Ecumenical Movement

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ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT

ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT . The long and varied history of Christian ecumenism is reflected in the many definitions attached to the word itself. The Greek oikoumenē comes from the noun oikos ("house, dwelling") and the verb oikeō ("to live, to dwell"). Oikoumenē, which is derived from the present passive participle of the verb, suggests the land in which people live or dwell and is usually translated "the inhabited world." The word initially had no theological implications; it was a descriptive term used by the Greeks to describe the world they knew, and later by the Romans to describe the Roman Empire.

Biblical usage of the word oikoumenē is sparse. Eight of the fifteen references are found in Luke and Acts, and with the exception of two references that suggest the Roman empire (Lk. 2:1, Acts 17:6) and one that may have cosmic import (Heb. 2:5), the remaining uses are no more than descriptive references to "the inhabited world" (Mt. 24:14; Lk. 4:5, 21:26; Acts 11:28, 17:31, 19:27, 24:5; Rom. 10:18; Heb. 1:6; Rv. 3:10, 12:9, 16:14).

As the early church extended its geographical boundaries, writers begin to refer to the church throughout the oikoumenē as a way of distinguishing it from local assemblies. And when Christians from different locations began to meet together to discuss aspects of belief and discipline, such gatherings began to be referred to as "ecumenical councils," that is, councils having representation from all parts of the oikoumenē. Eastern Orthodox churches acknowledge seven ecumenical councils before the Great Schism of 1054, while the Roman Catholic Church also claims as ecumenical subsequent councils in the West, such as the Council of Trent and the two Vatican councils. The Lutheran Formula of Concord (1577) described the early creeds (Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian) as "ecumenical creeds" because they had been accepted by all branches of the Christian church. The meaning of the word ecumenical was thus extended beyond the theologically neutral notion of "the inhabited world" to include both an understanding of the church in its worldwide sense and expressions of belief that have universal ecclesiastical acceptance.

After a period of relative neglect, the word ecumenical reappeared in the twentieth century, with new meanings appropriate to a new situation. Many church bodies, disturbed by their divisions from one another, which were made particularly apparent by the competitive nature of nineteenth-century missionary activities, began to look for ways to overcome their diverse histories. Following a world conference of missionary societies in Edinburgh in 1910, the word ecumenism began to be used to signify a concern to reunite the divided Christian family. Alongside this concern for unity was a corresponding concern for mission (from missio, "a sending forth") to the oikoumenē. These twin poles of unity and mission have characterized what has come to be referred to as "the ecumenical movement." However, a broader use of the word ecumenism has also emerged to designate an attitude of active goodwill and concern for all peoples. Concerns about world hunger, racism, or political oppression are thus frequently described as "ecumenical concerns" and are often focal points of common action not only among Christians but in conjunction with all people of goodwill.

The Birth of Modern Ecumenism: Edinburgh, 1910

The fellowship of those who have been made "one in Christ" has almost always been marred by institutional division. In the earliest Christian literature, the letters of Paul, there are accounts of Paul's attempts to adjudicate between factions bitterly disputing with one another. The church at Corinth was particularly notorious in this regard. The creedal controversies in the early councils were attempts to set boundaries to the faith, and they provided canons for exclusion of heretics as well as inclusion of believers. In 1054 a radical division, the Great Schism, culminated the separation between Eastern and Western Christianity, and in the sixteenth century the Western church was further divided into the many separate denominations that resulted from the Reformation.

It is to the credit of the groups thus divided that they continued to believe that their divisions were "sinful," but not until the nineteenth century, with its missionary advance from Europe and North America to the rest of the world, was the situation recognized as intolerable. The efforts to "make disciples of all nations" (Mt. 28:19) was in fact imposing divisions of European origin on newly converted Christians in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in ways that distorted the unity in Christ that the message was supposed to bestow.

It is therefore significant that the first major attempt to begin a healing of the divisions within Christianity originated in the missionary societies. In 1910, a number of missionary societies held a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, that by common consent is described as the birth of the modern ecumenical movement. The purpose of the conference was to develop a common missionary strategy that would not only avoid the scandal of the past but provide for a more creative and collaborative use of resources in the future.

The Three Streams Flowing from Edinburgh

As delegates to the Edinburgh conference looked ahead, they saw that some kind of structure would be necessary if the goals of the conference were to be accomplished. A continuation committee was established, and by 1921 it was clear that three concerns would need attention, continuing reflection, and structural implementation: (1) the missionary task of the church, (2) the kinds of common service the churches could render to the world even in their divided state, and (3) the doctrinal issues that were responsible for the ongoing divisions.

