Uneasy Pause in the Big Merger

After confusion and hesitation, the ninety-two delegates to last month’s Consultation on Church Union decided to start writing a “Plan of Union” under which 25 million Protestants would unite.

Although they met in historic territory at Cambridge, Massachusetts, COCU conferees made no historic progress on the meeting’s major topic—church organization.

Last year at Dallas, COCU had ratified four chapters of “principles”—on faith, worship, sacraments, and ministry; the 1967 session was to approve similar principles on structure. But the resulting commission on structure decided that more “exploratory discussion” was needed. It scrapped an “appendix” on structure passed at Dallas and started over again. The result was fifteen pages of sociological generalities on mission (“Our world is a rapidly changing world”), eight “guidelines” on structure, and eighteen questions that went unanswered at Cambridge.

The Methodists, in particular, wanted to shift out of neutral gear and decide on enough specifics to form a fifth chapter, on structure principles. Without it, theologian Albert Outler feared “undue flexibility,” a “hidden agenda,” and difficulty in explaining COCU to the grass roots. Episcopal ecumenical officer Peter Day replied that “we came here expecting to write such a chapter” but that apparently it was “unwritable,” and COCU had “no content to put into such a chapter.”

COCU finally voted to make another try at writing a structure chapter, using a revised version of “guidelines” from this year’s report. The “guidelines,” also to be used for the plan of union, provide that united church structures be:

Determined by functional usefulness; flexible; in many forms; inclusive of racial and ethnic minorities; comprehensive in mission; balanced between “freedom and order”; and related to non-COCU Christians in the United States and in other nations. Policies set by democratically chosen clergy and laity would be administered by designated officers.

There were fewer closed meetings at Cambridge than at Dallas, leading cynics among the five dozen reporters to assume that not much was really happening. The only excitement was provided by Carl McIntire’s band of fundamentalist pickets, and a profane Ascension Day observance by students at the host institution, Episcopal Theological School. As COCU delegates emerged from their final meeting, the seminarians handed out leaflets advertising, “See Christ ascend before your eyes.” At the appropriate hour, amid chants of “Go Jesus, Go,” a gas-filled balloon dummy was released and floated away.

The second major decision at Cambridge—for immediate work toward the plan of union and “church renewal”—caused a flurry of concern because only four of the ten COCU denominations have explicit authority to negotiate a union plan. The Methodist Church will vote on such authority in May, 1968. The Episcopal Church is to decide this September, and Chicago’s Bishop G. Francis Burrill warned that a COCU order for merger-writing “might accentuate anxieties that already exist.” He lost the bid to consider “home consumption” as well as ecumenical zeal. “Immediate” plan-writing was ordered, but COCU revised the Dallas document on “Steps and Stages Toward a United Church” to say it “anticipates” writing a plan of union. The 1966 version said COCU “is now beginning” work on the plan.

Whether a sign of escalation or of lethargy, the specific timetable for merger in last year’s version of “Steps and Stages” was obscured. The “four to ten years” for preparing the plan of union was reduced to a footnote. The “one to three years” for unification of membership and ministry was eliminated altogether (an omission that was not pointed out on the floor). And the specific “generation or more” until the final constitution is adopted was removed by amendment.

Groups besides the Methodists and Episcopalians without authority to write a merger plan are four newcomers: three Negro Methodist bodies (African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, and Christian Methodist Episcopal) and the “Southern” Presbyterians, who just joined COCU in 1966 and will debate whether to pull out at their assembly next month.

As now described, the plan of union will not be an imposing document. Muscular COCU Chairman David G. Colwell, a United Church of Christ pastor in Washington, D. C., said the plan will be kept to an “absolute minimum,” setting up “some kind of structure to receive the new church” and procedures for uniting membership and ministry.

Despite Methodist desires, it is unclear how much will be settled on structure before the union. William Phelps Thompson, attending his first meeting as stated clerk of the United Presbyterians, admitted displeasure with the strategy of his predecessor, COCU proponent Eugene Carson Blake, now chief executive of the World Council of Churches. Lawyer Thompson would prefer “a detailed constitution to be voted on by each denomination before we unite” but is willing to go along with COCU’s previous agreement that specifics and the constitution will emerge after merger.

