Promoting Better Cooperation Among Christian Churches

My Webster’s Dictionary defines “ecumenical” and “ecumenism” as “principles or practice of promoting cooperation or better understanding among differing religious faiths…used specifically in reference to the Christian Church as a whole.”

I begin this article observing that, in the evangelical world I am acquainted with, the word ecumenism is rarely, if ever, used in a positive light. This is, I suppose, because for most fundamentalists or evangelicals the word is associated with liberalism, bureaucracy, church mergers, the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, and equivalent state councils. If one is acquainted with Dispensationalism, a dominant form of fundamentalism, it is linked with the “beast” of Revelation, or, even worse, the Antichrist.

This is too bad. If there was ever a time that Christian churches need to pull together it is now, and for that reason, I offer stories from my own experience.

Perhaps my most memorable ecumenical experience happened in 1954, when I was 20 years old, recently called to the ministry. I was attending summer school at Northwestern University when my pastor excitedly informed me that at the end of the summer the World Council of Churches would be holding its second world-wide assembly in Evanston. I already had a job at the food commons at Sargeant Hall. I realized I could keep my job and attend the two-week assembly. And so I did.

I was impressed that the Church was worldwide, of all peoples and languages, different, yet one. I fancied myself as knowledgeable about theological things and followed the discussions (debates?) about whether the theme, “Christ the Hope of the World,” referred primarily to social progress and justice through Christian principles, or divine intervention as in the Second Coming. The Americans (mostly liberals) emphasized the former, the Europeans (more neo-orthodox) the latter. These two groups, unfortunately, and not third-world groups, dominated the discussions. I followed the conversations especially as I was pouring coffee at some of the luncheon gatherings where high-profile leaders spoke their convictions. I remember being especially impressed with Lesslie Newbigin.

My positive feelings about ecumenism and church unity did not last long. A few years later, in the early 1960s, a new group, Church of Christ Uniting (COCU) was formed after some liberal Protestant leaders got some national headlines when they suggested it was time for Protestant churches to join together in one great church merger. I had finished seminary at Garrett Biblical Institute at the time and was working on a Master’s thesis at Northwestern on Christian Fundamentalism and Dispensationalism. I was also in my second three-point circuit Methodist appointment and had had my first Christian Advocate article, on neo-evangelicalism, published. My concern about COCU was that there were no Evangelicals nor Roman Catholics included in the discussions. There was concern also because the need for unity was much less based on a common theological witness in an unbelieving world than to a common social witness addressing social problems.

My new interest in Roman Catholic inclusion was in large part related to an experience which took place shortly after the Vatican II Council in 1966. I was pastoring in Ashley, IN, where the two strongest churches in the community were our Methodist Church and the Catholic Church. The Catholic priest, excited about changes brought about by the Council, and I were together one day discussing the Council and the idea came up that maybe some of our people, both his and mine, might be interested in how things were going to be different because of the Council.

Youth groups, we agreed, would be the place to start. So we planned a gathering which would take place at his church. My youth group, somewhat to my surprise, was eager for the gathering. In fact, when the time came, our group, normally about 20 in attendance, doubled to about 40. The same happened with his group. What I soon realized was that our two groups, many of them friends and almost all of them classmates, had known each other for years but never much had discussed personal faith. Many Methodists had never even been inside the Catholic church and many of the Catholics had never even been inside a Protestant church, let alone our Methodist church.

The priest talked about how, as I recall, many Catholics did not even believe that Methodists were Christians and would go to heaven. The same was true about what Methodists believed about Catholics. I can’t even remember what all came next: I think it was about how we both loved Jesus and believed in salvation. We were not supposed to be suspicious of one another because we were brothers and sisters in Christ. I would liken what began to happen to a revival. We had youth hugging each other. I remember some tears.

I had some repenting to do. Probably because of my preaching that salvation is by faith alone, thanks to Martin Luther and the Reformation, and not by works, I had helped to communicate the idea that only we Protestants, and especially we Methodists, were true Christians.

