ecumenical movement

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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).

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

Ecumenical Movement. The movement in the Church towards the visible union of all believers in Christ. Aspirations for unity can be traced from NT times. The modern ecumenical movement may be dated from the Edinburgh Conference of 1910, though this owed much to earlier developments. It led to the establishment of the International Missionary Council and thence to the creation in 1925 of the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work and of the first World Conference on Faith and Order which met in Lausanne in 1927. These two bodies were fused in the World Council of Churches (q.v.).

The initiative between 1910 and 1927 came mainly from within W. Protestantism. The World Council of Churches, however, from the beginning included some E. Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches. In 1961 official RC observers were for the first time permitted to attend the World Council of Churches' Third Assembly; in 1962 non-RC observers were invited to the Second Vatican Council, and in 1964 the Council's Decree on Ecumenism referred to members of other Churches as ‘separated brethren’ rather than as outside the Church. Various organic unions among Protestant Churches have taken place (see REUNION) and the multilateral discussions conducted under the auspices of the World Council of Churches are paralleled by bilateral dialogues between world-wide organizations of different denominations. Councils of Churches at regional, national, and local levels now normally include both Orthodox and RCs. Since the late 1960s there has been a marked increase in the participation of non-Western Churches and of women. So far the Pentecostal Churches (except in Latin America) have taken little part.

ecumenical movement A movement whose name derives from the Greek oikoumenë (‘the whole inhabited world’) whose aim is to unite all believers in Christ, transcending all divisions of denomination. The beginnings of the modern movement culminated in the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, which led to the establishment of an International Missionary Council and to further interdenominational meetings. The institution of a World Council of Churches was held up by World War II, but in 1948 it met for the first time in Amsterdam, with the participation of representatives from 147 churches from forty-seven countries. As a result of more liberal attitudes within the Roman Catholic Church from the papacy of John XXIII, Catholic observers were sent to the Assembly of the World Council of Churches for the first time in 1961. Under John XXIII and his successor, Pope Paul VI, the conflict between the Eastern Orthodox Churches and Western Catholicism was bridged. There have been constant set-backs, for example the controversy between the Church of England (Anglican Communion) and the Roman Catholic Church over the ordination of women for the priesthood during the early 1990s, and the failure of Anglican-Methodist unity in 1972. However, there has been continued progress and dialogue between the denominations. This was witnessed by the establishment of more regional church councils and of a communion between the Anglican and Lutheran Churches in the early 1990s.

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