In response to the first concern, the International Missionary Council was established in 1921 to help various mission boards coordinate their previously separate and competing activities and to hold conferences that would enable members to think in new ways about the church's mission. During its forty-year life, the council held five conferences that dealt with the impact of secularism on the life of the church (Jerusalem, 1928); the relationship of the Christian religion to other world religions (Madras, 1938); the need to see missions as a two-way street on which the so-called younger churches would now be giving as well as receiving (Whitby, 1947); the imperative need for Christian unity, if mission was to retain its credibility (Willingen, 1952); and recognition that the time had come for missionary concern to be related structurally to those Christians already grappling with questions of unity and service (Ghana, 1957). The last conference translated into a decision to merge with the already established World Council of Churches, a decision that was implemented in 1961.

The Edinburgh-inspired concern for the church's common service to the world was embodied in a second structure, called the Commission on Life and Work. Recognizing that organic reunion was years if not light-years away, members of this commission sought to develop a consensus on matters to which divided churches could relate. "Doctrine divides, service unites" became the slogan. The first Conference on Life and Work, held in Stockholm in 1925, was widely representative—over 600 delegates from 37 countries attended and discussed the church's responsibility in such areas as international relations, education, economics, and industry.

A second Conference on Life and Work, held in Oxford in 1937, drew delegates from 40 countries and 120 denominations who discussed church and state, church and community, and the church and its function in society, while small groups dealt with education, the economic order, and the world of nations. Two realities loomed behind the Oxford discussions. One was the rapid consolidation of Adolf Hitler's power in Nazi Germany and the almost "emergency" situation it created for understanding the task of the church in such a world. The other was a realization that service could not adequately be discussed apart from considerations of doctrine. Consequently, the delegates voted that the Life and Work Commission should seek to merge with the Faith and Order Commission, the third outgrowth of Edinburgh.

This third structure provided a place for the doctrinal issues that divided the churches to be explored. The members, adopting the name Faith and Order, held an initial conference in Lausanne in 1927, with over 400 delegates from 108 churches, including not only Protestants but Eastern Orthodox representatives as well. The report of the conference exemplified a descriptive process called "comparative ecclesiology," which sought to pinpoint and describe doctrinal differences as well as similarities, without as yet attempting to resolve them. However, the commonly shared conviction at Lausanne that "God wills unity" led the delegates to project a second conference, which was held at Edinburgh in 1937, with delegates from 122 participating bodies. Unanimous agreement was reached on a statement about "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," although in other areas, such as church, ministry, and sacraments, awesome divergences remained. The delegates did acknowledge, however, that their task was not so much to create unity, which is God's gift, as to exhibit more clearly the unity that their empirical divisions obscured.

Members of the Faith and Order Commission realized that doctrine involves action and service, and they voted at Edinburgh (in complementarity with a similar action taken by the Commission on Life and Work) that the two groups should merge. Delegates from both groups therefore met in 1938 at Utrecht to work out proposals for "a world council of churches." World War II intervened, and until 1948 the world council was "in process of formation."

Other Ecumenical Advances

From 1910 to 1948, ecumenical activity was not limited to high-level consultations. Many denominations established international bodies, such as the Lutheran World Federation and the World Alliance of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches, so that global concerns could receive greater attention. National ecumenical agencies were created, such as the British Council of Churches and the Federal Council of Churches in the United States, which later became the National Council of Churches of Christ, providing vehicles through which Protestant groups could work cooperatively on many issues.

Another ecumenical impetus reminding Christians that "the world is too strong for a divided church" was the rise to power of Hitler, whose policies were bent on the extermination of the Jews, the suppression of any Christian groups opposing Nazi claims, and the extension of racially based totalitarian rule. The Barmen Declaration (1934) of the Confessing Church in Germany was a theological "no" to Hitler that brought Reformed and Lutheran groups together for the first time since the Reformation. Christians living under persecution from 1933 to 1945 discovered that in concentration camps or occupied territories their unity far outweighed their differences.

The World Council of Churches

In 1948 at Amsterdam, the World Council of Churches (WCC) became a reality, fusing the concerns of the Faith and Order and Life and Work commissions. In 1961 the International Missionary Council joined the WCC, thus completing the structural reunification of the three areas of concern originating at Edinburgh. Some 146 churches—Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox—were the original members of the World Council. During World War II, a skeleton staff in Geneva engaged in refugee relief and found various ways for Christians to communicate across the national barriers created by the war. The person most responsible during these interim years, W. A. Visser 't Hooft, a Dutch lay theologian, was elected the first general secretary of the WCC, and permanent headquarters were established in Geneva.

At the time of its creation, the WCC defined itself as "composed of churches which acknowledge Jesus Christ as God and Savior." From the beginning the WCC has made clear (despite misunderstanding by outsiders) that its task is "to serve the churches," not to become a superchurch itself or to be a Protestant/Orthodox counterpart to the Vatican.

