Where We Dwell in Common

Horizons ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (02) ◽  
pp. 332-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Haight
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Church Unity ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
The Many ◽  
Common Understanding ◽  
The Church

The great surge of Christian missionary activity during the course of the nineteenth century elicited a new concern for church unity. Was this missionary activity, after all, spreading division? In 1910 representatives of Protestant churches came together to respond to that question in Edinburgh at The World Missionary Conference. The conference in its turn channeled the concern to the sending churches. Although somewhat slowed down by World War I, the ecumenical movement grew and was punctuated by landmark events in The Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work (Stockholm, 1925) and The World Conference of Faith and Order (Lausanne, 1927). The report of this second conference included a description of what the churches assembled in their representatives shared in common and the many things that distinguished and sometimes divided them. When the World Council of Churches came into existence in August of 1948, the Faith and Order movement was integrated into it as a distinct agency whose concern was the doctrinal unity of the churches. Its signal achievement thus far has been the document entitled Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, frequently referred to as the Lima document, which sketches a proposal for a common understanding of these three aspects of the church across the churches. This document is the best example of what I will call “transdenominational ecclesiology,” and the fact that it has received so much attention from the churches indicates that it plays some important role in the whole church.

Praying for Justice: The World Council of Churches and the Program to Combat Racism

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-96
Author(s):  
Kate Burlingham
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
Violent Action ◽  
The Church

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, individuals around the world, particularly those in newly decolonized African countries, called on churches, both Protestant and Catholic, to rethink their mission and the role of Christianity in the world. This article explores these years and how they played out in Angola. A main forum for global discussion was the World Council of Churches (WCC), an ecumenical society founded alongside the United Nations after World War II. In 1968 the WCC devised a Program to Combat Racism (PCR), with a particular focus on southern Africa. The PCR's approach to combating racism proved controversial. The WCC began supporting anti-colonial organizations against white minority regimes, even though many of these organizations relied on violence. Far from disavowing violent groups, the PCR's architects explicitly argued that, at times, violent action was justified. Much of the PCR funding went to Angolan revolutionary groups and to individuals who had been educated in U.S. and Canadian foreign missions. The article situates global conversations within local debates between missionaries and Angolans about the role of the missions in the colonial project and the future of the church in Africa.

Porto Alegre 2006: Called to be the One Church: Ecumenism beyond its Crisis?

Exchange ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Houtepen
Keyword(s):  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Ecumenical Movement ◽  
Religious Plurality ◽  
Church Unity ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
The One ◽  
Economic Injustice ◽  
The Church

AbstractFrom 9-23 February 2006 the World Council of Churches held its 9th Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brasil with the theme God, in your grace, transform the world. It gathered in an atmosphere of crisis in the ecumenical movement, caused by global political and religious developments, post-modern thinking on the value of plurality and difference and by the slow reception of ecumenical agreements. The Assembly, though, became a sign of hope beyond the ecumenical crisis. Its reflections and proposals on Globalisation and economic injustice, on Christian identity and religious plurality and on Church Unity and the Mission of the Church demonstrate a matured ecumenical and ecclesiological awareness, strengthened by a new method of decision-making by consensus. The document Called to be the one Church might be seen as the constitutional basis for a reconfiguration of the ecumenical movement and as a refinement of the Toronto Declaration of 1950. It formulates a matrix of catholicity and of a legitimate diversity of church forms within an essential convergence about its structures of continuity and mission.

Molanus, Lutheran Irenicist (1633–1722)

1953 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-218
Author(s):  
Samuel J. T. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Free Church ◽  
Church Unity ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
The Church

At the present time ideas of church reunion are current in many forms. Journals are appearing which are devoted exclusively to the exposition of dogmatic positions in an increasingly irenical light. Not the least important among these publications devoted to the expository method of clearing up possible areas of thought for reunion are Irenikon, produced by the Benedictines at Chevtogne, and Catholica, published at Münster under the auspices of Dr. Robert Grosche. Catholica has once again appeared after eleven years of virtual suspension and Dr. Grosche lauds the theologisches Gespräch “as the recognized way which can bring us nearer to the unity of the Church.” With respect to actual ecumenical meetings the Faith and Order Conference of the World Council of Churches met in Lund, Sweden, in 1952, and there Greek Orthodox, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican and free church representatives, and even Roman Catholic observers, rubbed shoulders and discussed problems of ecclesiology with church unity as the ultimate goal.

