex web of mutual obligations.  This makes the group distinctive.

This is not the same as situation ethics which is in fact a morality of universals, arguing that ethics depends upon the situation in which actions take place.  For the group, their morality holds whatever the situation.

My interpretation of this is that local morality has a wider scope than we normally understand as morals.  It is a web of behavioural norms in which a particular society operates.  Religious congregations will develop their own norms which make them distinctive from other congregations.  Those within the same tradition will have more in common but the local church will have its distinctive culture too.

This makes ecumenism difficult if it is seen as a movement towards unity.  To negotiate unity is to some extent to demand a change in behaviour.  Sometimes this might be a minor adjustment but the smallest changes can sometimes have major implications invisible to those who plan or agree them at national or international level.

For example, disposal of the elements following communion may seem to be a trivial matter.  But for some Methodists what might seem to be reasonable restrictions on what they may do can have profound implications for their understanding of what communion is.  It implies Jesus' presence in the elements themselves whereas some Methodists understand Jesus' presence to be in the fellowship who take part in communion.  Without understanding this the resistance to quite trivial changes might seem inexplicable.  This begins to help us understand why ecumenical reception is so difficult, as even within a tradition variation in beliefs might have profound implications.

To summarise in Sacks words:

There is no road to human solidarity that does not begin with moral particularity - by coming to know what it means to be a child, a parent, a neighbour, a friend.  We learn to love humanity by loving specific human beings.  There is no short-cut.  (Page 58)

Does Sacks description of morality apply to Christianity?  I think it does.  Indeed a discipline of congregational studies has grown up around understanding the cultures of congregations.  I think John Wesley also recognised this in his sermon 'The Catholic Spirit' - I'm sure I'll turn to both of these at some stage.

The Unity of God in the Diversity of Creation

So, why does the imposition of 'artificial unity upon divinely created diversity' matter?  Sacks in chapter 3 of 'The Dignity of Difference' makes several points and I summarise a few of them here.

Biblical monotheism is not the idea that there is one God and therefore one gateway to His presence.  To the contrary, it is to the idea that the unity of God is to be found in the diversity of creation.  (Page 53, Sacks' emphases.)

What we cannot do is place ourselves outside the particularities of language to arrive at a truth, a way of understanding and responding to the world that applies to everyone at all time.  That is not the essence of humanity but an attempt to escape from humanity.  (Page 54)

God is God of all humanity, but between Babel and the end of days no single faith is the faith of all humanity.  (Page 55, Sacks' emphases.)

(Love) is what separates science (the search for universals) from poetry (the love of particulars).  It is also what distinguishes the God of the philosophers from the God of the Hebrew Bible.  (Page 56)

It was through reading Sacks that I found an articulation of something I had tried to voice long before I became involved with formal ecumenism.  I remember arguments with my father, who was a Unitarian Zen Buddhist, about the unity of God or the Universe.  I struggled with my understanding of yes, one universe, but one very diverse universe.  If it were not for diversity how could we have the argument? 

I suppose this is what the Doctrine of the Trinity is about.  There needs to be some diversity (even in the Godhead) for love to be expressed.  Christians place diversity within the Godhead and Jews do not but perhaps both seek to express the same thing.  The philosophers see God as a thing, people of faith see God as a relationship.

The problem atheists have is not their lack of belief in God but their belief that there is one story to be told about the universe.  This is a problem with all fundamentalisms; the belief that there is only one story to be told.

Many Christians will struggle with the idea that no single faith is the faith of all humanity.  Is this a liberal belief that all faiths are equal?  I would support Sacks; he has to be right.  But this is not the end of the argument.  This is the start of a new and fascinating journey for Christians; a journey abruptly curtailed for those who seek to impose their truth upon others.  I'm not sure how far I can follow this trail but I promise to return to it at a later date.

Imposing artificial unity

In the third chapter of 'The Dignity of Difference' Sacks writes 'Yet that is the case I will make: that we need nothing less than a paradigm shift in our understanding of our commonalities and differences' (page 48).  Later on page 52, he summarises his new paradigm:

'It (Babel) is a supreme act of hubris, committed time and again in history - from the Sumerian city-states, to Plato's Republic, to empires, ancient and modern, to the Soviet Union.  It is the attempt to impose an artificial unity on divinely created diversity.  That is what is wrong with universalism.'  (Author's emphases)

'The Dignity of Difference' was published in 2002, soon after the destruction of the twin towers on 11 September 2001.  But its context is equally the Holocaust and centuries of persecution of Jews.  In future posts this context will become more important.

What interests me about Sacks' paradigm is how far it mirrors my own experience.  There is an assumption common amongst Christians and others that God is perfect and so is his creation.  Creation is messy, any biologist will be aware of the waste, the magnificent and unnecessary diversity of life left to its own devices.  Astronomers are equally aware of the mess of 100s of billions of galaxies.  In all natural systems there are regularities but in detail there is mess; sometimes because we cannot see the regularities and sometimes because it is just mess.

