Ecumenical space.

Falconer, Alan D.

In a reflective essay on music, the internationally acclaimed pianist Alfred Brendel characterizes the musician's mystic art in the following evocative sentence:

 As an interpreter--that is, in my threefold function of curator,
 executor and obstetrician--I am not interested in cliches but in
 what is special and unique. (1)

The interpreter is one who seeks to hold to the original text or vision, explore the original intention and context of the author, composer or founding figures, and bring that text, intention, vision to birth in the contemporary context, thus giving it new life and renewed significance.

While this threefold function conveys well the role of the pianist, poet and preacher, it is also an apt description of the role of general secretary of an organization such as the World Council of Churches. Throughout his tenure of office, Konrad Raiser has on occasion after occasion exemplified this art. Whether it is to the assembly of the World Council of Churches, a meeting of the central committee or a keynote address to church leaders or leaders of civil society, he has drawn from the wellsprings of the ecumenical memory, conveyed the original intention and sought on the basis of such an analysis to find a new framework, a new language to open up a new or renewed discussion and offer a new horizon for the Council's work and the relationship between the churches. In this way, like Alfred Brendel he has been impatient with cliches but has sought to identify the special and the unique.

This issue of The Ecumenical Review is not the place or the time to assess the contribution of Konrad Raiser as general secretary. Such an examination requires both the passage of time and the eye of a less involved spectator and colleague. Rather, this volume affords the opportunity to identify important themes or issues of the vast legacy he bequeaths to the Council.

One of these important themes is encapsulated in the evocative, if inelegant, phrase "ecumenical space". It is in his major report to the eighth assembly of the WCC at Harare that Konrad Raiser developed this term most fully. (2) Characteristically in his exposition, he draws together the various hints and strands of the idea from their various niches in the earlier history of the WCC to present a new language which could help the Council articulate anew its special and unique role as a servant of the churches. (3)

The strands of an idea

Without seeking to trace all the elements in the development of this idea, it is important to identify some of the strands. The first occasion on which the notion of "space" seems to have appeared was at the Louvain Faith and Order meeting in 1971. In the report of the committee which explored "Conciliarity and the Future of the Ecumenical Movement", the term "space" emerged as a key idea:

 The conciliarity of the church requires the involvement of the
 entire lay membership including as it should every segment of
 (hu)mankind. There must be opportunity within the life of the
 church for each community of (hu)mankind to develop and express
 its own authentic selfhood; for the oppressed and exploited to
 fight for justice; and for the "marginal" people in society--the
 handicapped in mind and body--to make their own distinctive
 contribution. This becomes all the more necessary because modern
 technology has forced all (hu)mankind into a tighter
 interdependence which constantly threatens freedom and
 individuality. The church's unity must be of such a kind that
 there is ample space for diversity and for the mutual
 confrontation of different interests and convictions. (4)

The concept of space is here used to characterize an inclusive community, a conciliarity where authentic self-expression is welcomed and respected, where diversity is celebrated, and difficult and conflictual issues are addressed in an atmosphere of trust and confidence within the framework of real but incomplete unity.

However, it is another quarter of a century before the same idea re-emerges, and then without conscious recollection of the earlier discussion. The language of "space" appeared again in ecumenical vocabulary as an attempt to find an adequate expression to denote the inclusive community and to characterize a framework for holding and addressing diverse views on perennial conflictual questions.

In the first place, as an aspect of the Theology of Life process within the Justice, Peace, Creation stream of the WCC it became helpful to draw on the Kenyan experience of sokoni to include insights and experiences of the wider community within the search for the affirmations of life. The term sokoni referred to the market place where life stories and experiences were exchanged, in the light of which the poet drew the various strands together, sought to interpret them and show their interconnectedness, and thus present an inclusive, coherent and challenging account that invited the listeners to accept a more inclusive reality, and thus be invited to move "beyond the limits of the landscape that I knew", to use the phrase of the Scottish poet lain Crichton Smith. (5)

Simultaneously, a consultation on episcope and episcopacy developed the term "ecumenical space" to encourage those traditions which exercised oversight through a personal office to maintain fellowship with, and perhaps recognize, the authentic experience of those who exercised oversight primarily through a communal or collegial polity. In that discussion, various qualities and characteristics of the "space" were identified. (6) This drew on important theological themes which had been articulated in the section I report of the fifth world conference of Faith and Order at Santiago de Compostela in 1993. (7)

Both of these processes found themselves adopting and developing the concept of "space" as a response to different elements of Louvain's original understanding. In his report to the WCC assembly at Harare, the general secretary drew on these and other strands, developing what had been partial and sectional into a wider framework to present a coherent concept--rather like the poet of the sokoni--for the understanding of the nature and role of the World Council of Churches.

