What Conservative Evangelicals Can Learn From The Ecumenical Movement
In my country, a person willing to apply the adjective “conservative” to himself is terribly hard to find. I have the impression, however, that elsewhere people are not intimidated by the word and, indeed, are happy to list themselves as “conservative evangelicals.” Such people, I assume, understand a “conservative evangelical” to be a person zealous for the fundamental truths of Scripture. He wants to “hold fast” to the confessions of the Church, the undoubted and catholic Christian faith which for many has today been watered down or filtered out of their thinking. My hunch is that for the most part “conservative evangelicals” are critical of the ecumenical movement because they suspect that—its basis notwithstanding—the World Council of Churches cannot be trusted to preserve the faith-heritage of the Christian Church. If they are not that negative, they at least doubt whether the movement is possessed by a heroic determination to defend the fundamentals of the historic faith.
However, I have not been asked to make a judgment of the ecumenical movement. The question is what the “conservative evangelicals” can learn from it. One need not approve of a movement to learn something from it; certainly one need not be prepared to join the movement before he can profit from it. As a Reformed person, I can learn a good deal from the Lutheran church—as, perhaps, a Lutheran can from mine—without being obliged to become a Lutheran. Perhaps, therefore, the stoutest holdouts from the ecumenical movement will be ready to pick up a few things from it to their own profit.
There are indeed some things to learn from the ecumenical movement. I shall mention two.
First, the ecumenical movement places before us all, inescapably and urgently, the question of the unity of the Church. Church unity plays an undeniably large role in the entire ecumenical movement. Indeed, critics of the movement often accuse it of placing so much stress on visible unity that it compromises the prior importance of the truth. Some people call its search for unity a “false ecumenism.” They say it is driven by a worldly lust for oneness and uniformity. Now, we may not all agree as to whether the present-day ecumenical movement seeks unity in the correct way. But we cannot avoid the fact that the Bible demands a deep concern for the unity of the Church, a concern that can hardly be stressed too strongly. And the ecumenical movement has alerted us to this biblical concern.
I once read a remark by a New Testament scholar that is true and very relevant at this point. He said that the expression “one Church” does not appear in the whole of the New Testament, and that this fact reveals how self-evident the New Testament writers considered the unity of the Church to be. We should have to complete the thought by recalling that we are frequently summoned to preserve the unity of the Church, but at the same time we agree that this summons is given precisely because the necessity of unity is assumed. “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:4–6, RSV).
What Can We Learn?
In companion articles in this issue. Dr. G. C. Berkouwer, distinguished theologian and professor at the Free University in Amsterdam, and Dr. John A. Mackay, president emeritus of Princeton Theological Seminary and author of a recent book entitled Ecumenics, consider what conservative evangelical Protestants and the ecumenical movement can learn from each other.
After alluding to the fears of many evangelicals that the World Council of Churches may not preserve the faith-heritage of the Church, Dr. Berkouwer reminds us that one does not have to approve of a movement or join it in order to learn something from it. He sets forth two things evangelicals may learn from the ecumenical movement—the urgent importance of the unity of the Church and the dangers of an unbiblical eschatology.
Though he recognizes that the search for unity can be motivated by a desire for power, Dr. Berkouwer stresses the way in which the ecumenical movement confronts evangelicals with Christ’s High Priestly prayer. He is right; evangelical Protestants have much to learn about what it means to take seriously Christ’s words on the unity of the Church.
Dr. Berkouwer also warns about the tendency of some evangelicals to look forward so intensely to future unity in the coming kingdom that the seriousness of present divisions in the Church is obscured. His point is valuable that, by accepting uncritically the present division of the Church, conservative evangelicals might be perpetuating what is contrary to Christ’s will. But it could be balanced by mention of the parallel danger of consummating a unity based on unsound or inadequate doctrine likewise unacceptable to Christ.
Evangelicals may learn the lessons Dr. Berkouwer so clearly presents without compromising their essential doctrine and fidelity to the Word of God.