I'm sure the thing that shocks Christians about evolution is the idea that chance might have a part to play in it.  But this is only shocking if you already know how God creates.  A theme I will return to many times is that order emerges from chance actions, and understanding the relationship between order and chaos allows us to grasp something of God's action in the universe. 

My single point for now is that Sacks paradigm has implications beyond issues relating to unity and diversity.  The urge to impose order is a human urge, not God's.

The Dignity of Difference

British ecumenism is dominated by a model of ecumenism called 'full visible unity'.  I suppose if there is an old ecumenical paradigm this is it.  How does it work?  Simple.  If two traditions become one tradition, that is visible unity.  An example would be the United Reformed Church, where the Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Church of Christ traditions have become a single church.  When all the churches join together this would be 'full visible unity'.  It is important to understand something of the energy around this paradigm and I will return to this in a future post.

Various attempts have been made to identify a new paradigm.  One of these is known as 'reconciled diversity'.  This stops short of visible unity and argues reconciled traditions will learn to collaborate.  The problem with this approach of course is that it is potentially an escape clause for those who do not agree with the 'full visible unity' paradigm.  Somehow, this model has never built up a sufficient head of steam to be a contender for ruling ecumenical paradigm.  I don't know why this is. I'm told there were papers written a few years ago that ruled out this approach.  I don't know who wrote them or what they said.

There is a popular vision of 'unity in diversity' which attempts to reconcile full visible unity with diversity in some way although I've never seen this set down in any formal way.  I must confess I find it hard to visualise what it might mean in practise and so I suspect do most other people.

To move this debate forward we need to examine unity and diversity and ask questions like, 'what do they mean?' in theory and in practise.  I'm not seeking a new paradigm as such, merely to try to throw some light on the subject.

Initially I plan to comment on some aspects of 'The Dignity of Difference: How to avoid the clash of civilisations' by Jonathan Sacks.  This book is written from a Jewish perspective, close enough to make sense to Christians but distant enough to allow for some perspective.  In writing this blog I am attempting to take a step back from the usual content of ecumenical conversations and to ask what we are trying to achieve and whether or how we can be more effective.

On page 20 Sacks writes:

... the proposition at the heart of monotheism is not what it has often been taken to be: one God, therefore one path to salvation.  To the contrary, it is that unity is worshipped in diversity.  The glory of the created world is its astonishing multiplicity: the thousands of different languages spoken by (hu)mankind, the proliferation of cultures, the sheer variety of the imaginative expressions of the human spirit, in most of which, if we listen carefully, we will hear the voice of wisdom telling us something we need to know.  That is what I mean by the dignity of difference.  (The emphases are Sacks'.)

In his prologue, Sacks tells us something ecumenists learn very quickly,  Through conversations with other traditions we learn about their tradition and more about our own.  This is something we should celebrate.  We should be mourning the loss of languages and cultures to globalisation rather than trying to reduce their numbers ourselves. 

Unity in Diversity

The British Council of Churches between the late 1940s and 1989 was largely Protestant and its vision was of full visible unity.  This vision was supported by other parts of the world where uniting churches, eg the Church of South India, demonstrated that it was possible for Protestant churches to unite.  In Britain this vision was supported by the Methodist Deed of Union in 1932 and the birth of the United Reformed Church in the early seventies.

Since 1989, with the new Churches Together approach, the model of the Council of Churches, decisions made independently of the parent churches, has given way to churches making their own decisions together.  I described this in an earlier blog.

Imperceptibly, the emphasis has shifted from unity to diversity; to unity in diversity.  The problem has been to find a model of reconciled diversity that is not seen as a means to avoid the complexity and difficulty of full visible unity.  Even unity in diversity has to be made real in some tangible way.

I think the problem in part is that the movement from a focus on unity to a focus on diversity is not simply a shift in emphasis.  Unity is a model based upon control.  To place all churches under one model of governance implies this.  It also implies that if we work at it hard enough we will in time solve the remaining problems and find the model that will bring all the churches together.  This is to see the human relations under God as a convergent system.

Unfortunately human systems are divergent.  Diversity implies no single centralised control and no overall solution to the problems we face.  The approach is one of devolved centres that seek to identify and join in the movement of the spirit through their dialogue or conversation.  Unity will emerge from the interactions of many players rather than the reception of decisions made through formal talks.

Clearly this will be unsatisfactory to many but we have to ask ourselves how likely it is that formal talks will unite all the churches (rather than a few) and that they will stay united.  The diversity model implies we will stumble upon unity rather than plan it and this itself might seem unsatisfactory.

Divergent systems are sometimes known as soft systems and it would be helpful for ecumenists to understand them.  They will, I'm sure, be described in a future strand of this blog.