Exploring Ecumenism

Spiritual Direction

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Contextual theology considers every tradition to be formed through a conversation between a particular time and place and the Christian faith.  It does not cover solely those faith traditions, eg black, feminist, liberation, Asian, etc that differ from those of Western Europe.  The growth of new traditions is natural for a living faith.  Faith is not just words on paper but lives lived in many contexts and the insights shared are a small part of what is experienced on the ground.

Given this natural diversity, catholicity is essential for Christian unity.  However, it does not imply all traditions are equally valid.  The point is (1) all traditions are lacking, and (2) no-one knows for certain the frailties of either their own or anyone else's tradition.  Receptive ecumenism addresses this in its exploration of exchanges of gifts between traditions, where each tradition seeks from others what is lacking from its own.

The mainstream traditions are compromises between a variety of traditions who determine to collaborate despite their differences.  Their purpose is threefold (at least) - mission and unity, of course, and also spiritual direction.  In the Roman Catholic traditions this is known as formation; in the Wesleyan traditions as sanctification.  

John Wesley was not only the greatest evangelist since St Paul but also a skilled spiritual director.  He saw the need for spiritual direction amongst the new urban poor and he set up the structures (Methodist societies) whereby the poor could be spiritual directors for each other.  Formation was at the core of the early Methodist movement.

And I would maintain it is just as essential today as it ever was.  When the evangelicals of the 1970s found Methodism wanting, they took the wrong road.  They separated themselves into purist groups and focused on evangelism.  It had disappointing results because it failed to form its converts.  It failed to form its converts because it did not trust the wider Methodist Church.  Today, Methodism's evangelicals seem to have recognised the importance of formation within the church. 

Evidence of the importance of formation can be seen in the work of Father Christopher Jamieson of Worth Abbey.  I have written before of his BBC TV programme 'The Monastery' in 2005 and the book that followed it, 'Finding Sanctuary'.  Recently, he has fronted another BBC programme, 'The Big Silence' which once again  demonstrated the hunger people have for God, even some who do not recognise God exists.

We need therefore to recognise three legs to the churches' ministry; mission, unity and formation.

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The Mission and Unity Problem

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I've taken the excursion into evangelicalism in my last two posts because the problem I identified towards the end of the last, is common to all aspects of mission.  Perhaps evangelism is most prone to making absolute truth claims as it is a means of proclamation of the Word of God.  There are dangers associated with being right and this is something we all need to acknowledge.

Whilst all Christians bear witness to the cross and resurrection, there is no single evangelical message, but many traditions who all carry an element of the truth only known fully to God.

I am not advocating relativism.  I'm not arguing evangelists or others involved in mission should in any way water down their message.  Our witness is distinctive in all its varieties and no point is served by watering it down. 

Perhaps I can best approach the problem by returning to the theme of mission and unity.  It is quite difficult to get hold of why unity is essential to mission.  I can make this claim but many independent churches, who brook no contradiction to their message and so do not seek to collaborate or perhaps even recognise other Christians, can point to their evident success.  'You say unity is essential to mission, well we don't water down our message through collaboration with other (so-called) Christians and look at how fast our church is growing'. 

I might argue radical atheists point to divisions between the churches (especially divisions which led to war) and so if we were united, their argument would be baseless.  Unfortunately, this argument doesn't stack up.

Let's look at it another way.  Absolute truth claims cause disunity.  A casual exploration of blog posts about ecumenism will reveal how many Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox Christians reject ecumenism on the grounds their own version of the faith is the right one.  Given there are several absolute claims, it is difficult to see how anyone unfamiliar with the Christian faith is meant to choose between them.  Of course, they don't choose.  They encounter one tradition and join it, discovering the others later.

The major traditions are catholic.  I've written about this before and it is important to understand how each tradition has its own version of catholicity to offer to the others.  Catholicity happens when a tradition no longer finds it needs to be absolute.  Catholicity enables each tradition to put down its own roots, whilst at the same time being open to stimuli from other traditions.  The rooted  tradition deepens the faith of its followers but is not closed to being enriched thorugh encounters with others.  This allows an element of accountability, as traditions both support and challenge each other. 

Mission is not a competition between traditions.  The Edinburgh 1910 conference delegates recognised the need to rationalise the competition taking place between traditions in the mission field. 