Dr. Mackay recognizes that there are many millions of evangelicals and that they constitute an important segment of the conciliar churches. He differentiates them from ecumenists, who pursue as their great objective the visible unity of the Church, by saying that for evangelicals the biblical revelation and its expression in the thought and life of Christians has priority over visible church organization. Noteworthy is his stress upon trans-denominational evangelical groups, such as the Graham association, World Vision, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, and Young Life.
The first lesson that the ecumenical movement can learn from evangelical Protestants, says Dr. Mackay, is “the reality of Christian conversion.” He speaks plainly of the danger of a Protestant nominalism in conciliar churches that leads to the substitution of church membership for a vital personal relationship to Jesus Christ. We can only hope that evangelicals actually measure up to Dr. Mackay’s charitable estimate of the quality of spiritual reality among them.
The second lesson Dr. Mackay mentions relates to what the Bible can mean in the personal and corporate life of Christians. At this point he declares that the ecumenical movement may well find in conservative evangelicalism something belonging to the great classical evangelical tradition of Christianity—namely, the authority of Scripture and its devotional use.
His third point concerns missions. (Here he speaks con amore as one whose first love is missions in Latin America.) He has high praise for the contribution to world missions made through Evangelism-in-Depth, developed by the Latin America Mission, and looks appreciatively at the adoption by evangelicals of “the incarnational principle” whereby those engaged in evangelistic effort identify themselves fully with those they want to influence. He believes also that ecumenists may learn from conservative evangelicals in the field of Christian journalism.
Dr. Mackay is hopeful of better relations between ecumenical leaders and evangelical leaders, and approves consultation of such leaders.
CHRISTIANITY TODAY is grateful to Dr. Berkouwer and to Dr. Mackay for these candid but irenic essays and commends them to the careful attention of our wide readership, which represents evangelical and ecumenical circles.
Our readers will draw their own conclusions and raise their own questions regarding these interesting essays. Therein lies much of their value. The unity of Christ’s Church is a subject of abiding importance that Christians must face in obedience to their Lord. Certainly all of us have more to learn about it.—ED.
What we have here is not a pious wish but a vocation. We have the calling to seek and preserve the unity of the Church because the Church is not ours but Christ’s. We have, let us admit it, become used to talking about the multiplicity of churches. We like to think that the “pluriformity” of the Church reflects the many-splendored wisdom of God. We use the plural, “churches,” as though the many churches were natural and normal phenomena in Christian reality. But have we ever tried to use the plural of “the Body of Christ”? Would it not be grotesque?
Now, I am well aware that the multiplicity of churches is a fact, and that people who speak of one Church are called romantics. But the New Testament is not romantic, and it knows only of the one Body of Christ, of one Temple, of one flock living under one Shepherd. The divisions of the Church, therefore, are not merely to be regretted. They are to be looked at as an amazing and incredible mystery. A divided Church is an awful problem with deeply distressing dimensions. Recall that when the Corinthians were threatening the Church with division, Paul raised the piercing cry, “Is Christ divided?” (1 Cor. 1:13a).
Somehow we have managed to dull the edge of Paul’s question; indeed, some of us have rounded it off to a pious pleasantry. But it was a terrible problem that rose from the shadows of division, for the shadows of church division fell over Christ himself. Calvin was conscious of this, when he wrote that if the Church were divided, Christ himself would be divided. But, he added, this is impossible (quod fieri non potest).
Is it not understandable, then, that the ecumenical movement should confront us with the High Priestly Prayer of John 17, the prayer that is permeated and defined by the unity of the Church? Christ spoke of the glory he received from the Father and then gave to his own, “that they may be one even as we are one” (John 17:22). Then he prayed that they would “become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me” (17:23). The world is involved in the question of unity. And this makes the visible unity of the Church the pertinent matter. The world must see the unity of the Church, so that it can recognize the great mystery.
When we talk about the world, we are reminded that Paul speaks about the enemies of the cross only with wet eyes (Phil. 3:18). He awakens us to the possibility that unbelief is a counterpart of the fact that the world does not know, does not yet know, that God sent Jesus into the world, because it has not seen the unity of his followers.
