American Ecumenism at the Crossroads

In an old hotel in Oxford, England, four churchmen sat at a table one evening, sipping tea and discussing the essence of divine revelation. Among them were William Temple and John R. Mott, both of whom profoundly understood and influenced modern Christendom. Mott is said to have suggested that they had touched upon the crucial problem besetting all ecumenical gatherings. As they talked into the night, they agreed “that the nature of the Christian revelation was the one rock on which the ecumenical movement stood always in danger of foundering.”

That incident in 1937 is recalled by David P. Gaines, the most exhaustive chronicler of the ecumenical movement, as he identifies revelation as the source of the churches’ “deepest difference.”

“Would Christians ever learn that they could be ‘together in one accord’?” he asks. “Not until they approached one another in a true knowledge of the nature of the Christian revelation.”

Though seldom formally confronted, the problem mars the ecumenical vision today more than ever, and it heads a long list of reasons why the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U. S. A., the most ambitious experiment in inclusivism in American church history, has been foundering.

The current plight of the twenty-year-old NCC is worth examining by every concerned pastor and layman, whether or not he belongs to a constituent communion. For in the factors that led to the council’s predicament lie crucial lessons for all believers. As Christians realize increasingly that they cannot go it alone, that they must depend upon one another, indeed that they must work together if they are to obey the heavenly vision, the sorry condition of the conciliar movement in America must be brought into sharper focus. The motives of those most deeply involved need not be impugned, but the NCC’s basic faults have been ignored far too long.

Examination is also a service to the conciliar movement itself, because the architects of the proposed new conciliarism seem unable or unwilling to come to grips with the real issues. They have tended to shrug off evangelical anxieties as special-interest, right-wing polemic undeserving of serious consideration. Ecumenists sometimes say that to understand the council is to love it, that most anxieties are attributable to mere lack of information. To follow its doings and to comprehend its workings, however, is to see how far short of authentic ecumenicity it has fallen. Its neglect of evangelicals and others shows it has never really been ecumenical.

The NCC’s first and continuing slogan is, nobly enough, “this nation under God,” and its announced goal has been “more fully to manifest unity in Jesus Christ as Divine Lord and Savior.” Why, then, has it failed to achieve and promote true unity? How did it get off course? What has hindered it from gaining more respect from evangelicals?

Ncc Failures

Public acknowledgment that the NCC was in deep trouble came a year ago in Detroit at the council’s eighth General Assembly. Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, general secretary of the NCC, spoke in his official report of “an intensified polarization among Christians” and a “shaking of the foundations” in ecumenical structures. He recited a long list of NCC successes but also recounted its failures with unprecedented candor. “The National Council is about where its member churches are on evangelism, which is in a state of confusion,” he said. “In the field of theology, despite good work … there has been little overall cohesive impact. We have not made a decisive contribution or tackled the problem head-on.” He cited also a “yawning gap between the National Council and the people of the Churches,” and conceded that “any effort to grapple with the underlying questions of the National Council’s role is fraught with doctrinal difficulties and political dangers.”

Espy’s conclusion was that conciliar Christianity “can rise to the challenge of the great issues which now grip our society and the great potentialities which now well up in our churches only by unfurling rather than trimming sail, by going forward rather than drifting backward.” He suggested that the National Council be reorganized and enlarged and that its ministries be so worked out that church and non-church groups could unite behind and support any of the council’s programs that interested them. Those interested in social action, for example, could tie in at that point with no obligation to work at something else such as evangelism.

The assembly weighed Espy’s idea against a wild and revolutionary backdrop. All week long the meeting was subjected to disruptions and take-overs. Radicals went from one tirade to another. Council sessions came close to anarchy and sheer pandemonium. For nineteen years the NCC had catered to the left—only to have a new left spew venom on it.

Three Central Concerns

Implementation of the restructuring idea fell to the NCC’s 250-member General Board, which meets three times a year and is made up of representatives of all thirty-three constituent denominations. The board appointed a fifteen-member task force to study the options open to the council. In its initial report (presented at the board’s June 20–21 meeting) the task force drew attention to three central concerns about which churchmen differ sharply: unity, action-oriented engagement, and renewal.