Besides working on the union plan and the structure chapter, COCU groups in the coming year will develop an improved agenda and steering procedure for the April, 1968, meeting; collect reactions to the first four chapters of principles; and assemble denominational officials to “encourage and correlate” increasing interdenominational efforts arising out of COCU.

At the national level and in certain cities, churchmen are moving faster than COCU itself. Foreign missions, health and welfare, publications, and Christian education officials meet regularly. Four pension boards have already agreed to continue a clergyman’s retirement plan if he takes a post in another COCU denomination. The Episcopal Church, United Presbyterian Church, and United Church of Christ are on the verge of uniting their inner-city work.

With all this informal action, why the apparent slow-up in COCU itself? One theory: a pause until the Episcopal and Methodist decisions. This Colwell denies. An obvious problem is that ten denominations are more complex to handle than the chummy four that started it all in 1962. Even the smoothly oiled Episcopalians sent three different sets of two delegates to the three structure commission meetings in the past year. Also, COCU still has no full-time staff.

One official explanation is that COCU wants to program a “renewal” of church structure, which means taking time to figure out a flexible new style rather than amalgamating ten old organizations. Undoubtedly some thorny issues on structure still remain. With administrators outnumbering theologians two to one in the COCU delegations,The delegations also include few laymen. And the three groups that make up two-thirds of the constituency—Methodist, Episcopal, and United Presbyterian—have only one parish minister among their twenty-seven delegates. structure could well prove more difficult than the relatively facile theological compromises of previous years.

The C.O.C.U. Outsiders

At some point, the Consultation on Church Union will have to cut off new members so it can complete the merger. But for now, COCU still has an open invitation to any outsiders who want to join.

George Beazley, Jr., of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) predicts that two more denominations will enter, perhaps by summer. He mentioned no names, but one is the Reformed Church in America, which sent spokesmen to COCU structure commission meetings and whose interchurch agency will propose COCU participation next month when the RCA also votes on merger with the Southern Presbyterians.

COCU this year institutionalized the “observer-consultants” from non-member denominations. They can speak in both discussion groups and full-dress meetings, and their reactions to documents already passed are sought. The 1967 session drew onlookers from the RCA, American Baptist Convention, Canada’s Anglican and United Churches, Church of the Brethren, Greek Orthodox Church and the Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops, Friends United Meeting, Council of Community Churches, and the Moravian Church (Northern), which has discussed joining COCU.

Also on hand was Monsignor William Baum, ecumenical officer for U. S. Roman Catholics. Commenting on the Dallas “principles,” Baum said “the passages on Scripture and Tradition seem to parallel the position of Roman Catholic theology” and represent a “real convergence” in pan-Christian thought. He said the “excellent statement” on the Eucharist has “delighted” many Catholics, who didn’t realize they had so much common ground with Protestants. As Baum reads the documents, baptism is “an efficacious means of grace.”

But he said Catholics find it easier to deal with world confessional bodies—the Anglican Communion, World Methodist Council, and Lutheran World Federation—than with the emerging network of national union churches. Apart from any doctrinal problems, he said, Rome could not join with a church that was not international.

Curbing Episcopal ‘Lowerarchy’

Tighter central control and a special 1969 meeting to restructure the Episcopal Church will be proposed to the denomination’s triennial General Convention this fall.

The proposal from the Mutual Responsibility Commission would make the presiding bishop (currently John E. Hines) a “canonically established” chief pastor, limited to a twelve-year term. No one has served that long since 1923. The Executive Council would grow in power and “be charged to act on behalf of General Convention.”

Report-writing layman Walker Taylor of the MRC told Newsweek, “The Episcopal Church suffers from too much authority at the bottom. Right now it’s the lowerarchy—the rectors and vestries who run our 7,593 congregations,—not the hierarchy, which is the real church establishment.”

A Creed—If Necessary

The Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) are fighting a Lutheran move to require that denominations cooperating in a Southeast Asian scholarship fund “declare their acceptance of Jesus Christ as divine Lord and Saviour.”

The Christian Churches, who traditionally consider creeds to be divisive and anti-ecumenical and who consider even such a minimal statement a creed, must make similar affirmations for membership in both the National and World Councils of Churches.