A quest for unity can be motivated by the desire for power. But there is also a unity sought simply because we know there is one Shepherd and one flock. The ecumenical movement has something to teach us about this. I say this not because I suppose that the present movement is ideal, or that it has solved all its problems. But it has been stimulated by the restlessness that John 17 provokes within the divided Church. Realism about the Church’s divisions cannot undo the power of John 17, nor can it remove the evangelical earnestness of Jesus’ concern about unity in the presence of the world. Is it not clear that to be “conservative” and to be “evangelical”—if these point to a genuine preservation and the genuine evangel—is to be filled to the brim with the longing for unity and fellowship under the one Lord?
Among those of us who for various reasons raise objections to the present ecumenical movement, there is a temptation to capitulate to the fact of division. Jesus’ words about unity rise from the abyss of eternity. This is why we must stay unsettled and unresigned. If we capitulate to the facts, our conservatism will only seek to conserve what is unacceptable to Christ. And this is not evangelical conservatism.
In the second place, the ecumenical movement places before us, inescapably and urgently, a warning against the dangers of an unbiblical eschatology. Eschatology concentrates on the future. It has its eyes on the promises. Its windows are open to the return of Christ and to the end of the age. But the perspective of the future can be set in wrong focus. When we let our perspective of the future lead us into a futuristic attitude toward the present, when we appeal to what is going to-come to pass after our days for justification of our indifference to the events of our day, we have perverted eschatological truth.
The futuristic perversion of eschatology has had considerable influence on our vision of the Church. Many find it possible to take the divisions of the Church in stride, because they expect the unity of the Church to be revealed only in the future. This attitude often goes hand in glove with the distinction between a visible and an invisible Church. The visible Church is divided. But since the invisible cannot be divided, the divisions of the visible are not too serious. After all, spiritual unity is more important, we hear, than organizational unity. And so we can restfully wait until the Lord returns for the spiritual unity of the Church to be manifest in the open.
Such a view contains an objectionable ecclesiology. We cannot use the scalpel of spiritual unity to cut away our guilt for the visible disunity of the Church. Besides, the very idea is unbiblical. The eschaton in the New Testament is never unrelated to the present day. I know of no text that speaks about the future without at the same time speaking about the present. The eschatological outlook is never meant to be an escape from the problems of the present day. The future does not let us take the sharp edge off present problems. Everything that is proclaimed about the “last things” is pointed straight at today. We are told to pray to be given the powers of the future age, so that we can be in their service now.
When the Spirit creates one fellowship around the crucified and risen Lord and in the breaking of the bread, the “last days” have already broken into the present (Acts 2:17). The Bible surely speaks of a “not yet.” We still see darkly, and we still know only in part. But everything that is told us of the future is told as a calling to the tasks of today. Could this possibly be the reason why the ecumenical movement appeals so frequently to the Kingdom of God? Could this be the background of the book that Dr. Visser’t Hooft, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, wrote and called The Pressure of Our Common Calling?
Sometimes it has taken the odd, bizarre eschatological movements in the Church’s history to remind us that the future in Christian perspective is a summons to be alive to the requirement of this day. These groups have often reminded us of the eschatological call to watchfulness and obedience. “What I say to you I say to all: Watch” (Mark 13:37). Now, it is this same watchfulness that the ecumenical movement forces upon our attention. Whatever our judgment of any particular ecumenical movement may be, we are guilty of closing our ears to the Gospel’s own demands, if we close our ears to this.
Our “common calling” is not to be pushed ahead into the future age. We are not permitted the luxury of an enthusiastic but unbiblical eschatology. We ought to be spiritually alert enough to realize that an appeal to the future age can be an ecclesiological fatalism in disguise. The word “fatalism” has overtones of ironclad necessity, a mechanical drift of things that controls our destiny in spite of ourselves. There is also a kind of fatalism in existence that has to do with the Church. It springs up in our hearts whenever we isolate the future expectations from the present demands. We ought to be stripped of the illusion that this kind of futuristic expectation has any power to enable the Church to meet its calling in what is even now an apocalyptic age.