Two extreme positions on unity were cited: some feel there must be organizational unity by those who can agree on what the mission of the Church is, “at the expense of driving other member churches out of the unity”; others feel the churches should do together whatever there is a willingness to do but not do together “those things which will drive churches out of the unity.” Between these stood perplexed and more moderate or mediating churches and churchmen.

In presenting the second major concern, action-oriented engagement, the task force pointed out that “whether the churches … ought to be engaging in social action programs designed to produce change in the social and political structures of our common life” is one of the most controversial issues in the churches today. “The urgency American society is under at the present time to achieve justice for its minority groups, especially the black community, has its manifestation in the life of the church in a demanding conviction that the church makes social justice its over-arching priority, at the expense of almost anything else.”

About the third major concern, church renewal, the report said strong convictions exist “that the churches should confine or concentrate their resources and their work to … programs designed to result in the renewal of the church’s own internal life.… Evangelism, stewardship, Christian education, liturgical renewal and missionary outreach have been some of the traditional programs which have been central when church renewal has been given priority. Now social justice must be recognized as another means to the accomplishment of renewal, and some would say it is the indispensable if not the only means.”

The task force further stated that the NCC as a conciliar structure has four principal functions: (1) forum function (exploring subjects and promoting dialogue); (2) advocacy function (taking stands and following through on matters of social concern about which even Christians disagree); (3) facilitator function (gathering, storing, and distributing information); (4) program operation function (centralizing in the NCC “the management of joint program operations”).

The task force then presented four plans for restructuring the NCC and specified in some detail what a successor ecumenical organization might look like, how it would function, and what its concerns would be.

Option C (number 3) can be disposed of quite quickly. This plan would provide for The Churches United for Justice, a “radical departure from the NCC as it is presently constituted.” The primary concern of the organization would be social justice, “affirming a responsibility for all facets of human existence.” The plan would limit membership to “denominations who believe one of the primary thrusts of Christianity lies in the social sphere. It also requires its member churches to relinquish control over the use of their monetary gifts (all gifts must be made undesignated).” This option can hardly be taken seriously. It would encourage a thoroughgoing secularization of the churches and the end, ultimately, of any genuine spiritual ministry that envisages salvation now and in the world to come.

Under Option D (number 4) there would be A National Council of Churches with a Strong Centralized General Board. This would provide for development of an ecclesiastical machine with enormous power to determine what it should do and then do it. “This option places a high premium on undesignated giving to the General Board.” In effect it would create a super group not really answerable to the member churches, though they would foot the bills. The report did say that “funding remains a big problem for any NCC structure based upon a strong General Board.” This option has in it the seeds of autocracy and dictatorship and runs counter to democratic principles, under which the people have the right to know how their money is being spent as well as the right to “throw the rascals out.”

The Mildest Plan

Option B (number 2) proposed A National Conference of Churches designed to carry forward “the basic purpose set forth in the present preamble to the Constitution of NCCCUSA.” Conference membership would be limited to church communions, and Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and other ecumenically minded churches would be encouraged to join. But all member churches would be able to “refrain from supporting and participating in some of the organization’s program agencies or other activities.” The plan would encourage voting participation in program agencies (but not in conference-wide matters) by Canadian and U. S. non-member churches and para-ecclesiastical bodies (e.g., the American Bible Society and the National Committee of Black Churchmen). Assuming the continued fragmentation of the churches and the continuing financial problems of an overall organization, this option supposes that authority, power, and funding would be decentralized. In general it might increase the number of member churches. It would diminish the role of the General Board. But it would be little more than a face-lifting job; the new body would be essentially the old NCC with a new name, free perhaps of some of the stigma now attached to the council.

Option A (number 1) would be A Comprehensive Multiform Conciliar Complex to Facilitate Ecumenical Witness and Action by All U. S. Churches and Para-Ecclesiastical Bodies. The NCC and the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops would jointly offer this option to all U. S. communions and to religious organizations such as the American Bible Society and the YWCA. These communions and groups would be eligible for membership in any or all parts of the complex “provided they participate in and support the General Assembly and its staff, called the General Secretariat.” Participation in the General Ecumenical Assembly “will carry with it a commitment to accept and pay the pro rata apportioned costs and expenses of the General Assembly and the General Secretariat.” This would be aimed at solving the funding problem. There would be “five self-governing, self-sustaining ecumenical agencies” and a “larger number of self-governing, self-sustaining consortia, each specifically linked to one or more of the ecumenical agencies.” The purpose would be “to further the unity, mission and renewal of the churches in the United States.”

