ecumenism

ecumenism, movement or tendency toward worldwide Christian unity or cooperation. The term, of recent origin, emphasizes what is viewed as the universality of the Christian faith and unity among churches. The ecumenical movement seeks to recover the apostolic sense of the early church for unity in diversity, and it confronts the frustrations, difficulties, and ironies of the modern pluralistic world. It is a lively reassessment of the historical sources and destiny of what followers perceive to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church of Jesus Christ.

The word ecumenism is derived from the Greek words oikoumenē (“the inhabited world”) and oikos (“house”) and can be traced from the commands, promises, and prayers of Jesus. After the International Missionary Conference held at Edinburgh in 1910, Protestants began to use the term ecumenism to describe the gathering of missionary, evangelistic, service, and unitive forces. During and after the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), Roman Catholics used ecumenism to refer to the renewal of the whole life of the church, undertaken to make it more responsive to “separated churches” and to the needs of the world.

Ecumenical vision

Ecumenism can be understood as a vision, a movement, a theology, and a mode of action. It represents the universality of Christianity, affecting the way Christians think about their faith, the church, and the world. Ecumenism can draw Christians together, uniting their life and mission and bringing the Body of Christ and the human community closer to the fulfillment of God’s purposes. Those involved in ecumenism participate in ideas, activities, and institutions that express a spiritual reality of shared love in the church and the human community.

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Ultimately, the purpose of Christian ecumenism is to glorify the triune God and to help the one missionary church to witness effectively and faithfully among all peoples and nations. In the second half of the 20th century, Christians began confessing new dimensions of this vocation, especially in relation to what divides the churches. Progress was made on historical theological issues that have divided Christians through the centuries—baptism, the Eucharist, and ministry. But equally divisive among Christians are the divisions of the human family: racism, poverty, sexism, war, injustice, and differing ideologies. These issues are part of the agenda of ecumenism and bring a particular context, dynamic spirit, and urgency to the pursuit of Christian unity as well as of justice and peace. The church’s unity becomes essential for the renewal and unity of the human family. Through its unity the church becomes a sign, the first fruits of the promised unity and peace among God’s peoples and the nations.

History of ecumenism

The vision of one church serving God in the world came to reflect a central teaching of the early Christian faith. While unity is given in Christ, two diametric forces appear in the history of the church: one is the tendency toward sectarianism and division, and the other is the conviction toward catholicity and unity. Ecumenism represents the struggle between them. Some of the historical schisms within Christianity were theological conflicts foreshadowed in the apostolic church; others were internal quarrels related to liturgical differences, power politics between different patriarchates or church centres, problems of discipline and piety, or social and cultural conflicts. Nevertheless, the entire span of the Christian church’s first two millennia may be viewed as a drive to realize the unity of the earliest church.

In the earlier centuries of Christianity, the word ecumenical was used to denote church councils (e.g., Nicaea and Chalcedon) whose decisions represented the universal church, in contrast to other councils that enjoyed only regional or limited reception. The honorary title of ecumenical patriarch was given to the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople in the 6th century because his see was located in the capital of the oikoumenē and his leadership was accepted as primus inter pares (Latin: “first among equals”) in the faith and mission of the whole church. The Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds are called ecumenical because they witness to the faith of all Christians.

The possibility of an ecumenical approach, in the modern sense, to Christianity increased, somewhat ironically, in the 17th and 18th centuries, when English dissenting sects and Pietist groups in Europe began to promote evangelistic, revivalistic, and missionary endeavours. This, along with the simultaneous effect of Enlightenment thought, broke down many of the traditional foundations that supported separate church structures. Other breakdowns in the traditional understandings of church unity led to new possibilities for experimentation in the 19th century. The separation of church and state in the United States signaled the need for civility and respect for religious rights in a land of many religions. The sending of Protestant missionaries at the beginning of the 19th century revealed the possibilities of cooperation across denominational lines at home and brought to light the scandal of competition and conflict among Christian denominations abroad. Since the 19th century the term ecumenism has denoted the movement of the renewal, unity, and mission of Christians and churches of different traditions “so that the world may believe.”

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Early 20th-century ecumenism derived impetus from the convergence of three movements: international Protestant missionary conferences, beginning with the Edinburgh Conference (1910) and taking shape as an institution in the International Missionary Council (1921); the Faith and Order Conferences on church doctrine and polity, commencing in the conference at Lausanne (1927); and the Life and Work Conferences on social and practical problems, beginning with the Stockholm Conference (1925). In 1937 at the Oxford Conference of Life and Work, proposals were drawn up to unite churches with Faith and Order. To this end, the World Council of Churches, a consultative and conciliar agent of ecumenism, working with national, denominational, regional, and confessional bodies, was inaugurated in Amsterdam in 1948. The International Missionary Council joined the World Council of Churches in 1961.

Protest movements against the developments that led to and continued in the World Council of Churches have produced an ecumenical convergence of their own. Most participants in this convergence prefer to be called “evangelical.” In the United States the National Association of Evangelicals was formed in 1943, in large part to counter the Federal Council of Churches, which began in 1908 and reorganized as the National Council of Churches in 1950. Evangelicals have many organizations that operate on an international level to channel specific cooperative energies.

In 1961 Pope John XXIII established the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity (now the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity), and the Eastern Orthodox churches created the Pan-Orthodox Conference. Dialogues among the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Pentecostal, and Protestant churches have brought general consensus on such issues as baptism, the Eucharist, and the nature of ministry. The Lutheran churches and the Roman Catholic Church have agreed on a common understanding of the doctrine of justification, even as Lutherans, Episcopalians, and the Reformed churches have attained surprising unanimity on certain theological issues.