The issue of membership in the WCC has been a delicate one. All churches accepting the basic affirmation of "Jesus Christ as God and Savior" have been welcome to apply for membership, and at each world assembly (held every five or six years) new churches have joined, so that after the Vancouver world assembly (1983) there were three hundred member churches representing around four hundred million Christians and including almost all the major Protestant and Orthodox bodies in the world. Membership in the WCC, however, does not imply that member churches believe that their own doctrine of the church is inadequate, nor does it mean acknowledging that other members are "fully" churches. At the New Delhi assembly in 1961, a more fully developed basis for membership was approved. It reads: "The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of Churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

Although the WCC has gone through several structural reorganizations since its inception and will continue to respond structurally to new situations, the emphases of all three Edinburgh streams have remained central throughout its history. A brief description of the structure as it existed after the Vancouver assembly will indicate the wide variety and scope of WCC commitments.

There are three major foci of concern in the WCC, identified as "program units." Program Unit I, devoted to Faith and Witness, is where the earlier Faith and Order Commission is housed. In its new guise, Faith and Order has continued to have an active history since the formation of the WCC, dealing with issues related to the visible unity of the church and preparing reports on such topics as accounts of Christian hope; the theology of baptism, Eucharist, and ministry; the relationship between church and state; and the unity of the church in relation to the unity of humankind. The subunit on World Mission and Evangelism is clearly the repository of many of the concerns of the earlier International Missionary Council and deals with problems raised in proclaiming the faith today, discerning the true missionary congregation, and developing ways for churches throughout the world to share their resources, both material and spiritual.

The subunit on Church and Society is one of the continuing vehicles for the concerns of the earlier Commission on Life and Work; the WCC has held important conferences in this area, most notably a conference on "The Church in the Social and Technical Revolutions of Our Time" (Geneva, 1966), which included worldwide representation and set a new direction for Church and Society concerns. There have also been subsequent conferences on the uses of nuclear energy and issues in medical ethics. The subunit on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies has been a vehicle for widening contacts far beyond the Christian arena. The subunit on Theological Education seeks to make resources available for training for ministry in as ecumenical a context as possible.

Program Unit II is concerned with Justice and Service, another place where certain Life and Work emphases continue to be manifest in concrete ways. The subunit on Inter-Church Aid, Refugee and World Service has been a conduit for specific, practical, and immediate help to people in need. The subunit on Churches' Participation in Development enables churches to be involved in economic development in their own lands through grants and other acts of solidarity such as long-term low-interest loans, along with extensive educational programs and the sharing of technical services. The subunit on International Affairs calls the churches' attention to situations of injustice and conflict, particularly in such areas as the violation of human rights. The Program to Combat Racism, through separately solicited funds, gives financial support to groups of racially oppressed peoples so that they can work for their own liberation. The Christian Medical Commission engages in programs of community health care and education, particularly in areas that are without adequate hospitals or professional medical assistance.

Program Unit III is concerned with Education and Renewal and is oriented to new thinking about Christian education and its impact on parish life. The subunit on Education sponsors programs to develop leadership, educational curricula for churches, and Bible study. The subunit on Renewal and Congregational Life provides resources for local congregations and other Christian groups. The subunit on Women is helping the entire Christian family to rethink the roles of women in both church and society. A similar subunit on Youth gives special attention to the needs of young people.

Even this cursory listing indicates the council's breadth of concern. It directs ongoing attention to theological reflection in the context of the contemporary world (Program Unit I), specific actions in various projects of service (Program Unit II), and ongoing attempts at renewing the mind for the life of the people of God (Program Unit III). In addition to a staff of about 275 persons to administer these various activities, the WCC has a Central Committee, composed of about 135 members, chosen proportionately from among the member churches, which meets annually to determine the ongoing tasks of the WCC between assemblies.

At the world assemblies, member churches meet to discuss their common task and to work on problems that have emerged since the previous assembly. The topics of the assemblies give an indication of the central themes of the WCC's ongoing life. From 1948 to 1983, six assemblies were held: "Man's Disorder and God's Design" (Amsterdam, 1948), "Jesus Christ the Hope of the World" (Evanston, 1954), "Jesus Christ the Light of the World" (New Delhi, 1961), "Behold I Make All Things New" (Uppsala, 1968), "Jesus Christ Frees and Unites" (Nairobi, 1975), and "Jesus Christ the Life of the World" (Vancouver, 1983).

The most volatile storm center of controversy in the life of the WCC has been the Program to Combat Racism. Provided for at Uppsala (1975) shortly after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., who was to have been the keynote speaker, the Program to Combat Racism assigns considerable sums of money each year to groups throughout the world who are victims of racism and are trying to find ways of escaping such repression. Small grants have occasionally been given to "freedom" groups, particularly in Africa, occasioning protest from others who feel that such gifts will foster violence. Although there have been no instances in which the charges have proven accurate, the issue has remained an emotionally charged one and has the effect of deflecting the public's attention from many of the other activities of the WCC.

