Exploring Ecumenism

Called to be One 3: Our Context and its Influence

This post relates to the third critical issue in Called to be One: What Now?, Our Context and its Influence .

This critical issue does not seem to be very well defined.  What is our context?  Presumably, the writers mean England.  England is a big and complex place, so what is the context?

I do not think decline is a particularly significant part of our context.  Some parts of the church are declining and others are growing.  What is important is consumerism, as the writers suggest.

Called to be One 2: Unity, Diversity and the Goal

This post relates to the second critical issue in Called to be One: What Now?, Unity, Diversity and the Goal . 

A few months ago, I joined a Pentecostal prayer meeting at an ecumenical gathering.  I found it extremely difficult!  I reacted negatively to being told what to pray for and to pray for it aloud myself.  This was a two-fold problem, as I neither agreed with the issue I was told to pray for nor did I like being told to pray to order. 

Called to be One 1: Some Concerns about Power

A few weeks ago I mentioned the document, Called to be One - what now? ; an account of a conference held last November.  Many of the people who attended were involved in the publication of a document, Called to be One, in 1996.  Re-reading this 15 years later, it seems both fresh and dated at the same time.

Much of it is still current today and yet things are very different.  The main difference is a loss of confidence in the ecumenical movement in England.  The people who organised and attended the November 2009 conference can easily be dismissed as an older generation, out of touch with the painful realities of the present day. I think the reality is more complex. 

Is Evolution Calvinist?

And so we arrive at Wesley's third great doctrine : Sanctification.  If Justification  is the decision to tread the narrow path between order and chaos; between license and morality, then Sanctification is how in practice we tread that path.  Sanctification is a lifelong journey; nothing like a life committed to one or the other of those so-called alternatives.

Wesley's theology is future-orientated.  For Calvinists, God is the all-powerful creator, who made the world, just so.  Everything was determined from the very beginning, down to who will and who will not be saved.  Their focus is on the past.

For Wesleyans, the future is more important.  From humanity's perspective, creation is incomplete.  The invitation is to contribute to the completion of God's creation.  This means all people can be saved.  Nothing is predestined. 

Justification and Imperialism

In my last post , I argued the Christian doctrine of Original Sin and the theory of evolution are entirely compatible.  This is something of an embarrassment because Augustine of Hippo's doctrine of original sin has encouraged so much Christian censoriousness.  He argued that the sin (of Adam and Eve) is communicated through the sex act and this has been enough to justify a fear of sex, damaging to the life of the church, including the position of women, who have been accused of the fall in much the same way as the Jews are accused of murdering Jesus.

Original sin is the first of Wesley's three great doctrines and so we need to look at the other two before we arrive at a final conclusion.  The next is Justification by faith. 

The Ichneumon Wasp

Williams goes on to quote another Australian colleague, who shares the national gift for chucking a bonzer phrase, on the Ichneumonid wasps, whose designer, if there was one, 'must have been a sadistic bastard'.  Darwin, although he visited Australia as a young man, expressed the same sentiment in staider, less antipodean terms: 'I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.'  (From: The Greatest Show on Earth  by Richard Dawkins, page 370)

This criticism of the Christian faith, boils down to the question: why does God allow suffering?  In this and the next two posts I will attempt a theological response.  I will show evolution is a threat not to the Christian faith but to some interpretations of it. 

Why is Cosmology Important for Ecumenists?

I want to return to the theme of science for a few posts.  (I will return to ecumenism's modern history; this diversion is to allow time to re-read Called to be One). 

I had a conversation the other day about Christian interpretations of evolution and it was suggested I should write down my ideas.  I'll start to do that in my next post.  But first, I aim to review how my thnking has moved on since I left this topic last summer. 

Called to be One - what now?

I want to return to my sequence about the modern history of ecumenism.  The last post about the Marigold Book  was on 15 February.  In November 2009, an informal consultation on the future of the ecumenical movement  took place in Bristol. 

As a result of this consultation an open letter was sent to the church leaders of Britain and Ireland , calling on them to examine and question the commitment of the churches themselves to ecumenism:

What is being asked for is not another re-examination of the ecumenical instruments as such – these need the fullest possible affirmation, support and resourcing – but a self-examination and mutual questioning of the churches themselves as to their ecumenical commitment, attitudes, and actual performance. What were the expectations in 1990? How far have the churches actually lived up to them? How much closer are they today than they were then?  How far in practice are we ‘committed to’ each other?

Three Ways to Read the Bible

I've been thinking about the ways we read the Bible, probably as a result of the Channel 4 series, The Bible A History.  The following ideas are not exhaustive.  They outline three ways to approach the Bible, all of which can be subdivided into many approaches.

Two of these are imposed readings, at each end of a continuum.  Imposed readings are where we come to the Bible with a clear expectation of what it says.  We know what is good and right, and expect the text to tell us so.

Must Ecumenism be about Control?

More than a century ago, the sociologist Max Weber wrote at length to argue for a fundamental difference between the two religious groupings [Protestants and Catholics], which resulted in Reformed Protestants becoming identified with self-discipline and a 'spirit of capitalism', and Protestants associated with a highly regulated 'work ethic' rarely possessed by Catholics.  The notion still holds some sway in popular consciousness, but detailed acquaintance with the story of Reformation and Counter-Reformation makes it dissolve into qualifications and contradiction; it is an idea best avoided.  Discipline and the urge to order people's lives were ecumenical qualities.  (From: A History of Christianity , by Diarmaid MacCulloch, page 685)

I'm still reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's book and my eye was caught by this paragraph and particularly the last sentence.  Most likely MaCulloch means ecumenical in the sense that all traditions shared the same urge.  However, I must confess I do feel at times that the aim of full visible unity is discipline and the desire to order people's lives.