Exploring Ecumenism

Saturday, 06 August 2011

Full Visible Unity

I haven't said a lot about full visible unity in this blog, which might seem odd as it is a major theme in the thinking of many committed ecumenists. My problem is, I don't think there is clear agreement about what it means and therefore it is hard to think about it strategically.

Visible unity is where two or more traditions are united under one organisation. So, for example, in 1976 visible unity was achieved between most of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in England and Wales. Full visible unity is often meant to be similar unity for all the churches. I think this is a Protestant vision of church unity and it culminated in the English Covenant, which fell apart in 1982. The 1989 Swanwick Declaration was an announcement of a new approach called Churches Together but many have clung, perhaps implicitly, to the original vision of full visible unity.

Visible unity is feasible, not only because examples can be found but also because pathways to visible unity can be planned. So, the Anglican Methodist Covenant is seen as a step towards visible unity between the Church of England and the British Methodist Church. However, to say something is feasible is not the same as saying it is likely. We know the necessary steps towards visible unity but the two churches may or may not be likely to take them. The pathway may be clear but it is not guaranteed easy and some may not be willing to face the implications.

The pathway goes something like this:- within the Anglican Methodist Covenant we move to shared ministry (now under consideration by both churches) and then by way of women Bishops and Methodist Bishops, we progress to interchangeability of ministry and then the final step to structural unity. Whilst it is certainly possible to take something like this path, there are significant strategic problems - but that's a topic for another time.

We need to take care not to assume because structural unity leads to visible unity, visible unity requires structural unity. We are so used to assuming the two are essential to each other that the effort of imagining visible unity without structural unity is daunting. But what if it is structural unity that blocks progress to visible unity? I can think of four reasons why structural unity is not an adequate pathway to full visible unity.

It is assumes the Christian world is static. Any feasible version of full visible unity must be able to accommodate change.
There are massive implications about accountability for use of power in a single structurally unified church.
It would be unstable. Both conservative and congregationalist tendencies would destabilise it. There are several groups in the traditional churches who do not agree with ecumenism and believe their expression of church is the one true church. It is hard to conceive of a united single church which could accommodate such various and strongly held views. On top of that there are others who don't believe in the authority of church organisations (let alone Bishops).
Theologically, I wonder whether it is the right direction. The mindset is one of law. The church hierarchy determines the law and the rest of us obey. This is not the Christian understanding of the rule of spirit and love. It isn't that some discipline isn't needed in any church but holding something as immense as a world church together, using the discipline of a single structure, would be impossible.

Formal conversations are usually seen as steps towards structural unity but I am not convinced it is where they are leading. Their main success has been to open up the possibility of mutual recognition between the churches. This is ground upon which Christians can build. We forget not long ago most Christians believed those of other traditions were not proper churches. Today it is a view held by a minority, albeit a vocal one.

If we want full visible unity we won't find it through formal conversations or strategic plans. It is something churches discover as they participate in conversations and grow closer in praxis.

Posted at 06:00 PM in Ecclesiology, Theoretical Ecumenism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, 05 August 2011

Mission, Formation and Unity

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This is the sixteenth and final post in this sequence about ecumenical formation.

In the book Theory U by C Otto Scharmer, the author uses the image of a painting to illustrate the nature of the U theory. I have previously covered U theory in a sequence of posts, starting here. To answer the question 'what?' we can look at the painting. The painting itself tells us nothing about the future but it has a history and in itself we may learn a great deal. To answer the question 'how?' we can watch the artist at work. And so we learn the technical aspects of the art of painting. Finally, we can ask the future orientated question 'why?' and this time the image is of the artist contemplating the empty canvass. In a sense there is little to see but without this vital step there would be no painting at all.

Perhaps mission, formation and unity express this threefold approach. When we speak only of mission and unity, we not only lose the contribution made by formation but lose a sense of the role mission and unity play in the church.

Mission addresses the question 'what?' It is inevitably past orentated as it is an expression of the faith. It is those who are formed by the church acting on their formation. This is not to say it is static, far from it; it is the church in action.

