Forming a movement: origins and opportunities.

Oxley, Simon

An educational seedbed for the ecumenical movement

The reader who turns to the general histories of the ecumenical movement and the WCC will not find much assistance in understanding the early influence and role of people, activities and movements related to education. The other "streams", Mission, Faith & Order and Life & Work, that eventually flowed into the WCC are properly recognized, but about education there is a curious reticence.

It is often forgotten that Sunday Schools began in England in the late eighteenth century as a social response to the behaviour of children on their one day each week free of factory employment, rather than as a Christian nurture initiative. The first Sunday Schools were not directly related to churches but established by people of goodwill on a non-denominational basis. As the Sunday School movement spread to many parts of the world in the nineteenth century, local, national and global associations of Sunday Schools were formed drawing in people from an increasing variety of Christian traditions. The movement was essentially lay-led and came under deep suspicion and resistance from some in the churches. J. Blaine Fister, former Executive Director of the Division of Education and Ministry of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, USA wrote:

 ... we are impressed with the dedication and zeal of the early
 pioneers of the movement, most of them lay persons, who
 persevered often in the face of ecclesiastical opposition....
 These early pioneers worked for the "cause" without serious regard
 for denominational affiliation. The early Sunday Schools were
 called "un-denominational" or "non-denominational". The
 non-denominational nature of early Sunday School work made it a
 natural for the formation of Sunday School associations on an
 interdenominational basis. These Sunday School associations became
 the forerunners of the conciliar movement in the United States.
 The councils of churches, or present-clay ecumenical agencies,
 grew out of the early Sunday School associations. (1)

Philip Cliff, a British historian of the Sunday School movement, makes a similar comment:

 ... the first tentative steps towards future church unity were being
 taken as the delegates to World Sunday School Conventions
 encountered other churches. They learned to trust one another, even
 though they were different in church order, or emphasized different
 aspects of doctrine. These early ecumenical encounters laid the
 foundations for meetings which later became starting points for the
 International Missionary Council, the Faith and Order Commission,
 the Life and Work Movement, all of which are now included in
 the World Council of Churches. (2)

If the Sunday School movement is rarely credited as a seedbed of the ecumenical movement by general ecumenical historians, the role of education-related bodies like the Student Christian Movements (SCMs), YMCAs and YWCAs is recognized as giving early ecumenical experience and inspiration to those who would become the leaders in the International Missionary Council, Faith & Order and Life & Work and, eventually, the World Council of Churches.

SCMs in the different countries espoused the cause of Christian unity from early on in their history. The SCMs were probably more of a popular movement than the ecumenical movement itself ever became as they were thoroughly participatory and organized by students for students. Ans J. van der Bent said of the SCMs that they:

 ... helped generations of students to understand and experience a
 quality of Christian discipleship and to grow in a profound
 awareness of the oikoumene in Christ. (3)

He also recognized that SCMs enjoyed a freedom denied to more institutionalized organizations. Although the ecumenical movement in its early days relied heavily on those who had learned from and been enthused by their exposure to people from across Christianity, the participatory and common ownership style of movements such as the SCN, YWCA and YMCA was not adopted elsewhere.

Ecumenism as a learning experience?

The Message (4) of the first WCC Assembly in Amsterdam made extensive use of process-oriented language--learning, teaching and becoming. In the Constitution that was adopted, the fourth function of the WCC was "To promote the growth of ecumenical consciousness in the members of all the churches". (5) This function still remains, albeit in a slightly modified form. If the ecumenical movement came out of a learning experience within the different "streams", its global expression through the WCC was to be itself a learning experience. There was to be an educational essence to the WCC, quite apart from any explicit educational activities or programmes. Individuals and churches would learn through their participation in the WCC.