A new language for a new expression of the nature of the WCC

In his development of the concept "ecumenical space", Konrad Raiser embodied the role of curator, by reminding the churches of that which they had in different fora asserted.

As executor of the tradition, he further sought to interpret the original impulses in the light of the intention of the original framers of the concept. In this task, however, he did so in the context of having to find a new idea which more adequately characterized the developing understanding of the WCC itself.

On assuming office, Konrad Raiser as general secretary inherited a recommendation mandated by the central committee in 1989 and reaffirmed at the seventh assembly of the WCC at Canberra (1991) to engage in a process of reflection on the nature of the WCC itself. The Common Understanding and Vision process, as it came to be called, sought to examine the nature and role of the WCC within the one ecumenical movement. (8) Over an eight-year period, a series of consultations and correspondence with the member churches explored the ecclesiological significance of the WCC and identified its major special and unique functions in serving the churches as they called each other to the goal of visible unity. Throughout these complex discussions, constant reference was made to the classic statements on the nature of the WCC--especially the Toronto Statement (1950)--and to the intention of the framers. The question was asked again as to whether it was possible to state more affirmatively the ecclesiological significance of councils of churches. (9) At the end of this process, it was decided not to change the basis of the World Council of Churches as it is defined in article 1 of the constitution. However, what emerged was a new accent in the understanding of that basis:

 The WCC is a "fellowship of churches" whose primary purpose is "to
 call one another to visible unity in one faith and in one
 eucharistic fellowship, expressed in worship and common life,
 through witness and service to the world, and to advance towards
 that unity in order that the world may believe" (art. 3).

The accent was firmly placed on the "fellowship of churches which call one another to visible unity". It was discerned that through an emphasis on the fellowship of churches it was important to see the Council as an inclusive body whose members--the churches--living in fellowship deliberate together, affirm each other, work through the issues which divide and thus prevent the manifestation of visible unity and maintain fellowship which both celebrates diversity and seeks to overcome those expressions of diversity which fracture the community. It is in the attempt to find an adequate language to express this aspiration for inclusive community where authentic self-expression is welcomed and respected, and where diversity is celebrated and difficult and conflictual issues are addressed in an ethos of trust and confidence, that the general secretary developed the idea of ecumenical space.

Impulses for transformation

There are a number of central Christian impulses which might undergird such a concept and help to delineate its character. Such a notion insists on the necessity for communities and churches to be inclusive rather than exclusive, and which suggest that boundaries of the member churches must not become walls of exclusion and confinement. Jesus of Nazareth challenged the religious, social and economic establishments of his day through his teaching and his identification with the Samaritan and the Roman (those perceived as enemies by his community), the leper, the widow and the poor (those excluded for social and economic reasons). This costly challenging of exclusive identities led to his crucifixion. The way of reconciliation is costly. So central for Christianity is this experience that St Paul has to invent a word for the experience. Katallago is the way of exchange, the mode of seeing identity as constantly changing in the light of the other, the awareness of interdependence with others. This is a central element of ecumenical space.

Reconciliation and forgiveness

The cost of reconciliation was a major preoccupation in the writings of the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, especially those works produced in the period 1886-97. In Father Sergius, The Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil and What I Believe, Tolstoy explores the breakdown of relationships and the need for reconciliation, and the way in which the behaviour of one person affects the identity of others. The costliness of reconciliation is nowhere more eloquently and perceptively exposed than in his novel Resurrection, written in this period. The plot, based on a real episode, told to Tolstoy by his friend Koni, tells of a nobleman who was called to serve on a jury at the murder trial of a prostitute. The prince recognized in her a girl whom in his youth he had seduced. The novel wrestles with the question of how the nobleman and the prostitute can be reconciled. In such a situation, it is evident that to ask forgiveness is not enough. The prince finds it necessary to transform his life by taking responsibility for his actions through the appropriating of the prostitute's story. Initially, of course, his action is governed by his desire to be freed from his own sense of guilt. The prostitute, equally, is hesitant about accepting the seriousness of the prince's desire for forgiveness until she sees the way he seeks to offer reparation by centring his life on her needs. Forgiveness emerges when each eventually is empowered to be free. Resurrection occurs. Out of the despair and alienation of fractured relationship, hope, new life and new creation are born through the acceptance of responsibility and the appropriation of the history of the other.