Formation addresses the 'how?' of the church. It is in formation that we encounter the insights of our own tradition and then the insights of others. As Christians we need to learn about our faith, about how to pray and how to preach and minister. We need to learn something of the breadth and diversity of faith. It is something we need to learn to do both within and between our traditions.

Finally, we approach the question, 'why?' We are brought back to the opening words of Genesis and John, 'in the beginning ...' And we discover it is about diversity, about the conversation between God and matter and later God and humanity. We are united in the conversation. In the conversation we find our purpose and grow into our mission.

I'm going to move onto a new sequence next but hope to return to formation as a theme later. The next step will be to explore the practicalities of ecumenical formation.

Posted at 06:00 PM in Conversations, Formation, Mission | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, 04 August 2011

The Nature of Ecumenical Church

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This is the fifteenth and penultimate post in a sequence about ecumenical formation.

Ecumenism is about relationships between people. Social capital makes a distinction between bonding and bridging relationships. The former take place within a group and builds up capital as people learn to trust one another. Bridging capital is between groups and is the more challenging of the two. It is challenging because it demands mutual respect for church cultures that have evolved over many years.

Ecumenism is a sign of genuine church. How do we know any given church is part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church? One sign is its ability to hold its own people together despite their theological differences and another is recognition of other traditions as brothers and sisters of the same faith.

So, in formation we see the two movements of roots down and walls down. These are not necessarily sequential. Although bonding capital needs to be developed first, Christians will return to their own traditions, frequently as they regularly participate and deliberately as they bring new questions to ask of their own tradition.

But the encounter with others is crucial because it raises questions as it brings us into new relationships with God. As we debate, the spirit is at work and brings us into new truths. The ecumenical church grows through the sum of all these conversations.

Posted at 06:00 PM in Conversations, Ecclesiology, Formation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Wednesday, 03 August 2011

Bricolage: The Future Church

This is fourteenth in a sequence about ecumenical formation.

Once we place formation at the centre of ecumenical thinking, we find ourselves in a very different place from traditional Protestant full visible unity. When mission is at the centre, full visible unity makes sense. The argument goes that a united church is good for mission. Lack of unity gives the wrong impression.

Why should it? The only reason lack of unity seems negative is because we make it so. Unity expressed through church structures is no more impressive than disunity expressed through church structures. Some of the fastest growing churches are anti-ecumenical and split off from the mainstream. Sometimes this illustrates the problems we encounter when formation is not central. To go it alone is to cut your tribe off from what is common to all traditions. It isn't a sign of pure doctrine but of truncated doctrine, based on the whim of unaccountable leaders rather than on the shared faith of the people.

We need to think not upon imperial structures of top down authority but upon bricolage (the illustration is a 'Monstrous "Heath Robinson"-style contraption for cracking nuts', by velodenz). If there is trust between traditions than we can cobble together what we need from whatever is around us. It is tidy minds who create the problems; we must have a hierarchy with everything in place or failing that go it alone to preserve our precious purity.

We need in summary a culture of asking for forgiveness rather than for permission. The confidence to ask forgiveness comes through good formation, formation which makes us independent of the structures and doctrines that nurture us.

Posted at 06:00 PM in Conversations, Diversity, Formation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Tuesday, 02 August 2011

Roots Down, Walls Down

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This is the thirteenth post in a sequence about ecumenical formation.

There are then, two movements in ecumenical formation. I came across a slogan at a conference about Arminianism last year, 'Roots Down, Walls Down'.

Logically roots down comes first, although in time the two movements will interact with one another. As we explore our own tradition (even before we think of it as our own), we drill down into it. We learn of the distinctive insights, shared by those who belong to it. This is not to claim traditions are unchanging. Compare the agendas of Methodist Conference in the 1930s and today. The concerns about the sabbath and temperance have almost vanished, replaced by political issues such as racism, poverty and the environment. And yet it is still the same tradition.

Drill deeper still and we begin to tap into more that is shared with other traditions. Methodism's history means it shares some of its heritage with the Church of England for example. But the point is we approach this material through the Methodist doctrine and church structures that make Methodists different from Anglicans.

