Archive: Re-Imagining and the Fair Name of Ecumenism
By Geoffrey Wainwright
We did not last night name the name of Jesus,” said a participant in one of the worship services at the Minneapolis “Re- Imagining” Conference, and then more generally: “Nor have we done anything in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Her remarks were met by laughter and cheers. Since, then, nothing Christian took place, it might seem that we could stop worrying and forget about the whole thing. Unfortunately, however, some have claimed a Christian status for the Minnesota event. And, in particular, some have invoked the principle of ecumenism to justify the participation by United Methodists. It is the ecumenical question that I want to address.
For all my adult life, I have been engaged in the ecumenical movement; and in recent years, I have regretted it when Evangelicals have tended to contrast themselves with Ecumenicals. For I have always seen myself as standing within classical Christianity: Evangelical, Orthodox, Catholic Christianity. And I have always understood the modem ecumenical movement—from its origins and at its best—to be about the manifestation and attainment of the unity of the holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, which is the body of Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. And for what purpose?
The early motto of the ecumenical movement was taken from the prayer of Jesus for his disciples at the Last Supper, “that they all may be one.” And why this unity? “That the world may believe.” Division among Christians diminishes their witness to a gospel that declares “God has reconciled the world to himself.” When, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Methodist layman John R. Mott led his church and others into the ecumenical movement, it was in the service of “the evangelization of the world in this generation.” The same cause inspired the great Edinburgh missionary conference in 1910 and led to the formation of the International Missionary Council (IMC). After World War II, the IMC brought its energies into the World Council of Churches (WCC).
Of course, Christian unity is not simply a matter of assembling a humanly organized community around a humanly contrived message. The Church gathers around the one gospel and correspondingly seeks to confess and proclaim the one faith. That is why matters of Faith and Order have been essential to the ecumenical movement. Through long years of study and reflection, consultation and conference, classical ecumenism has painstakingly brought the churches closer to agreement on the core contents of Christian doctrine and practice. That is the achievement of the Lima text on “Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry” (1982), of “Confessing the One Faith” (1990), and of numerous texts produced in bilateral dialogues among the Christian communions. Genuine ecumenism will respect and build on these hard-gained convergences. It is the failure to abide by the ground rules that disqualifies the Minneapolis event, however varied the denominational allegiances of its participants, from any claim to the honorable title of ecumenical. Let me illustrate that with regard to the membership basis of the World Council of Churches.
The constitution of the WCC established it as “a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior.” How then could applause greet a speaker at Minneapolis saying, “I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all. … I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff”? The WCC makes its confession “according to the Scriptures.” How then could the liturgies of Minneapolis turn the divine wisdom of Proverbs into an independent deity, to be called on in prayer as “Sophia, creator God”? The WCC seeks to accomplish its mission “to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” How then could the Minneapolis event feature as a speaker Chung Hyun Kyung, notorious since the 1991 WCC gathering in Canberra, who duly obliged by introducing a “new trinity” of “goddess”—Cali, Quani, and Enna?
The new general secretary of the WCC, Dr. Konrad Raiser, has claimed that “if the WCC did not exist, we should have to invent it.” That is no justification for the sad decline from the original vision and the abandonment of existing achievements. The disaster of Minneapolis should serve as a summons to recall the World Council of Churches and all ecumenical agencies to their first vocation of uniting Christians for the proclamation of the Name in which salvation is to be found. And the Decade of Solidarity with Women would be better marked by honoring and emulating those who have contributed so much to classical ecumenism: a Suzanne de Dietrich and an Ellen Flesseman-van Leer in their Bible studies, a Janet Lacey in interchurch aid, a Kathleen Bliss and a Madeleine Barot in the cooperation of men and women in church and society, the many women missionaries, evangelists, teachers, and local church leaders who have testified to the one gospel in every land, and the countless millions of women who have united throughout more than a century for the annual World Day of Prayer.
Dr. Geoffrey Wainwright a minister of the British Methodist Church, is the Robert E. Cushman Professor of Christian Theology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He is chairman of the World Methodist Council’s committee on ecumenism and dialogues. Wainwright is a co-editor of the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (Eerdmans and WCC Publications) and the author of numerous books.
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