Confessions of a Reluctant Ecumenist

It seems only fair to tell you that I started out not being at all enthu­si­as­tic about ecumenism.

This was not because I doubted the true Christian-ness of other Chris­tians. That was never par­tic­u­larly a prob­lem for me. It was the con­certed efforts that made up ecu­menism, and quite often ecu­meni­cal enthu­si­asts them­selves, that deterred me.

I always some­how imag­ined that the chief goal of ecu­menism was the bureau­cratic forg­ing of a super-church, based on lowest-common-denominator prin­ci­ples, sup­press­ing local vari­ety and dis­tinc­tive­ness. This was, to say the least, unap­peal­ing. It has always seemed to me that com­mu­ni­ties can’t do at all; what they can do is spe­cial­ize, and ecu­menism was ask­ing for the end of spe­cial­iza­tion. And yet at the same time, the offi­cial ecu­meni­cal agree­ments that got put into place rarely had any effect on church life at all. They were peace treaties for the sake of PR but did noth­ing to address the remain­ing dif­fer­ences between us.

Another mis­per­cep­tion I had was that ecu­menism placed lit­tle value on truth, or that it some­how put truth and love at odds with each other. Per­haps on some level I felt that the peo­ple I knew who were most enthu­si­as­tic about ecu­menism were also least con­cerned with ques­tions of truth. It was all “why can’t we get along with each other?” plain­tive activism. It is a very good ques­tion why Chris­tians are so remark­ably poor at get­ting along with each, but I think this ques­tion is best answered by an unflinch­ing gaze at truth and fact, not gen­tle sen­ti­ment about unity.

On the flip side, though, I also couldn’t help notic­ing that many of the peo­ple who were the most pas­sion­ately com­mit­ted to their own tra­di­tion also tended to be the most impa­tient with oth­ers’. There was an alarm­ing ten­dency to rely on hearsay, exag­ger­a­tion, or oversimplification—all of a kind that they would never tol­er­ate in a descrip­tion of their own tra­di­tion. It was as if the pas­sion­ate com­mit­ment to their own her­itage required the fail­ure of every other. It was par­a­sitic in a way, and ulti­mately did no bet­ter to serve the cause of truth—what kind of truth is so eas­ily deflated by some­one else know­ing some­thing true too?

In all this it never seri­ously occurred to me that the dis­ci­pline of ecu­menism rejects both of these extremes. It insists on truth and love in equal mea­sures. It is hope­ful and real­is­tic at the same time. It looks for­ward to a day of full pub­lic and vis­i­ble unity among the churches but admits it still doesn’t know the path that will take us there. It is also vastly more com­plex than I ever imag­ined, cer­tainly not a mass effort at reduc­ing and sim­pli­fy­ing. It is a good place to be.

Tim Cooper says:
May 25, 2010 at 3:45 am
Sarah,
I am a Catholic friend of Jed’s and Roger’s. Unfor­tu­nately I can’t remem­ber where I got the quote from but I really like it. Per­haps you know the source. It goes some­thing like this… “if we can’t achieve unity in form we can achieve unity in love”. God bless your efforts in build­ing up the body of Christ.
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