Taking stock of ecumenism.

Stranz, Jane

An increasing perception, writes Ellen Ueberschiir in this issue of The Ecumenical Review, holds "that the ecumenical movement has a glowing past and a gloomy future". Debates about the theological issues that divide churches no longer seem important to many church members, notes Ueberschiir, general secretary of the German Protestant Kirchentag. While the 20th century was the "great ecumenical century", in the 21st it is not the issue of ecumenical dialogue but that of inter-religious conflicts that is seen as the pressing concern.

Rather than succumb to the temptation of concentrating their efforts on building their own identity and preserving their own structures, she argues, churches need to reach out to each other, to work more intensively to resolve the still outstanding issues in order to work for a common dialogue of religions.

As the World Council of Churches moves towards its next assembly in Busan, South Korea, this issue of The Ecumenical Review is intended to contribute to this ecumenical stocktaking of the 21st century.

Kirsteen Kim, in the article that opens this issue, reviews the changes in the landscape of Christianity that emerged during the second half of the 20th century. While the first decades following the Second World War were dominated by movements of convergence, creating an awareness of being part of one human family, since the late 1960s there has been increasing awareness of the diversity of interests and identities on the global stage. Within Protestantism, this has been matched by the growth of Pentecostal and new and independent church movements, while the centre of gravity of Christianity has shifted to the global South.

Yet the main Pentecostal churches of the world are for the most part not involved in or with the WCC fellowship in a visible way, as Jacques Matthey, the WCC's former director for mission and unity, notes in his article. Yet this is a "life or death" issue for the WCC, he argues. Without such involvement, the WCC cannot claim to be a "world" council of churches. At the same time, Matthey sets out an agenda to involve the churches more directly in the life of the WCC rather than resorting to "business" management models based around small "efficient" decision-making bodies, which increase the distance from member churches.

The WCC, argues Simon Oxley, another former staff member, has been more successful at identifying and producing collective definitions of issues--ecclesiological, social, political, economic--than it has been at mobilizing the members of churches. He draws on the insights of the late German ecumenist Ernst Lange to underline the need to promote ecumenical consciousness in order to overcome a parochial outlook and check the tendency of churches themselves to maintain and reinforce a status quo.

Nicu Dumitrascu, dean of the faculty of Orthodox theology at the University of Oradea, Romania, underlines the importance of an approach to ecumenism that addresses academic relationships rather than ecclesiological issues. Recent changes in higher education in Europe under the Bologna system have led Romanian institutions to redesign the partnerships between theology, the humanities and social sciences, fine arts and music. The result has been exchanges across national boundaries, and a riving interchange between disciplines that provides a basis for an "academic ecumenism" in the best sense of the word. The works of the church fathers--patristic theology--can take on a renewed significance in this dialogue of cultures.

John Gibaut, the WCC's director of Faith and Order, argues for the need of a "determined recovery of the language of catholicity" by the churches. Over the past 40 years, Faith and Order reflection has creatively broadened the meaning of catholicity to see this as a gift of the Holy Spirit belonging to the very nature and mission of the church, rather than being about doctrinal truth or formulation. He notes that the 2006 text, "Called to Be the One Church", sees aspects of catholicity manifested even when eucharistic sharing is not possible, when churches pray for one another, share resources, assist one another in times of need, make decisions together, and work together for justice, reconciliation and peace, holding each other accountable to the discipleship inherent in baptism. In the increasingly conflict ridden contexts in which churches find themselves, such mutual accountability represents a challenge to the churches to become what they are: catholic.

The "Called to Be the One Church" text emerged from the 2006 WCC assembly in Porto Alegre. In 2013 it will be the Korean city of Busan that welcomes the next WCC assembly. As the Council looks towards Asia, the final two articles in this issue offer insights and perspectives from China and Korea. Ambrose Mong Ih-Ren examines how the theology of the Roman Catholic theologian Paul Knitter can be particularly relevant in poorer and religiously plural Asian communities. The key challenge of inter-religious dialogue as experienced in the Asian context is developed through the lens of Knitter's theology Mong Ih-Ren offers the conviction that dialogue must come from direct experience and encounter with people of different faiths. His assertion that "our dialogue with them must be a dialogue of rife", neatly echoes the theme which the WCC's central committee chose for the assembly in Asia: "God of life, lead us to justice and peace."

The final article on ecumenical horizons and "taking stock" is a study of the Twelve Articles of Faith, by Jae Buhm Hwang, professor of systematic theology at Keimyung University in South Korea. The Articles, which have a history stretching back over a hundred years, are sometimes referred to as the first Asian confession of faith. While acknowledging that the Twelve Articles have had negative as well as positive effects on the expression of Christian faith in Protestant churches across parts of Asia, Hwang nevertheless points to how the Articles have made a significant contribution to helping churches seek unity.

The address of Walter Altmann, WCC moderator, to the central committee in February 2011, as reproduced in the Ecumenical Chronicle, brings together the threads of the various contributions to this issue. He draws attention to current religious trends: secularization in some places, religious fervour in others; increasing religious pluralism at the global level, and the shift in the composition and centre of gravity of Christianity. These trends bring into sharp focus the questions that have been at the centre of the life of the ecumenical movement since its beginning and that Altmann poses anew: Unity or fragmentation? Cooperation or competition?

It is wrestling with such questions that will define the furore of ecumenism in the 21st century.

In his first report to the central committee, the Council's general secretary Olav Fykse Tveit, who took office in January 2010, begins to sketch out how the WCC might respond to current ecumenical stocktaking. He identifies the importance of "mutual accountability", where churches come to the same table to give account to one another, to share their concerns and to define their common challenges and common gifts. The WCC, he writes, is not a "loose fellowship" of individuals: "We are a fellowship calling one another, supporting one another, challenging one another."

In reaching out to each other by demonstrating such "mutual accountability", churches offer a model of life whose importance has much wider relevance when it comes to working for a common dialogue of religions and responding to the challenges of justice and peace in the world. Here the question is not whether there is a "glowing" or "gloomy" future for the ecumenical movement but for the future of the whole inhabited world, the oikoumene.

Jane Stranz

Deputy Editor

DOI: 10.1111/j.1758-6623.2011.00117.x