Thoughts on Christian unity
Posted by Chris T. on Thursday, May 1st, 2008
LutherPunk offers some thoughts on the announcement of full communion between the United Methodist Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America:
Here’s the thing: I don’t see the point. Unless we are re-incorporating ourselves into another a new structure that actually does away with the distinctions of Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, whatever, then there is still division. And maybe division isn’t so bad. I have this gut feeling that the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus wasn’t referring to organizational identity.
I want to pick up his refrain here: "Maybe division isn't so bad." Not because disunity is a good thing — neither of us is saying that. But we place an awful lot of emphasis on institutional unity as a panacea, when the reality is that we Christians would find reasons for disunity even if we were all in the same big institutional sandbox. Disunity in the Body of Christ simply will not be resolved before the eschaton. Because its chief components are fallible human beings. So institutional disunity is only bad, IMO, when it fosters our own innate sinfulness rather than calling it into question.
My problem about the kind of fiat ecumenism that is popular among denominations (and, I suspect, one of LP's concerns, too) is that it seems to call the smallest number of people possible into the deepest possible conversation. So a handful of denominational mucky-mucks get pretty intimate with the theology, practice, and common life of another church — and it mostly stops there. This is unfortunate, because mostly what is needed is for the maximum number of people to get just a little better acquainted with traditions they don't currently understand. That would be a more auspicious first step toward Christian unity — but it's not really on the radar of denominational higher-ups. (This ties into Lee's point about activism and the churches, incidentally.)
I think the top-down ecumenism of the last fifty years has brought the whole Christian world some real gains. For one thing, I suspect we are all less terrified that if we sit down at the same table, we'll end up losing "market share" to our partners in conversation. There is a will to stay in conversation with one another and live with the risks that entails. But we need to start consolidating those gains by getting actual communities connected. Beyond worshiping together now and again and sitting down to a meal afterward, I don't honestly know what that would look like. It seems to me that's where we desperately need some theological reflection and analysis of past ecumenical experience. The concordats and commissions are not really moving us forward on this point.
Filed in Ecumenism, Sin and Salvation, The Church |
9 Responses to “Thoughts on Christian unity”
A few scatter-shot thoughts…
Ecumenism sì, indifferentism no.
Mainline merger into mush. I can think of several friends of this blog who don’t like that any more than I do.
C.S. Lewis in Letters to an American Lady who happened to convert from Episcopal to Roman Catholic: the people at the centres of their traditions are closer to each other than the fringe people… including the self-consciously ecumenical?
Look at ARCIC: so the two sides’ liberals get together and agree with each other. So what? One side goes home and keeps having women’s ordination and same-sex unions (don’t pay attention to what they say about unity with the larger church; watch what they do) whilst the other retains its Irish prejudice against things it thinks are English, beautiful things like Protestant mannerliness, good Gothic architecture and music and the idiom of the Prayer Book. The local Romans are culturally more modern than the Episcopalians and among church workers just as liberal but they’ll never get together. (Also why liberal Romans don’t convert.)
Then again there’s particularity in Catholicism: different rites, different cultures, diffferent schools of spirituality. Look at the Orthodox communion or the various ritual churches under Rome. There need not be juridical uniformity.
ISTM, and others have written so, that enthusiasm for interdenominational stuff like joint services is passé. It could be because mainline Protestantism just isn’t as important as it was 40 years ago, creeping indifferentism (mush is mush), one of the causes of the above, or as you suggest the person in the pew doesn’t care what the higher-ups say about unity (no fiat ecumenism) and is happy being name-the-denomination.
A good word for the Catholic way in which inter-Communion is a sign the goal has been reached not a means. To us using it before real unity is like ecclesiastical sex before/without marriage.
Just to pick up one thread from what you’ve posted — I think the thing about joint services is they so often have this awful, built-by-committee feel that does justice to neither tradition and is often not very prayerful.
