Is Ecumenism Running Out of Fuel?

Behind the continuing rah-rah façade of the ecumenical movement things look something less than cheery. Even avid disciples of the ecumenical ideal now concede a darkening picture. The drive to unify Christendom on an organic, worldly scale has bogged down.

“At the moment the drive, in this country at least, seems stalled and plagued with uncertainty,” says William MacKaye in the Washington Post.

Methodist theologian Albert Outler’s analogy of the mood is more graphic, if somewhat indelicate. “It’s a feeling that the movement is a kind of ecclesiastical coitus interruptus,” Newsweek quotes him as saying.

Perhaps at long last the ecumenists are facing up to hard realities, realizing that true Christian oneness can be built neither upon sentiment nor upon subjectivity. And they are increasingly embarrassed by the mawkish overkill that has assessed virtually every ecclesiastical development solely on the basis of whether or not it furthered an ambiguous ecumenicity.

Yet ecumenically oriented Christianity still shows no signs of correcting its insensitivity toward theological affirmation and its preoccupation with particulars in the social sphere to the neglect of scripturally revealed truths and principles. The good judgment of countless devout Christians continues to be brought under open or implicit rebuke while the rampant theological skepticism of influential ecclesiastical figures goes unchallenged. Church bureaucrats float from one perspective to another, drifting with the headlines, never anchoring long enough to make a dynamic difference or to arrest the enduring interest of the laity.

Lack of potent theological “fuel” to empower the ship Oikoumene is as much the conciliar movement’s problem as the shallow waters in which that vessel seeks to sail. Now that social action has failed to provide an adequate dynamic, some activists are hopefully seizing upon “renewal” as a reactivating force to push ecumenism ahead. Since everyone from Pentecostals to Unitarians senses the need for church renewal, this is seen as an especially appealing concept.

Where do the evangelicals stand in all this? Certainly they have little reason for self-content. MacKaye asserts that “the anti-ecumenical drive of the New Evangelicals” is making no headway. This judgment somewhat overstates the case, though in some respects it is correct. For one thing, the evangelical drive is better characterized as para-ecumenical rather than “anti-ecumenical.” It both permeates the conciliar movement and exists beside and above it. But evangelicals are indeed lagging in top-echelon denominational influence, and not because they prefer it so. As Harvey Cox notes in The Secular City, social-activist clergymen “have moved into key positions in churches, seminaries, and city-mission structures.” Anti-evangelical spokesmen are often entrenched in major ecumenical posts, and they welcome evangelical participation only within an avowedly pluralistic dialogue.

Evangelical anxiety about the nature and desirability of the ecumenical movement as now constituted is surely not grounded in a distaste for Christian togetherness itself. CHRISTIANITY TODAY has consistently stood for oneness among like-minded believers. “Principles of Christian Unity,” which appeared in the January 29, 1965, issue as editorial policy, included an appeal for union among churches whose existence derives only from sociological, racial, or cultural differences. It also urged that churches whose separate existence is grounded in basic theological differences of faith and order should seek to resolve these differences.

But as long as theological skepticism finds a sounding board in the conciliar ecumenical movement, and ecclesiastical energies are concentrated on debatable concerns while the prime spiritual and moral task of the Church is neglected, evangelicals will find there neither a comfortable home nor peace of mind and conscience.

One of the most curious aspects of today’s Church in the Western world is that it has no formidable foes on the outside. All the troublesome skeptics are inside. They fight the Church with the Church’s own resources. More and more the question seems to be one of faith versus skepticism. Jesus asked, “When the Son of Man cometh, will he find faith?” Is the Church he founded going to stand for something or isn’t it? Inasmuch as the Church’s mandate and mission, clearly given in its New Testament charter, are now routinely violated, is the institutional church any longer of a mind to hear and listen to its legitimate Head? What would Jesus have said to the 1966 Geneva meeting or the 1967 Detroit conference? Suppose he should appear at Uppsala?