Option A has the appearance of a catch-all to gather in as many denominations and religious groups as possible. It might solve the recurring financial problems. And it would give members the privilege of choosing which of the various ecumenical agencies they wanted to support.

The Next Step

Now the task force says that the outline of options has served its purpose and that work must begin on an actual model. Polls and discussions (very limited in scope) showed that options A and B were the most popular, so whatever new organization emerges will presumably be a blend of these but will include some of the assumptions in option C also. Option D apparently did not engender much enthusiasm.

At the most recent meeting of the General Board, the task force tried to break loose from the concept of keeping unity and mission in tension, each as a primary objective. The task-force report drafted at that meeting declared: “The data convinces us that the churches have established the fact that mission has an indisputable basic claim upon our common life and that at the very least mission is first among equals and therefore must be given the primary position.” Objections to this position were raised from the floor, most notably by Dr. Eugene Smith, North America secretary for the World Council of Churches, who succeeded in getting the statement deleted. It had been included in a paragraph entitled “The Primacy of Mission” that was subsequently replaced by a paragraph of in-group jargon called “The Claim of Mission”; the new paragraph in effect continues the concept of keeping the two objectives in tension.

Several other principles got by the board without change, but with the understanding that they represented only “the first in what must become a series of navigational assessments.…” A decentralized agency is envisaged, with limited coordinating authority. Ultimate voting power is to be restricted to delegates from denominations; religious organizations will participate on a limited basis. Flexibility is recognized as essential, so much so that the agency’s program is seen as “chiefly, if not exclusively, catalytic and experimental in nature. Adequate provision for the spinning off of continuing programs should be made. Flexibility both in patterns of operation and areas of concern would be essential.”

The task force has worked hard and exhibited some commendable insights. Significantly, however, it has seen its mandate from the board as merely sensing what “stakeholders” in a future ecumenical agency will want, rather than trying to determine what would be best for them to have. This is a serious impediment, inasmuch as the only “stakeholders” who can be identified with any certainty are churchmen of the present NCC constituency. Informal meetings are being conducted with chief officers of some non-NCC communions, but these have not progressed far enough to provide any guidance for the task force. The result is that the task force has failed to identify the basic problems of the NCC as seen from the outside, and has ended up working on a new model that bears a striking resemblance to the old. Looking over their reports, one gets the impression that they tried to get around the weaknesses in the present organization rather than correct them. They have offered alternatives rather than solutions, have in part bowed to expedience rather than experience, and have tended to emphasize the economical over the ecumenical.

What are the basic defects of the National Council? Where has it gone off course?

As David Gaines has observed, revelation is the substantive underlying issue. The inclusivist apologetic continues to appeal to Scripture as if the propositional view of revelation were still the prevailing norm. Much of what passes for Christian thinking today, however, rejects that view, and conciliar ecumenism has made no official distinctions at this point. The ecumenical umbrella is available not only to those who hold that revelation consists of truths that can be expressed in statements, but also to those who subscribe to the heilsgeschichtlich view, wherein revelation has its locus not in verbalization but merely in events perceived as divine acts.

But what can be known of God’s will if the orthodox view of Scripture is rejected? Who is to say which acts are divine? Indeed, the whole rationale for the ecumenical movement, historically grounded in Jesus’ prayer “that they all may be one … that the world may believe” (John 17:21), is surrendered when propositional revelation is denied. A non-propositional view of Scripture yields a subjective authority only and a temptation to resort to the Bible only when convenient. Firm conclusions cannot be drawn about Jesus himself, his death and resurrection, his Saviourhood, his Lordship; much less can ethical guidelines relating to the complex questions of our day be deduced. Unless there is agreement on the nature of revelation, Christians cannot talk about the same Christ, and any so-called unity is unreal. Espy in his Detroit proposal laid great stress on Christian obedience, saying that “to be ecumenical in churchmanship is to be obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ.” But how can we obey someone of whom we have no objective knowledge?