Far better, in my mind, to have each side experience something “real” from the other side. That is to say, if you’re having Anglicans and RCs meet, pray the Office from the BCP sometimes, in a totally Anglican mode, and then pray the LOTH other times. (IIRC, this has actually been done for some time. I believe Fr Haller has posted about this. But it’s cardinals and bishops and high-up priests — not pew Catholics and pew Anglicans.) You have to go on to talk about it — far too much time is spent talking about a handful of theological issues and as you note, no one comes away with much appreciation for the real life of the others. But it’s better at least than the mish-mashy liturgies that often get put together.
It is odd — for a long time, I stayed away from Episcopal parishes because I thought they were too close to us Indies and I would lose the narrative of why I am Indie. I was afraid I’d be tempted to convert. The more time I spend with Piskies, though, the more I actually understand their tradition and can meaningfully articulate the differences Independent Catholics bring to the table.
But as I say, I’m at a loss for how to foster that beyond sharing in the Eucharist or praying the Office sometimes, and eating together. (Blogging ecumenism is good, too, as you often note — it pushes against that tendency to have a select few trying to teach the many about another church by getting the many involved in each other’s real faith lives.)
One other thing I would note is that seemingly very little time is spent thinking about how the charisms and emphases of each denomination might contribute uniquely to ecumenical engagement. This is something my own bishop has written and talked about a lot — lots of ecumenically-minded Indies don’t seem to understand that we are not at our best when we try to wedge our way into this high-level, concordat kind of ecumenism. It just doesn’t fit the kind of churches we are, and it takes our attention off far more important things.
Father, you write: “The more time I spend with Piskies, though, the more I actually understand their tradition and can meaningfully articulate the differences Independent Catholics bring to the table.” May I ask what those differences are, in your opinion?
Isn’t the real problem the denominational structure?
Until we stop protecting our institutions and start living a life of love in Jesus, these things will never resolve.
Agreeing to disagree is, in the end, selfish. It’s simply a way to avoid conflict. That conflict can lead to greater truth.
-Brad
http://www.SimplyOneLife.org
Brad –
I think that’s a bit too simplistic. Religious institutions are frequent occasions for sin for those who wield power in them, and they’re enormously slow to change. (This is not only about liberals fighting conservatives, either — look at the tremendous amount of work Benedict XVI has had to do to unravel the sweeping, liberal liturgical changes made in the post-Vatican II era.)
But they are also important for preserving the riches and heritage of the Christian tradition, doing the kind of major social work only large institutions can do, contributing to theological and biblical scholarship, etc. I would love for Rome or the Anglicans to be as adaptive to circumstances across the board as many of our parishes are. But I would not want for a minute to have Christianity live without the pontifical universities, Lutheran Social Services, or the monastic traditions that frequently source liturgical and theological revivals.
As for agreeing to disagree, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. I think it’s rather agreeing not to beat up on one another over our disagreements. To take one example, YF and I do not paper over our disagreements on hot-button issues like women’s ordination or gay marriage. But we do try to take one another’s positions seriously and not call one another names. We also try to define our lives by more than just those few issues. More fruit comes out of exploring what we share and encouraging one another in faith than constantly starting arguments.
Brian –
Much of it is a question of emphasis. For instance, a strong devotion to the saints and to Mary is simply not possible in much of the Anglican mainstream, not the way it is in the big-C Catholic world (Roman, Anglo-Catholic, Indie). That’s not just theology, but a question of quotidian things — whether one uses prayer cards and routinely calls on particular saints or simply commemorates a person at the Office. So there are things that are technically possible in the Anglican churches, which are practiced by some sub-communities there, but which are absolutely central to Indie life.
