COCU Still Struggles for Mainline Church Union

The Consultation on Church Union (COCU), recounting its largely lackluster 20-year history during a national convention in Louisville, Kentucky, last month, nevertheless pledged to continue its painstaking plan to unite 22 million American Protestants into a single denomination.

After four days of blunt discussions, delegates from the ten mainline churches participating in the COCU effort endorsed a scheme that would bind the denominations together in a “covenant” of commitment to each other. The concept of COCU’s “covenant,” an ancient term used to describe God’s special relationship to his people, must now be approved by the ruling assemblies of the ten member churches.

The architects of the plan hope that it will provide a much-needed infusion of vitality and fresh vision for COCU, which has been plagued in recent years by internal disagreements and a flagging passion for ecumenical endeavors among many in American mainline Christianity.

“Living in covenant together would not yet complete the one body we seek,” admitted Gerald F. Moede, a United Methodist minister and general secretary of COCU. “[But] the covenant would give us joints, ligaments, [and] a few sinews to put onto the theological skeleton we have, so the body could take shape.”

In his keynote address to the plenary gathering, Moede assailed both the “resurgence of denominationalism” and the church-growth movement in the United States, arguing that those trends deny the “catholicity” that Christ counseled for his “obedient” church.

“It may well be that groups of like-minded people grow faster,” he said, “but we argue that this growth may well be built on a false foundation, pandering to a consumer mentality, and not on the gospel of Christ, who reconciles and makes one of Jew and Gentile, male and female, black and white.”

But in its effort to erect a Protestant body that is “truly catholic, truly evangelical, and truly reformed,” the COCU planners have been stymied by theological divisions, as well as the more troublesome structural problems emerging from the various understandings of the nature of ordained ministry and ecclesiastical authority. Some of the member churches are administered by bishops, for example, while others prefer the more autonomous, “congregational” tradition.

Still, the most serious obstacle to COCU’s merger plan may be the widening disinterest in such broadly based cooperative Christian efforts. A recent forum of United Methodist bishops placed ecumenism at the bottom of a list of 15 priorities for the church in the coming years. Avery Post, the president of the United Church of Christ, allowed that it is growing increasingly difficult to “find a constituency for the ecumenical movement today.” And Kenneth Teegarden, the chief executive of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), admitted that his denomination “preaches ecumenism with power, but we practice it with reservation.”

Nevertheless, COCU delegates appeared committed to combat the discouraging signs of the times, girding themselves with the words of John Hotchkin, a Roman Catholic ecumenical specialist and an official observer at the COCU convention.

“A cold critic might well send you a telegram congratulating you on your twentieth anniversary and expressing the wish that your next 20 years will be just as happy,” Hotchkin told the delegates. “But much has been accomplished. COCU has never sought to escape or build castles in the sky. You are coming to the brink, and, for God’s sake, you must continue on.”

In Norway’S State Church, A Pastor’S Abortion Protest Has Wide Implications

For the last three years, Børre Knudson, the pastor of a small Norwegian church in Balsfjord, inside the Arctic Circle, has been sending back his paycheck and refusing his duties. It was his protest against Norway’s state policy of granting abortions on demand. The measure narrowly passed Parliament in 1979.

As a pastor in the state church of Norway, Knudson, 43 and the father of five, is a civil servant, hired and paid by the government.

Knudson insists that the abortion law conflicts with Norway’s Christian and moral traditions, and “reflects an incontrovertible clash of values between church and state.” Under it, some 14,000 abortions were performed last year.

To provoke a court test of the “heathen” abortion-on-demand law, Knudson, who is said to be loved by his congregation and respected by fellow clergy in neighboring parishes, not only returned his salary, but also refused to conduct marriages and to maintain the church register (the method by which the Norwegian government keeps its census records).

A case was duly filed against him by the government, and in January it came to trial.

The most prominent testimony on his behalf was delivered by Per Lønning, a noted former bishop who resigned in 1976 to protest a 1975 abortion law. The 1975 measure permitted abortions during the first trimester if “the pregnancy, birth, or care of the child … place the woman into a difficult life situation.” The statute required that a committee of two doctors judge the merits of each application, but most requests were granted, so that soon 23 percent of all pregnancies were aborted.

Lønning argued at the trial that Knudson’s protest paralleled the actions of figures in church history—such as Luther—who opposed church or state regulations in order to save the message of the church.

