COCU On the Shelf

While Memphis, Tennessee, sandbagged its riverfront to keep out the flooding Mississippi, the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), meeting in the city, hastily erected its own form of sandbagging to keep denominations in and keep church union alive. The eleven-year-old COCU, once buoyed by hopes of an early, giant Church of Christ Uniting, took a long, agonizing look at itself and admitted what many had known for some time: most of the local church members in the eight participating denominations The eight are: African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church in the U.S., United Church of Christ, and United Methodist Church. do not want organic union as specified by COCU.

The Plan of Union, presented to the churches in 1970, was rejected by the people, according to a report prepared by a COCU team. (The team studied 8,500 responses to the plan.) The result was a unanimous decision in Memphis to shelve union plans and work on the grassroots level to promote union among local churches instead. There is a “general unreadiness,” said the final COCU resolution, to “accept the organizational structures proposed for a uniting church.”

COCU participants still believe in church union, however—“the focus has merely changed,” said General Secretary Paul A. Crow. “We’re in the midst of a breakthrough. Now local congregations will be able to capture the vision of union—a vision we’ve been living with for eleven years.” Indeed, the radical policy shift will make union more meaningful, Crow believes. “Some styles of union may be passé,” he said, “but I don’t think the idea of a life together in Christ is outdated.”

Under the new localized emphasis (local union will still need a national expression in the form of a united church, Crow insisted), physical unity among the eight churches will take much longer than it would have taken under an imposed plan of union. Crow said interim steps will be taken, among them creation of “generating communities” (local efforts where COCU principles will be put into effect) and “interim eucharistic fellowship” (a Crow-inspired plan for sharing the Lord’s Supper on a regular basis among churches of the participating denominations). In addition, much of the union plan—particularly those parts on faith, worship, and ministry—will be rewritten to bring it into line with local church feelings. Success or failure of COCU may, in fact, depend on the success or failure of these two programs. The generating communities (a limited number will be set up around the country) will test COCU’s theory for two years; study of them will precede further steps, said Crow.

OFF-SEASON TOUCHDOWNS

Thirty-one players from eighteen professional football teams are touring Army bases at military expense as part of Campus Crusade’s Athletes in Action outreach program. The pros play touch football against Army teams, testify at half-time, and engage in personal evangelism around bases.

The Atlanta Falcons and the Detroit Lions lead in representation on the tour (it lasts through June) with five players each.

In one encounter, says a Crusade leader, Dennis Pete of the Denver Broncos told prisoners in the brig at Ft. Bliss, Texas, how he had accepted Christ a few years earlier in a prison cell. Pete went on to give an invitation, and four of the men prayed to receive Christ, asserts the source.

Delegates at the five-day meeting officially ignored last year’s pullout by the United Presbyterian Church (see June 9, 1972 issue, page 40). But in the corridors, the UPC was a prime topic. Said one delegate: “It’s like the family member who went bad. Everyone knows what he did, but no one’s talking about him and no one’s pointing to the empty place at the dinner table.” There was no empty place at COCU’s table, but should the Presbyterians repent (something Crow is cautiously optimistic about), a chair will no doubt be quickly produced. The withdrawal was “a serious matter which caused moments of crisis” said Crow, “but it’s not an issue here any more.”

Racism and the place of the black denominations in a united church dominated discussion. COCU ordered formation of a Commission on Institutional Racism to probe and expose any racism rampant in the structures of either the participating denominations or an eventual united church. The commission is also designed to plan for “compensatory action” for blacks and other minority groups in the new church. Compensatory action was described as “organized, planned calculated efforts to make amends and restore to black people some of the benefits and advantages of life from which they have been unjustly excluded in the churches and society.” Practically, COCU delegates said, it means expanding educational fund-raising drives to include the schools of participating black churches; expanding denominational health-insurance and pension plans to include blacks; provision of staff expertise, loans, and collateral for black church projects; and the purchase of goods from black businesses.

COCU vice-president Charles Spivey, an African Methodist Episcopal minister, warned that union between predominantly black and predominantly white churches will be difficult unless churches accept responsibility for “white racism” in their midst. He asked that black compensation and the defeat of racism be listed as COCU’s number-one priority. The eighty delegates instead named it one of five priorities.

Backing up their determination to work on the racism problem, however, the delegates chose AME bishop Frederick D. Jordan of Hollywood, California, as their first black chairman. He succeeds George G. Beazley, a Disciples of Christ minister who served as chairman for two years. Jordan, a spry man with a salt-and-pepper-gray beard, coyly refused to give reporters his age. He graduated from Garrett Seminary in 1924. Jordan is currently in charge of urban ministries and ecumenical relations for the AME Church and also heads the AME delegation to COCU.