Ideologically barren ecumenists in search of fuel will find the ultimate in the New Testament. Indeed, those true to Christ’s Word have found that they become one in the best sense when they work together for the Gospel. The most memorable examples of ecumenicity have been found in common spiritual causes.

Evangelicals worked together in hundreds of city missions, ministering to the underprivileged and distraught, long before ecumenists discovered the challenge of the inner city. Denominational missionary boards know all too well that most of their recruits have been and still are theologically conservative. Christians in North America and abroad have now for nearly two decades found common cause in the Graham crusades in ways that no amount of ecumenical promotion has been able to achieve. Most evangelical education was interdenominational before the current ecumenical emphases in liberal schools. Consider also the many years during which summer Bible camps and conferences have drawn together believers from different streams of Protestantism. The ecumenical movement as such still has nothing to match that dynamic.

Biblical Christianity has a built-in dynamic that ecumenical engineering cannot duplicate. The ecumenical movement has failed to capture the imagination of the Christian laity in any appreciable depth. It is being carried along by the ecclesiastical establishment. History shows that the establishment has never originated any great spiritual movement; it is too much concerned with self-perpetuation of its own leadership. Either it must find enthusiasm among the common people or it fails.

Social activists of the Protestant establishment were at it again in February, picketing Washington to protest American involvement in Viet Nam. They were duly countered by demonstrators from the American Council of Christian Churches, who used the opportunity to put in a good word for present government policy.

It is a significant footnote to church history that both these wings of American Protestantism showed general interest in Viet Nam only after the Communists had made a bid there. By contrast the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which avoids a political role, has been sending missionaries to Viet Nam since 1911. For a long time the Alliance was virtually alone in doing so. Sometimes it paid a dear price, as the recent martyrdoms attest. But today, as a result of these efforts, the Protestant Church in Viet Nam numbers more than 40,000 baptized members (see chart on page 17).

There is little doubt that the struggle in Viet Nam involves complex matters of freedom and human dignity. Those who think these values are best preserved by an end to effective resistance to Communist expansionism seem incredibly naïve. When churchmen publicly take that line, and profess to speak for Christian conscience as such, or for their church constituencies, their presumptuousness needs to be challenged.

But the stance of the well-publicized church movements on Viet Nam confirms the impression that what is most neglected is an evangelical crusade to confront Asian nations with the Gospel of Christ, and with a discerning critique of atheistic Communism as well. The primary task of the churches seems to have become something other than the proclamation of good news. It is reassuring to know that while American churchmen seem less and less interested in the regeneration of men, the Asian Congress of Evangelism, scheduled for Singapore in November, will rally Asian Christians to these spiritual dynamisms that political Christianity in the West so readily ignores.

The Political Priests

… Instead of proclaiming the good news of eternal life, the political priests have allowed themselves to become preoccupied with a social gospel concerned with housing rather than heaven, with race relations rather than salvation.…

This increasing preoccupation of the Church, or at least of a clamorous part of it, with worldly politics has been accompanied, not unexpectedly, by an increasing carelessness about the actual doctrines of Christianity.

Religion … is an assertion about the nature of the universe. If religious doctrines have any validity, there can be nothing approaching them in importance.… An uncommitted spectator might be pardoned for scepticism when he sees clergymen, whose business is the saving of souls for eternity, devoting themselves to the most ephemeral of worldly disputes.

And, when they do turn their attention away from politics and sociology to the small matter of God’s existence, they seem as uncertain, as muddled, as distracted by twentieth-century doubts, as the least resolute of their flock. Only the Anglican Church, perhaps, would tolerate in its pontiffs such quasi-atheism as the Bishop of Woolwich has publicly paraded for the confusion of the faithful; but he has his equivalents in the other Churches.…

If the Church has nothing more than the world to offer, why go to the Church? If the Church provides no escape from the spirit of the times, what help is it? If we want politics, there are politicians and political parties in plenty. If we want philanthropy, there are a multitude of charitable bodies. If we want practical advice, there are counsellors, lawyers, doctors and psychologists.