Diversity happens when the Christian faith is incarnated in particular times and places.  (The map shows worldwide distribution of Catholic (yellow), protestant and Anglican (purple) and Orthodox (cyan) churches.)  We can choose to proclaim our own tradition as the one true version or we can see our tradition as one version of the same faith amongst many others.  If faith is genuine, it will always grow into something new because the Christian faith is not words on paper but many living traditions. 

This leads me to think mission and unity belong together but there is a third element we rarely seem to consider.  I'll describe it in my next post.

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An Evangelical Problem

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Superficially the problem is fundamentalism because it seems fundamentalists have claimed evangelicalism as their own.  Their extreme approach is one reason why Protestant ecumenism is split between the World Council of Churches and the Lausanne movement internationally; Churches Together and the Evangelical Alliance in Britain.

This problem cuts deep and often into our neighbourhoods.  I remember meeting a well-known ecumenist on the train, who explained it was impossible for some churches to work with large evangelical Church of England churches.  There was no point in even trying.  I suppose the bigger you are the less you feel the need to be in conversation with other traditions; the less attention you need to pay to other expressions of your faith.

But there is a deeper problem illustrated by this excerpt from the blog 'Evangelism is your Comfort Zone'.  The post is Evangelism as a Political Act:

This is a powerful political statement because our allegiance is hence forwards not to a flag. To evangelise is to say, clearly and boldly and usually by implication, No to all other idols – money, fame, success, power, sex: No to all other authorities – religious, political and personal. It is to declare by word and allegiance that the only loyalty we can own is to the two bits of rough wood that once held a man in place to die.

I largely agree with this argument but something isn't quite right and it took me a while to work it out.  Perhaps the use of the word 'other' suggests evangelism is itself an idol or authority.  That might be an unfortunate turn of phrase. 

But these words imply evangelism is the one voice amongst others that is right.  This turns Christianity into an absolute and it is the reason for evangelism's divisive tendencies.

As soon as I have the truth, it follows that those who do not agree with me do not have the truth.  The dilemma is this.  If I admit others who do not fully agree with me are right than there is no single truth and where does that end?  If I stand firm then, with those who agree with me, I have to maintain purity of belief, which can only result in schism.

Is there any way of resolving this dilemma?  I think there is and that will be the theme of the next few posts.

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On the Nature of Evangelism

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A few years ago, I attended a lecture about the history of Cliff College.  Cliff is a Methodist college of evangelism and is about 15 miles from where I live, in the Peak District.  The lecturer was a baptist scholar and the content of his story was quite surprising.

Cliff was founded just after the turn of the last century (indeed this was a centenary lecture).  At the time, Methodist evangelism was Arminian in contrast with other evangelical traditions, which were Calvinist.  The new college reflected the traditional Methodist emphasis on sanctification, in contrast to the Calvinist evangelical traditions.  No Principle of Cliff was ever invited to attend the Keswick Convention (annual gathering of Calvinist evangelicals).

That is until the mid-seventies, when there was a subtle change.  I became a Christian around that time and remember when I joined Newcastle Methsoc in about 1975.  The new Chair of Methsoc, introduced sitting in a circle and singing hymns from sources other than the Methodist Hymn Book!  This really was an issue at the time; today worship songs are the norm.

I think the then Principle of Cliff and these changes in the Methsocs were not unconnected and marked not only a movement towards a more Calvinist evangelicalism but also a move of evangelicals away from the mainstream life of the Methodist Church (which has always seen itself as an evangelical tradition).  It seems from this time forward evangelicals and mainstream Methodists became estranged.

Conservative Evangelicals in Methodism, which later became Headway, represented a movement similar to the evangelical wing of the Church of England.  However, something happened in Methodism in the mid-nineties.  At the Derby Conference in, I think, 1994, the current statement about sexuality was adopted and Headway didn't like it one bit.  Their opposition to what was and still is a rather safe compromise, was absolute.  At the Blackpool Conference in 1996, they attempted to overturn the statement.  Something happened at that Conference.  They put everything into their case and were roundly knocked back.  The then President made a firm request for a moratorium on the debate.

At the same time, the Decade of Evangelism (1990 - 2000) was also proving to be a disappointment and I can only surmise there was a lot of soul searching.  In the last decade, there has been a move to build bridges with the mainstream church and the evangelicals have come in from the cold.

I remember a few years ago I sat in on a meeting of leading connexional evangelists.  Amongst them was the late Rob Frost, a leading evangelical.  He said when he heard young people saying they cannot belong to a church that condemns homosexuals, he had to listen to what they were saying.  Everyone present agreed with what he said. 