As the COCU plenary session wound down, Memphis was winning its battle with the flood. It remains to be seen whether COCU’s sandbags are as effective.

Canadian Disunity On Union

The Council for the Faith, a militant coalition of Anglo-Catholics and Anglican evangelicals, has rejected the official Plan of Union designed to link the Anglican, United, and Christian (Disciples of Christ) Churches in Canada. Claiming a following of 100,000 of the country’s 1,500,000 Anglicans, the council warned that if union becomes a reality, a “continuing Anglican Church” would be formed.

Union with the United Church would only water down the faith, assert council spokesmen. Another bone of contention is the ordination of women. And creed-conscious Anglo-Catholics insist that the historic creeds must be “believed” and not merely “received,” as stated in the Plan of Union.

Professor Donald Masters of Guelph University, co-chairman of the council, predicts the Plan of Union will be defeated if or when it comes to a vote at the local synod level of the Anglican Church.

LESLIE K. TARR

Canadian Evangelicals: More Than Paper

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) took note of gains during a one-day mini convention in Toronto this month. Six denominations joined, taking advantage of last year’s decision by the EFC to provide for denominational membership (see April 14, 1972, issue, page 37). They are: the 80-congregation Evangelical Free Church, the 873-church Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (100,000 members), the 38-congregation Evangelical Church (4,000 members), the 110-church Christian and Missionary Alliance (18,000 members), the 26-church Brethren in Christ, and the 111-church Free Methodists (5,000 members). Applications are pending for three other denominations. In all, there are nearly sixty organizations and groups in the EFC, as well as hundreds of individual members.

Additionally, the establishment of area chapters and an increase in individual memberships indicate activity in the grass roots, prompting an optimistic prognosis that the nine-year-old EFC is no longer largely a paper organization.

The 600 delegates were told that EFC receipts ($24,000) were nearly double last year’s, and that the establishment of a permanent office with a full-time executive secretary at last appears attainable.

Retiring president Robert Thompson, well-known political and religious figure, called upon the EFC to continue its role as “a unifying fellowship” in a vast land whose citizens are seriously divided.

The president for the next two years is A. Donald MacLeod, 34, a suburban Toronto Presbyterian minister, the youngest person ever elected to the EFC post. Ward Gasque of Regent College in Vancouver (an editor-at-large of CHRISTIANITY TODAY) and William J. Newell of the Christian and Missionary Alliance were elected vice-presidents.

LESLIE K. TARR

No Other Gospel

When the German Protestant Kirchentag meets in Düsseldorf in June, the biggest and most articulate group of evangelicals in Germany will formally boycott it. The Kirchentag (church congress) began after World War II as a nation-wide lay-oriented biennial rally of all German Protestants, primarily state-church people. Early Kirchentag meetings were marked by a concern for Bible study, personal Christianity, and evangelism, but since the 1965 Kirchentag, when German death-of-God publicist Dorothee Sölle was given a prominent place, the emphasis has been on radical theology and political action. This provided part of the impetus for the formation of the “No Other Gospel” evangelical confessional movement in 1966.

Faced with increasing evangelical hostility to the Kirchentag’s tone, Kirchentag leaders had arranged to give evangelicals a place on the program with the explanation, “We need the collaboration of all elements in the church.” But—especially in view of the 1971 Kirchentag, when such slogans as “Marx lives!” were heard and seen—the evangelicals have become increasingly convinced that their cooperation appears to legitimatize the Kirchentag’s claim to represent German Protestantism.

Says “No Other Gospel” spokesman Walter Künneth, explaining the boycott: “It is not the presence of ninety-seven different groups from West Germany … which motivates our rejection, but the absolute lack of a biblical foundation.… The presence of the No Other Gospel movement would make the pluralistic church of today perfect.”

West German Minority

For the first time since the Reformation, Protestant church members make up less than half of the population of West Germany. The figures for 1973 are 29,696,571 Protestants (49 per cent), down 2.2 per cent since 1960, according to the Konfessionskundliches Institut, in Bensheim, West Germany. Roman Catholics make up 44.6 per cent, up 0.5 per cent. Jews are 0.1 per cent, and “others”—primarily people who have left one of the two main churches—are 6.4 per cent, up 1.7 per cent. In the major cities of Hamburg and West Berlin those belonging to no religious group make up 18.1 and 17.1 per cent of the population respectively.

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