I have tried to reflect on what we can learn from the ecumenical movement by concentrating on these two facets—the unity of the Church and the dangers of an unbiblical eschatology. I have not tried to analyze the ecumenical movement as such. But as to what “conservative evangelicals” can learn from the movement, these two matters—though others could be named also—seem paramount. Indeed, the ecumenical movement itself must be seen and evaluated in terms of a homesickness for a visible expression of what we have “together with all the saints.” We cannot even begin to understand the motivations of the ecumenical movement until we too long for the reality of the one flock under the one Shepherd, and until we desire it “so that the world may believe.…”
What The Ecumenical Movement Can Learn From Conservative Evangelicals
One can say without fear of exaggeration that the two most significant terms in contemporary Christianity are “ecumenical” and “evangelical.” In both Protestant and Roman Catholic circles, these terms are gaining a new theological dimension and increased status.
The term “evangelical” designates that which centers in the “Evangel,” the “Gospel,” the “glad tidings.” It points to the “good news” both of what God has done for man in the person, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and of what he can do in man through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. To be “evangelical,” a person or a community must witness to the Evangel in thought, behavior, and sense of vocation.
“Ecumenical” means, etymologically, relating to the oikoumene, that is, to the “whole inhabited earth,” which for the Greeks meant the world unified by Greek culture and for the Romans the world unified by Roman law. In Christian history, “ecumenical” came to signify the unity produced by Jesus Christ and the Gospel and made manifest to the world by the community called the Christian Church. After the visible unity of the Church was shattered in the eighth century, the term “ecumenical” became lost for many centuries thereafter. It was restored to usage only in the present century, when the Christian churches of the world began to develop a sense of their common missionary responsibility to the oikoumene.
In 1950, two years after the World Council of Churches was founded, its Central Committee offered the first and only definition of “ecumenical” ever to emerge officially in council circles. “This word,” the committee said, “is properly used to describe everything that relates to the whole task of the whole Church to bring the Gospel to the whole world.” In this historic statement the “evangelical” and the “ecumenical” are inseparably related, so that no person or group can be truly “ecumenical” without being “evangelical,” nor truly “evangelical,” in consonance with the mind of Christ, without being “ecumenical.” It is important to affirm this because there are people for whom these two terms constitute a dichotomy, an absolute either/or.
The “ecumenical movement,” which in the early forties of this century the famous Anglican archbishop William Temple called “the great new fact of our time,” is the effort of many Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches to give corporate expression to their concern for the unity and mission of the Church universal. This effort received concrete, organizational expression in 1948 with the founding of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam. This body, composed of more than two hundred denominations and closely related to national councils of churches in many lands, has as its Basis of unity a single article of faith:
The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of Churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In recent years, through the influence of Pope John XXIII and the spirit and findings of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), the ecumenical movement began to have reality for the Roman Catholic Church. The church which had refused to send even an observer to the Amsterdam Assembly of the World Council of Churches, and for which the term “ecumenical” had ceased to have contemporary significance, invited representatives of non-Roman churches to attend the Vatican Council sessions as “separated brethren.” It gave its implicit sanction, moreover, to the term “Ecumenical Council” as descriptive of this epoch-making gathering in Rome. Evidence also grows, paradoxical though it may seem, that the church of Rome is beginning to assume a leading role in the ecumenical movement.
Over against the “ecumenists,” whether Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, or Roman Catholic, stand what may be called the “conservative evangelicals,” whose number is growing rapidly throughout the world. It has been estimated that in the United States conservative evangelicals include not only most of the 24 million Protestants not in conciliar churches but also a quarter to a third of the total membership of the conciliar churches.