I think these changes within my own tradition are encouraging because they have shown evangelicals and others with different callings can work together in a constructive way.  Indeed, the local evangelists I have met over the last 10 years have reminded me of the plight of many community development workers I have known during previous decades, undervalued and underpaid.  Ten or fifteen years ago, I don't think I would have been able to write that I am honoured to work alongside evangelicals, today I can and that is because Methodist evangelicals have made a crucial decision to enter into conversation with their own church.

However, as I indicated in my last post, and will develop further in my next, there are still some outstanding issues.

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Mission and Unity

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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.

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Inter-Church Programme Proposals: What is the Church for?

The document, Inter-Church Programme Proposals, looks forward to the Inter-Church Process of Lent 1986.  The key question they hoped to address was: What is the Church and what is it for?  The aim was to consult widely with church leaders, church members and church related organisations.  After some brief speculations about how this question might be asked in terms of mission, God's Kingdom and God's final purpose for all, they write on page 5:

We might go on to ask whether our Churches might recognise each other as "other provisional embodiments of God's purposes".  However, our hope in tackling these questions is not just to produce new documents, but to enable action to follow to change our standing in one another's eyes and our relationship to each other within the fellowship of Christ, so that together we might follow our common calling "in and for the world".  And we shall also need to ask: What is the world saying to us?  What is the Kingdom asking of us as Christians?  What is the meaning of the Church in a secular society which sees no purpose for it?

Note the aim of this process was not restricted to unity.  It was not unity for the sake of unity but for the wider benefit of the world.  There is an expectation that things would change as a result of this initiative.

Our Churches' 'confessions' to one another of what we believe we are as churches, given both our varying size and the doctrinal, social, cultural and historical context of our life, will be placed 'on the table' for further use in the process.  These are not envisaged as final, but as provisional responses, incorporating the viewpoints of those concerned with the Church's mission, evangelism, ministry and social responsibility, as well as those concerned with Faith and Order and with Christian unity.  But they will be something new, in that we shall be saying how we see our own church in our overall perspectives, which will be encouraged by existing or new co-operation between us.  This will lead us on to ask ourselves together: On what basis, and on what understanding of the Church can we move forward?  And, out of this process, what shape might emerge for the ecumenical instruments needed to serve the Churches' common mission to the world?

Again it is clear that a vision of churches collaborating in a common relationship with the world was foundational to the Inter-Church Process.  It struck me, following the January 2009 conference about receptive ecumenism, that receptive ecumenism needed to be accompanied by ecumenical reception and a third process I called transformative reception.  This is where the churches together allow the world to form their mission and ministry.  It is unsettling to find it current 25 years ago, given I found it necessary to reinvent it following that conference.

Again, I am forced to ask why it is, given the undoubted success of the Inter-Church Process, modern ecumenism stepped back into Faith and Order debates, losing its sense of commitment to the world?

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Inter-Church Programme Proposals: Creative Dislocation

It is interesting, reading Inter-Church Programme Proposals, from February 1985, to see how much has changed in the British ecumenical scene over the last 25 years.   This is a short pamphlet written to outline the proposed Inter-Church Process, for Lent 1986.

Despite the failure of the English Covenant in 1982, the document is surprisingly upbeat, particularly in the light of the then recent visit of Pope John Paul II to Britain and the encouraging and supportive approach of the Roman Catholic Church at the time.

The Roman Catholic Bishops made a particular reference to the Documents of the Second Vatican Council, because it was there that a reappraisal of their understanding of the Church led Roman Catholics to a new relationship to other Churches and to the world, and to a new understanding of the churches' mission.  Their stress on local ecumenism arises from their concern that church members locally should experience the 'creative dislocation' of ecumenical encounters which change our perception of our fellow-Christians and lead to a new awareness of our common mission.  (Page 3)

This is an interesting paragraph for two reasons.  Much of it resonates with current interest in ecumenical reception and receptive ecumenism.  The warmth of the embrace of ecumenical dialogue by the Catholic Church is familiar through to this day, as is the emphasis on mission.

What strikes me though is the concept of 'creative dislocation', which seems to be a much more positive approach to local ecumenism than we find today.  This is something I think we'll see as we explore the story of the Inter-Church Process: a much more positive view of local ecumenism.

One of the questions I hope to address is, why has the commitment to local ecumenism become dulled over the last quarter century?  The Inter-Church Process was a success by any measure, so why is there so much scepticism today?  It is as if church leaders wish to protect local churches from 'creative dislocation' rather than encourage it.