The Development of Roman Catholic Ecumenism

During most of the developments described above, the Roman Catholic Church remained uninvolved. Its posture was clear: church unity could be achieved only by the return to the Roman Catholic Church of all the Christian bodies who had separated from it. Since full ecclesial reality was possible only for churches in communion with Rome, Roman Catholics were initially forbidden by Rome to participate in ecumenical activities. For example, Roman Catholic observers were not permitted to attend either the Amsterdam (1948) or Evanston (1954) assemblies of the WCC.

However, a few Roman Catholic ecumenical pioneers very cautiously began to initiate contact with non-Catholics. After World War I, Max Metzger, a German priest, founded the Una Sancta movement to foster dialogue between Protestants and Catholics. French priest Paul Couturier worked for revision of the prayers of the Christian Unity Octave of the Roman liturgy, so that Catholics and Protestants could begin to pray together. The Foyer Unitas in Rome was established for the study of non-Catholic traditions. Dominican priest Yves Congar in France, Jesuit Gustave Weigel in the United States, and other individuals trod a lonely path of seeking to put Protestants and Catholics on speaking terms with one another. After the Amsterdam assembly (1948), an "Instruction" was issued by the Holy Office in Rome in 1949, providing some cautious initial guidelines for Catholic and non-Catholic encounters; even so, an invitation to the Vatican to send Catholic observers to the Evanston assembly (1954) was declined. In 1961, however, during the pontificate of John XXIII, a similar invitation to send observers to the third assembly at New Delhi (1961) was accepted, and five priests attended.

A major ecumenical turning point occurred when John XXIII invited the major Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox bodies to send observers to the Second Vatican Council, convened in the fall of 1962. Lasting warm and personal relationships that dissolved the frosty barriers of the centuries were established during the four sessions of the council (1962–1965).

Vatican II enhanced Catholic engagement in ecumenism in a number of ways. For one, the very calling of a council was seen as an instance of ecclesia semper reformanda ("the church always being reformed"), a concept Protestants had previously thought was anathema to Rome. Second, the inclusion of the observers demonstrated that Rome did not wish to continue to live in ecclesiastical isolation. Third, the influence of the "missionary bishops" who had often worked with Protestant missionaries brought fresh perspectives to other bishops trained in exclusivist patterns. Fourth, many of the council documents opened new doors of ecumenical understanding.

Of the sixteen promulgated conciliar documents, at least seven had significant ecumenical import. The document on ecumenism opened new doors for dialogue and understanding; the document on the liturgy restored the use of the vernacular and made Catholic worship less foreign to non-Catholics; the document on the church affirmed the "collegiality of the bishops," correcting certain one-sided emphases from Vatican I concerning the primacy of Peter that had been ecumenically counterproductive; the document on revelation gave scripture a greater prominence and authority in relation to tradition; the document on religious liberty dispelled fears about Catholic ecclesiastical imperialism; the document on the church and non-Christian religions created the possibility of dialogue between Roman Catholics and adherents of other world religions; and the document on the church and the world today indicated areas of concern, such as economics, labor unions, nuclear weapons, and culture, on which Catholics and non-Catholics could work together despite lack of full doctrinal consensus.

Assessments of the long-range impact of Vatican II are diverse. For many Catholics, the council brought the church into the modern world and made new levels of activity and dialogue possible. For other Catholics, the council created so many lines of rapport with modern thought and movements that the distinctiveness of the Catholic faith seemed to be placed in jeopardy. For most Protestants, the council unexpectedly legitimated Catholic attitudes that continue to enrich ecumenical life.

In the new atmosphere created by Vatican II, the relationship of Roman Catholicism to the WCC was raised anew. There is no theological reason why the Roman Catholic Church could not become a member of the WCC, since the basis of membership poses no challenge to Catholic faith. At the Uppsala assembly (1968), three years after the conclusion of Vatican II, the relations with Roman Catholic observers were so cordial that it seemed as though an application for membership might soon be possible, but by the Nairobi assembly (1975) such momentum had diminished. One important consideration, acknowledged by both sides, has been that, because of its size, the voting power of the Roman Catholic Church in the WCC would be disproportionate and cause alarm to member churches that have numerically small constituencies. Nevertheless, a close working relationship has been established between Geneva and Rome, not only in areas of social service projects, such as the Commission on Society, Development, and Peace, but in the theological arena as well, and Roman Catholic theologians have for some time been full voting members on the Commission on Faith and Order, contributing to discussions and reports about ministry, baptism, and Eucharist.

A further ecumenical contribution has come from Roman Catholicism. Building on the Vatican II document "The Church and the World Today," Catholics in Third World countries, particularly Latin America, have created a "theology of liberation," affirmed by the Latin American bishops in a meeting in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979, which involves committing the church to making "a preferential option for the poor." This has led to significant numbers of Catholics, frequently joined by Protestants, siding with the destitute at great personal risk in oppressive situations; Catholic-Protestant differences have paled before the awesome responsibility of ecumenical challenges to the oppressive status quo. This "practical ecumenism" provides a significant model for ecumenical involvement elsewhere.