The incarnation could be described as God taking upon Godself the story of humankind. The cycle of exclusion is unlocked through the process of forgiveness. In her magistral study The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt opined that Jesus of Nazareth Was the discoverer of the role of forgiveness in human relations. (10) Throughout the gospels, the theme of forgiveness appears as a "leitmotif". Reconciliation and forgiveness--two central foci of the ministry of Jesus--lead to the crossing of boundaries, to the negotiation of boundaries. Ecumenical space provides a theatre where such reconciling processes of the churches may take place. Through the history of action, reaction and separation churches have developed identities-in-opposition. Through such costly reconciliation a new relationship of interdependence and mutuality might emerge. (11)

Conversion

A second impulse central to ecumenical space is that of conversion. In her important study on aspects of conversion in the New Testament, Beverley Gaventa identifies three categories of personal change. (12)

The first category is "alternation". This is a relatively limited form of change which develops naturally from an individual's previous behaviour. It is a natural progression, where the roots of later developments can be identified in earlier stages of the person's growth and development.

The second category is that of "pendulum conversion". This "type" involves a radical change in which past affiliations are rejected and replaced by a new commitment and identity. The catalyst of such change may be an event, person, group or other agent which triggers the dramatic change in the individual's perceptions and values. Past associations and convictions are rejected when new ones are formed. Past and present are disconnected. This type of conversion leads to discontinuity. This is normally illustrated by Luke's account of the conversion of St Paul in Acts. There are, of course, other New Testament examples as well.

The third type of conversion identified is that of "transformation". This is an altered perception reinterpreting both the past and the present. A transformation is a radical change of perception in which some newly gained cognition brings about a changed way of understanding. Unlike a pendulum conversation, a transformation does not require a rejection or negation of the past or of previously held values. A transformation involves a new perception, a re-cognition of the past. As with conversion, however, the catalyst of change is an event, person, group or other agent. Transformation is a continuing process--a series of "moments" or "events" where the horizon is transfigured. This is a transformation into a community of mutual responsibility and commitment. This is how St Paul describes his own conversion.

That this is not simply an experience of individuals is evident in a report of the Groupe des Dombes, For the Conversion oft be Churches, (13) where instances of corporate conversion are noted. Such a call to conversion invites the recognition by each tradition of the diversity in time and place within the tradition itself. Such a call invites the churches of the different confessional traditions to acknowledge that they have learned from the other traditions and recognize a complementarity which has become evident through theological dialogue, and common reflection and action on issues of social justice. Such a call to conversion involves self-examination where mistakes, distortions and misjudgments are identified, and appropriate apologies articulated. Such a call to conversion invites the churches to commit themselves to each other, to a process Of conversion by incorporating the other into themselves and to the embodiment of realized communion. Such a call invites the churches to move beyond themselves, to embrace the other.

Baptism

A third impulse of ecumenical space is the recognition of our common baptism in Christ. Both forgiveness and conversion are associated with the process and understanding of Christian baptism. Baptism into the death and rising of Jesus of Nazareth is both particular and beyond particularity. A recent reflection on baptism notes,

 The worshipping community is the community of the baptized, since
 baptism is the sacrament of incorporation into a community of God's
 new creation, uniting us to Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit
 ... The union of each baptized person with Christ places us in
 union with the whole community of faith through time and across
 space. This new community, as Christ's body, is a fully inclusive
 community in which distinctions are no longer divisions. (14)

Primarily, Christian identity is being-in-Christ. When exploring the nature of Christian community, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (15) emphasized the coming together of Christians in Christ through baptism, while John Calvin consistently asserted the bondedness of Christians with each other because of that baptism. Baptism is into a local community and into the fellowship of those confessing Christ. Baptism insists on a positive relationship with others beyond the limits of "our own" community. Such a recognition invites the churches to move towards the ecclesial recognition of each other.