That was a reasonable expectation, given the early development of the ecumenical movement. However, by the time of Amsterdam, the seeds of an enduring problem had already been sown. Stephen Charles Neill writing the Epilogue to the period 1517-1948 in the first volume of A History of the Ecumenical Movement concluded:

 The movement is still too much an affair of leaders in the church,
 of ministers rather than lay folk, and of those who can afford the
 time to go to conferences rather than those who must stay at home.
 This again is doubtless inevitable at the start; ideas begin with
 the few, and a long time must be allowed for the dissemination of
 those ideas to the mass. (6)

This situation did not improve, leading W.A. Visser 't Hooft to conclude in his overview chapter of the period 1948-68 in the second volume of A History of the Ecumenical Movement:

 The ecumenical movement is not sufficiently rooted in the life of
 the local congregations. In spite of all attempts made to educate
 church members for participation in the ecumenical enterprise, the
 movement is still too much an army with many generals and officers,
 but with too few soldiers. It would seem that not enough has been
 done to show that the ecumenical concern is not to be conceived as
 one of the many concerns in which a local congregation may take
 interest, but as a concern which arises out of the very nature of
 the church. It is clear that real advance towards full unity will be
 made only if, in coming years, local congregations and their members
 discover that to follow Christ means to follow him in his work of
 building the one body, his body. (7)

These conclusions signal issues which are recurrent throughout the subsequent history of the ecumenical movement and the World Council of Churches within it. In the first statement, a process is envisaged whereby the ecumenical learning of the few is passed down to the many. There is no recognition that those "who must stay at home" might be encouraged to engage in a "bottom up" approach to ecumenism. In the second, it was noted that the twenty years that had passed had not resulted in church members who had been educated for participation. The phraseology "education for participation", (i.e., education which prepares people to act within a given context) rather than, say, participative education or education through participation (which could be seen as education through which people form their context) is significant.

In both cases the diagnosis was probably correct, in that the people of the churches were not being ecumenically engaged and transformed. However, the response to this by a top-clown dissemination-reception model of education requires further examination today. It is no criticism of the writers that they held the educational views of their time. It is a matter of concern that such views often still dominate educational practice, if not theory, in the ecumenical movement. The persistence of such a view of education can be seen as the story of the WCC unfolds. To the present, one can hear complaints that work that has been done by this high-powered ecumenical group or that has not been "received" by the churches and the people who comprise them. Ironically, educational processes are then expected to deal with the problem.

It can be argued that there are now two very different worlds of ecumenism--institutional ecumenism and experiential ecumenism. We can argue about whether this was always the case, but even if that were so, it does not seem to have been the intention of the founders of the WCC. Institutional ecumenism is expressed through formal relationships directly between churches (dialogues, conversations, agreements, covenants, etc.) and the activities of ecumenical bodies. For the most part, these involve the few in a discourse that is accessible only to them. Experiential ecumenism is expressed by those who, for example, go to Taize, are involved in Drop the Debt campaigns, worship in a multi-denominational congregation, do evangelism together, care for the homeless or even just engage with their neighbours or the people they work alongside. These are powerful learning experiences for many people. However, this learning tends to remain at the level of the individual and, perhaps then, is not processed in a way that leads to thoroughgoing changes in attitudes, behaviour and relating.

In his "must read" book for anyone with an interest in the ecumenical movement, The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How It Has, Been Impoverished by Its Friends, Michael Kinnamon states:

 To put it bluntly, ecumenism has been, to a large extent,
 domesticated, brought under control, by the churches it was
 expected to reform. (8)

There should be no sense of surprise in the first part of this statement. After all, that is what institutions do to individuals or groups they perceive to be troublesome. They either co-opt them or marginalize them. We can see that in the case of the movements cited at the start-Sunday schools have been brought within the churches' organization and domesticated whereas the others are marginal to the work of the churches. The contemporary observer might be surprised at the thought that a purpose of the ecumenical movement is to reform the churches, for what they see in reality is cooperation in ways that do not imply change. It is possible to form superficially good relationships, to collaborate in activities and even to achieve a kind of consensus whilst preserving one's status quo. That this is prevalent between churches in the ecumenical movement is a sign of the impoverishment that troubles Kinnamon:

 The ecumenical vision insists that the church is renewed when
 Christians who are different share gifts with one another, but we
 speak more of tolerance and cooperation that leave intact the way
 we are ... The ecumenical vision insists that unity and renewal are
 rooted in repentance for the ways Christians have offended against
 God and one another, but we too often speak of growth without
 repentance or conversion. (9)

The theme of the upcoming 9th Assembly of the WCC, God, in your grace, transform the world, has forcibly reinserted the concept of transformation into our discourse. Only time will tell whether we (ecumenical institutions and networks, churches and individuals) have opened ourselves to being transformed or whether we play safe by keeping it theoretical for ourselves whilst demanding it of others.