Who are these conservative evangelicals? They are not bigots or fanatics, although such people are found among them (in minority status), just as they are found in the ranks of ecumenists. Speaking in general terms, the difference between the two groups might be expressed thus: Major leaders of the ecumenical movement pursue as their supreme objective the visible, structural unity of the Christian Church. Leading spokesmen for conservative evangelicals, on the other hand, consider the question of biblical revelation and its expression in the thought and life of persons and groups to have priority over any visible relationship, organizational or conciliar, among Christian churches in general, whether in the world, the nation, or the local community.
The spectrum of conservative evangelicals includes small, so-called sect churches as well as large Christian groups whose members cross all ecclesiastical boundaries and are dynamically united in the pursuit of some “evangelical” objective. Among these are such organizations as Young Life, World Vision, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Campus Crusade for Christ, and Christian Business Men’s Committee International. Organizations of this type begin to play the role of the historic Roman Catholic orders, of which there are today more than six hundred; though loyal to the Roman Catholic tradition, these orders are not controlled, nor is their polity shaped, either by the Vatican or by local bishops. In the category of conservative evangelicals there are also some large churches, such as the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the Southern Baptist Convention, and major Pentecostal churches, that are unrelated to the ecumenical movement. Mention should also be made of the World Evangelical Fellowship, organized in 1951, which now comprises more than twenty national fellowships.
With these needed clarifications, we are ready for the question that inspired this article: “What can the persons, groups, and churches that form part of, or are committed to, the ecumenical movement learn from conservative evangelicals?”
The first thing they can learn is the importance of emphasizing the reality of Christian conversion.
Emphasis upon the Church, upon church relations and unity, and upon church membership and church growth can becloud or minimize the revolutionary Christian reality of rebirth, radical spiritual change, personal salvation, the “new man.” Indeed, emphasis upon the Church as such, upon formal and loyal church membership, upon unity among the churches, can give rise, and does give rise in many ecumenical circles, to an impersonal “churchianity” and a very nominal Christianity.
The Roman Catholic Church has become deeply concerned about Catholic nominalism. Last year an eminent Chilean theologian with whom I had a public dialogue on the ecumenical movement made this remark, “We Catholics must make Christians.” The plain truth is that ecclesiastically and even ecumenically speaking, a person can be a church member without being in any basic sense a Christian.
Church membership is becoming a substitute for Christian commitment. There is a widespread Protestant nominalism, in which belonging to the church takes the place of belonging to Christ in a vital sense. In recent years I have come to know loyal church members, admirable people, some of them officers in their congregations, who have admitted to me that they have no clear idea of what the Christian faith is. Their minds are a theological vacuum, their lives a spiritual wilderness. A Roman Catholic layman was once asked, “Tell me, my friend, what is it you believe?” He answered, “I believe what the Church believes.” “And tell me, what is it that the Church believes?” His reply, “The Church believes what I believe.” In conservative evangelical circles this could not occur, because primary emphasis is placed upon conversion to Christ, the new life in Christ, and a clear concept of what one believes.
Contemporary relevance must be given in ecumenical circles to what Jesus Christ said to that eminent religious leader, Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” The first-century concept of sainthood, as descriptive of “God’s men,” “God’s women,” people utterly and intelligently committed to God in their thinking and their living, must be restored. “The new man in Christ” must take on present-day meaning. The question arises in this connection whether what is today called “church renewal” is adequate in a situation in which Christian nominalism prevails. For the renewal of life presupposes the presence of life, and this precisely is what is lacking in so many church members. What a large proportion of them primarily need is not liturgical thrill but evangelical challenge, not renewal but rebirth, not concurrence with bureaucracy but conversion to Christ.
But the going may be rough. At a recent meeting in the ballroom of a famous hotel, a cultured lady, a loyal and leading member in a local Protestant congregation, said this, “If I were to mention the word ‘conversion’ as a Christian objective, they would put me out of the church.” In this context, two episodes that have occurred in the past year are prophetic and far-reaching in significance.