Christian hospitality

A fourth impulse--essential to the concept of ecumenical space--is the constant call to offer hospitality which permeates scripture and the history of the church. Perhaps it was because the people of Israel had constantly been on the move--into exile and return, or moving pasturage--and had been constantly dependent on the hospitality of others that throughout the Hebrew scriptures there is a constant rejoinder to offer hospitality. That experience of hospitality received and the injunction to offer it to others is another leitmotif of the gospels. The paradigm of the host is Jesus of Nazareth, and the enjoinder is to receive the stranger as Christ has received us (Rom. 15:7)--the theme for the meeting of the plenary commission on Faith and Order in Kuala Lumpur in 2004. There was also an awareness of a strong tradition expressed in Romans 12 and memorably expressed in the Letter to the Hebrews: "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained strangers unaware." Such an awareness is embedded in Christian literature, art and spirituality. The Celtic runes of hospitality are one such expression as are the novels of Dostoyevsky or the famous Rublev icon on the hospitality of Abraham and Sarah. In recent scholarship, Christine Pohl and John Koenig (16) have laid solid foundations for a recovery of this central Christian impulse. But such hospitality involves seeing the "other" not as threat hut as "gift". It involves "embrace" rather than "exclusion", and thus challenges notions of boundaries as walls of identity. (17)

Pilgrimage

These impulses and many more central Christian themes identify the contours of "ecumenical space". The identities of the churches are in flux and are interdependent. The Christian journey, individual and as community, is a continuing journey. Even before they were named Christians, disciples of Jesus were called "the people of the way" in the city of Antioch. Following Jesus, "the way, the truth and the life" (John 14:6), they were seen to be on a common journey, searching for a way of life that embodied, reflected and glorified the good news of the gospel. Christians over the centuries were yearning and struggling for new life in the Spirit. People of the way, pilgrims, sojourners and wayfarers, called to repent and turn around, and guided by the Spirit of truth (John 16:13), their whole life became a journey towards the community of the household and the city of God (Eph. 2:19; Rev, 21). To travel as a pilgrim involves awareness of the risk of the journey, and the vulnerability of the traveller. Travellers leave behind much that they loved. The Lund Faith and Order conference (1952) called the churches to let go of much precious accumulated ecclesiastical baggage for the sake of the common journey--and yet there is a growing tendency to hold on to our past identities and to see our boundaries as walls.

"Ecumenical space" is therefore an invitation to the churches to embrace vulnerability, to live a kenotic ecclesiology. (18) Such a space is not "safe" as many aver, but costly and cathartic. However, without embracing the "other" there can be no transformation.

"Ecumenical space"--space for deliberation and life together

In his address to the eighth assembly at Harare, Konrad Raiser pointed to some of these impulses as he sought to give content to this new phrase. In his role as obstetrician, he sought to help the "fellowship of churches" give birth to a new way of being. Subsequently, the manner of working of the Council has sought to embrace these ideas and impulses. A number of consultations have been held so that such deliberation may be held on conflictual issues. In the seminars on human sexuality the theological themes of pilgrimage and baptism have provided a context in which it has been possible to address contemporary divisive issues between and within churches in an atmosphere of trust and confidence. Meetings of the central committee have adopted an agenda which allows discussion of issues confronting the churches where there is no pressure to adopt a consensus statement, but where space exists for exploration.

However, a major limitation of those processes to date is that those who do not wish to discuss a matter attend sessions on topics which are less conflictual. If the concept "ecumenical space" is not to turn into a cliche, but become an expression of the special and unique character of the WCC, ways will need to be found for all who are committed to discuss divisive questions in an ambience of interdependence.

A second potential of this concept is that it offers the possibility of mutual accountability. At the central committee meeting in 2003 a new interim statement, "A Church of All and for All", was commended to the churches for study and action. The statement, as readers of the last edition of The Ecumenical Review are aware, was written by persons with disabilities. The embracing of "ecumenical space" provides the possibility that the fellowship of churches should give account to each other of how they have received that text. The space provides the possibility for ecumenical oversight--a conciliar episcope.

