This post will provide an overview of what happened, mainly through links. I am very impressed by much of this material and I will return to it in the near future. I have two main sources of information and would welcome information about anything else that has been placed online. Presumably more than one person who attended wrote blog posts? Let me know if you aware of anything.
First up, a series of posts by Wes Grandberg-Michaelson, General Secretary of the Reformed Church in America, who writes for the Sojourners blog. He wrote a post every day during the consultation and here they are:
The second source is the Global Christian Forum's website. Here you will find the final statement and some information about the way the Forum operates and its background.
I will return to some of this material in the near future.
Sometimes it is important to examine our assumptions. One such assumption is no ecumenical activity can be justified if it does not support the mission of the church. This seems to be accepted by all the traditions.
Perhaps one reason is the centenary of the the Edinburgh 1910 World Missionary Conference. If the modern ecumenical movement started with that conference, mission and unity have always been two dimensions of the same activity. Later in the twentieth century, the Life and Work and then the Faith and Order movements started and so perhaps mission and unity had less prominence for a while.
There is a perception ecumenism and mission have become separate movements. While the celebration of Edinburgh 1910 had its official (sponsored by the World Council of Churches (WCC)) conference in Edinburgh in June (Edinburgh 2010), a much larger Cape Town 2010 conference in October, was sponsored by the Lausanne movement.
The first Lausanne Congress was in 1974 and marked a split in the ecumenical movement, or at least the Protestant part of it. The supporters of the Lausanne Covenant (formulated in 1974), founded in this country the Evangelical Alliance. This evangelical movement is an alternative ecumenical movement, open to all Christians. It operates independently of the movement supporting the World Council of Churches.
Although some churches belong to both movements, it is a significant split that is only slowly being healed. One encouraging event, is the WCC General Secretary addressed Cape Town 2010, for the first time.
We must not make the mistake of thinking these two movements are split along the lines of mission and unity. Just as the Lausanne movement is ecumenical in nature, so the Councils of Churches / Churches Together movement focuses on mission. Local Ecumenical Partnerships, which today are understood to be formal organisational structures, were a few decades ago the equivalent of today's Fresh Expressions. Indeed, it may be argued in their explicit linkage of mission and unity, they set a better example than some mission projects, where unilateral initiatives or initiatives that bypass established churches are not questioned.
In my next post I will say a bit more about evangelical ecumenism before I go on to highlight what I understand to be the weakness of the mission and unity model.
This is not a topic I know a great deal about and so I'm preparing this post as a request for help tracking down material for future exploration.
Usually we think of ecumenism as an exercise in ecclesiology. We seek unity between churches, denominations or traditions. This is a formal approach to unity. It involves negotiated agreements between traditions.
My question: does culture have a role creating divisions or supporting unity between Christians?
Inculturation is the process whereby cultures that pre-exist the arrival of the Christian message, take it on board. Traditional missionary activity perhaps tried to introduce western traditions into places. Today the focus is upon cultures interpreting the faith in their own way, although I suspect this is something of a generalisation.
Does culture simplify or complicate the quest for unity? If our major divisions are between the continents, so Anglicans on one shore have more in common with Catholics on the same shore than they have with Anglicans an ocean away, does this mean the quest for unity must be harder? I'm thinking for example of the differences between African and American Anglican churches over sexuality. This is a well known example but there must be others where Christian cultural traditions are growing further apart. To what extent, does culture account for the differences between African and American Anglicanism, rather than theological emphases or tradition?
Or perhaps as Roman Catholicism, a single tradition, can embrace cultures all over the world, unity between very different Christian cultures is possible. The success of this church, with its centralised Magisterium, may imply all Christians should be a part of it but this would deny the witness of many Christians who seek freedom to worship outside of a centralised authority.
And what about local cultural differences? Do inner city churches in Britain have more in common with each than with rural or suburban churches in the same city?
How does culture influence the ways we express our faith?
One further point. Unity or reconciliation? This topic resonates with the idea of a global church. Where are the voices who are not heard? Can Christians on the margins, whose voices are not heard, find solidarity with each other? Or do they face one another through veils of incomprehension?
I wrote three posts about this era earlier this year and the first placed the Inter-church Process into its historical context. By 1985, the plans were advanced and the plan was to work through three phases.
Phase 1 was called Understandings of the Church and was to last throughout 1985 and until September 1986. It aimed:
To look closely at our understandings of the Church in the light of our common mission, from the point of view of the tradition and experience of each denomination, but also in the light of ecumenical experience and in relation to the existence of other denominations.
The objective was to find replies to a central question from local, national and international sources. The question was:
"In your tradition and experience, how do you understand the nature and purpose of your church, in relation to other Christian denominations and as together we share in God's mission to the world?"
At the local level, the aim was to engage local Christians to share their views together during Lent 1986. This would be 'nationally co-ordinated and locally devised'. This process would be supplemented by the views of those involved in local ecumenism and members of other local Christian Communities.
At national level, the national churches would be consulted and asked to produce a 2000 word response to the churches. This would be supplemented by the views of national bodies such as the Evangelical Alliance, other responsible secular, professional and non-Christian organisations, and major non-Christian faiths. This would be supplemented by work already completed.
At international level, the findings of multilateral and bilateral conversations would be collated and third world views obtained through church missionary organisations.
I summarised the results of this process in a recent post.
Phase II: Reflecting and Questioning Together, over the autumn and winter of 1986-7, aimed:
To promote prayer, reflection, and mutual questioning on the material produced in phase I in order to prepare for phase III.