In his historic address before the United Nations in New York on October 4, 1965, Pope Paul VI, as he brought his discourse to a close, used these words:
The hour has struck for our “conversion,” for personal transformation, for interior renewal. We must get used to thinking of man in a new way; and in a new way also of men’s life in common; with a new manner, too, of conceiving the paths of history and the destiny of the world, according to the words of Saint Paul: “You must be clothed in the new self, which is created in God’s image, justified and sanctified through the truth” (Eph. 4:23).
Last July, in his annual report as director of the division of World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches, that eminent ecumenical figure Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, himself a profoundly evangelical spirit, said:
I suspect that the most fruitful and significant question with which we shall have to confront our colleagues in the ecumenical movement will be the question about the meaning of conversion.… We must be centrally concerned with the issue of conversion and its meaning in the kind of era in which we live—an era in which the Church is a minority in a secularized and religiously plural society. I think, if I may say so, that this will be found to be a more crucially important issue than the issue of church growth.
Hopeful and thrilling in this regard is a profound study entitled “Secularization and Conversion,” recently published by the Division of Studies of the World Council of Churches.
Secondly, the ecumenical movement has also very much to learn from conservative Evangelicals in the matter of what the Bible can be and should be in the personal and corporate life of Christians in every dimension of “togetherness.” It is important to mention that the new and more dynamic formulation of the Basis of the World Council was the result of a strong plea by Norwegian evangelicals, who felt that more explicit recognition should be given to the status of Holy Scripture. It was this influence—as I know, because I was a member of the WCC committee that made the final decision—that led to the revision of the Basis and the inclusion of the words “according to the Scriptures.” The text of the Basis now reads: “The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures.…”
It is true that in certain conservative evangelical circles, devotion to the Bible and to ideas about the Bible becomes, in a very subtle way, a substitute for devotion to Christ and a personal relation to him. It is important, nevertheless, that the ecumenical movement should be inspired by conservative evangelicals to emphasize something that belongs to the great classical evangelical tradition of Christianity—namely, the authority of the Bible and the devotional use of Holy Scripture. For ecumenists, the Bible must become the companion of the Christian’s life, the Book whose reality takes on increasing significance in heart and home and work, in spiritual retreats, and in a prophetic ministry. Amid the rush and turmoil of contemporary living, the restoration of the Bible to the luminous and dynamic role that belongs to it will not be easy. But Christians committed to the worldwide unity of the Christian Church must give an ecumenical dimension to the practice of daily listening to the Book.
Thirdly, while the word “evangelical” is part of the classical heritage of the whole family of God, in conservative evangelical circles this classical term is given more of a missionary connotation than it has in ecumenical circles in general. Individual evangelicals are inspired to accept as their mission “winning” others to Christ and engaging in a dynamic way in Christian evangelism. Their supreme objective is not merely to do good to others in the spirit of Christ but to lead others to accept Christ as Saviour and Lord. That is to say, there is in evangelical circles a traditional Christian enthusiasm and sense of mission for the transformation of life in the spiritual, not merely the sociological, sense. This has a vital bearing upon the issue of evangelism, an issue that today is being confronted afresh in the ecumenical movement.
In the realm of evangelism, I know of no more significant and creative effort than one that originated about a decade ago in Latin America, “Evangelism-in-Depth.” This movement, whose headquarters are in San Jose, Costa Rica, is promoted, interestingly enough, by persons who are loyal to their own denominations and enjoy full ecclesiastical status in them but who carry on their work within an extra-denominational context. Evangelism-in-Depth is spoken of as “a program and a philosophy” that seeks “to relate evangelism to the total life of the believer and of the Church.” The growth of any movement,” it is stated, “is in direct proportion to the success of that movement in mobilizing its total membership for the propagation of its beliefs.” But “Evangelism-in-Depth,” according to Dr. W. Dayton Roberts, associate director of the Latin America Mission and a United Presbyterian minister, has as its aim not to take the place of the work being done by churches but to help churches do their work. In Latin America this movement receives the cooperation of churches that belong to the ecumenical movement and of churches that do not. Here “evangelicalism” transcends mere “ecumenism,” giving to the word “ecumenical” a very dynamic meaning. It is a striking example of unity in mission, and in mission that is not merely bureaucratic proclamation but grassroots action.
