Exploring Ecumenism

Unity and Mission: some inadequate views

It is one thing to say as I did yesterday that mission is an essential dimension of unity.  But is the opposite also true?  Is unity essential to mission?

There is no straightforward answer and I suspect I will return to this topic many times.  However, it has to be said the most obvious answer to this is no, unity is not essential to mission.  Many missionary enterprises have worked very well (at least according to their own objectives) when practiced unilaterally.  There are many stories of break-away groups being more successful than their parent bodies.  Methodism (many times in its history) is a case in point.  However, it also must be recognised that the Edinburgh missionary conference of 1910 is viewed as the origin of modern ecumenism.  Here a wide range of missionary churches met to explore their missionary enterprises.

Today, I will explore two common arguments which aim to link mission and unity.  The first is the view that by pooling their traditions, churches will be more effective.  The offering of a range of resources for mission (as well as for worship, spirituality, pastoral support ...) will provide something for everyone perhaps even in every neighbourhood.  This could be true but the prevailing image is of churches in competition, rather than collaborating over provision of a range of spiritual services.  Many people have found spiritual sustenance from a single tradition rather than a variety of traditions, inevitably approached superficially.

A second common argument is that so long as churches are divided they offer an impression that Christians are at war.  Love is not paramount and adherence to each tradition is more important.  In theory this hangs together but as I pointed out earlier many successful missionary movements were split from parent churches.  It is almost as if Protestant churches at least, grow from splitting.

Both these arguments are unsatisfactory and I think it's worth asking why.  I think they betray an inadequacy  in our understanding of unity and it is only through understanding unity in diversity that we can find a better purchase on the relationship between unity and mission.

Ecumenical Reception - conversations in three dimensions?

It appears then that conversations take place in two dimensions; between and within traditions.  But this cannot be the full picture.  William Rusch in Ecumenical Reception writes on page 116:

It should be noted that to date there is virtually no evidence of even partial or preliminary ecumenical reception of ethical or gender issues that are now showing the potential of being church-dividing within and among churches.  Until some clarity is obtained on these subjects, further steps towards ecumenical reception will be hampered.

If the aim of ecumenical reception is full visible unity, it has to be asked what would be the consequence of achieving such a goal?  Our local churches wrestle with a range of ethical issues, sometimes as a result of a decision they have made, sometimes because they're forced to and sometimes without understanding what they are facing.  Sometimes local churches do this together.  Usually, we call this mission and sometimes it is asserted that unity is essential for mission. 

So, two churches of different traditions are wrestling together with a local issue.  How would closer agreement about the conduct of holy communion help them to do this?  Let me be clear, I'm not saying communion is irrelevant to the mission of these churches.  I am saying we need to understand how our ecumenical conversations are relevant to local mission.

The churches in Cleveland were able to collaborate over long term unemployment through RESPOND!  I have no recollection of ever discussing the traditional concerns of ecumenical conversations.  The churches journeyed very deeply into practical theology, especially through Dark Holy Ground but I don't think the formal differences ever made any difference.  It is a long time ago and my memory may be faulty but I think many churches jointly engaged in mission today would also fail to see the link.

Indeed formal ecumenical conversations might even inhibit collaboration if Rusch is right and the churches cannot agree about gender and ethical issues.  The cries asking why we always have to wait for the slowest before we can do anything would be deafening.

Of course, most local churches collaborate over mission and ignore the ecumenical conversations as at best irrelevant and at worst divisive.  Perhaps mission is a third dimension where formal conversations are prepared to enter into dialogue with the issues that engage local churches.  As we contemplate climate change, debt and racism (to name three out of many intractable issues of our time) what do our ecumenical conversations have to contribute? 

Ecumenical Reception - conversations in two dimensions

Let me attempt my own explanation of ecumenical reception.  First, what is meant by reception?  Imagine a major political party that decides on a substantial policy change.  Its first task is to persuade its members.  This is simple basic reception, where a decision is made by the governing body of an organisation and it must ensure, for the decision to be effective, that it is accepted by its members.  A number of factors will come into play and not least amongst these would be the members' understanding of the party's founding principles. 

Reception applies within churches too.  Presumably, the early church would have perceived reception as simply working out the implications of their faith as the widening membership encountered new challenges.  Reception should not be confused with evangelism, which is about telling the good news to new people.  Reception is agreeing on what the believers in fact believe.