At this stage encounters with other traditions make sense. We can challenge each other to go deeper, confident we are drilling into the same bedrock. We should not need to defend our differences because in discovering them, we help those of other traditions see their own from a new perspective. This approach is known as receptive ecumenism. We discover as our roots go down, so too the walls between us come down.

In following this path, we steer a course between two unwelcome extremes. First, the desire to tidy up and bring everything into a single structure. The challenge is to love and support one another despite our differences. To convert someone would be to lose their insights from the conversation.

The other is the desire to fly apart, to abolish the traditions and go it alone. Ultimately, I don't think this is possible. To choose no tradition, is failure to acknowledge what influences you. Ultimately it displays spiritual ignorance, lack of awareness of one's own roots.

Posted at 06:00 PM in Conversations, Diversity, Formation, Reception | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Monday, 01 August 2011

One Church or Many?

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This is the twelfth post in the sequence about Christian formation.

Last time, I suggested formation is familiarity with a library of texts associated with a particular tradition. It is further supported through encounters with other traditions, which cause us to draw upon experience of our own tradition and make it conscious. Indeed formation takes place not only through ecumenical encounters or interfaith work but in any missionary situation where we talk about God.

This leads me to ask whether, through a formational lens, we see more clearly the case for reconciled diversity.

Full visible unity strongly implies structural unity. This requires analytical theological negotiation. So step by step, as each difference is dealt with, theologians move on to the next problem.

With a focus on formation however, equiping all church members with insights from their own tradition and conversations between traditions, we are in a very different place. There is still a need for theologians but their focus changes to what helps communication between Christians rather than debate between scholars. This does not downplay scholarship but re-frames its energies.

A major problem with formal conversations is their lack of reception by church members. To see theological work as primarily one of formation, brings the urgent need for reception into focus.

This approach brings another debate into focus. Many claim to have abandoned the traditions and seek a Christians Together approach. The free-spirited nature of this is of great value but it tends to call into question the value of formation. We urgently need conversations between them and traditional ecumenists.

Posted at 06:00 PM in Conversations, Formation, Reception | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Sunday, 31 July 2011

Christian Traditions as Libraries

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In this eleventh post in a sequence about ecumenical formation, I will explore how we can interpret Christian traditions as libraries.

I will start by unpacking the words I ended with last time, 'An open library has been replaced by a closed book'. Before the printing press, the Bible was out of the reach of most people. It was accessible, at least in Western Europe, to those who could read Latin and had access to copies in libraries or churches. This meant primarily the ordained and religious. However, it was open in that the Bible was accessible to a wider community of scholars. The printing press meant the Bible was opened up to anyone who could read in their own language. This has been enormously important to the history of the faith and to its missionary activity down to the present day. But alongside this, the fact is a set of books bound into a single volume, in a particular order, leads to this single book becoming a defensible space. It is harder to envisage an exchange between scholars of different scriptures, now the Bible is in everyone's hands.

I wonder whether Christians were really people of a book before the advent of printing? There were documents but they witnessed to experience, rather than the direct word of God. Most Christians would experience Christianity through liturgy rather than the written word. Perhaps fundamentalism is trying to turn the Christian faith into something its founders never intended, a people of a book. The Bible can be inerrant only if it is the direct word of God, which it clearly is not.

We need to understand our faith as something that exists in the debates based on scripture, rather than in the scriptures themselves. Our faith is based not on the infallibility of the written word but in the creativity of the spoken word.

What we need to do is understand the change from library to single volume and its implications. Perahps we need to regain a sense of each Christian tradition as a library.

Before printing, it was possible to build up a library where the Canon would be interpolated by other texts. Each tradition would accumulate its own distinctive liturgies, theological interpretations and church law. Together these would be a concrete record of what is often called tradition. Some texts would be closer to the centre of the tradition and some more peripheral. Ecumenism generates texts which are shared between traditions and might have a place in several libraries.

So, Methodists treasure the writings of the Wesleys (Charles' hymns and John's notes, diaries and sermons). These are valued in common between all the traditions that look to the Wesleys as their point of origin. Then each Methodist Church will value their particular expression of their church law (CPD in Britain) and certain theologians who grow out of their specific tradition. Writers from other Methodist traditions will have a shared place too.