The NCC-WCC creed is a price the Disciples have been willing to pay for ecumenism, explained East Asia Secretary Joseph M. Smith. If necessary, he indicated, they would go along with the creedal change in the Foundation for Theological Education in Southeast Asia if that’s the only way the Lutherans can join in.

Smith distinguishes between ecumenical cooperation on the WCC-NCC model and creeds for the Church as such. Thus, Disciples have lobbied against specific belief demands in the Consultation on Church Union, with some success. Recognition of creeds is all right, in Smith’s opinion, but not requirement of them.

He sees some softening of the Disciples’ anti-creed stand because in other denominations, creeds are “no longer used in the literalistic, absolutist way, or as a test. They are used confessionally—the way in which at this time we express our common faith.”

Tongues At Notre Dame

The charismatic movement within the Roman Catholic Church has spread to Notre Dame University. The prayer meetings, including healing services and speaking in tongues, were revealed last month in two campus journals, Scholastic and Observer, and given broader exposure by National Catholic Reporter.

The movement came to South Bend from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, and one recent weekend of prayer meetings at Notre Dame drew forty students from Michigan State University. Three bishops reportedly know about the movement and have no objections.

Father Jerome Wilson, Notre Dame’s vice-president for business affairs, has attended the past five sessions but has not spoken in tongues himself or been able to interpret those who did. Apparent leader of the local movement is Kevin Ranaghan, a graduate student in theology who teaches at nearby St. Mary’s women’s college. Sources said Father Edward O’Connor, a theology teacher, is active in the group, and other priests and teachers have attended.

Says Wilson, “Through the laying on of hands, the Holy Spirit seems to manifest itself with love. And some of the boys seem to have had a genuine gift of tongues.”

Wilson said the meetings have been criticized as too emotional and too traditionalist because they inspire “greater love for the Mass, the Blessed Sacrament, the Rosary—everything that was so much a part of the Church before things started to change.”

Canadian Merger: Rocky Voyage

When the joint union commission of Canada’s Anglican and United churches held its first meeting recently, a “smooth, pleasant, unrushed voyage” toward merger was predicted, even though it may take twenty years to reach the distant shore.

That long voyage, however, may prove to be anything but smooth and pleasant. This month, Canadian Churchman, the Anglican paper, regretted that the commission delegation includes “no member who can be considered an authentic representative of those Anglicans who generally fear and oppose” union. The editorial coincided with the announcement that Churchman Editor A. Gordon Baker will resign and return to the parish ministry.

The United Church Observer, recognizing the absence of loyal opposition, took an iconoclastic view of the unity session: “A discouraging word was not heard, and the skies remained uncloudy all day.” Only those afflicted with ecumenical blindness could fail to see the problems ahead.

Lacking an outlet within the union commission, Anglican opponents are forming such groups as “The Council for the Defense of the Faith.” This ad hoc group from five Ontario dioceses is headed by D. C. Masters, history professor at the University of Guelph, and C. J. de Catanzaro, former professor of Hebrew at Trinity College, Toronto.

The council says that the “Principles of Union” passed by both denominations as the basis for merger are “theologically insufficient, particularly in that they do not commit the proposed ‘new embodiment’ to the faith of the creeds and the councils as binding and authoritative for all its members.”

A declaration sent out for signatures to all clergy and lay members of the Anglican Church will be forwarded to church authorities. The document expresses concern over the increasing apathy toward doctrine, discipline, and worship as spelled out in the Prayer Book; man-centered worship; and attacks on basic doctrines by church officials. The declaration also renounces the “new theology” and the “new morality” as heretical. It holds to the inspiration of Scripture; the creeds as binding on clergy and laity; the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion; and a threefold apostolic ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, with emphasis on the priesthood of the laity.

Two strong elements within the Anglican Church are now coming into open opposition. One is the Anglo-Catholics, who feel closer to Rome with its emphasis on the creeds, sacraments, and apostolic succession and want no part of the radical humanistic theology surfacing in the United Church. The second group, the evangelical Anglicans, are drawn into the fray for different reasons. They are on the increase within their denomination, but they feel that a giant merger would substantially muffle their voice and thwart their plans for evangelism.

