2/28/54
What is the Ecumenical Church?
Scripture: (Read Hebrews 13: 1-16).
A popular magazine features, each month, a section called: "It pays to increase your word power." A page of words, not too uncommonly used in speech and reading matter, is given, with choice of about four definitions. The reader checks the definition he thinks right, and later checks his total score with the correct answer code given on another page. Sometimes you or I will readily identify the correct definition with the right word. Sometimes, the word looks familiar, but the definition is hard to recognize. And we realize that we’ve always been hazy about the meaning of that word. Once in a while we run across a word that is not in our vocabulary at all. And if we check its definition carefully, we become one word richer in the ability to express to others our ideas, or to receive from other their thoughts.
We may run into a few words of great significance this year in the news -- words connected with a very significant church gathering at Evanston. For the second assembly of the World Council of Churches is to be held at Evanston, Illinois, the last two weeks in August. This anticipated meeting is being discussed in many nations and varied tongues all over the world. It will have a press coverage greater than any comparable meeting held in this country, for it has world-wide significance.
The World Council of Churches is composed of more than 150 denominations of every major communion except the Roman Catholic (which thus far declines any official connection or official recognition of the Council). In addition to the church denominations with which we of this country are familiar, there will be representatives of ancient Christian churches of the Near and Middle East; of the rather new United Church of South India; of the great Eastern Orthodox church (sometimes generally called the Greek Catholic).
The World Council of Churches is based on a constitution unanimously adopted at Amsterdam in 1948, affirming common faith in the divinity of Christ. The constituent churches make common cause in their expression of working unity, and their search for better mutual understanding through conference and study. The World Council seeks no control over the churches; does not legislate for them. But it promotes fellowship, leaving all matters pertaining to organic union to the several churches.
Between assemblies, held approximately every 5 years (it is slightly more than that since the Amsterdam meeting of 1948), the governing body of the Council is a central committee of 90 persons, meeting annually. On this body, the Congregational Christian representative at present in Dr. Douglas Horton, who was the first convener of the Council’s central committee at Amsterdam in 1948.
The World Council of Churches has come into being because of the urge for inter-denominational cooperation which dates back before 1910. In 1910, at Edinburgh, Scotland, conferences were held on (1) Faith and Order, (2) Life and Work, and (3) Missionary Cooperation. Significant conferences along these three lines of thinking have been held since 1910 as follows: Faith and Order in Geneva in 1920, at Lausanne in 1927, and at Edinburgh in 1937; Life and Work at Geneva in 1920, at Stockholm in 1925 and at Oxford in 1937; Missionary Cooperation at Jerusalem in 1928, and at Madras in 1938. Other gatherings have intervened. The world’s YMCA, YWCA, Student Christian Federation, and Sunday School Association, all antedating the Edinburgh meeting, are also integrated into the now-overarching World Council of Churches organized at Amsterdam in 1948. This is a growing movement at understanding, and possible cooperation. It is not a movement of union, though it does seek to find what are the bases of hoped-for unity in thinking.
There is considerable uneasiness that hosts of poorly informed Americans will assume that the Evanston meeting of the World Council of Churches will be a meeting for church union. They should be disabused of the idea. The diversity of tradition on theological expression, church polity, policies toward the state, and so on, are far too diverse for this to be a possibility. Americans, especially, need to have patience and a far more penetrating understanding than to allow press reports to disillusion them on one hand, or on the other hand sweep them off their feet. Theologians believe that we need far better preparation than we now have, to understand the nature of the deliberations to be held at this second meeting of the Council at Evanston. (Anna Carol, daughter of RWK, in India)
There will be there, 600 accredited delegates with power to vote on those statements on which agreement is sought. There will be 600 accredited visitors, without power to vote. There will be about 150 consultants with the official delegates. Daytime meetings will not be open to public gallery. But evening sessions will be held in buildings large enough for general public attendance by admission ticket.
The theme for discussion will be, "Christ the Hope of the World." There will be six major fields of exploration and study. These fields are defined as:
1) Faith and Order - the discussion of our Oneness in Christ and our disunity as churches.
2) Evangelism - the mission of the church to those outside her life.
3) Social Questions - The Responsible Society in a World Perspective.
4) International Affairs - Christians in the Struggle for World Community.
5) Inter-Group Relations - The Church Amid Racial and Ethnic Tensions.
6) The Laity - The Christian In His Vocation.