Ecumenical reception is more complex because members of various denominations are being asked to receive new ideas that do not originate solely from the councils of their own traditions.

William Rusch's in his book Ecumenical Reception offers a variety of definitions of the term.  One of them, from Gilles Routhier (page 61), has the advantage of being short and perhaps straightforward.

Reception is a spiritual process by which the decisions proposed by a council are received and assimilated into the life of a local church and become for that church a living expression of the apostolic faith.

The way I see it is this.  A council for a major denomination with several thousand local churches make a popular decision.  This decision is so popular that every church agrees with it, enthusiastically endorses it and incorporates it into their life.  The chances are we will find several thousand interpretations of the decision.  Usually, decisions are not so popular, are not successfully explained or passed onto the churches and, if more than one tradition is involved the reality will be even more complex.  In the latter case we may find not only that the councils of the 2 or more traditions differ but where more than one local church addresses the change their views might be jointly and severally different too.  Fortunately, a wide range of interpretations might be acceptable and be perceived as creative interpretation but even so churches will wish to understand and interpret this variety.

These are merely the problems ecumenical reception seeks to address but I suspect there are some problems with the way it is framed.  Return to the Routhier definition and note the movement is all one way from council to local church.  There is no real recognition that there might be a conversation not only between the council and local churches but also between local churches. 

A decision made by a council might be itself in response to demands from local churches, who find existing regulations no longer meet the needs of their mission.  Indeed much ecumenical work begins with local churches, who then ask their councils for changes.  But this will not merely start locally, the dialogue has to continue into the later reception period.  And of course if it is a dialogue, who can predict where it might lead?

Ecumenical reception implies then that ecumenical conversations are not only between traditions but also within them.  Neglect the internal conversations and serious problems are likely to be encountered.

But this is in fact a conversation in three dimensions and I will turn to the third dimension tomorrow.

A Brief History of Local Ecumenical Patnerships

In Britain during the 1960s, new structures were devised to enable local churches to work together as single congregations.  These are now known as Local Ecumenical Partnerships (LEPs).  Under the old British Council of Churches, LEPs were important because they were visible evidence of united or uniting churches. 

This changed in the late 1980s when new ecumenical instruments were developed and the big step forward was the incorporation of the Roman Catholic Church into the ecumenical instruments.  The RC Church was unable to form single congregations and so a new looser style of organisation - Churches  Together Groups - came onto the scene.

It is interesting that over the last 20 or so years, the new approach has not overtaken the old models but the two have moved forward in tandem.  Single congregation LEPs are still popular amongst Protestant congregations.  When we look at this history objectively we may have to conclude the new Churches Together paradigm has never really taken hold. 

LEPs are attractive because they are visible evidence of Christian unity and after the difficulties most unity schemes have encountered, they are seen as the most progressive approach to practical  ecumenism we have.  I do a lot of work with LEPs and they are a source of significant ecumenical experience but it is odd that so long after the old BCC was closed this model persists.

Or does it?  LEPs are now one tool amongst several which can be used to assist local churches working together.  When they are seen as such, they still make sense.  Perhaps the old paradigm has moved on and now the focus is  about how we do mission together.  Where LEPs are helpful they are used and where not they are set aside in favour of other approaches.

This history is worth closer examination because it is an example of how decisions made nationally (in this case the Swanwick Declaration of 1989) are received locally.  The study of ecumenical reception helps us understand the ways in which local churches respond to decisions made nationally.

I will look at ecumenical reception in more depth over the next few days and try to show how it has to be conducted as a conversation between national and local churches. I hope also to show that as presently conceived, ecumenical reception as an idea is too narrow.

Reflections on Cleveland in the 1980s

I intend to return to Dark Holy Ground in the future but this will be my last post about it for a while (until I find the paperwork).  I want to reflect on ecumenism in the light of what happened in Cleveland over 20 years ago. 