Extending Intramural Christian Activity

Within the Christian family the impetus of ecumenical concern has not only led Christian bodies to seek closer contacts with one another and to work together whenever possible, but also led many denominations to seek organic union with one another. The motivations usually include at least a desire to respond organically and structurally to Jesus' high-priestly prayer "that they all may be one" (Jn. 17:21); a recognition that division is a "scandal" in the sight of both Christians and non-Christians, who cannot fail to perceive the hypocrisy of those who preach unity but do not practice it; and a desire to use institutional resources with more efficient stewardship by avoiding both overlapping and competition. Although not widely heralded by the secular press, there continue to be significant numbers of mergers between denominations that are members of the WCC. While the latter body does not act as the agent or broker for such reunions, its very existence has brought diverse groups of Christians into contact with one another and thereby helped to enhance the movement toward denominational reunion.

Many of the reunions have taken place among the so-called younger churches as they have sought to overcome the legacy of divisive denominationalism that the nineteenth-century missionary enterprise bequeathed to them. Although the period is exceptional, the reunifications that took place between the years 1965 and 1972 give some indication of the intensity of the concern to heal the Christian divisions of centuries. During that period, united churches were created out of two or more confessions in Zambia, Jamaica and Grand Cayman, Madagascar, Ecuador, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, Belgium, North India, Pakistan, Zaire, and Great Britain.

Other specific steps toward organic unity will be completed only after years of further discussion and exploration. A proposal for reunification of ten denominations in the United States, the Consultation on Church Union, is now, after years of high-level ecumenical discussion, moving into a time of local denominational reacquaintance at the grass-roots level before any final decisions are made.

The tender spots in negotiating denominational mergers center less on theology than on polity. Theological agreement on most, if not all, issues is increasingly reachable, but the form and structure of new denominations is rendered difficult when any of the three major polities—congregational, presbyterian, or episcopal—are being combined. The Church of South India (1947) was the first such reunification to draw all three types of church government within a single new structure.

Within all denominations, and within the World Council of Churches, a new intramural issue has emerged with a vitality not anticipated even a short time ago: the role of women within the life of the church. Not only have such issues as the ordination of women and the holding of church office by women been treated very differently by the historic Christian confessions, but cultural influences, often unconsciously appropriated by various church groups and imposed on the intramural discussions, have made this a "radicalizing" issue for many women, who have been active in ecumenical affairs and have discovered that they have been the victims of conscious, or even unconscious, discrimination within the churches. The World Council of Churches has included a division within its structure to deal with the problem in an ongoing way, and a major consultation was held at Sheffield, England, in 1981; however, equality of status is far from a reality, either ecumenically or denominationally, and ongoing discussion and action on this matter will be high on the ecumenical agenda for the foreseeable future.

Extramural Ecumenical Developments

In addition to all the ecumenical concerns that center on mission and unity, there is the further meaning of oikoumenē that calls attention to the whole of "the inhabited world" and comprises not only service to every member of the human family but also a certain way of thinking about and relating to those who are part of the human family but not the Christian family. There are at least four areas in which the inner life of the ecumenical movement has been turning outward toward appraisal of and dialogue with groups that Christians cannot avoid confronting in an ever-shrinking world, and with whom they must seek terms of mutual understanding.

One of the most important of these areas has been the new attention accorded the relationship between Christians and Jews. Christians, born of the family of Abraham and Sarah, are beginning to acknowledge that they have been at best ungrateful heirs, and at worst despicable destroyers, of a faith apart from which they cannot truly define themselves. The ongoing history of destructive relations between Christians and Jews, frequently the result of a Christian theological imperialism, has been exacerbated in recent times by the Holocaust and the murdering by the Nazis of six million Jews, with the passive complicity and at times the active involvement of the Christian world. In the emerging ecumenical discussion, a new emphasis on the eternal nature of God's covenant with the Jews (based in large part on fresh study of Romans 9–11) is beginning to challenge the more traditional "supercessionist" view—that the coming of Christ superseded the divine covenant with Abraham—which has reduced the Jews living in the common era to objects for conversion. The WCC has sponsored several consultations on the relationship between Jews and Christians. Vatican II opened some doors for the new discussion by its clear declaration that anti-Semitism can in no way be grounded in the Christian scriptures, and many Protestant denominations, including a number in Germany, the location of Hitler's rise to power, have been exploring in fresh ways the implications of a view that Christians and Jews, who have lived in such destructive tension in the past, can create a more positive future together.

