From Faith and Order to Doubt and Disorder: Should ecumenism be radically re-shaped?
Christian disunity is a scandal – or so we used to say.
The divisions amongst Christians have historically led to wars, conflicts and community disruption. The hurt and pain is most acutely felt within families where there have been different church belongings. The consequences of religious sectarianism continue to make their impact felt, most particularly in Northern Ireland, and, as many from the global south observe (particularly Desmond Tutu), intra-Christian division is an impediment to work for social justice. It is for these reasons that the work of “Faith and Order” has been regarded as central to overcoming Christian division. Its aim is “to serve the churches as they call one another to visible unity in one faith and in one Eucharistic fellowship.” Yet in recent years Faith and Order has floundered in the face of a cooling in many churches towards ecumenical endeavour. Ecumenism now struggles to convince people of its urgency and many openly question the goal of visible unity.
So, there is doubt as to the goals of ecumenism and a disorderliness is reflected in less joint working between denominations. We are a long way from the aspirational Lund Principle (1952):
“Should not our Churches ask themselves whether they are showing sufficient eagerness to enter into conversation with other Churches, and whether they should not act together in all matters except those in which deep differences of conviction compel them to act separately?”
This new context has sometimes been described as the “ecumenical winter”, but what if this is not a seasonal change from which spring will surely come, but a dramatic change in the Christian climate? Has ecumenism run its course? Is this the new normal? But let’s be clear about what “normal” might mean: in the face of decline, denominations have reasserted their own identities in the search for renewal in the ecclesial-market, often in competition with one another, and this is undertaken over and against the ecumenical movement itself. Meanwhile younger generations have less of a fixed loyalty to a tradition, with considerable fluidity regarding belonging, including multi-denominational belonging.
The new ecumenical normal includes several features: the axing of regional and county level ecumenical councils and bodies, the closing of Local Ecumenical Partnerships, ecumenical budgets slashed and ecumenical organisations diminishing, meanwhile there is a much more fluid and dynamic reality at local level. Meanwhile some church leaders are panicking over decline, pinning their hopes on slick strategies that will deliver an immediate turn around for institutional decline. There is much lamentation over decline and the diminishing of church institutions. To put it another way the scandal of disunity has been replaced by the scandal of decline.
But is a new kind of ecumenical movement possible, one characterised by a different kind of “doubt and disorder” that may bring us closer to a new kind of Christian unity?
With globalisation, has come a profound questioning of established ways of doing things, and old structures and authorities are challenged. There is a creative doubt over old ways and old, established power structures. It is of course the outworking of the Enlightenment that individuals and groups do not have to be content with the inherited ways of doing things. The ecumenical movement was arguably one such fruit of the enlightenment – a response to secularisation and a determination to create a better world for tomorrow in the post World War II era. To work and pray for visible unity was as much a protest against religious institutions that had perpetuated division and conflict, as a desire to realise “One Church, On Baptism, One Eucharistic Fellowship”. As such ecumenism, paralleled other movements that sought to bring about reconciliation between the nations such as the European Union and the United Nations. But like those bodies, ecumenical organisations and their agendas can so often look stale or belonging to a bygone era, especially those with a large bureaucracy.
A different kind of energy for change is around today, energy that is much more visceral and unrestrained. It doubts the unassailable nature of authority passed down from the past, and it has no difficulty with transgressing boundaries of nationhood, identity and family even if the results are a frightening disorderliness. Perhaps this is most abundantly clear in the breaking down of voting patterns inherited from ones parents , how marriage has changed and developed, the way in which transgendered people are seeking to challenge received definitions of gender identity and , when it comes to the church, in the way that individuals feel less of a sense of denominational loyalty when it comes to choosing a church to worship on a Sunday. Traditionalists of all sorts may lament or complain about this but it is the reality of the age in which we live. But it has a dark side too, in the return of old fears and prejudices where minorities are blamed and targeted by those angry that the world they once knew (or thought they knew) might be slipping away forever. “Post-Truth” has emerged as the means by which an old order is restored. Religious conservatism (some may call it fundamentalism) is offered as the only salvation for churches in decline in the face of a bewildering world of change.
What might this mean for the future shape of ecumenism? What we can say with a degree of certainty is that high level ecumenical agreements on matters such as communion and ministry will not be enough if we are to attain true visible unity: they belong too much to a previous era that could be slipping away forever. All too often they have been expressed in terms that seek the renewal and sustaining of existing church/denominational structures (and of course how power is exercised). More and more I hear people thinking out loud that the church structures as we know them are in irreversible decline, that the old models of “church” are ill-fitting for our times and new ones will emerge in their place, and that being “church” in the future will be very different. This is a frightening prospect if you can imagine nothing else but the church of your childhood, or even of 10 years ago.
I have been struck by the way in which many younger theologians are speaking of the visceral nature of the Gospel and thus of faith too, and speak of a theology that is almost anarchical. This is most obvious in the work of queer and feminist theologians who have been almost compelled to reinvent theology because they have so often been the victim of it.
Herein lies a clue to possible future trends: theological fluidity and diversity. In the 1980’s and 1990’s the British Council of Churches and its successor body the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland published “The Forgotten Trinity”, which was more than a collection of academic articles, but a plea to take seriously Trinitarian Theology. It was a seminal moment in the history of the British ecumenical movement: since then Trinitarian theology has been more central in many church’s theologies. Yet one of the the themes that emerged from this is an ecumenical theology that stresses diversity amidst the dynamic life of the Trinity. “Diversity” is a word behind which lies an almost chaotic human reality. This is implicit in the story of the day of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles where different languages are heard proclaiming the Gospel – a reversal of the Tower of Babel where the apparent chaos led to confusion and division. Is this is a better image of unity for the modern age, a unity characterised by a pentecostal disorderliness that is the human response to the visceral nature of the Gospel where Jesus is tortured to death that we might live? And this visceral quality has always provided the means by which the church can engage in solidarity with, and offer hope to, a tortured world and an orphaned humanity.
The ecumenical movement was at its most dynamic when it was led, not by church leadership and even less by church bureaucrats, but by people in communities anxious for change in their churches and in their society. People who, for example, were eager to transgress their church authorities in who could and could not receive the sacrament. And in spite of decline there is plenty of that around at the moment! Maybe a new ecumenical movement is possible (perhaps it is already here?) where people will transgress those things that keep Christians apart (from who can and cannot receive communion to overcoming racism, sexism and homophobia) in order to work more effectively for a world that is reconciled to God.
Now, didn’t Jesus pray for something like that?