Before the next assembly of the WCC two of the commissions will explore two of the impulses of the ecumenical space. The Faith and Order commission will explore the theme of hospitality, while the conference on world mission and evangelism will examine that of healing and reconciliation. It may be that they will provide insights which will inform the fellowship of churches about central characteristics of this space.

The challenge is whether as churches we are prepared to journey together, conscious of our common being in Christ in baptism, prepared to engage in costly processes of reconciliation through which we are all transformed and both offer and receive hospitality, because God may be speaking to us through the other. If the fellowship of churches fails to embody this, then ecumenical space will quickly become another cliche. If the fellowship of churches has the courage to embrace the challenge, then it will be a special and unique body.

As Konrad Raiser demits office he has left a large legacy to the World Council of Churches. He has reminded the Council of its heritage, interpreted that inheritance in the context of its time, and presented a contemporary language which seeks to invite the fellowship of churches to live that tradition in a new and dynamic manner. In doing this, on a number of occasions, he has had to invent a new language. As I said, ecumenical space is an evocative, if inelegant term. Perhaps a reader of The Ecumenical Review, or indeed the general secretary in retirement, might offer a more felicitous expression. It is imperative, however, that the central concept does not disappear, only to resurface in another twenty-five years.

(1) Alfred Brendel, On Music: Collected Essays, London, Robson, 2001, p.42.

(2) This threefold characterization resonates well with the threefold distinction made at the Montreal Faith and Order conference (1963)--Tradition, tradition and traditions. See P.C. Rodger and L. Vischer eds, The Fourth World Conference on Faith and Order, London, SCM Press, 1964 pp.50-60.

(3) In Diane Kessler ed., Together on the Way: Official Report of the Eighth Assembly of the World Council of Churches, WCC, 1999, esp. pp.88-94.

(4) In Lukas Vischer ed., Faith and Order Louvain 1971: Study Reports and Documents, Faith and Order Paper no. 59, WCC, 1971, p.226ff.

(5) See D. Hessel and L. Rasmussen eds, Earth Habitat: Geo-Justice and the Churches' Response, Minneapolis, Fortress, 2001, esp. pp.83-99, and Working on Life: A Dossier, WCC/JPC, 1997.

(6) Peter Bouteneff and Alan Falconer eds, Episkope and Episcopacy and the Quest for Visible Unity, Faith and Order Paper no. 183, WCC, 1999, esp. pp.40-45.

(7) T.F. Best and G. Gassman eds, On the Way to Fuller Koinonia, Faith and Order Paper no; 166, WCC, 1994, pp.232f., esp. para. 20.

(8) Towards a Common Understanding and Vision of the World Council of Churches: A Policy Statement, WCC, 1997.

(9) For a discussion of this question see my article "An Ecclesiological Understanding of Councils of Churches", in Colin Podmore, ed., Community--Unity--Communion: Essays in Honour of Mary Tanner, London, Church Publishing House, 1998, pp.104-16. In this article I describe councils as "theatres of ecumenical space and time".

(10) Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago, Chicago UP, 1958, pp.236-47.

(11) Alan Falconer and Joseph Liechty eds, Reconciling Memories, Dublin Colombo, 1998, 2nd ed. International Theological Commission, Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past, Rome, 1999. J. Liechty and C. Clegg, Moving Beyond Sectarianism, Dublin, Colombo, 2001. In connection with this project, A Resource for Adults, and one for school children have been produced.

(12) Beverley Gaventa, From Darkness to Light: Aspects of Conversion in the New Testament, Philadelphia, Fortress, 1986.

(13) Groupe des Dombes, For the Conversion of the Churches, WCC, 1993.

(14) From "A Common Reflection on Christian Worship in Reformed Churches Today", in Lukas Vischer ed., Christian Worship in Reformed Churches Past and Present, Grand Rapids MI, Eerdmans, 2003, pp.283ff.

(15) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, London, SCM Press, 1954.

(16) Christine Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Grand Rapids MI, Eerdsman, 1999; and John Koenig, New Testament Hospitality, Philadelphia, Fortress, 1985.

(17) Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, Nashville, Abingdon, 1996.

(18) See my article in Alan Falconer ed., Faith and Order in Moshi, WCC, 1998.

Alan D. Falconer is coordinator of the WCC's team on Faith and Order.