A big part of what we offer is the way our communities function, too. I think one of the best things we bring, what redeems us from our particular dysfunctions as a community, is that our tiny communities are very adaptive, use up very few resources while providing a lot, and tend to be extremely close-knit and heavy on pastoral care. You might think of this as proving that “Emergent” can be coupled with the Catholic theological tradition, an apostolic priesthood, and strong sacramental life and bear real fruit. Perhaps that can embolden some smaller Anglican communities that are oriented in a more institutional direction.
In addition to this, playing on the refrain “Division isn’t so bad,” I think TEC has lost sight of just how damaging the current “unpleasantness” is. A lot is being sacrificed on the altar of institutional unity, and in my experience, people are simply more Christian to one another when they are not fighting over an institutional sandbox. I have seen a deeply conservative, anti-LGBT Independent Anglican receive the Eucharist with great joy from a gay Independent Catholic bishop at an event in our movement. I’ve seen tremendous willingness to set aside differences for the work of the Gospel in our context, which is often very hard in institutional churches. (It is also something that in a big church, you can usually find someone else who is conservative/liberal/radical/moderate/high-church/low-church/whatever to make common cause with, whereas we Indies are often forced to meet those who disagree with us face to face and make a common life together, because there are so few of us around.)
All this has a flip-side, though. Usually I point up how good many of our priests are (the ones formed in jurisdictions with strong formation programs) despite not requiring the MDiv for ordination. This is a strong point of differentiation with the congregationalist Protestant churches, IMHO (I served there for a while as a campus minister.) But the Episcopal Church is a strong counter-weight to that. There are know-nothing Piskie priests — bls has chronicled her frustrations with this — but in my experience with TEC colleagues, most of them are enormously learned and an inspiration to me to not rest on my laurels. (This is on my mind because my friend Mtr R preached a fantastic sermon about an hour ago that was either strongly influenced by patristic sources or came to strikingly similar insights to the sermons I read during the Office last night…)
And of course, there is a whole laundry list of good stuff institutions like the Episcopal Church do that we Indies cannot. We can’t run seminaries, residential or otherwise, that train priests so well academically that they are qualified for both ministry and doctoral work in theology, Bible, liturgics, etc. We can’t do major social justice programs — though there is good work going on in individual parish communities. As Tim has noted before, very few parishes can manage a communal celebration of the Office daily.
So it’s a two-way street. I’ve been going to a TEC parish regularly since a little after our parish start here in Durham failed, and it’s been wonderful. But I think it has been all the more fruitful for me — and for some of the folks there — that I have been a visiting Indie rather than someone who felt swayed to live the Anglican life to its fullest. There is some great cross-pollination that is going on.
I was in Berlin for the ecumenical festival of 2003 and noticed how the official ecumenical services definitely seemed “planned by committee.” They were mind-numbingly boring! But I had a great time hanging out at the Lutheran seminary downtown during the festival and chatting with them and some We Are Church folks over beer
and I also enjoyed praying Compline with the Lutherans there on other occasions.
Any kind of minimal-disagreement liturgy is boring. That’s why I like to go to 1962 Missal (aka Tridentine) Masses — there’s something incredibly powerful about not even being concerned that a stranger walking in wouldn’t have a clue what’s going on. It’s not that the stranger isn’t welcome — it’s that they don’t perceive a need to force banality on themselves, so as to be perceived as “welcoming.”
Mark –
Yes, exactly! Even a complete outsider comes away from a service like that knowing that there is a “there” there. Something is really going on in those liturgies. It might not be something that person agrees with or even understands, but there’s something to engage with. That’s not often the case with try-to-please-everyone services.
Man…I am about 3 days too late for the conversation!
My concern ultimately is that we are forming this very bland sort of Protestantism that loses the ultimate gifts of the varying traditions and glosses over our differences. I’m Lutheran (and not UMC, TEC, etc) for a set of very valid reasons. I would assume that many folks feel the same way about their traditions. It is not because I do not see the beauty present in other churches, nor is it because I believe the other churches are devoid of the Gospel that I am Lutheran. I am just not so sure that we need this top down ecumenism to validate it.