Other traditions have similar libraries, eg the Church of England has a special place for the Book of Common Prayer, as well as its Canons and other expressions of church law. We largely encounter each others' libraries through our conversations, because only the scholars will have in-depth knowledge of other traditions' libraries.

This is of course, a major problem for ecumenists. Ecumenism becomes a specialist pursuit. It is hard to follow the debates between scholars if you are living a life.

On the other hand, non-scholars can specialise in their own tradition. Methodist local preachers for example learn Methodist doctrinal emphases and are encouraged to be familiar with the Wesleys. It is fashionable to take some of this with a pinch of salt but if we're serious about ecumenism perhaps we should take our own texts a little more seriously.

As we are formed by our own tradition, we take on board, sometimes unconsciously, its doctrinal emphases. In this sense we become living books. It is then in encounters with Christians from other traditions, in the exchange of insights, we are encouraged to draw on the resources of our own tradition. Our unconscious formation becomes conscious and we experience a deepening of our faith.

Posted at 06:00 PM in Conversations, Formation, History | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Saturday, 30 July 2011

The Bible as a Library

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This is the tenth in a sequence about ecumenical formation.

So, what is the nature of the Bible? People were quick to lay claim to the Bible once the printing press was invented. It is easy claim the Catholic Church kept the texts from the people but we have to allow they did not have the technology to do anything else. The text was inevitably out of reach, there were few copies and they would have been in Latin. But the Church was threatened by the new access to the texts in the vernacular.

What was the Bible like before the invention of printing? Today we glibly speak of the Bible as a library but what we forget is that is exactly what it was. Each book in the Bible was a separate volume in a library. So, even scholars never experienced it as a single volume with books in a particular order.

How many libraries held the entire canon of scripture? How many other texts were interpolated or alongside? Clearly the Canon evolved and presumably most libraries valued the complete set. There never was complete agreement about its content. Hence there is apocrypha and deutero-canonical scriptures.

On top of this there will have been many translations of the same scriptures. Whilst the Roman Catholic Church maintained the Latin Vulgate as the primary source, there were always other translations into other languages, especially in the East.

Printing brought together an opportunity not only to translate scriptures into the vernacular but also to collect them into one place and into (more or less) a single coherent narrative.

This relatively recent development forms the context in which we experience formation today. The very fact of a single volume Bible makes an immense difference in that it implies greater coherence to scripture than the old libraries ever could.

The covers of the printed library make the content both easier and harder to share. Easier because it means everyone can have a copy. Harder because the covers are round a body of writing sometimes seen as under threat and so in need of protection.

An open library has been replaced by a closed book.

Posted at 06:00 PM in Formation, History | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Friday, 29 July 2011

The Political Context of Churches

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This is the ninth of a series of posts about ecumenical formation. This follows yesterday's post which introduced two authors who have recently written about the Church of the East.

Diarmaid McCulloch suggests the big difference between the Church of the East and the Western (Catholic and Orthodox) churches was not so much theological (Jenkins suggests theological differences were really fairly small) as their politics.

The two major Western Churches were both in the Roman Empire and the decisions made at the various councils (especially Chalcedon, which split the Church of the East from the west) were made for the convenience of the Empire.

The Church of the East on the other hand was never a state religion. It had to make its way by negotiation and making accommodation with the prevailing powers, often of other faiths. Consequently, faith could not be imposed but had to be passed on though debate.

So, Christianity spread and maintained its presence through negotiation with other faiths. This worked very well for hundreds of years. (The reasons for the churches' decline are complex but seem to relate to the crusades and Islam's encounter with a very different Western Christianity.) We need to ask ourselves how much of our determination to impose Christian faith as the one true faith is the result of the Imperial origins of Western Christianity and whether the Church of the East was a more natural way of spreading the Christian story through debate with other faiths. In such a context formation would be vital; without it Christians would not be able to uphold their side of the debate.

I think it would be a mistake though to see the West as imposing one true faith from the start. It took many centuries for the Roman Catholic Church to become the dominant church in Christendom. Over that period, there were other churches (notably the Celtic Church in Britain) and ideas were debated. Despite claims made by modern pagans, I have seen little evidence that Christianity was imposed by force. That came later.