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Called to be One 12: The Role of the Ecumenical Instruments

This post relates to the twelfth critical issue in Called to be One: What Now?, The Role of the Ecumenical Instruments .

This critical issue resurrects a debate I thought had been settled decades ago and manages to miss the point entirely.  It seems some of those present at the consultation long for the ability of the old British Council of Churches to work outside of the churches.

The current ecumenical instruments assist the churches in their ecumenical relationships and do not initiate ecumenical activity themselves.  The vision is to seek the commitment of the churches to ecumenism, rather than ecumenism pursued by a minority of enthusiasts.

The case against this culminates in the following: One view being powerfully expressed is that the instruments have been largely reduced in their capacity to act effectively even as ‘heralds’, let alone as promoters, of ecumenism, due to an over-reaction by those in the churches who were determined to have no return to ‘the old BCC ways’ of ecumenical bodies acting ‘on behalf of ’ the churches. The end result, on this view, is that there is now no effective promoter of ecumenism outside the churches themselves, many of whom are happy to acquiesce in this position.

The final paragraph does not effectively answer this criticism, merely reiterating that it is not the role of the instruments to take the lead.  My answer to this is two-fold, a minor and a major point.  The minor point is the claim that the instruments do not promote ecumenism to the churches is ill informed.  The instruments do promote and remind the churches of their ecumenical commitments.  Their focus is upon support for the churches rather than initiating work themselves.  So, it is nonsense to suggest they are not effective in promoting ecumenism.

My major point is that there is an additional effective promoter of ecumenism ignored entirely in this argument: local churches.  Now, it would be rash to claim they offer a coherent single message but the reality is local churches and local Christians are making their point loud and clear.  They don't want the bureaucracy they associate with the national churches, they want to work together on mission and are not interested in anything that does not assist with their mission agenda. 

The message may not be what some ecumenists want to hear but it is being expressed with substantial consistency and insistence across almost the whole of the country.  The instruments know this; I wonder whether the people at the consultation are as aware of what is happening as they claim to be.

Called to be One 9: Protestantism and Cultural Disorientation

This post relates to the ninth critical issue in Called to be One: What Now?, Protestantism and Cultural Disorientation .

This is another issue that seems misconceived.  So, Protestantism has, unlike Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, been consumed by markets, management and novelty.

First, this implies unity lies in following the lead of Catholic and Orthodox churches.  But why should we?  Protestantism is widely varied but it seems we are all suffering from cultural disorientation and need a good dose of (very) old time religion to get us back on track.  Whilst I admire the grace and charisms of the great non-Protestant traditions, I also admire the grace and charisms of my own.  It has its debts to these ancient traditions but that is no reason to return to them.

The writers make a number of assumptions.  They imply Protestantism in Europe has sold out.  But Protestantism is all over the world and some of the world's most vibrant churches in Asia, Latin American and Africa cannot in any way be described as suffering cultural disorientation.  This is not to say they are perfect (far from it), but they are authentic.

What is being implied is liberal protestant theology has sold out to markets, management and novelty.  In my view, the churches that have sold out are American fundamentalist churches and the churches around the world that copy them.  Think about prosperity gospel  and what what that says through its uncritical view of markets.  Or the tele-evangelists and their marketing of cheap faith for a high market value.  Or Sarah Palin and her tea party movement.  Or Glen Beck who says the social gospel is not Christian.

Time and again I hear people saying Europe needs missionaries in reverse.  Last weekend hundreds of thousands of Christians attended the second ecumenical Kirchentag  in Munich.  The faith is alive and well in Europe, perhaps its America that needs missionaries in reverse.

So, what about the liberals?  They uphold in the main that branch of Protestantism that argues, debates, values research and evidence.  These are the traditions that have analysed the Bible and the tradition; questioned many things formerly held to be sacred.  All the churches have benefited from this activity, as they have adapted their teaching to the demands of the modern world.

Called to be One 4: Denominationalism and Local Ecumenism

This post relates to the fourth critical issue in Called to be One: What Now?, Denominationalism and Local Ecumenism .

Building on my last post , let me approach consumerism from a different direction. 

Christianity is a faith rooted in history.  Its strength is its ability to adapt to new situations, to be contextualised, or incarnated, in the particular.

Of course, some traditions claim their faith is timeless and must not adapt to context.  But the reality is as faith spreads, it spreads in particular, not generic ways.  The success of many missions was rooted in local people taking on the faith and moulding it to their own culture.  Christianity is good at this, whether or not the missionaries or evangelists approve.