This article was first published in The
Catholic Herald
An Ecumenical Leap Forward
By Dwight Longenecker
‘This is an ecumenical conference for
those who hate ecumenism’ were the opening words of
a conference I attended last month in Chicago. The
event was hosted by The Fellowship of St James, publishers
of Touchstone Magazine. The Fellowship was founded
in the 1970s by some young evangelical Christians.
They were members of an independent Christian community
who were concerned with Christian unity and were exploring
the claims of the historic church. The Fellowship of
St James seeks to uphold the historic Christian faith
by gathering members from the three streams of Eastern
Orthodoxy, the Reformed tradition and Catholicism.
The reason the conference was
jokingly referred to as ‘an ecumenical conference for those
who hate ecumenism’ is because most of the people gathered
there have become impatient with the present state
of the ecumenical movement. This is so for three reasons.
Firstly, they feel the ecumenical movement has gone
off course. The World Council of Churches and its national
affiliates seem more interested in social action than
they are in church unity. It is a good for churches
to work together in the social sphere, but when a Council
of Churches makes social work the main priority they
have forgotten their raison d’etre. The fact
that there is serious drift within the World Council
of Churches is exemplified by the fact that both the
national and international structures are practically
bankrupt. They operate with huge deficits and some
commentators report that both organisations are near
collapse, propped up with ageing agitators with agendas.
The second reason why the speakers
claimed to ‘hate ecumenism’ while loving church unity
is more profound. Whether they are Baptists, Catholics
or Eastern Orthodox, they all claim to believe in what
C.S.Lewis called ‘Mere Christianity’. Despite the problems
with Lewis’ term, they believe in the essentials of
the historic Christian faith, and feel that the modern
ecumenical movement has been swamped with the relativistic
spirit of the age. This relativism means that ecumenical
dialogue has too often crumbled into sentimental statements
which merely ‘affirm’ whatever truth ‘works for you.’ The
delegates to the Touchstone conference reflect a growing
dis-ease with a form of ecumenism which is no more
than an occasional feel good service where we smile
and drink tea with other Christians.
The third reason for the delegates’ unhappiness
with the current ecumenical climate is related to the
second. Because they believe in the historic faith,
and believe there is such a thing as revealed Truth,
the delegates from all three traditions really do believe
that progress can be made. In this sense they are both
pessimists and optimists. As a result, this new breed
of ecumenists wants to ‘talk turkey’. They want to
cut through the social programmes (worthy though they
may be) and the ecumenical tea parties (pleasant though
they may be) and get down to brass tacks. They want
to debate the issues, talk them through and hammer
their way into a future church unity which they admit
is still aeons away.
As a result, at the conference
we heard two Baptist theologians, two Eastern Orthodox
theologians and two Catholics. None of them pulled
any punches. The Baptists asserted their creed and
pointed out what problems they had when the role of
Tradition was too highly regarded. They drew back from
the claims of papal primacy and defended an ‘invisible’ church
which was the already unified body of all true believers.
The Orthodox made their tradition attractive and pointed
out the strong points of the Orthodox way, but they
too drew back from the claims of papal primacy. The
former Lutheran pastor, Fr Richard John Neuhaus, was
one of the Catholic speakers. He also shot from the
hip. He spoke with humour and charity, but reminded
the Protestants and the Orthodox of the great overtures
the present Pope has made to both sides, and how these
overtures have been met with silence and hostility.
I came away from the conference
feeling as if I had had a gulp of ice cold water. It
was bracing, it made me gasp, and it quenched my thirst.
Ironically, I also felt far more at one with my fellow
Christians of other traditions than I do at the usual
ecumenical gathering. After the conference I also
began wondering if this might be the shot in the arm
our rather flaccid ecumenical movement needs. At the
grass roots level perhaps we should be willing to debate
more openly. We have lost the old fashioned habit of
debating Truth as if it really mattered. The formal
theological conversations like ARCIC have done good
work re-formulating the Truth in a way that is acceptable
to both sides. But to complement this we should also
debate the truth within our publications, through the
media, through local meetings and the already existing
channels of ecumenism.
The ‘other side’ may not be our usual
partners in the mainstream churches. Instead we should
engage the only other church that is growing—the conservative
evangelicals. Cardinal Avery Dulles has made the same
point. The time is ripe, he writes, ‘to welcome the
more traditional and conservative churches into the
dialogue. For the Catholic Church it may not prove
easy to reach a consensus with either the Orthodox
or the conservative evangelicals, but these churches
and communities may have more to offer than some others
because they have dared to be different. Catholics
have the right and duty to challenge the adequacy of
some of their positions, but they should be invited
to challenge Catholics in their turn.’
The week of prayer for Christian unity
is coming up next month. To complement the usual round
of prayer meetings and joint services perhaps we ought
to invite our Christian brothers and sisters of other
denominations to take part in some challenging conversations.
Let us face together the issues which really do divide
us. Let us examine the Scriptures and the tradition
to see where the Truth lies. Let us do so in charity
with humour. Together let’s ‘give an answer for that
faith which lies within us’ never trying to score cheap
points and never taking our eye off the ball of the
ultimate goal which is Christian unity.
Within the ecumenical scene the
Catholic Church is often portrayed as the villain in
the piece.
We are the ones who offend because of our policy of
closed communion. We are the ones who make ‘indefensible’ claims
to authority. Yet over the last thirty years, it is
the Catholic Church which has taken the most substantial,
serious and risky ecumenical initiatives. Because we
believe in the possibility of a visible church we take
seriously the very real theological causes of division
within the church. It is therefore up to us to take
ecumenism into its next stage. We have learned to love,
respect and listen to other Christians. Perhaps the
next stage is to step into the arena and wrestle with
one another. The wrestling needn’t be other than sporting,
and who knows, like Jacob wrestling the angel, we may
all come away both bruised and blessed.
Dwight Longenecker is editor of The
Path to Rome and co-author of Challenging Catholics,
a debate with Anglican evangelical John Martin.
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