A concern to understand the relationship of Christianity to other world religions is a second area that has been the object of increasing ecumenical attention. A Vatican II declaration, "The Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions" (1965), began to open doors on the Roman Catholic side, and the WCC has held a series of consultations, such as one at Chiang Mai, Thailand, in April 1977, on "Faith in the Midst of Faiths," which sought to explore new ways of dealing with the many communities of faith that exist in a world where Christians have often claimed to be the unique community of faith. The discussion goes back to a meeting of the International Missionary Council in Madras in 1938 on the Christian message to a non-Christian world. The issue is to discover a modus vivendi for all, between an attitude of theological imperialism, which implies that if one faith is the truth no other faiths really have a right to exist, and a syncretism, which implies that there are not enough differences between the faiths to pose an issue and that some amalgamating of them all can create a new faith for the future. The unattractiveness of both options means that the discussion will continue.

A third area of extramural ecumenical dialogue has had varying degrees of success and failure: the relationship between Christianity and Marxism. In the years immediately after World War II, an extended dialogue between Christians and Marxists flourished in Europe, since many Christians had been united with Russians and other communists in opposing the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini. However, the European dialogue was severely set back by Soviet takeovers in such places as Czechoslovakia. The issue of how Christians are to approach Marxism and communism is vitally important, as a matter of daily life as well as intellectual dialogue, because in many areas of the world Christians live under socialist or communist regimes. The entrance of the Russian Orthodox Church into the WCC at the New Delhi world assembly (1961) assured that the issue of Christian presence within a Marxist state would be under continual scrutiny.

The matter is rendered even more urgent in parts of the world where socialism or communism are seen as possible alternatives to oppressive governments that are perceived to be linked to imperialistic forms of capitalism. In Latin America, for example, the issue of Christian involvement in movements seeking to overthrow oppressive dictators cannot be separated from the question of the degree to which Christians are willing to work with Marxists in such situations or to accept certain elements of Marxist analysis in seeking to create a society more in keeping with their understanding of the Christian gospel. Although in the United States concern about Marxism is frequently interpreted as the camel's nose of subversion entering the tent of ecclesiology, the dialogue will remain crucial on an ecumenical level as long as Marxism represents an option for millions of people living in a world Christians are called upon to serve.

A further area of dialogical involvement centers on the appropriate relationship between Christians and those who are defined by a term such as secularism. A significant part of every world assembly of the WCC has addressed matters like international relations, racism, poverty, violence, and social embodiments of evil. Vatican II called attention to this new dialogue in its document "The Church and the World Today" (1965), which dealt with problems of culture, the spread of atheism (for which the church acknowledged some responsibility), the role of secular agencies in bringing about social change, and so forth.

But there is an even more fundamental issue, to which the Faith and Order division of the WCC has been directing attention and which is summarized in the title of one Faith and Order study: "Unity of the Church—Unity of Humankind." Recognizing that there is a unity that binds all people together as part of the human family, quite apart from the unity some of them have consciously chosen by their allegiance to Christ, how are those two kinds of unity to be related to one another? Does the former negate the significance of the latter, or vice versa? Can the two unities coexist? Is one too narrow, the other too broad?

The above are only a few examples of ways in which contemporary ecumenical concern is becoming broader and deeper. The original commitment to Christian cooperation has grown beyond issues of exclusive interest to Christians.

Some Unresolved Ecumenical Issues

The ecumenical movement is not so close to being successful that it will shortly render itself unnecessary. The three areas of mission, doctrine, and service still contain formidable obstacles to be overcome, though their formulation has shifted in some interesting ways since 1910.

In the area of mission the matter of "sending ambassadors of Christ" to faraway places must be viewed from a new perspective, since it now depends on who is deciding what is "far away." "Foreign missions" used to mean activities beyond the boundaries of North America and Europe. These continents constituted the "center," the rest of the world the "periphery." Mission was conceived of as a one-way street, emanating from the center toward the periphery. By the time of the Whitby conference of the International Missionary Council in 1947, it was clearly and even sternly affirmed that mission had become a two-way street and must remain that way. The new Christian vitality in the last half of the twentieth century seems to be coming from what used to be called the periphery, that is, the younger churches.

The real issue in the 1980s and 1990s and beyond may be the degree to which the "older churches" at the "center" can have the grace to be recipients of new understandings of the gospel that will come from the "younger churches" at the "periphery." For the time being, at least, it may be more ecumenically blessed for the older churches to receive than to give. (The WCC, which at its inception was made up almost entirely of "leaders" from North America and Europe, has responded creatively to the new situation. Increasing numbers of its staff and leadership are drawn from other parts of the world.)

In the area of doctrine there have been a surprising number of theological convergences, even though certain unresolved issues remain central to the question of church reunions. There are increasing degrees of consensus on the meaning of baptism and even on Eucharist, though the matter of ministry (i.e., who is properly validated to administer the sacraments) is far from resolved.

