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TOWARDS AUTHENTIC ECUMENISM. Ecumenism does not mean lessening one's fidelity to one's particular tradition, but rather puts it in a larger context and community.
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TOWARDS AUTHENTIC ECUMENISM Ecumenism does not mean lessening one's fidelity to one's particular tradition, but rather puts it in a larger context and community. I tend to think of this as like the relationship between one's nuclear family and one's extended family, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Authentic ecumenism is neither pandering to the other, a mutual congratulation society without real honesty about differences, nor is it a secret rejoicing in the problems the other community is suffering, vindicating one's own superiority.
Ecumenism for me starts with a fidelity to one's own community, not because it is the best, but because it is one's own, with a vibrant sense of its particular gifts and also a concern to help it overcome it’s defects and become more healthy and whole.
It is in this context of mature relation to one's own people that one is also concerned about one's extended family, rejoicing with positive developments and weeping with the failures of charity and internal conflicts that beset all of our church families.
A particularly delicate area in ecumenical relations arises when one is called to take sides on conflicts in other communions on some of the issues that are tearing church communities apart, such as homosexual marriage or the ordination of women. We must recognize that many of the deep conflicts in the Christian churches today are more within than between churches, between liberal and conservative factions within each denomination.
This raises the problem of how we take the side of those in another denomination with whom we agree. When Methodists put a clergyman on trial for officiating at a same-gender covenant service, is it appropriate for those who support his views in other denominations to sign a petition to that effect? What do we do when the leadership of one communion mobilizes the leaders of other denominations to repress their own dissenters?
One example of that was the meeting of the International Catholic Women Ordination Conference in Dublin, Ireland a few years ago. A Benedictine nun, Joan Chittister, was the designated speaker. An Indian Protestant woman, Aruna Gnanadason, head of the women's desk of the World Council of Churches, was also asked to speak. The Vatican told Joan Chittister that she couldn't speak under pain of excommunication. It also put pressure on the head of the World Council of Churches to forbid Aruna Gnanadason to speak under threat of canceling cooperation between the WCC and the Vatican on key joint committees.
Joan Chittister mobilized her Benedictine community who united around her right to speak with a carefully and respectfully formulated rejection of the papal threat. Faced with a united front of Benedictine nuns, the Vatican backed down. Meanwhile Aruna felt sadly constrained to cancel her talk, under pressure from her WCC boss. Thus one had the startling spectacle of a Protestant woman leader of the WCC forced to back down before a Vatican demand, while Catholic women quietly but firmly resisted it.
What's going on here? One is tempted to ask the head of the WCC, have you forgotten your history? Do we see here the assumption that ecumenical cooperation between Geneva and Rome is more important than justice for women? Such examples alert us to the fact that there are many ecumenisms and not just one.
When churches are polarized, ecumenisms can also split left, right and center. Conservative factions seek their allies across denominations, as do liberal factions. Institutional leaders across churches seek to maintain good relations in ways that may covertly cooperate in repressing both the dissenters in the other group and their own dissenters. One gets the phenomenon that Jewish theologian and ethicist Marc Ellis has called "the ecumenical deal," church leaders tacitly agreeing to prevent our dissenters from supporting your dissenters. What is the solution?
There is no easy solution. Somehow we need to try to help both our own churches and one another to foster communities where both truth and charity can reign. We need to foster communities where people across deep divisions of viewpoint on controversial issues can speak their truth without fear of repression, and yet not resort to demonizing the other.
Christians unfortunately have never been very good at maintaining this balance. This is a moment to try again. Perhaps we can occasionally try a little pastoral care with one another across church lines.
I think of the personal journeys to Rome that both the former Archbishop of Canterbury and the current presiding bishop of the Swedish Lutheran church undertook to try to explain face-to-face to Pope John Paul II why they had decided to ordain women. True, they didn't change the Pope's mind, but their relationship to their fellow presiding bishop was pastoral rather than polemical.
Yes, indeed we need to seek truth and justice in our own communities. Yes, we need to sympathize with and support one another in those matters one believes in. Yet, as one embattled group in the United Methodist Church has named itself, in its contest with the Good News faction of that church, "in all things charity." Perhaps that should be our watchword in relations within and between churches at this moment: “In all things charity."