Each of these six areas of study will be significant. There may be a tendency of the press to report more extensively on the "Social Questions" and "International Affairs" sections if controversy seems sensational. There will be controversy, for Christians and church members vary more than one realizes upon these applications of Christian faith and attitude. We need to remember that there may be present Christian church leaders from behind the Iron Curtain, if they can get permission from their governments to travel and from our government to enter for the conference. Thus far our government has assured leaders that such will be admitted for the purpose of the Council.
If so, it is to be hoped that they, and Christians from free countries will say, in session, what they really think. For no step toward understanding will be achieved by cautious pussyfooting around in order "not to say the wrong thing." We ought to be prepared for the shock is someone from an Iron Curtain country should be less intolerant of Soviet rule than we are. They have to live there! and it has had some effect upon them. We will understand them better and they will understand us better, if there is frank talk without general recrimination.
No popular attention that may possibly be focused on these two sections should obscure the importance of the other four sections which are equally areas of need for understanding and search for agreement.
Now there will be opposition to the whole enterprise. It will be restrained and perhaps non-vocal from some quarters. It may be very vocal in some quarters. Our churches - these major denominations, cooperate in State Councils of Churches, the National Council of Churches, and the World Council of Churches.
There is a very small (numerically speaking) group who call their national meeting the American Council of Churches, and their world group the International Council. They are generally very conservative, what may be called "fundamentalist." And they are very vocal in criticism of our National Council and World Council of Churches. They staged a meeting at Amsterdam in 1948 before the World Council, attended by less than 40 of their delegates (some of whom were confusing it with the World Council meeting). Their vociferous attacks are leveled in charges of "communism" against our National Council and World Council. Many of them have attacked the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in most unrestrained terms. They will quite probably stage another meeting of their "International Council," probably in some city other than the Chicago area. We American folk ought to discern which meeting is which in order to be clear about the meeting, the pronouncements, and the progress in which we are primarily interested. Now for some of the "big words" - new expressions -- to which I referred at the beginning today.
The whole movement that is involved in the formation and function of the World Council of Churches is called the "Ecumenical" movement. In discussing it, some will say "ecumenical;" and some will say "oe’cumenical." In our country the pronunciation "ecumenical" seems to prevail. The word comes from the Greek, but being no student of that excellent ancient language, I can not dig out its derivation for you.
But its over-all interest is to express the Christianity that is more than our denominations -- the faith and understanding and practice that is characteristic of the Christian church universal, if we may discover what that church is in the hearts of people and the intention of God.
So, we are going to hear more about "Ecumenical Christianity" and "Ecumenicity." And it will be necessary for informed Christians to become so familiar with the word that hearing it or using it does not shock our attention away from the matter being discussed.
Every person who has ever learned to repeat the "Apostles Creed" and who has recited, and thought about the words: "I believe in the Holy Christian Church," or "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church" (that is the church universal) -- is making an affirmation of ecumenical Christianity. We ought to be willing to think vigorously about it, and to follow, understand, and constructively criticize the thinking of the minds that will wrestle with it at Evanston.
If there is such a thing as a universal expression of Christian faith and order that transcends the differences of family organization and procedure in our denominations, we ought to be hard at the effort to discover and define it. If Evangelism means more than just getting adherents and members for one’s particular church, we ought to know what Christian evangelism is! Jesus, whom we call Christ, was a person who lived in a country called Palestine a couple of millenniums ago. His teachings have had a profound effect on the ethics of the world. But is it necessary to have a personal encounter with Christian order to be dynamic Christians? Is there a genuine ecumenical concern over our complacency with numbers of church members and our awareness of the need for Christian quality? Just to mention these things is to suggest how deeply important may be the questions on evangelism explored at Evanston.
Is there such a thing as a Christian approach to Social Problems, to International Affairs, to Inter-Group Relations? If so we ought to be exploring for it even though the frankness of others may surprise or affront us. What about the business of being Christian at one’s vocation, in the daily decisions and directions of our daily labor? Laymen are facing it with increasing earnestness.
Much about the very effort to discover or recognize the Ecumenical church is shocking and scandalizing. Paul had to point out insistently, to the early church, that Gentiles as well as Jews, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian or Greek - were all part of the church and the Christian fellowship once they had accepted the Lordship of Christ. There were factions in the church then. In that motley group at Corinth were people who went in for ecstatic experiences in religion. Those who "spoke in tongues" held themselves aloof from their more "unspiritual brethren" who worshipped in less hilarious ways. Well-to-do members of that church, attending the Love-Feast, ate by themselves lest the poorer members gobble up their delicacies. Paul scandalized them by insisting: "It is not the Lord’s Supper which you keep if you divide into factions and do not discern the Lord’s body." [I Corinthians 11: 17-34].