1. RESPOND! and Dark Holy Ground were ecumenical projects - they were conceived as such from the outset and the spirit of collaboration was largely unimpeded by the usual concerns about unity.  I am not saying these concerns are unimportant; merely that they did not in any way impede this work.
2. A great deal of ecumenical work is of this type.  An issue is identified and the relevant churches get together to address it.  This happens to such an extent that it seems there are almost two ecumenisms; that of formal conversations and that of informal collaboration.  To a large degree these continue independently of each other.  This is equally true between national churches and between local churches.  For now I simply make this observation.
3. The experience of Dark Holy Ground raises other questions about ecumenism.  The exercise of listening to marginalised people changed the lives of those people.  It brought people at the margins of the churches into the mainstream of the lives of the churches; to the extent that a range of church leaders were able to speak to government ministers on the behalf of the marginalised.  It could be asked whether churches could have enabled direct conversations between the government and long term unemployed but for its time this was a radical departure.
4. Dark Holy Ground presented the churches with the image of the dark face of God and this is something the churches together still need to hear and experience.  There is a great deal of talk of sharing the treasures of our traditions and perhaps too little willingness to explore the dark places in relationships between churches.  Even churches that are habitual close collaborators at times find themselves facing darker dimensions to their relationships.
5. And what of relationships where one potential partner refuses to recognise the other as Christian?  Such debates, or sometimes confrontations, quickly lead us all in dark places.  (If you don't recognise me and my tradition, how can I possibly recognise you and yours?)  These confrontations are not peripheral and sometimes reach the very core of our mainstream churches.   

Ecumenical blogs

I have been searching for ecumenical blogs and have found an interesting post about how ecumenism might be carried forward through discussion about religions on blogs.  The blog is Something New in Ecumenism: Blog-level Ecumenism. 

This was posted in May 2007 and I wonder how the author views his work 18 months later.  The blog is from an American context (so far I haven't found any British blogs about ecumenism, although I'm still looking).  My impression is that most blogs about ecumenism from the States originate from a Catholic or Orthodox background which suggests a rather different context to my experience in Britain.

I have maintained that blogs and web2 applications generally have a role to play in ecumenism as an adjunct to face to face conversations and so I have some reservations about blog-level ecumenism.  However, one major advantage is the potential for conversations between people who would not otherwise meet.

Dark Holy Ground

Dark Holy Ground was a course run by RESPOND! during the 1980s.  Robert Gallagher, one of the 3 course leaders had a gift for listening.  He made loads of notes on scraps of paper and so one evening after the course the 3 leaders took them to a pub in Guisborough.  Over a few pints they set them in  order, with much debate, which must have been loud because after they finished they looked up to find their table surrounded by people fascinated by what they were discussing.  I have that booklet somewhere and when I find it I will quote from it on this blog.

I met Robert, to interview him for my only ill-fated article for the Teesside Advertiser.  As the participants shared their experiences, the long term unemployed spoke of how they thought their unemployment was their fault.  Then by hearing each others stories they discovered that others felt the same way, soon they came to see unemployment as not their fault but something to do with society.

Frequently they spoke of how they had come to see unemployment as the best thing that happened to them, something that has to come from the heart of those who have experienced it.  This experience of the power of sharing stories was repeated many times as groups of long-term unemployed formed across the county.

Soon , they came to speak of darkness - how God had a dark face but was still somehow God.  The pain and burden of unemployment remained but somehow recognising God in the darkness made a difference.  They began to see their estates as dark holy ground.

And then they turned to the psalms and found people who lived 3000 years ago had experienced what they experienced.  One particular example was particularly powerful.  Psalm 139: 11.12 reads (New RSV):

If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night', even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

They read these verses and someone noticed that at the end it is still dark.  The darkness is not dark, the night is as bright as the day but it is still dark; still night.  To find common ground with the psalmists in Cleveland's estates was empowering even though the pain remained. 

The Christian faith does know joy but to focus on joy to the exclusion of suffering is to deny people's experience of the dark face of God.  Many dark places are empowering, the image of light needs to give away to the equally empowering image of darkness.  When we acknowledge the pain in people's lives a real transformation begins.

I had two conversations with Robert.  During the second he asked how I thought he felt as he listened as a pastor to someone pour out the story of their pain.  This was of course a rhetorical question; his answer was 'joy'.  I didn't understand.  'Because', he said, 'it is there in the pain that I feel closest to God'.   

RESPOND! (Churches Response to Cleveland's Industrial Crisis)

This time I've checked Google first and I can find no trace of RESPOND!, so it is down to my unreliable memory.  RESPOND! (Churches' Response to Cleveland's Industrial Crisis) grew out of Impasse and also the work of Teesside Industrial Mission (TIM).  During the 1980s it was independent of TIM but I think it returned to the care of TIM in the nineties.  I left Middlesbrough in 1989 and so my knowledge of what happened after that date is hazy.