“Although We Cannot Fully Meet” the Roman Catholic Response to Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry

1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-267
Author(s):  
Peter R. Cross
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
The Church

The publication of Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry by the World Council of Churches in 1982 was the culmination of more than fifty years of ecumenical discussion. The document was designed to elicit official comment from the churches involved in its production and also to involve a wide membership of the churches in the process of reception of the text by taking its insights into their spiritual, pastoral and theological life. This present article analyses the response of the Roman Catholic Church. The response is largely positive, but the methodology of the document reveals unresolved tensions concerning theological reformulation while the wider issue touching reception in the life of the Church is avoided.

The Ecumenical Movement in its Early Years

1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID CARTER
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Ecumenical Movement ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The World ◽  
Church Relationships ◽  
World Council

The year 1998 sees the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the World Council of Churches. Great, but subsequently largely disappointed hopes, greeted it. The movement that led directly to its formation had its genesis in the International Missionary Conference of 1910, an event often cited in popular surveys as marking the beginning of the Ecumenical Movement. This paper will, however, argue that modern ecumenism has a complex series of roots. Some of them predate that conference, significant though it was in leading to the ‘Faith and Order’ movement that was, in its turn, such an important contributor to the genesis of the World Council.Archbishop William Temple, who played a key role in both the ‘Faith and Order’ and ‘Life and Work’ movements, referred to the Ecumenical Movement as the ‘great fact of our times’. This was a gross exaggeration. It is true that the movement engaged, from about 1920 onwards, a very considerable amount of the energy of the most talented and forward-looking leaders and thinkers of the Churches in the Anglican and Protestant traditions. It remained, however, marginal in the life of the Roman Catholic Church until Vatican II, despite the pioneering commitment of some extremely able people amidst official disapproval. Some leaders of the Orthodox Church took a considerable interest in the movement. However, both the official ecclesiology and the popular stance of most Orthodox precluded any real rapprochement with other Churches on terms that bore any resemblance to practicality. Even in the Anglican and mainstream Protestant Churches, the movement remained largely one of a section of the leadership. It attained little genuine popularity, a fact that was frequently admitted even by its most ardent partisans. One could well say that the Ecumenical Movement had only one really solid achievement to celebrate in 1948. This was the formation, in the previous year, of the Church of South India, the first Church to represent a union across the episcopal–non-episcopal divide. This type of union has yet to be emulated outside the Indian sub-continent.One of the aims of this article will be to try to explain why success in India went unmatched elsewhere. The emphasis will be on the English dimension of the problem, though many of the factors that affected the English situation also obtained in other countries in the Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition. This assessment must be balanced, however, by an appreciation of the real progress made in terms of improved and even amicable church relationships.

Covenants

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Kingston
Keyword(s):  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Methodist Church ◽  
The Road ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
History Of ◽  
On The Road ◽  
The Church ◽  
Different Parts

This chapter explores the notion of covenant as an instrument which may facilitate closer and more binding relationships between or among churches wanting to commit to each other in a further step on the road to complete unity. The history of the term is outlined, noting its origin with the World Council of Churches. Several recent covenant relationships in different parts of the world are examined, with comments on their development and documentation. It is observed that a leading motivation in the establishment of covenants has been that of mission, while a significant challenge has been varying theologies of ministry. Particular note is taken of the covenant between the Methodist Church in Ireland and the Church of Ireland (Anglican), in which these churches are formulating legislation to facilitate interchangeability of ministries.

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