Spiritual Disciplines for Ecumenism

In some ways ecu­menism is a threat­en­ing under­tak­ing. Our churches have become com­fort­able with their sep­a­rated exis­tences, which some­times have been estab­lished for cen­turies. Our nat­ural instinct is to pro­tect our own inter­ests, our own fam­ily, or our own her­itage. It some­times seems that, if ecumenism’s goal is to say that we’re all one, then all the things our ances­tors fought for, all the things we love most dearly, are sud­denly worth­less. On the flip side, we often see things in other churches that dis­turb us greatly. Some­times we don’t under­stand them and so we mis­in­ter­pret them; but some­times we do under­stand them and we dis­agree pro­foundly. In this light, ecu­menism may seem like a big reduc­tion into mean­ing­less­ness, claim­ing that noth­ing is really right or wrong, good or bad.

On the other hand, it is equally true that the dis­unity of Chris­tians has been dam­ag­ing both to the church and to the world. After split­ting in 1054, East­ern and West­ern Chris­tians bat­tled each other in some of the Cru­sades. After the Ref­or­ma­tion, ter­ri­ble reli­gious wars rav­aged Europe. They were so bad that they actu­ally dis­cred­ited reli­gion itself; much of West­ern cul­ture today is still con­trolled by a desire either to escape or to pri­va­tize the claims of Chris­tian­ity, sup­pos­edly to keep the world safe. (Chris­tians deserve this loss of con­fi­dence in many ways, but the his­tory of the 20th cen­tury shows it’s doubt­ful that sec­u­lar ide­olo­gies can do bet­ter.) The com­pe­ti­tion in the mis­sion field did much to dis­credit the gospel when it was intro­duced to new lands. Was this really that the faith that Jesus com­mended to his dis­ci­ples, com­mand­ing them to “love one another”? Or was it human sin attack­ing the most pre­cious gift of God to the world?

What all of this means is that we must approach ecu­menism as a spir­i­tual call­ing. It is not a polit­i­cal strat­egy, an intel­lec­tual game, or a bland effort at being nice. The unity of the church is both a com­mand and a gift of God. If we are to obey this com­mand and receive this gift, we have to under­take cer­tain spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines to put our hearts and souls in the right place so they will wel­come, not impede, the work of the Holy Spirit. Tomor­row and the next day I’ll lift up six spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines that are essen­tial to ecumenism.

Jed Wilson says:
September 8, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Thank you. I am look­ing for­ward to them. And as I write this the tune “For All the Saints” comes to mind… some verses which strike me rel­e­vant in the con­text of the above post (in no spe­cific order, quoted from http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/f/a/fallthes.htm )
—
For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world con­fessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be for­ever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Cap­tain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the dark­ness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
For the Apos­tles’ glo­ri­ous com­pany,
Who bear­ing forth the Cross o’er land and sea,
Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee:
Alleluia, Alleluia!
O blest com­mu­nion, fel­low­ship divine!
We fee­bly strug­gle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
—
God­speed!
Jed
Reply
paul sailhamer says:
September 9, 2010 at 3:44 pm
May I sug­gest at least Two Cheers for the vari­ety of Denom­i­na­tions that make up the world-wide church whose Head is the Lord Jesus? 1…Every gen­uine Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion has kept an impor­tant aspect of our faith out front and focused for the rest of the church to be reminded of and chal­lenged by: evan­ge­lism, mis­sions, prayer, dis­ci­ple­ship, the­ol­ogy, bap­tism, social action, etc. This is a ser­vice to the whole church to be stim­u­lated by one segment’s spe­cial bur­den or call­ing, so that we all have com­plete min­istries. 2…Whenever one “seg­ment” of the church body has attempted to become the dom­i­nate seg­ment it has not been long before that seg­ment begins to “Lord it over the oth­ers”, attempt­ing to be the “Head” instead of Jesus. We can all learn from one another, stim­u­late one another to goos works, keep each other accountable…I like to spell unity this way “younity”…we are one in Christ if He is the one in whom we place our com­plete trust and obe­di­ence, but we do not lose the “you-ness”, the dis­tinc­tives that He has gifted us with through His Word, His Spirit and his Prov­i­dence in history.
Reply