But Catholics and Protestants, for example, are much closer than before on such issues as the authority of scripture, the relationship of scripture to tradition, the meaning of "the priesthood of all believers," the nature of liturgy, the meaning of faith, and the necessity of social involvement on the part of Christians for the good of all. The office of the papacy naturally continues to divide Roman Catholics from the Orthodox, Anglicans, and Protestants, and the claim to infallibility of church teaching, while interpreted in different ways by the Orthodox and the Catholics, is an area where they are discernibly closer to each other than either of them is to the Protestants. The role of Mary in the economy of salvation is another unresolved area, although the Mary of the Magnificat (Lk. 1:46–55) is increasingly important to Protestants as well as Catholics.

The difference of atmosphere from earlier times, however, is marked. Rather than closing off unassailable areas from discussion, there is a willingness to reexamine and even restate deeply held truths in the light of what is learned in ecumenical dialogue. Many non-Catholics, for example, could now acknowledge the possibility of some form of papacy, if defined as primus inter pares, the pope as a "first among equals." While this is not a definition acceptable to Roman Catholics, many Catholics are nevertheless attempting to define more precisely the meaning of papal authority, especially in the light of Vatican II's conclusion that the bishop of Rome shares teaching authority with the other bishops in the "episcopal college."

Another doctrinal issue, however, will be increasingly important in the life of the ecumenical movement. It has little to do with formulations of a doctrine of the papacy or Eucharist or baptism, but a great deal to do with how doctrines are actually formulated. Protestant ecumenical theology has had a strong classical European stamp upon it, solidly rooted in the biblical heritage of Luther and Calvin. Roman Catholic ecumenical thought has likewise been nurtured by a European frame of reference, though, thanks to thinkers like Karl Rahner, it has been moving in new directions. Orthodox theologians have seen themselves as guarantors of past tradition, and their modes of describing that tradition have the stamp of centuries upon them.

But this is not the background from which Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans have come into the ecumenical movement. There is no reason, this new generation argues, why ways of doing theology in Europe should be normative everywhere. They are insisting that their own theology must now be done indigenously, arising out of their own cultures and using imagery appropriate to those cultures. Thus African Christians are drawing on images and experiences that maintain some continuity with their tribal pasts, to provide new metaphors to speak of the love of God in Jesus Christ. Asians are doing the same with a heritage more venerable than that of Europe, and "water-buffalo theology" (Kosuke Koyama) is more resonant for them than forensic images drawn from medieval courts of law. Latin Americans are insisting that theology must grow out of the experience of the poor, rather than being imposed on the poor by intellectuals in universities. A theological system arises out of human struggle, they are asserting, rather than being provided ahead of time by experts and then "applied" to specific situations. To the degree that the former "periphery" does begin to speak to the former "center"—and is heard—the issue of theological methodology will become an increasingly critical area of discussion.

In the third area, that of service, many difficult ecumenical issues have been posed for discussion, and the drawing of lines of difference bears little resemblance to the situation at the beginning of the modern ecumenical era. If, in the earlier period, it was true to say that "doctrine divides, service unites," the reverse has almost become the descriptive reality: service divides, doctrine unites.

A basic difference between two types of Christian approach to service seems to be part of a legacy that each era leaves to its successor. This legacy is a distinction between (1) those who see the Christian life as fundamentally an individual matter, in which, by giving sufficient attention to the personal and inner dimensions of life, a spirit is created that will transform the outer structures of society, and (2) those who believe that Christian faith is so incurably social that it is never enough just to change individuals and assume they will change society. This second view necessitates a simultaneous frontal attack on the unjust structures of society because they are causes of and manifestations of, as well as the results of, human sin. Almost all Christians, when pressed, would agree that both concerns must be present and that a theology containing one and not the other would be truncated and incorrect. But in practice, the matter of priority, or, even more, proportion, between the two is a significant cause of division.

What becomes ecumenically confusing is that divisions over such matters bear no resemblance to past denominational or confessional allegiances. For example, the lines between Roman Catholics and Protestants are not usually drawn on an issue such as the appropriateness from a Christian perspective of possessing nuclear weapons. Some Catholics will be closer to some Protestants than they will be to most other Catholics; some Presbyterians may be more at home in the company of Methodists on this matter than with their fellow Presbyterians. Within a Catholic religious order, the most diversified opinions may be found on the ethical responsibility of multinationals, and within member churches of the WCC similar divisions occur.

Issues of practice, then, are more often volatile sources of disagreement than issues of belief. For example, when "conservatives" attack the WCC, the issue is less likely to be a Faith and Order commission report on baptism than the allocation of funds for the Program to Combat Racism. Some Catholics appear to be more upset with the social analysis of Catholic liberation theologians than with Protestant views of the meaning of papal infallibility. Church members in the twenty-first century are better able to tolerate doctrinal differences on the meaning of the real presence in the Eucharist than to allow for two points of view on whether or not "class struggle" is a legitimate descriptive term in Christian social analysis. So it is tensions within the realm of service—how the church is to relate to the world, what it is to do in relation to revolutionary situations, how it is to make a critique of the economic order (or whether it is even appropriate to do so)—that have become the causes of the deepest ecumenical ruptures.