What does all this mean for ecumenical formation?

The British prime minister, Tony Blair, once declared that his priorities were education, education, education. His emphasis on education was both right and wrong. We are wrong if we think that education (or in our context, ecumenical formation) can solve all our problems. We are right to believe that education and ecumenical formation are powerful agents of change.

There is a global debate about education which, in its own way, is mirrored in the ecumenical movement. There are those who see education purely in utilitarian terms. Education is seen as the process by which people are given the knowledge and skills that make them economically productive citizens of their society. The pressure on education to be subservient to economics is almost universal. An illustration comes in a letter to the Guardian newspaper in Britain, commenting on the pressure on the British education system from commerce and industry:

 What my teachers tried to give me, and what teachers now try to give
 pupils, is some basic knowledge and the skills to manipulate it;
 that is, to make thinking, aware people out of innocent and biddable
 children. Of course this does not suit the short-term aims of the
 CBI (Confederation of British Industry), which wants trained,
 biddable monkeys to tweak the spanners and keyboards of industry
 and commerce without asking questions. Nor does it suit government,
 which prefers its electors gullible rather than inquiring ...
 Education departments should foster education. Commerce/industry,
 if it wants tame monkeys, should train its own. I do not want ... a
 working population of obedient trained operatives. Sounds too
 dangerous to me.

The theme of the 47th international conference on education of UNESCO in September 2004 was Quality education for all young people. The notion of quality education is one that counters those forces that would limit the access to and understanding of education, including that of economic utility. Education is seen as a process towards individual and communal wholeness (Christians would see that as a gospel value) and not just a useful tool for the achievement of societal and economic goals, as important as those are. At the conference, the director general of UNESCO argued that only quality education can:

 Assist young people to acquire the attitudes and competencies of
 what might be called the "democratic mind". There is room in such a
 mind for stable and enduring values such as tolerance, solidarity,
 mutual understanding and respect for human rights.... However, this
 cannot be acquired by traditional approaches focused on academic
 content and rigid teaching methods... It needs to be: flexible and
 adaptable, capable of analyzing and understanding different
 perspectives that also are able to build and re-build a coherent
 outlook. (10)

The discussion around ecumenical formation might also be characterized by a utilitarian/quality divide. The utility can be either academic or pragmatic. In the academic sphere, the ecumenical movement and the phenomenon of ecumenism can be seen as a proper area of enquiry, the study of which is unrelated to the development of commitment or practice. A pragmatic approach is where ecumenical formation is seen as learning about the ecumenical movement in order to be able to understand it and function within it. This is a motivating and sometimes limiting factor in the demand for ecumenical formation for the staff of agencies, churches and ecumenical organizations. Whilst we can see value in these utilitarian approaches, we should not be content with this limited understanding. Certainly there is no hope for change, renewal or transformation if ecumenical formation is only learning about ecumenism.

Just as the director general of UNESCO argued for quality education to help the acquisition of a democratic mind, we should look to ecumenical formation to help the acquisition of an ecumenical mind. In other words: seizing the ecumenical vision, developing ecumenical attitudes and opening ourselves to the other in relationship. Knowing about what happened in Edinburgh in 1910, about Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry or about the functions of Regional Ecumenical Organizations is not irrelevant but will not, in themselves, change, renew or transform us. There are some inter-related aspects of ecumenical formation that can help us--the process of conscientization and the engendering of passion and commitment.