It would be embarrassing to single out individuals, groups, and churches that are dedicated to luminous and dynamic evangelistic effort of this kind. Suffice it to say that in all cases an understanding of the Gospel as involving what God has done for man, what God can do in man, and what man must do for God in the interest of his fellow man, leads people of the most diverse background to adopt the incarnational principle. In other words, those engaged in evangelistic effort identify themselves completely with the people whom they want to influence. They thereby win a right to be heard by these people, because of the qualities the latter have learned to admire in these persons identified with their life and environment.
To illustrate the “incarnational” approach in the interest of Christ and the Gospel, let me say this: In the realm of journalism there are magazines produced by conservative evangelicals that present the Christian faith, with relevance to contemporary issues, in more compelling literary style, with more communicative capacity, and with a wider circulation than do the products of circles committed to the ecumenical movement. This is a very remarkable achievement. In order not to be embarrassing, I mention only one example, Decision, which has a circulation today of more than three million copies a month and whose editor is a United Presbyterian minister.
Conservative evangelicals have little use for those in their ranks who are fanatically anti-ecumenical or for whom evangelical ideas become a mere badge, ostentatiously displayed or vociferously proclaimed. For the truth is, in some conservative evangelical circles there is found what might be described as evangelical pharisaism. Sound ideas become subtle idols; they take the place of the divine realities that the ideas are designed to express. This cult of the badge with its crusading anti-ecumenism can lead and does lead to evangelical sterility. But those related to the ecumenical movement should beware of identifying such people with the core of conservative evangelicalism. They should also be on the lookout for any similar fanaticism in their own ranks, and of any trend toward mere negativism in their approach to conservative evangelicals.
Things are happening today in the two groups we have been considering that give great promise and stir high hopes. In a very quiet way, distinguished figures in the ecumenical movement and in the conservative evangelical ranks meet from time to time. Without any fanfare or publicity, they come together to consider the differences that divide them and the spirit and goal that should inspire their common devotion. Of great significance in this regard is the article entitled “The Conservative Evangelicals and the World Council of Churches,” written by Eugene L. Smith and published in the January, 1963, issue of the Ecumenical Review. Dr. Smith, a leading Methodist churchman and a major ecumenical leader, represents in his person and spirit very much of what is best in “ecumenism” and “evangelicalism.”
May I close by referring to two moving experiences that came to me last March in California. It was my privilege to address a meeting in San Francisco that took place at the social headquarters of the Sixth Army. The audience was composed of area secretaries of Young Life and their wives. In the chair was the general of the Sixth Army, a devout Roman Catholic layman. How did it happen that a man of his eminence and background should preside at a gathering of that kind? The reason was this: Some years ago, while the general was on duty in West Germany, his son and daughter came under the influence of Young Life, and their lives were completely transformed. The father was so impressed by what happened to his two teen-agers, one of whom is now studying at the United States Military Academy at West Point, that he himself became a devotee of the Young Life fellowship.
The following day, I had lunch with the Pentecostalist, David du Plessis, a dear friend of many years whom it had been my privilege to introduce to the ecumenical movement. He told me of his recent experience at the Second Vatican Council. He had been invited by leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to attend that gathering at their expense. Several times during the council sessions, he met with a group of bishops and cardinals in whose life and outlook the “ecumenical” and the “evangelical” had become fused and who wanted to learn from their guest about the Pentecostal movement in the world of today.
Something is clearly happening at what have been traditionally regarded as two polar extremes, the Roman Catholic Church and the Pentecostal movement. Today the Roman church is becoming more evangelical, and the Pentecostal movement more ecumenical. Between the two is the great complex of Protestant churches dedicated to the ecumenical movement, to one of which I myself belong. Let these churches, and my own beloved church in particular, become aware that much that is significant for Christianity’s future in the world can Ire learned from conservative evangelicals, and not least from a maturing Pentecostalism.