A Secular Outlook

Not surprisingly, without the moorings of a solid commitment to biblical revelation the NCC has drifted far off course. By definition it identifies itself as a council of churches, but the vision of the spiritual nature and mission of the Church often seems to have been lost. The council has given itself over almost exclusively to a secularly oriented social dimension of life at the expense of some crucial New Testament themes, such as the kerygma. Amos and James are emphasized at the expense of Moses and Paul. Humanity is thought of exclusively as a group, and the approach to virtually every issue is sociologically impersonal.

At some points, the unity factor is appropriated in behalf of partisan politics, while at others togetherness is regarded as an end in itself. Dr. John A. Mackay, who was one of the leading figures in the ecumenical movement, has written sadly that “now unity is not for mission. Unity is for unity.” He warns that “when unity is equated with institutional oneness and episcopal control, and when both of these are regarded as indispensable for real unity, let this not be forgotten: The most unified ecclesiastical structure in Christian history was the hispanic Catholic church, which was also the most spiritually sterile and the most disastrously fanatical.”

In its operating principles, the National Council plainly excludes the recognition of regeneration as the necessary building block for the reconstruction of society. It implicitly disregards the biblical truth that righteous persons are product of the transforming power of the Spirit of God, made possible by Christ’s atonement. To put it simply, the council expects good deeds from bad men. It does not explain how sinful man can gain a new moral capacity. Individual evil simply is not reckoned with.

The council’s approach is that when environment is improved, people will behave better. This is not articulated explicitly, but the assumption is evident in the council’s whole mood. There is virtually no concern for the problems of individuals, no talk ever of the consequences of personal transgressions, no reliance on prayer or meditation.

Ultimate power, as council leaders see it, lies in the political and economic sphere. And the council’s program and pronouncements invariably lean toward the left, because state control is seen as a panacea. Paul’s preaching at Ephesus motivated men to forsake the purchase of silver for Diana, thus putting the whole market in jeopardy. If current conciliar strategy had been followed, the Ephesian Christians would have passed a resolution calling upon the government to prohibit the sale of silver.

It is no wonder, then, that the council regularly provides a platform for alien gospels. There is constant criticism of the American right but never any warnings about the dangers of a leftward drift. There is also a perpetual thirst for novelty; council leaders take their cues from newspaper headlines, concentrating on a few issues and neglecting most others (little or no study has been devoted to the problems of pollution, traffic safety, drug abuse, pornography, medical ethics, and organized crime).

The NCC’s practice of selectivity in social issues has achieved near notoriety. Repression is denounced in South Africa but not in the Soviet Union. Policemen are denounced for using violence against rioters, but the rioters themselves are excused as having been provoked. Politicians who champion causes the council favors are regarded as courageous heroes; those who take issue are ridiculed and regarded as puppets of special interests. Recently the mood and tone of council reports has been decidedly on the side of radical dissenters, with a call for a minimum of restraint.

Rarely are both sides of an issue presented fairly before the council. Usually soft spots on the left are glossed over, while the right is regarded as repressive, exploitive, and prejudiced. Typical was the council’s public support of the boycott of table grapes—it adopted this position without hearing any arguments from the growers’ side. More than a year after the vote, a grower chided the General Assembly and pleaded his cause, but to no avail. Looking at the New York skyline, one can almost imagine the Interchurch Center tower leaning leftward Pisa-like.

One would expect that with all its social involvement, the council would be considered a paragon of Christian relevance. But a poll taken for the council last year showed that 40 per cent of American adults have never even heard of it. Of those who said they knew of the council, only 55 per cent indicated a generally favorable attitude toward it. Twenty-two per cent of those aware of the council’s existence said they disapproved of it, and the rest had no opinion.

Even young people, who are regarded as having more concern than the older generation with the issues closest to the council’s heart, have had very little to do with the council. The dissolution last year of the University Christian Movement marked the severance of the council’s last official tie with youth organizations. Despite a crash program to involve young people in council affairs, including a shift to weekend board meetings as a special accommodation, only a handful of youth have shown up for the three General Board meetings in 1970.

Popularity, of course, is not necessarily a measure of success. But the council defends its secular orientation on the grounds that it is a creature of its constituent denominations, and that this is what the denominations want. The facts seem to speak otherwise. Denominational support for the council has never been remarkable. Often it is thought that individual Christians are the ones who refuse to support the council because the council runs against their grain. Actually, in the first six months of 1970, undesignated giving to the council from the denominations was down while income from other sources, including individuals, corporations, and foundations, was up. Overall the council is experiencing the most serious financial setback in its twenty-year history. Its 1971 budget will be down at least 10 per cent, or about $2.5 million.