In 1983 when I moved to Middlesbrough, RESPOND! was a small group set up by TIM to address the Industrial Crisis (I don't think it was called RESPOND! in those days) but it was in 1984 (I think) when RESPOND! obtained funding, that the work took off with the appointment of Keith Lindsey.  Keith had previously founded a youth work project in Stockton called the Ravens.

One major dimension to the work was the opportunity to speak directly to government ministers.  RESPOND! prepared reports for the Church Leaders who were able to call government ministers to Cleveland.  The reports were written with the participation of unemployed people across the county.  So, this process, which was repeated several times, enabled the views of the long term unemployed to be heard directly by the government.  The first included the idea that Cleveland could be designated as an experimental area to try out new ideas for work with the unemployed.  I don't remember how or whether the government responded but the truth was Cleveland was an experimental area in its own right.  Impasse and a variety of copycat projects, some inspired directly by RESPOND!, were springing up all over the place.  For a couple of years in the late 80s I wrote articles for RESPOND! about unemployment projects for the local free paper .  There was never any shortage of places to visit.

Keith made lots of contacts with groups of unemployed people all over the county and these led to a training course called Dark Holy Ground.  This was led by Keith, Robert Gallagher, who at the time was vicar with the Local Ecumenical Partnership in Coulby Newham, and the Catholic Priest at the Catholic Cathedral in Middlesbrough - I'm afraid I've forgotten his name.  The courses were a mix of long term unemployed and people in employment.

The impact of these courses was phenomenal.  They were the topic of the only article for the free paper I had rejected!  I will write about the findings in future posts.

Middlesbrough Impasse

During the late seventies and early eighties, Revd Bill Hall (he may have been a Canon) was Chaplain to Arts and Recreation for the Durham Anglican Diocese.  He started to meet with long-term unemployed people and at some stage asked the question, if you set aside a wage, what else do you gain from employment?  His group of unemployed people brainstormed answers and found 6 or 7 practical advantages to being employed besides income.  I'm not sure I can remember them all but they included a structure to the day, friendships, opportunity to use or develop skills and so on.

The next step was to ask why should the unemployed lose these opportunities as well as an income by virtue of being unemployed?  And so Impasse was born.

There were several Impasse centres mainly around Teesside.  The biggest was on the main street in Middlesbrough.  There people could spend the day practicing car maintenance or needlework, making furniture  or preparing economic meals which were on sale at low prices.  Skilled workers taught the less skilled and people were enocuraged to find work to do for themselves. 

This idea was copied around the county (Cleveland) and during the period I lived there (1983 -89) there were several Impasse centres and other copycat centres.    Bill saw this as revolutionary, he used to say the unemployed were the vanguard of the revolution.  However, it was another project RESPOND! - Churches' Response to Cleveland's Industrial Crisis which really addressed and more about that another time.

I wrote these few paragraphs and then thought to Google Middelsbrough Impasse and I'm delighted to find it (and Bill Hall) were still going strong in 2001.  Comparison between this article and my memories above may illustrate how time dilutes memory!

A search for ecumenical resources

Time for a break from conversations, to explain more about this blog.  It can be too easy to be bogged down in ecumenical conversations and activities and so I hope to include ideas for churches and ecumenical groups.  I don't in any way wish to portray ecumenism as an activity that is not worthwhile but it can come across as worthy and, well, dull.  It shouldn't be this way and so one of my responses will be to gather in one place resources for ecumenists.  There will be loads of reflection, much of it theological, because it interests me and also because I want to encourage debate about why we do ecumenism.  Here are some examples of other things I would like to collect:

1. Stories - some maybe contributed by committed ecumenists, along the lines of why I am still a ..., others will be stories I add in from time to time from various sources.
2. Neighbourhoods - most ecumenical work is done in neighbourhoods - I hope to add posts showing how churches have developed work in their neighbourhoods.
3. Images - apart from logos and pictures of groups of people posing during some ecumenical meeting, ecumenism seems short of images.  Is there any exciting stuff anywhere? 
4. Worship materials - for use in any worship not just joint services.
5. Humour - there must be some ecumenical humour out there somewhere - I've rarely encountered any - there must be some - surely?  If you have any examples, please ensure they are funny before sharing them!

If you have resources to share, directly or through a link, I would be delighted to add your material, acknowledged and with due regard for copyright restrictions of course.