There has been a quite remarkable response to the devastation caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami. Individuals, social groups, churches and commercial organizations responded so generously that governments were shamed into increasing their initial financial response. As an expression of global human solidarity it has been truly impressive and we must be thankful for that which lies within our human nature that evokes such a response. However, this raises a very sharp question for the churches and the ecumenical movement: why do we respond to such a tragic and catastrophic event with sacrificial generosity but not to global injustice with its tragic and catastrophic consequences? Every day, day in and day out, thousands die of the effects of poverty and disease that are the result of or that could be alleviated by human decision. We may be concerned about this but we are not driven to sacrificial action. Our response to the Indian Ocean tsunami shows that we have a conscience but that it takes a particular set of circumstances for it to be roused to action.

One of the phrases most associated with Paulo Freire is conscientization--a process of becoming aware of the social, political and economic contradictions in a context, developing a critical consciousness, leading to taking action against the oppressive elements of that reality. At one stage Freire stopped using the term as he feared that people felt that it was sufficient to have a critical interpretation of the world without a consequent transformation of oppressive structures. A significant aspect of ecumenical formation must be a process of conscientization that does not simply awaken our conscience but energizes us for action.

Ecumenical formation should engender enthusiasm and passion. Commenting on the passions aroused by football, Bill Shankly (a renowned football club manager in England) said: "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death ... I can assure you it is much, much more important than that." Football supporters like myself know what he meant. However, ecumenism, which sounds so dull, ought to arouse even greater passions because it really is more than a matter of life and death. It should arouse the passions of those who respond to the call of God in Christ, transcending the divisions and partiality of our institutions and articulations of faith, who believe that a new world is promised in Jesus' vision of the kingdom. It may anger those who want to retain a comfortable, for them, status quo even though they may recognize that all is not well with the church and the world. Ecumenism ought not to be a matter of indifference.

Ecumenical formation should call us to commitment--not to institutions but to one another as humanity and to God. We may have to use imperfect expressions of our community in faith but our primary commitment should always be beyond them. We are citizens of heaven (Phil 3:20) and not of some ecclesiastical or even ecumenical region.

There are two lessons that can be learnt from the early development of the WCC within the ecumenical movement:

1. The need for the engagement of all in the churches was acknowledged, but processes were not adopted which would enable ecumenism to be built on local experience.

2. Although the development of an ecumenical consciousness was recognized as necessary, the dominant model of education was the transmission of the products of the few to the many with the presumption of an instructional methodology. (11)

Understanding ecumenical formation as a process of conscientization, and the engendering of passion and commitment, requires us to face the challenge of adopting more appropriate ways of learning together. The possibilities for renewing or re-forming the ecumenical movement and the WCC within it lie more in this than in making changes to our institutional structures.

Praying for transformation, as we do in the 9th Assembly theme, God, in your grace, transform the world, should encourage us to adopt transformative styles of ecumenical formation.

(1) J. Blaine Fister, "Christian Education: Potential and Promise in the Ecumenical Movement", Mid-Stream, XIX, 1, 1980, p.59.

(2) Philip B. Cliff, The Rise and Development of the Sunday School Movement in England 1780-1980, NCEC, Redhill, 1986.

(3) Ans d. van der Bent, From Generation to Generation: The Story of Youth Work in the World Council of Churches, WCC, 1986, p.x.

(4) The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches, W.A. Visser 't Hooft ed., New York, Harper, 1949, p. 10.

(5) Ibid., p.197.

(6) A History of the Ecumenical Movement Vol. 1 1517-1948, Ruth Rouse and Stephen Neill eds, London, SPCK, 1954, p.730.

(7) A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Vol. 2 1948-1968, Harold E. Fey ed., London, SPCK, 1970, p.26.

(8) Michael Kinnamon, The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How Been Impoverished by Its Friends, St Louis MO, Chalice, 2003, p.84.

(9) Ibid., p.115

(10) The Month at UNESCO 54, July-Sept. 2004, Centre catholique de cooperation avec UNESCO, Paris, p. 18.

(11) I have argued the case more fully for this in Education and the World Council of Churches--an overview from its origins to the 1968 Uppsala Assembly which can be found on the website ecuspaee.net under ecumenical formation --analysis/research.

Simon Oxley is responsible for work on education and ecumenical formation at the WCC.