Bias Toward Liberals

One seasoned council observer contends that in most board committees and staff leadership in other top positions, the council is “horribly unrepresentative” of the denominations to which it is supposed to be responsible. Persons on the left seem to get the inside track for strategic appointments, and from these positions they initiate programs and pronouncements. Conservatives, on the other hand, must beg for attention, and their proposals are invariably given to liberals to work over, with distressing results. As a result the council has been totally unresponsive to the concerns of some millions of evangelicals, as many as a third of whom are within the council constituency itself.

Unfortunately, the representation problem seems bound to be carried over into the new agency. The NCC is not really a council of churches as much as it is a council of denominations. The denominations with connectional systems are the ones that are favored; associations of congregations that do not delegate authority to higher levels are pretty well left out in the cold. Under the present system, ecumenical leaders are disinclined to consider the local church as the basic ecclesiastical unit. The representation problem will be aggravated intensely when the Roman Catholic Church and the forthcoming “Church of Christ Uniting” (COCU) are brought in.

Furthermore, the council has a huge credibility gap. It says it doesn’t lobby, but it does. It says it doesn’t theologize, but it does. It lays claims to objectivity, yet invites to its general assemblies President Kennedy and Vice-President Humphrey, but not Eisenhower or Nixon.

Council leaders never appear able to admit they are ever wrong. Not infrequently they get all the political mileage they can out of a statement through publicity and distribution, then say it is just for study (opposing views apparently do not warrant study).

There is an unwillingness to see that social problems have more than one answer. Because men are human and differ widely, because they embody varying mixtures of good and bad, it is often impossible to say what the one right answer to a social problem is. Often the issues are so complex that the Christian simply must do something rather than nothing. But the council insists repeatedly that one course of action (often simplistic) is the only legitimate Christian response in a particular problem area, despite advice from dissenting believers who are experts in the field. An especially appropriate Scripture passage is Ezekiel 22, where the prophet, a social critic if there ever was one, warns against attributing something to God that isn’t and making “no distinction between the holy and common.” He speaks of prophets who say, “ ‘Thus says the Lord GOD,’ when the LORD has not spoken.”

All in all, the National Council of Churches has alienated and polarized American Christians instead of bringing them together. It has raised more questions than it has answered. It has not promoted Christian fellowship or apologetics, nor has it made any substantial impact upon American culture from a biblical standpoint. There is no evidence to suggest that its influence has produced more believers than disbelievers. For conservatives who have tried earnestly to work with the council rather than abandoning it, the result has been near frustration. One lay member of a prominent General Board delegation said recently that he was quitting because he had “had it up to here.”

It is probably not the fault of present NCC leadership that evangelicals are usually excluded. For one thing, evangelicals have seldom made any conscientious effort to get in on the decision-making process, and sometimes those who have begun to do so have succumbed to ecumenical propaganda and have wound up yielding their distinctives. Also, exclusion of evangelicals is probably more than anything a carryover from the days when they were looked upon as obscurantist and lacking in social conscience, as well as numerically insignificant. Now, however, there are many millions of them, and their vitality in both the intellectual and the social arena is well attested (most recently by Roman Catholic scholar Kilian McDonnell, who in a Commonweal article chides the attitude of condescension toward evangelicals).

Now, presumably, evangelicals have an opportunity to assume their first important role in the American inclusivist drama. Whether they accept the invitation will depend largely on how revelation is regarded in the forthcoming ecumenical agency. But the decision will also be affected by the extent to which past NCC biases are conceded and transcended. There is as yet no evidence of any intention to make crucial course corrections.

More needs to be said about the possibilities as well as the limitations of Christian cooperation on the North American continent. One can create a kind of unity of tying together all the tomcats in the neighborhood by their tails, but what they have in common isn’t worth talking about. Mere organizational unity is not necessarily a Christian achievement. There can be infighting so intensive that it is more of an offense to the unbeliever than conflict among separate organizations would be. On the other hand, unity for mission can be and has been exploited by special interests that appropriate corporate strength for the advancement of dubious causes. Christians owe God a better kind of togetherness.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.