The Pope And Portugal

No political motive should be attached to Pope Paul’s going to the Fatima shrine, according to Msgr. Fausto Vallainc, Vatican press officer. Newsmen asked Vallainc on the eve of the pontiff’s departure for Portugal whether the trip might have adverse effects in Africa (Portugal is the only European nation that still maintains extensive colonies in Africa). The press officer said newspaper reports that saw in the trip any purpose beyond the promotion of peace were “distorting” the Pope’s intentions. He denied that the journey is intended to indicate approval of any political regime or to pacify persons who are discontented with Paul’s recent encyclical on economic and social concerns.

The Canadian Anglican Evangelical Fellowship, formed in 1961, now has nearly 400 members and is headed by Archdeacon Desmond Hunt of Kingston, Ontario. Hunt says that evangelicals are always ready to go into union on the basis of cooperation but that “we are worried about with whom we are uniting. Union with the Presbyterians would be easier.”

In Western Canada, Rev. M. A. E. Hardman, of Winnipeg, editor of the Communicator, a journal dedicated to scuttling union, says the “Principles of Union” are impossible. Hardman thinks that “union with the Roman Catholics would be much easier.”

No organized opposition is evidenced within the United Church, but there are rumblings. Former Moderator James R. Mutchmor objects strongly to episcopal government, and he is supported by others who would like to see a federation of churches. Many liberals in the United Church want a modified form of the episcopate that would give bishops less authority. They do not want to be tied to the creeds or to the Prayer Book, which dominates worship in the Anglican Church.

Evangelicals in the United Church have a closer relation with the Anglican evangelicals than with the liberals in their own church and are now organizing on a basis like that of the Anglican Fellowship. The United Church Renewal Fellowship will probably not oppose union with the Anglicans. Many feel that union would impede radical theology and strengthen their own foundations of biblical authority. One fear exists: that the final draft on union may place a heavy accent on liturgies and the traditional episcopacy, which would bring both churches closer to Rome. Principal Leslie Hunt of Wycliffe College, chairman of the evangelism committee of the Canadian Council of Churches, feels that a purge is coming in both churches in the wake of radical theology and that evangelicals will have to stand firm and identify themselves. On union, Hunt said that “theologically, there is nothing much to come and go on today because in the United Church it seems that you are at liberty to believe anything.”

The U.S. Consultation on Church Union (see page 38) looks longingly at the Canadian churches, whose entry would strengthen and internationalize their merger effort. But the Canadians’ own two-way troubles are likely to prevent further ecumenical adventures.

J. BERKLEY REYNOLDS

West Indies: Ecumenical Seminary

After three strikes by construction workers, the ten-denomination United Theological College of the West Indies finally dedicated a $620,000 headquarters last month. The seven-acre campus in Kingston, Jamaica, overlooks a river and is adjacent to the large University of the West Indies.

In the dedicatory sermon, Overseas Secretary E. H. Johnson of the Canadian Presbyterians said, “I cannot think of any group that brings together as wide a range of denominations and regional backgrounds.”

Seminary President Wilfred Scopes, who served thirty-five years in India with the London Missionary Society, says the ecumenical movement has “bypassed” the West Indies but has been speeded up by political independence in the islands. He hopes his school will further the process.

The seminary is an amalgamation of Jamaica’s St. Peter’s Theological College (Anglican), Calabar Theological College (Baptist), and Union Theological Seminary (itself a merger from seven denominations). In close cooperation is Codrington College on Barbados, which maintains quaint traditions and excellent academic standards.

The United Theological College has twelve teachers and fifty-eight students (including twenty-one Methodists and fourteen Baptists). The theological stance is quite inclusive. Although the cooperating groups reserve the right to teach denominational distinctives, only Baptists and Anglicans are holding additional classes, and very few of them.

Scopes holds that “it is important to see salvation in three ways”: personal conversion to Christ, conversion to the Church, and witness to the world. Overemphasis on any one creates “a distorted and unbalanced Gospel,” he says.

Evangelical leaders do not appear to be warming up to the idea of the new seminary. One commented, “All the churches will never be united. If the formal churches join, then I foresee that some of the other churches may get together as a counter-move, and some others may even become more exclusive than before.”

Another evangelical said the denominations are not usually interested in mass evangelism. But efforts in that direction by such North American visitors as Leighton Ford and Tom Skinner have done much to spur broad cooperation among grass-roots churches that maintain separatist attitudes.

BILLY HALL

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