Shortly after that, another “ecumenical” experience, or lack of one, took place when I was pastoring in Elkhart, Indiana, in the late 1960s. When I moved to Elkhart I found that there were two ministerial associations, the regular Ministerial Association, and the Evangelical Ministerial Association. As a Methodist (United Methodist by this time) I naturally started attending the regular Ministerial Association, along with 13 other United Methodist pastors (Methodist Protestant, Methodist Episcopal, Evangelical, and United Brethren mergers had multiplied our numbers). But I was a committed evangelical so I also started attending the Evangelical Ministerial Group (and was received with some suspicion). I was enough a part of that group that I gave a program once at one of the meetings. The regular Ministerial Association was hardly a liberal group. Our United Methodist pastors tended to be evangelical, more or less, and we were joined with a number of Missionary Church pastors and Mennonite pastors. The Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart at the time featured professors such as John Howard Yoder, liberal socially but not necessarily theologically.

Then the challenge came to the Ministerial Associations that we should seek to win our community to Christ. Someone had made contacts with the Billy Graham Association and Leighton Ford, Billy Graham’s brother-in-law, would be available for a city-wide crusade. We were ecstatic. Then came the disappointment, at least to me. The evangelical group would not be cooperating. It was unbelievable. If ever an organization personified evangelicalism, it was the Billy Graham Association. The problem was that the evangelical group, with a number of Baptist and fundamentalist churches, was opposed by conviction from cooperating with groups it considered “liberal,” even if the occasion were a Billy Graham organization evangelistic crusade. This was what was called “second degree” separation. One friend of mine had even been Leighton Ford’s roommate at Wheaton College who considered Leighton a friend. Still, his church would not join in supporting the crusade. The crusade was a success in a number of ways, but it could have been so much more.

In 1973 I had a totally different ecumenical experience. I was appointed to Wesley Church, Union City Indiana-Ohio, population 5,000 straddling two states (and two city governments). At the time the city was at the center of tomato country and included many tomato farmers and many migrant workers, all of whom were from south Texas (and probably Mexico). Campbell’s Soup claimed no other part of the country could grow the quality tomatoes needed for their V-8 juice. The farm workers were present from mid-July into October. Wesley Church was the key church in an ecumenical effort known as Darke County (Ohio) Migrant Ministry, a ministry primarily to the migrant camps. Among other things, youth groups would send youth mission teams to aid the ministry (I did a lot of coordinating and was very busy).

There was much more. Our church was the base for the elementary school for migrants (Ohio side only—Indiana students went to regular public school which presented serious language and culture problems), There was also an adult education program and a migrant Head Start program in our church. This was in addition to our church’s own nursery school and community Head Start school. Each of the migrant programs had been contracted out to public schools or colleges. This meant, among other things, three sets of cooks and three menus for noon meals. It meant inspectors and administrators from two states and two counties. One Fire Marshall who supported the program contacted our own Head Start teacher suggesting at a certain time she might take the children to the park because he had to count all the people in the church and there would be too many with her class present. The church – bless the people – dealt with all kinds of maintenance and sanitary problems. The town not nearly as much. Because Ohio drinking laws were different, taverns were concentrated on the Ohio side. When some Hispanics wanted to open a tavern appealing to migrants the town (out of pure prejudice) rejected the application. For once in my life I set aside my convictions about alcohol and supported the request.

Also a part of the story was the presence of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) a labor union under the leadership of Baldemar Velasquez, a graduate of Bluffton College (Mennonite). FLOC talked justice and was negotiating and threatening strikes and demonstrations because of poor working conditions. This presented a difficult situation because FLOC was in conflict not so much with a big corporation but with local farmers. I became so wrapped up in the cause that on one occasion I consented to join a sit-in in the Ohio governor’s office. (Had I gone, my image and reputation might have changed greatly). As it was, bad weather cancelled our trip.

Then, to make matters worse, tragedy struck. The Indiana town marshal shot and killed an unarmed migrant worker over a traffic violation. Persons from outside the community held meetings (in our church) suggesting demonstrations. In a display of power the whole incident was hushed up by local authorities.

It was a whole new learning experience for me. Ecumenical work in difficult situations is more than discussing doctrine. It cannot avoid the social problems that seem everywhere with us. Eventually Campbell’s Soup moved operations to California (sacrificing product quality). The situation was also greatly affected by the introduction of tomato-picking machines.

As for me personally, I became more, not less, involved in ecumenical endeavors. More on that in the next article.

Riley B. Case is a retired United Methodist clergy member of the Indiana Conference who has for many years authored articles for the Confessing Movement. His articles are published on Juicy Ecumenism, the blog of the Institute on Religion & Democracy.

More:

‘Covenant Communion’ and the Failure of Quasi-Mergers

United Methodism, Mainline Protestantism, Christian Faith – Is There Hope?