Two Orthodox Contributions to Unity

The Ortho­dox have been right in the mid­dle of the ecu­meni­cal move­ment from the get-go. They weren’t at the 1910 Edin­burgh con­fer­ence, the “birth­day” of ecu­menism, though that’s because they weren’t invited. But in 1920, as the whole Chris­t­ian world was reel­ing from World War I and its after­math, the Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ties put forth a sug­ges­tion that made a huge impact on the movement’s direction.

In this year the ecu­meni­cal patri­archi­ate of the Ortho­dox Church issued an encycli­cal called “Unto the Churches of Christ Every­where.” It expressed a desire for a growth in unity among all the churches that would over­come “anti­quated prej­u­dices, prac­tices, or pre­ten­sions.” There­fore the sug­ges­tion was made, “espe­cially in view of the hope­ful estab­lish­ment of the League of Nations,” that there be estab­lished “a con­tact and league (fel­low­ship) between the churches.” Such a fel­low­ship could address such prob­lems as the dif­fer­ences in church cal­en­dars, pros­e­lytism, and so-called “mixed mar­riages”; it could facil­i­tate the exchange of resources for ser­vice, of vis­it­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives, of “broth­erly let­ters on the occa­sion of the great feasts,” and of stu­dents and fac­ulty at the­o­log­i­cal schools; and it could study doc­tri­nal dif­fer­ences at pan-Christian con­fer­ences with an eye to resolv­ing them. It took some time, and the grow­ing strength of the respec­tive Faith & Order and Life & Work move­ments, before any­thing con­crete could be done. But the out­come of this encycli­cal, almost thirty years later in 1948, was the for­ma­tion of the World Coun­cil of Churches.

Another early and impor­tant Ortho­dox con­tri­bu­tion came in 1927 at the first-ever Faith and Order con­fer­ence. Met­ro­pol­i­tan Ger­manos of Thy­ateira made the fol­low­ing state­ment: “Although the Ortho­dox Church con­sid­ers unity in faith a pri­mary con­di­tion of reunion of the Churches, yet it rejects that exclu­sive the­ory accord­ing to which one Church, regard­ing itself as the one true Church, insists that those who seek reunion with it shall enter its own realm. Such a con­cep­tion of reunion, amount­ing to the absorp­tion of the other Churches, is in every way opposed to the spirit exist­ing in the Ortho­dox Church, which has always dis­tin­guished between unity on the one hand and uni­for­mity on the other.” In other words, ecumenism’s goal isn’t to declare a “win­ner” among the churches that gets to gob­ble up every­one else. Unity with­out uni­for­mity, reunion with­out absorp­tion: these are the ideals and have guided ecu­menism ever since.

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Jed Wilson says:
October 18, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Not strictly on the Ortho­dox con­tri­bu­tions, but inter­est­ing and coin­ci­den­tal (or prov­i­den­tial) as regards the World Coun­cil of Churches – I just fin­ished a novel in which George Kennedy Allen Bell (Bishop of Chich­ester 1929–1957) is a chief his­tor­i­cal figure.
Ulti­mate Prizes, by Susan Howatch, is set in Eng­land pri­mar­ily dur­ing 1942–1945. The main char­ac­ter Neville Aysgarth, an archdea­con in the Church of Eng­land, setup a min­istry to Ger­man pris­on­ers of war in his area, and was even­tu­ally com­mended by Bell for his efforts. Bell also prompted Aysgarth to con­sider work­ing with him in the recon­struc­tion of Europe and soon to be formed World Coun­cil of Churches (WCC).
From what I have gath­ered, Bell seemed to have been a promi­nent voice in Ecu­menism and also par­tic­i­pated in the estab­lish­ment of the WCC.
- Susan Howatch’s Author’s Note at the end of the novel states about Bell: “After the war he went to Berlin and preached the Chris­t­ian mes­sage of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion to the thou­sands who flocked to hear him. Deeply involved in the recon­struc­tion of Chris­t­ian Europe, he became a lead­ing fig­ure in the World Coun­cil of Churches. He was even­tu­ally awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit, with sash and start, the high­est hon­our the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many could bestow…”
- Accord­ing to Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­nica [ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/59601/George-Kennedy-Allen-Bell ] Bell was chair­man and pres­i­dent of the WCC, though this must be dif­fer­ent than Gen­eral Sec­re­tary which I see more promi­nently iden­ti­fed on the WCC web­site [ http://www.oikoumene.org/en/who-are-we/background/history/general-secretaries.html ]
Thank you for your efforts, and may the God who is, was, and is to come bless and pro­tect you today.
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