We are not beyond some shocking today! The ecumenical fellowship of church with church, denomination with denomination, may thrill us! And the ecumenical encounter may shatter some of our thoughts concerning ourselves. If we have ever indulged the notion that our fellowship, being the true people of God, is the apex of the Christian structure, it is painful to be confronted with the fact that most Christians (i.e. of all other denominations) are ill informed as to our peculiar virtues, and consider our significance as something less then epochal!
And, come to think of it, what do we know about the size, strength, shades of belief and prevalence of the whole great branch of Christendom called the Eastern Orthodox Church? We may be generally aware that a few Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox-in-exile, and other Eastern churches can be found in our large cities. But do we have any notion of the immensity of that fellowship in all Eastern Europe? Some of these questions may shock our narrow complacencies a little.
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Somewhere in the ecumenical discussions of the World Council, and preceding that meeting, another jaw-breaking word is going to appear. It is "eschatology." And we’d better not turn our backs and try to shrug it off. For it will be discussed in one form or another. There are those who surmise that those of Adventist persuasions will seize upon and make capital of the theme of the Evanston meeting: "Christ the Hope of the World" and swing the discussion to their notion of what is called the "second coming of Christ." The word "eschatology" is directly imported from the New Testament, and is a way of referring to "the last things."
It seems that early apostles expected Jesus to reappear again, after his ascension, bringing an end to the evil world, and final judgment, within their lifetime. Others have had that notion in the centuries since, and look for every indication that might point that way. In excitement, small groups have been so convinced that they had an end of the world figured out, that they let property go, got white robes, went to high ground and waited to be caught up into heaven.
There are others who believe that Christ comes again constantly; that we are continually under his judgment! Shall we shrug it all off? Better not! For what we or our neighbors in the earth think about this matter has a bearing on the ethics by which we live.
The Hebrews whom Paul addressed in his letter, read, from him, "Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come." The Christian conviction that there is, somehow, more to life than just this short mortal span, makes a difference to Christian attitudes and to the way a Christian acts.
Interestingly enough, the Christians of the first century were, in their very concern with the age to come, more responsible to their own age. Paul was concerned with "eschatology" all right -- with "things to come." But something about his very concern made him sensitive to things at hand. Some of his flock at Thessalonika got so concerned with the "things to come" that they forgot about their needy brethren. And he refused to let them pull that line, that with the end coming so soon it was useless to work any more. He dealt sternly with that nonsense: "If anyone will not work, let him not eat." [II Thessalonians 3: 10].
An eschatological faith can mean things like Paul’s insistence that we must revise our attitudes toward possessions. If you buy anything, you should remember that you have it to use and give, but not to keep. For you will in no event have it beyond this mortal span. The author of I Peter writes: "Therefore keep sane and sober for your prayers. Above all in your unfailing love for one another -- practice hospitality -- As each has a gift, employ it --- that in everything God may be glorified." [I Peter 4: 7-11].
These, then, are some of the hard words and hard facts and great ideas with which Christians of widely divergent backgrounds and experiences will wrestle at Evanston in August. We should prepare ourselves to know and enter into the searchings with no shallow mind but with deep and patient and searching effort to understand.
[the sermon was ended with a printed prayer "for the second assembly of the World Council of Churches" which is attached to the handwritten sermon manuscript]
This prayer is commended to the churches by the Central Committee of the World Council. You are asked to join Christians around the world in its use.
Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift, we pray for the health and the power of Thy Church on earth. We confess that we have made it unworthy by our own unworthiness. We have clung to ways which are merely our own, and have caused the Church to continue in division. We have failed to give ourselves only to Thee, and have brought weakness upon the Church. Renew in us a right mind, O Father, that there may be new life and power in Thy Church unto Thy glory.
We pray for those who prepare for the coming Assembly of the World Council of Churches, that all that they do may be inspired by Thy Spirit. May their thinking be courageous and true; may their plans work wholly to the good of Thy Church; may they serve with the devotion of a single mind stayed on Thee alone.
We pray for those who will attend the Assembly, that in their preparations for their work there, they may seek Thy purposes; that in their discussions, they may speak to defend only Thy truth; that in their decisions they may follow the leading of Thy Spirit unto the service of mankind.
We ask Thy blessing upon this undertaking, that Thou wilt judge, correct and redeem each part and step, that the whole may be a great sign unto men of the presence and the coming of our lord, even Jesus Christ.
And now unto Him be glory in the Church, through Christ Jesus, world without end.
AMEN
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, February 28, 1954.