But these are not what we want. These are the diversions and trivia of the world. They leave us, as they left our remotest ancestors, gazing out uncomforted into the awful darkness. The Church’s function is to bring light into that darkness, to take the sting from death itself, to preach good news which no election manifesto can promise. Anything which hinders, or distracts from, this function is unworthy and a betrayal.

The case for secular involvement is familiar enough. The Church, the argument runs, in order to capture the hearts and minds of twentieth-century men, must be in the forefront of the campaigns which absorb them: campaigns for social and economic equality, for better housing and welfare services, for the advancement of the coloured races. But the argument is a fallacy. For the Church to identify itself with secular causes will inevitably scandalise some of the faithful and deter some waverers, and it can have no compensating advantage unless, sooner or later, it actually brings irreligious people into the religious fold, persuading them to believe in God and to pursue the salvation of their own souls. That this latter result in fact occurs there is no evidence whatever.

The secular causes which most absorb people in any age are exactly those which the Church should examine most suspiciously. A heresy is dangerous in proportion to its popularity, and today’s favourite heresy is the secular gospel, the doctrine of omniscient science, omnipotent welfarism and democracy as the touchstone of all good. Here, therefore, is the enemy. What the Church needs is not compromise with the Zeitgeist but an up-to-date Syllabus of Errors.—ANTHONY LEJEUNE in the Weekend Telegraph, published by the Daily Telegraph, London, England.

The age of innocence in America is past. The acceleration of degeneracy in the public and private lives of Americans shows itself in increasingly bitter disunity and in devil-may-care attitudes toward morality and law. The moral toboggan slide evident in our national life during the past decade leads many observers to speculate that America may have passed her peak and begun to decline as the moral and political leader of the world.

The conflict in Viet Nam—the most unpopular war in our history—has created great disunity and frustration among the populace. A national consensus on America’s role in furthering freedom and opposing tyranny throughout the world is fast evaporating. Sharp disagreements on our responsibility to honor our international commitments and on our means of exercising power have crippled our national will. Debate and dissent over our Viet Nam policy have resulted in acrimonious denunciations, glaring examples of a “credibility gap,” violent demonstrations, and surly defiance of the draft—symptoms of a sick society.

Disrespect for law has been seen further in the race riots that have plagued more than 100 cities during the past four years. Hatred by blacks and whites has spawned violence and destruction. Reason and law have been pushed aside by inflamed men concerned only for their own desires.

Many Americans continue in hot pursuit of materialistic goals and give low priority to spiritual aspirations and eternal purpose. Harvard sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin, who died February 10, frequently predicted the decline of Western civilization because of its preoccupation with materialism. He warned of the dangers inherent in the “sensate” or materialistic way of life and called for a return to “ideational” values based on faith and love. Yet a large proportion of Americans today devote their lives primarily to amassing money and possessions, unaware that in the process they may be losing their souls.

Other examples of degeneration are evident. Crime in the streets has increased so much that it promises to be a major campaign issue in 1968. The incidence of divorce—which William Rickenbacker considers a “frontal attack on society”—continues to mount. The “sexplosion” in America, aided and abetted by a constant flow of salacious visual and verbal stimuli in books, magazines, and movies, is leading more and more people to engage in sexual relations that transgress God’s law and create personal and social problems. Freedom for unmarried women to use “the pill” is promoted more vigorously now than the importance of premarital chastity. Homosexuality is boosted as a socially acceptable way of life—not only by deviates but by leading clergymen and social engineers. Adultery is advocated as a healthful practice by certain psychologists.

Although sexual degeneracy has not overwhelmed the populace, there are signs that it is increasing. A recent issue of the Berkeley Barb, a newspaper published by the avant-garde existing outside the fringes of the University of California campus, contained no fewer than fifty want ads from people seeking homosexual partners and twice that many from males seeking female sex mates. Other advertisements invited couples to participate in Sexual Freedom League orgies and husband-wife swaps. Although such appeals are now found mainly in pornographic publications and a score of “underground” newspapers throughout the country, we may expect this open solicitation of degenerate practices to become more widespread as our sex standards continue to plunge.

