ecumenical movement

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ecumenical movement

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

ecumenical movement , name given to the movement aimed at the unification of the Protestant churches of the world and ultimately of all Christians.

During and after the Reformation Protestantism separated into numerous independent sects. An early attempt to reverse this tendency was the Evangelical Alliance founded in England in 1846; an American branch was formed by Philip Schaff in 1867. Other organizations that crossed denominational barriers were the Young Men's Christian Association (1844), the Young Women's Christian Association (1884), and the Christian Endeavor Society (1881). In 1908 the Federal Council of Churches of Christ, composed of the larger Protestant denominations in the United States, was organized and strove to represent Protestant opinion on religious and social questions. The movement known as Church Reunion in Great Britain and as Christian Unity (1910) in the United States was active in seeking a creed and polity behind which all Christians could unite.

On an international scale the ecumenical movement really began with the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910. This led to the establishment (1921) of the International Missionary Council, which fostered cooperation in mission activity and among the younger churches. Other landmarks in the development of the movement were the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work (Stockholm, 1925), inspired by Nathan Söderblom of Sweden; the World Conference on Faith and Order (Lausanne, 1927); and the first assembly of the World Council of Churches (Amsterdam, 1948). The World Council, bringing together Protestant, Orthodox Eastern (including the Russian Orthodox Church), and Old Catholic bodies, is now the chief instrument of ecumenicity; in 1961 it united with the International Missionary Council.

Progress has also been made in mergers between individual churches; notable examples include the Church of South India (see South India, Church of ), established in 1947, the first union between episcopal and nonepiscopal churches, and in the United States, where there have been many mergers, the United Church of Christ . A proposal was made in 1960 to bring together the American Methodist, Episcopal, United Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ denominations; this led to the establishment (1962) of the Consultation on Church Union, whose discussions continued into the 1970s. A proposed merger between the English Methodists and the Church of England was rejected by the Methodists in 1969. The Anglicans did, however, reach several doctrinal accords with the Roman Catholic Church in the early 1970s. Several American Lutheran churchs united to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1988, which agreed in 1997 on a full communion (an arrangement by which churches fully accept each other's members and sacraments) with the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, and the Reformed Church in America. The Lutheran group reached a similar agreement with the Episcopal Church and the Moravian Church in 1999. Under the terms of the full communion, the churches involved can hold joint worship services, exchange clergy members, and collaborate on social service projects.

The Vatican did not give formal recognition to the existence of the ecumenical movement until 1960, when it established the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. Protestant and Orthodox Eastern observers were invited to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and the Decree on Ecumenism (1964) promulgated by that council encouraged new dialogues with Protestant and Orthodox churches. In 1969, Pope Paul VI visited the headquarters of the World Council of Churches in Geneva; the Catholic Church now sends observers to the World Council and is a full member of some of its committees. In 1995, in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the Roman Catholic commitment to Christian ecumenism; in 1999, he became the first pope to visit Orthodox nations. Catholics and Lutherans signed a joint declaration in 1999 on the doctrine of justification that resolved some of the issues that led to the Reformation in 1517.

Bibliography: See B. Leeming, The Churches and the Church (1960); N. Goodall, The Ecumenical Movement (3d ed. 1966); J. Desseaux, Twenty Centuries of Ecumenicism (1984); R. S. Bilheimer, Breakthrough: The Emergence of the Ecumenical Tradition (1989).

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ecumenical movement

World Encyclopedia | 2005 | © World Encyclopedia 2005, originally published by Oxford University Press 2005. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

ecumenical movement Movement to restore the lost unity of Christendom. In its modern sense, it began with the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910, and led to the foundation of the World Council of Churches in 1948. See also Basel; Chalcedon; Constance; Lateran Councils; Trent

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Ecumenical Movement

The Oxford Companion to United States History | 2001 | | © The Oxford Companion to United States History 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Ecumenical Movement. The ecumenical movement is the formal endeavor by Christians to achieve unity in the face of denominational differences. A worldwide phenomenon, it has particularly flourished in the United States, where the wide diversity of competing denominations eventually impelled leaders to promote cooperation and even merger between previously separated church bodies.

Until the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) freed American Catholics for ecumenical activity, most of the movement in the United States was Protestant. An Evangelical Alliance, formed in London in 1846, attracted many Americans, who organized their own version of it in 1867. It promoted allied activities by “evangelicals,” which then meant the mainstream of Protestant churches. The alliance remained largely an effort of clergy leaders and did not grasp the imagination of most lay people.

The International Missionary Conference at Edinburgh, Scotland, presided over by the young American Methodist John R. Mott in 1910, is usually seen as the beginning of modern ecumenism. However, already in 1908 mainstream American Protestants had organized a Federal Council of Churches. Its successor, the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., founded in 1950, originally included twenty‐five Protestant and four Orthodox churches. Expanding thereafter, it became a major voice of cooperative moderate‐to‐liberal non–Roman Catholic Christianity.

Meanwhile, state and local councils and federations of churches also engaged in common activities, often including theological discussion. Various denominations, as part of the movement, moved to end longstanding divisions. The twentieth century brought mergers of separate Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, and other bodies. Most notable was a merger of the Congregational Christian and Evangelical and Reformed churches into the United Church of Christ in 1957.

Despite setbacks in formal organization, the ecumenical movement changed the spirit of American mainstream Protestantism. Meanwhile, the more conservative Protestants, through the National Association of Evangelicals after 1942, also expressed an ecumenical spirit, as did Catholics after 1965. By the end of the twentieth century the ecumenical spirit was undimmed, even as leaders looked for new forms by which the movement might express itself.
See also Lutheranism; Methodism; Protestantism; Religion; Roman Catholicism.

Bibliography

Ruth Rouse et al., eds., A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 2 vols., 1967, 1970.
Russell Richey, ed., Denominationalism, 1977.

Martin E. Marty

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Paul S. Boyer. "Ecumenical Movement." The Oxford Companion to United States History. Oxford University Press. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 5 Jul. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

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