This would be done at local, regional and national levels though meetings to discuss the material produced at phase 1. The expectation was ecumenical groups would make their own arrangements but the 'nature and purpose of the church' would also be the theme for the January 1987 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
Phase III was Evaluation and Proposals for Action between the Spring and Autumn of 1987. It aimed:
To evaluate and assess this process of prayer, study and discussion in order to discern the way forward and to make proposals for the practical and organisational aspects of the churches' mission and unity, including the shaping of the ecumenical instruments needed for the future.
This would take place through a series of meetings. (1) Three meetings took place in England, Scotland and Wales within 10 days of each other, (2) a conference of 500 - 1000 participants in September 1987, (3) after September proposals would be considered by churches and other ecumenical bodies.
The vision did not have a narrow Faith and Order focus. In terms of content and its commitment to engage with all interested parties locally, nationally and internationally, the process showed a real vision for the whole church in the context of the wider world.
There was a genuine commitment to engage with local churches. Given the technology of the time, they achieved something that would be unthinkable now. It is amazing they were able to do all this 25 years ago. With blogs and social networking today, it would seem easier to undertake these wide-ranging conversations. In reality, this vision seems to have deserted the ecumenical movement and such a broad conversation seems impossible.
This is notice of a new blog I hope readers of Exploring Ecumenism might visit.
Methodist Ecumenical News (MEN) is a blog I have started for the British Methodist Connexion, one among several supported by the Connexional Team. Where Exploring Ecumenism is my own blog and reflects my own opinions and speculations, MEN aims to report on ecumenical work from local churches, through Districts to national and international ecumenism. Consequently, MEN will cover mainly factual events, happenings, agreements, etc.
Exploring Ecumenism tends to be speculative; it entertains me and a few spammers, if no-one else. So, I see MEN as an opportunity to report on more factual material. So, the blogs will be complementary and taken together will provide a good picture of the latest thinking and action.
At the time of writing, MEN has 11 followers, more than this blog although a fraction of its age. So, I am optimistic that it might have a real impact. It will have a close relationship with the ecumenical section of the Methodist Church website and replaces the news stream, which was never very satisfactory.
I'm planning a backbone of regular posts, at 8am on working days. I will do my best to cover as wide a range of ecumenical news as I can find, anything which might be of interest to Methodists.
I'm also seeking a team of occasional writers. They will write on specialist topics. Building this team will take some time but I hope to encourage writers to provide a wide range of material; an overview of Methodist ecumenical work.
Why Methodist? It might seem odd to have a Methodist ecumenical blog. This has been conceived as complementary to the Methodist Church website. However, if the response is positive, it may be possible to explore an ecumenical ecumenical blog.
But one step at a time. You can help by visiting MEN and clicking the 'Follow' button in the top right (you could also follow this blog!). Do keep and eye on it and comment - the same goes for this blog too.
Towards the end of December I prepared a paper for the Sheffield Jesus Seminar, organised through the Urban Theology Unit and St Mark's, Broomhill. I didn't get around to publishing it on this blog at the time. The paper was in two parts. The first was lifted from a post I made in April 2009, The First Commandment is One Commandment Not Three. The paper I was asked to write for the seminar was called 'Jesus and the Discipline of Subversive Love' and I was offered the same passage as I had analysed in this post.
The Seminar took place on 22 May 2010 and I have only this week started to examine the results and I will in a future post pick up a few interesting issues that arose. Five of us presented papers to about 30 people. Then five groups spent 15 minutes with each author, so everyone got to comment on all the papers.
So, follow the above link for the first part of the paper and then read the following for the second part.
I have been reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's A History of Christianity for the past 6 weeks. I haven't got very far, it has 1016 pages and I'm on page 398. One problem is it's a very heavy book (about two house bricks) and so not really practical to take on the train. I read it while the computer boots up each day. I worry my computer is rather slow but if I get it fixed, I'll never finish the book!
And I want to finish it because it is a brilliant book. It is very well written and although some of the complexities require careful reading, it is because they are complex, rather than a fault in the writing. This book makes accessible a great deal that puts Christian history into perspective. It should be essential reading for ecumenists.
In a recent post I suggested bible study as a 'risky but serious study of the Gospel bringing together experiences of the spirit in the word with the best of biblical scholarship'.
This post relates to my recent review of the essay by Dr Cheryl Bridges Johns, where she compares the gifts of the north and the gifts of the south.
For me, something did not feel right about this comparison of gifts and I want to explore it further in this post. Of the South, Johns writes:
Glimpsing into this window of opportunity, we see a Christianity that takes Scripture seriously. Taking Scripture seriously is not the same as being fundamentalist. Many in the Global South are quick to point out that they are not "fundamentalists"in the sense that they hold to a rigid legal code. Rather, Scripture is viewed as a living of the Spirit for the present time. This is especially true among Pentecostals where there is a fusion between Spirit and Word.
I wrote about ecumenical reception about a year ago and I return to it for just one post. This links with recent posts about the Global Christian Forum and its implications for local ecumenism.
A helpful text about ecumenical reception is Ecumenical Reception: Its Challenge and Opportunity by William G Rusch. It is rather dry although persistence might reward the reader with a few interesting insights.
A few posts ago , I mentioned the use of participative methods as one of the distinctive features of the Global Christian Forum . The intention has been to distance the Forum from formal talks about Faith and Order.
Consultancy for Mission and Ministry This should take you to details of the Consultancy for Mission and Ministry course at the York Insititute. See my post about non-directive consuultancy around 9 September 2009.
Image by freefotouk via Flickr
Recent Comments