If Americans—Christians and non-Christians alike—do not soon repent of their sins of hatred, greed, violence, crime, divorce, and illicit sex—as well as other personal and social sins—turn to God, and live in accordance with his commandments, our decline will inevitably lead to the fall of the American nation.

DANIEL A. POLING

Daniel A. Poling, who died February 7 at the age of 83, was an outstanding leader in an age of mediocre Protestantism. From the early days of his ministry, when he stumped the state of Ohio on a Prohibition ticket, Poling was active in public as well as purely religious affairs. He edited the monthly Christian Herald from 1925 to 1965, was pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York and the Baptist Temple in Philadelphia, served as president of the World Christian Endeavor Union, and presided over the work of Christian Herald Charities, a foundation that directs the Bowery Mission and other projects. In recent years Poling emerged as the catalyst of new interest among evangelical leaders in the Conwell School of Theology, which, under its new program, could become one of the great interdenominational, evangelical seminaries of our day.

At times Poling seemed to divert his efforts to marginal concerns, as when he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Philadelphia to buttress the Republican cause. But he always operated on principles that he felt were grounded in the Gospel. He argued that “the Gospel is first, personal, and always social.” But he added, “The place of the Church is not to change society, but to change men and women who will then do the changing of society.” Poling himself was a changed man. He lived to see others changed and to labor for the transformation of society.

THE CHALLENGE OF SOKA GAKKAI

In a little less than forty years adherents of the Soka Gakkai religion in Japan have increased from zero in 1930 to more than ten million today. Militantly nationalistic after World War II, Soka Gakkai appealed to a new reconstructionist spirit among Japanese youth while waging a vigorous offensive against so-called Western Christianity. The handbook of Soka Gakkai charges Christianity with a lack of logic and power and with outrageous hypocrisy. “Comparatively few in Western countries any longer follow Christ’s teachings; we earnestly believe that we hold the surge of the future for all.” The handbook argues that “Christians adhere to their faith with a head knowledge only.”

There is irony in some of the criticisms of Christianity made by Soka Gakkai. A religion that claims its god is all powerful has some difficulty in explaining the defeat of Japan in World War II (he “was absent from Japan at the very time he was most needed,” says the handbook). And although the religion stresses logic, it seems strangely insensitive to the depth of human sin or the need for a divine initiative in salvation. At the same time, Christians cannot take too lightly the charge that Christ’s followers fail to live morally superior lives. Christians are to shine as lights in the midst of a dark and wayward world. Christ must be seen in them. Soka Gakkai’s success is a challenge to Christians to present tangible evidence of the One who really holds the future, not only in their doctrine, but in their lives.

CHANGE IN THE CHURCH

A survey of three thousand Protestant ministers, reported in McCall’s February issue, revealed the startling difference that exists between the beliefs of younger ministers and those of older ministers. Writer Ardis Whitman stated, “A tide of angry, anxious dissatisfaction with the church washed through the responses of the ministers who came out of the seminary … since World War II. The church will change, they said, because it has to.”

Nearly half of all ministers in their twenties and thirties had seriously considered leaving the ministry. The most common complaint—voiced by 40 per cent of the younger group as against 20 per cent of the oldest—concerned the problem of “relevance.” Firmly committed to social objectives, the younger ministers showed less interest in theology. A majority did not believe in the Virgin Birth or regard Jesus as divine in the traditional sense. While prayer was a “problem” for 20 per cent of the whole sample, “young ministers were three times as likely to find it a problem as the oldest group.” Salvation was not seen as the major task of the Church and “in any case has little to do with the hereafter—if there is a hereafter.”

A change is needed in the Church—but not the kind advocated by many young secular theological rebels. The Church needs to move forward to a new realization of the power of the living Christ, a new respect for biblical authority, a new desire to proclaim the Gospel and serve mankind. Only faithfulness to the message of Christ can unite Christians, young and old, in the world’s greatest mission.

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