07643
October 8, 2007
Consultation outlines ‘bold’ themes
Statement on PC(USA)’s ecumenical position going to ’08 General Assembly
LOUISVILLE – A consultation designed to help frame the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s stance on ecumenical relations has outlined what it says are bold themes for the committee that ultimately will submit language to the 2008 General Assembly (GA).
A widely diverse group of people, taking part in the first Ecumenical Consultation for the PC(USA) since Presbyterian reunion in 1983, met here Sept. 27-29 to help craft the denomination’s position on ecumenism.
One of the results was a 21-page document, which after analysis was revised to include several overarching themes. The final recommendation to the Assembly will come from the GA Committee on Ecumenical Relations (CER), which also took part in the consultation and is chaired by Elder Edward Chan.
Agreed upon by the group, which included the Rev. Michael Livingston, president of the National Council of Churches (U.S.A.); the Rev. Anna Case-Winters, professor of theology at McCormick Theological Seminary; and former PC(USA) moderator the Rev. Syngman Rhee, was a commitment by the denomination to:
- Reclaim its historic ecumenical commitment to do all things together, except those things that because of conscience it needs to do separately;
- Engage in new dialogue between its core ecumenical commitments and emerging forms of church life;
- Engage in dialogue and cooperation with people of other faiths;
- Emphasize a commitment to justice in the economy and the earth; and
- Celebrate ecumenism on the local level.
“I think we’ve learned several things from this consultation,” said the Rev. Jane Dempsey Douglass, who led the group in its final phase of work on what it handed over to the CER. Dempsey Douglass is professor emerita of Princeton Theological Seminary and a former president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.
Being proactive rather than reactive, the realities of a changing religious landscape in America, and building close personal relationships out of which close ecumenical relationships grow were part of the consultation discussions.
The group’s conclusions stemmed from a desire by many participants to create a “bold” document for the denomination that speaks in language understandable outside the PC(USA).
“It’s all the same old stuff,” the Rev. Jack Baca said after reading the initial document. What would be bold is to find ways to talk to the various faith communities now part of the religious landscape and “invite them into the conversation,” he said.
“If the denomination just keeps talking to itself, we’ll just keep getting what we’ve gotten,” said Baca, senior pastor of Village Community Presbyterian Church in Rancho Santa Fe, CA. “We need to reach out into all different kinds of theological directions.”
The Rev. Eileen Lindner, deputy general secretary for research and planning for the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, outlined four “adaptive patterns of emerging ecclesiologies” that are now features on the American religious landscape.
Megachurches, theological affinity groups, the broadening role of parachurch organizations and the emergent church “have been selected because each, it will be argued, has implications for how the quest for Christian unity is perceived and the ecumenical calling lived out,” she said in her paper, “Issues of Post-denominational Identities and Emerging Ecclesiologies.”
Lindner said a “recalibration” in the way the PC(USA) and other communions have historically engaged in ecumenism might be necessary in light of the emerging patterns.
“Will persons we see as ‘other’ have a place among us only if they become one of us?” the Rev. Jay Rock, the PC(USA)’s coordinator of interfaith relations, asked in his paper, “Is Christian Unity a Catalyst for Human Community? Interfaith Relations and the Ecumenical Movement.”
“Can we learn to be guests in the house of others? Can we and those ‘others’ learn to be guests together in the world house?” continued Rock.
Bishop Earl McCloud Jr., ecumenical affairs officer for the African Methodist Episcopal Church, cautioned the group during a panel discussion on perspectives from outside the PC(USA) that before the denomination takes its message ecumenically, “you must be clear about that ecumenical message yourself.”
The other panelists joining McCloud were Mercy Oduyoye, director of the Institute of African Women in Religion and Culture at Trinity Theological Seminary in Ghana, and the Rev. Kim Yong Bok of the Presbyterian Church of Korea.
McCloud stressed understanding what “undergirds” the ecumenical stances of the Presbyterian Church, and challenged the denomination to stand firm in that so “a little wind does not blow your foundation completely away.”
“You must stand for justice in God’s word,” McCloud said. “And in standing, you must speak truth to power.”
Simultaneously, McCloud encouraged the formation of close individual relationships in order to ultimately form close ecumenical relationships.
“Before people want to know that you care, they want to know that you care,” he said. “The church is at its best when we walk together children and don’t get weary.” |