I found this quote in one of Clayboy's blog posts, Pope vs Pope: a different vision of Roman ecumenism .

According to the Venerable Bede, Pope St Gregory the Great gave St Augustine this advice:

You know, my brother, the custom of the Roman Church in which you remember that you were bred up. But my will is, that if you have found anything, either in the Roman, or the Gallican, or any other Church, which may be more acceptable to Almighty God, you should carefully make choice of the same, and sedulously teach the Church of the English, which as yet is new in the faith, whatsoever you can gather from the several Churches. For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Choose, therefore, from every Church those things that are pious, religious, and right, and when you have, as it were, made them up into one bundle, let the minds of the English be accustomed thereto.

Posted at 06:00 PM in Formation, History | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Thursday, 28 July 2011

Church of the East

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This is the eighth of a sequence of posts about ecumenical formation.

Last time I wrote about the role of libraries in the growth and propagation of the world's faiths. Perhaps one of the greatest systems of libraries were those of the Church of the East.

The Church of the East seems to have been little known until the publication in 2009 of Diarmaid McCulloch's 'A History of Christianity', which includes a section about the Church of the East. I also recommend The Lost History of Chris tianity by Philip Jenkins. That this history is lost is somewhat alarming but Jenkins' book is a good place to start to catch up.

It is clear, reading Jenkins, that the churches' success, (it existed for many centuries longer than Protestant churches have existed in Europe) was based on its networks of communities, usually founded on a library. When the church was destroyed in the thirteenth century, whole cities were wiped out along with almost all of its libraries. Some survive but are little known in the West, although Kenneth Bailey draws on them in his books, eg Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes.

Two stories from Jenkins.

Had not the Indians designed a system of nine wonderful signs that could be used to express all numbers? Although he does not seem to know of the existence of zero, that is the first reference in the West to the revolutionary numbering system, which we know as Arabic numerals. Though the system would not be widely publicised until the ninth century, Syriac Christians had known it long before that. (Page 77)

Arabic numbers are so called because they came to Europe through Islamic Arabic libraries. It seems they obtained their knowledge through the Church of the East. For most of its existence the Church of the East was under Islamic political rule and there was a close scholastic exchange between the two traditions. But the Church of the East didn't invent Arabic numbers, they obtained them from their churches in India, presumably through Hindu libraries.

The other story is of Bishop Adam in China.

Around ... 782, the Indian Buddhist missionary Prajna arrived in the Chinese imperial capital of Chang'an, but was unable to translate the Sanskrit sutras he had brought with him into either Chinese or any other familiar tongue. In such a plight, what could the hapless missionary do but seek Christian help? He duly consulted the bishop named Adam, ... Adam had already translated parts of the Bible into Chinese, and the two probably shared a knowledge of Persian. Together, Buddhist and Nestorian scholars worked amiably together for some years to translate seven copious volumes of Buddhist wisdom. Probably, Adam did this as much from intellectual curiosity as from ecumenical goodwill ... Scholars still speculate whether Adam infiltrated Christian concepts into the translated sutras, consciously or otherwise. (Page 15)

Jenkins goes on to show how these texts bore fruit far beyond China, in Japan.

These two stories illustrate the close relationships between faiths centuries ago. These relationships seem to have been natural co-operation between scholars, for mutual benefit.

Perhaps different faiths were not seen as so different in those days, after all it was modern Western missionaries who classified the world's faiths. We have made distinctions between faiths and in consequence we have built walls between them and now need interfaith dialogue to break them down. Many see such dialogue as somehow unnatural. It is hard to see how they can be, given the natural ways in which information has been exchanged in the past.

Formation was a natural outcome of exchange between faiths. Whilst some people might have changed faith, it seems people largely found it natural to exchange ideas with people from other faith traditions.

Today some believe we must keep other traditions at arms length. Is this wise? Many ecumenists, me included, claim their faith has deepened as a result of sharing ecumenically and interfaith. Usually this is built up as an intriguing discovery. Perhaps a thousand years ago this would have been an unremarkable experience.