In an extensive and unanimous opinion, Judge Martin Beer and two other judges exonerated Knudson and ventured beyond the scope of the case to conclude that the abortion law should not have been passed.

The case got front-page coverage in the Norwegian press, receiving mostly negative editorial comment. But the clergy was pleased. Bishop Andreas Aarflot of Oslo, the primate, said the court clearly appeared to support the position the church has taken: that the abortion law conflicts with basic ethical principles. This is one issue on which conservative and liberal pastors see eye to eye.

But just behind the abortion issue lurks the whole question of church-and-state relations. The Lutheran church is bound more closely to the state in Norway than in any other nation. Judge Beer, in his opinion, took a swipe at the increasingly questioned government-controlled status of the church, declaring that the government should have “taken the trouble” to find a substitute for section two of the constitution, which states that the Lutheran creed is the state’s religion.

Most of Norway’s nominally Lutheran citizenry vaguely favors the existing state church system under which the state collects church taxes. Liberal clergymen favor it because they see it as guaranteeing a continuing broad range of theological positions. Most other clergy would like to see the church freed from its ties to a militantly secular government.

Curiously, a number of ardent evangelicals favor the current arrangement for pragmatic reasons. Aligned with mission societies within the Church of Norway, these “personal Christians” (as distinct from nominal church members) reason that they will let the church taxes of the masses take care of church operational expenses, freeing them to channel their offerings to mission causes abroad.

While believers differ on the church-and-state question, they all support Knudson’s stand, which is now being appealed to a higher court and probably will be resolved finally only in the country’s supreme court.

HARRY GENET

With ANBJØRN NEERLAND

Sued For Libel, Anticult Writer’S Life Gets Tough

Life has not been the same for Jack N. Sparks since his book The Mind Benders: A Look at Current Cults (Thomas Nelson) was published in 1977. One group that figured in the book—which calls itself the local church (and insists on a lower case spelling)—decided to assert its claims of conforming to historical Christian teaching by suing Sparks and his publisher.

In June 1980, local churches filed suits against Sparks and Thomas Nelson that totaled more than $37 million.

Since then Sparks has often felt alone and vulnerable as his legal bills have snowballed. He sent letters to acquaintances in May and September of 1981, appealing for financial assistance, but response was meager. This January he again sent out a letter, noting that a bill for $30,000 in lawyers’ fees was due that month, and that an additional $100,000 would fall due in June.

Part of the problem may be that Sparks is himself aligned with a group that has raised questions in some quarters. A former Campus Crusade for Christ staff member, Sparks is part of a cluster of CCCers who withdrew to form a church that would match their ideals. The resulting Evangelical Orthodox Church (EOC) is presided over by Peter E. Gillquist as its bishop and is centered in the Santa Barbara, California, suburb of Isla Vista. The EOC has attempted to build bridges to Eastern Orthodox denominations, and its rigorous shepherding of members is viewed by some as authoritarian. In an interesting twist, Bishop Gillquist’s other hat is that of religious book editor for Thomas Nelson.

Approached by local church lawyers late last year with an out-of-court settlement proposal, Thomas Nelson lawyers refused. The local church had said it would settle for its own legal expenses, which it reckoned at $500,000.

Response to Sparks’s January letter helped him begin catching up with his legal bills, on which he had fallen behind. But he noted that it would take “sustained help” to bring him up to date.

Sparks serves as chancellor of the EOC school, Saint Athanasius’ Academy of Orthodox Theology, and the local churches’ offensive has played havoc with his career. “As of the first of January,” he said, “I haven’t been able to teach at all. I’ve been on the road most of the time, and it [litagation] has totally disrupted my academy schedule.” Others have picked up courses he was to have taught this spring in medieval church history and in liturgy.

Sparks acknowledges a sense of loss because of the disruptions. “But,” he says, “I do feel that this defense is essential, because if we don’t fight in a case like this, if we don’t say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a right to speak out against these things; we’ve got a right to say what’s true with respect to groups like this,’ we’re going to find ourselves not able to say anything. Witness Lee and his people have scared a lot of people.”

In March, Sparks’s attorneys began taking depositions from members of the local church, including its leader, Witness Lee. This was the first time they had moved beyond a purely defensive posture.

The trial is set for June 17 in Dallas, Texas.

In spite of the hassle, Sparks says he has no regrets about the charges he made in The Mind Benders. “With what I now know,” he says, “I could put together a much stronger book.”

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