Beyond the focal points of mission, doctrine, and service, other unresolved, structural issues remain. For example, what should be the relationship of world confessional bodies, which are global expressions of denominationalism, to the WCC? Is the continuation of such groups as the Lutheran World Federation or the World Alliance of Reformed Churches a contribution or a detriment to ecumenism? Do they impede the cause of Christian unity, or are they provisionally necessary for the maintenance of certain doctrinal emphases and portions of a tradition that might otherwise be lost?

Coupled with such matters is the problem of size. Is there a "critical mass" beyond which concern for the Christian message will be dissipated simply because of the need to keep the wheels of a large organization running smoothly? To the degree that ecumenical dialogue brings about new understandings that render unnecessary the ongoing life of separate denominations, will the resultant mergers necessarily be vehicles for a refining of the prophetic nature of the gospel, or will bigness breed slowness and timidity? Whatever the answers to these and yet unanticipated questions, ecumenical concerns will persist in the life of the church as long as there is a discrepancy between the actual state of the church and the will of the head of the church "that all may be one."

Bibliography

For a history of the mission and expansion of Christianity, the movement out of which modern ecumenism grew, the best overall resource is still K. S. Latourette's Christianity in a Revolutionary Age: A History of Christianity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 5 vols. (New York, 1958–1962). Documents pertinent to the development of the modern ecumenical movement are conveniently collected in Documents on Christian Unity, 4 vols., edited by G. K. A. Bell (London, 1924–1958), which includes Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox materials. For a full history of the ecumenical movement, with special attention to the formation of the World Council of Churches, consult A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517–1948, 2d ed., edited by Ruth Rouse and Stephen C. Neill (London, 1957), and its sequel, The Ecumenical Advance: A History of the Ecumenical Movement, vol. 2, 1948–1968, edited by Harold E. Fey (Philadelphia, 1970). An interpretive account of the Faith and Order movement can be found in A Documentary History of the Faith and Order Movement, 1927–1963, edited by Lukas Vischer (Saint Louis, 1963), which contains excerpts from all the Faith and Order conferences through the New Delhi assembly (1961). The closest comparable volume tracing the Life and Work movement is Paul Bock's In Search of a Responsible World Society: The Social Teachings of the World Council of Churches (Philadelphia, 1974). The reports of all the WCC assemblies contain speeches, reports of the various commissions, and other pertinent information. These are The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches: The Official Report (New York, 1949), The Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches: The Evanston Report (New York, 1955), The Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches: The New Delhi Report (New York, 1962), all edited by W. A. Visser 't Hooft; The Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches: The Uppsala Report, edited by Norman Goodall (Geneva, 1968); Breaking Barriers: Nairobi 1975, edited by David M. Paton (London, 1975); and Gathered for Life: Official Report, Sixth Assembly of the World Council of Churches, edited by David Gill (Geneva, 1983). My The Ecumenical Revolution, rev. ed. (Garden City, N.Y., 1969), is a history of both Protestant and Catholic ecumenism through the Uppsala assembly in 1968.

For an account of the "ecumenical pioneers" who were active before Roman Catholic ecumenism was widely sanctioned, see Leonard J. Swidler's The Ecumenical Vanguard (Pittsburgh, 1966), which gives special attention to the Una Sancta movement. Hans Küng's Justification: The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection (London, 1964) is a good example of one of the earliest serious attempts to bridge the Protestant-Catholic chasm.

Two accounts of the Second Vatican Council are of special interest: the reports from Le monde by the French journalist Henri Fesquet available as The Drama of Vatican II (New York, 1967), and Xavier Rynne's Letters from Vatican City: Vatican Council II (New York, 1963). The latter is an expansion of a famous series of New Yorker accounts, published pseudonymously throughout the council. The most easily available collection of the results of Vatican II is Documents of Vatican II, edited by Walter M. Abbott and Joseph Gallagher (New York, 1966). Since Vatican II, a series of volumes known as "Concilium," with more than a hundred titles, has been published by various publishers at regular intervals.

As an example of new theological and ecumenical understanding, Gustavo Gutiérrez's A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y., 1973) is the best introduction to post-Vatican II liberation theology, and Paul M. Van Buren's Discerning the Way (New York, 1980) and A Christian Theology of the People Israel (New York, 1983) represent fresh attempts to reconstitute Christian theology by taking its relationship to Judaism with new seriousness.

The most useful ecumenical periodical is Journal of Ecumenical Studies (Pittsburgh, 1974–), published triannually, with articles, extensive reportage on ecumenical activities throughout the world, and book reviews of new ecumenical literature. The Ecumenical Review (Geneva, 1948–), a quarterly publication of the WCC, contains articles, extensive journals of WCC activities, and book reviews covering ecumenical contributions from all over the world. The Information Service of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, published in Rome, gives papers, digests, and summaries of ecumenical activities in which the Secretariat is involved.