Promoting Better Cooperation Among Christian Churches, Part III

This series on ecumenism is written from the perspective that if there was ever a time when Christian churches need to pull together it is now.

But it needs to be the right kind of pulling and for the right reasons. Unfortunately, this means something much more than the kind of institutional linking associated with groups like the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches or state Councils of Churches, which often spend their time promoting a liberal social and political agenda. While my experience is primarily in Indiana, I believe it is illustrative of what is happening across America.

Sometime in the late 1960s the United Methodist Bishop of Indiana (Reuben Mueller) in conversations with the Roman Catholic bishop of North Indiana, with the hopes of interpreting the significance of Vatican II for Christian faith at that special time, planned a retreat at Notre Dame for 50 specially picked United Methodist pastors and 50 specially picked Catholic priests. The purpose was to discuss not only how Vatican II had changed the religious climate between Catholics and Protestants, but also how we might explore our differences and similarities.

The first presentation was on the matter of authority. Within the first hour it was evident that there was serious division about Scripture. The division was not between priests and pastors, but between the conservatives and liberals in the room. Conservative priests and conservative Methodists were on one side, arguing for the full authority of Scripture and liberal priests and liberal Methodists, citing various “authorities,” were on the other.

I remember thinking the real divisions in Christianity are not so much between denominations as between the differences we have, even within our own denominations, about eternal truths. There were many other issues that were discussed at that retreat but I was and am still impressed that there was overall a great sense of Christian unity. Some of the priests were so moved by our time together they urged their bishop to offer a common communion service (the bishop was appalled, saying “we are not ready for this, yet.”)

About this same time, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we were confronted with Vietnam, Woodstock, Kent State, the Jesus People, and, where I was living at the time in the South Bend-Elkhart area of Indiana, the Catholic Charismatic Revival.

It was also the time when the Good News movement, an evangelical renewal group, was launched in Methodism. Good News faced many challenges (primarily church school materials) but it also was caught up in controversies over liberation theology, Marxism in the churches, quota systems, and a number of other social issues. Our own UMC Board of Global Ministries was voicing support for Castro in Cuba. One UMC women’s study book even affirmed the social progress brought about by communism in China.

I wrote letters to various people about some of these things, especially concerned about the National Council of Churches (NCC). In many areas I had high respect for the National Council. It was NCC which had published the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible, and to which I had transferred all of my loyalty and from which I memorized whole books of the Bible. I was also appreciative of the NCC for publishing the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches which I purchased every year (they take up quite a bit of shelf space in my library). My major concern with the NCC was not just its one-sided social stances but because major portions of the Christian faith were not represented by the NCC. Not only were Roman Catholics not included but also the whole evangelical world.

In the early 1980s I had expressed these concerns to our new bishop in Indiana, Bishop James Armstrong, who, interestingly, had just been elected president of the NCC governing board. In 1983 he appointed me as a district superintendent (DS) in the North Indiana Conference of the United Methodist Church. He cited as one of his reasons for the appointment that we needed more theological diversity. My first year was the same year that the CBS program 60 Minutes aired the program “It’s Sunday evening do you know where your church offerings are?” which was a controversial exposé of the World Council of Churches, the NCC, and the mainline churches and their funding of controversial leftist causes. This was also the year that Bishop Armstrong’s NCC published its Inclusive Language Lectionary, which revised the Revised Standard Version of the Bible by doctoring male and female-specific language and images to conform to progressive thinking on “inclusive language.” For many ordinary Christians this was an undermining of Biblical authority.

In my first nine charge conferences as a DS, seven openly expressed concern about the Inclusive Language Lectionary. My fellow (they were all male) superintendents responded to this thinking by telling churches and people to get with the program. I, on the other hand, indicated I would represent the church’s concerns with persons responsible for the translation. In the process of doing this I had an extended phone call with Dr. Bruce Metzger of Princeton, one of the translators of the original RSV, who, interestingly, agreed with many of my concerns about translation integrity.

Thanks to my connections with Bishop Armstrong I also obtained copies of a study conducted by the NCC titled “Profiles of Faith.” The study used statistics gathered by, I believe, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, that analyzed the thinking of Americans on various things including religion. The study was never published, because, as someone told me, the NCC disagreed with the conclusions. Obviously, Americans were much more conservative in what they believed in than the NCC thought were so.

A few years later a group of mainline Protestant denominations formed a group called Consultation on Church Union (COCU), which explored the possibilities of a merger, or semi-merger, of a number of mainline churches (the topic of an earlier article). At the 1996 UMC General Conference an agenda item was whether the UMC supported these possibilities. I was a delegate that year and I remember making several speeches in the legislative group and on the floor of the conference arguing our church’s future was not in these kinds of mergers and relationships. We had better ways to spend our time and money. It was a lost cause. The bishops and our church leaders dominated the day and prevailed while arguing the churches’ ecumenical future in the direction of these mergers or relationships. It should be noted that COCU has long since ceased to be a viable entity.

Meanwhile, state councils of churches were in trouble. In the 1980s the Indiana Council of Churches for all practical purposes simply died. Such councils continued in other states but in a weakened form. In 1996 in Indiana a new organization, Indiana Partners for Christian Unity and Mission (IPCUM) was formed as a successor to the Indiana Council of Churches. I personally had interest in this since it was formed with a stated goal to be much more inclusive of Christian denominations besides just mainline churches. Evangelical groups were invited, as were parachurch groups. More importantly, the Roman Catholics agree to be part of the new group. When the opportunity came for me to be involved I jumped at the chance. I would represent not United Methodists but a Chistian social agency from Kokomo, Coordinated Associate Ministries (CAM), which had a link with the Salvation Army. In 2003, according to my files and notes, the United Methodists seemed to dominate the group and supplied 38 percent of the budget. Thirty-two denominations or ministries were part of the group. I met many new friends and the group engaged in interesting and helpful dialogue. However, overall, it was a disappointment.   Evangelical churches and parachurch groups never joined. The group never attracted the higher-ranking leaders of the denominations. After seven or eight years I dropped out. The group no longer exists.

What have I learned in these (and other) experiences?

Old-style ecumenism is no longer a major force in American life. We no longer speak of merging groups for greater Christian witness. The time of grand denominational cooperative efforts to make an impact on society is no more. This is for a number of reasons. Religious institutionalism is in decline. This also includes denominationalism. The excitement these days is with megachurches, some of which are like denominations in themselves. But they are not governed by bureaucrats. This is a day of individualism. The growing impact of Pentecostalism serves as an example. Pentecostalism appears to be the only kind of Christian expression that is thriving, not just in America but world-wide. While Pentecostals do not necessarily disdain education and sophistication, it is true that any group that receives direct messages from God is more inclined to trust these direct messages than to depend on the wisdom of education.

While “mainline” denominations are often described as “liberal” it would be well for us to analyze the situation more carefully. Politically, at least, the so-called mainline denominations–such as United Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, American Baptist, Lutheran, Christian Church (Disciples), and Episcopal–are not only predominately white but also more conservative than liberal. According to Ryan Burge, sociologist in Graphs About Religion, mainline Protestants favored the Republican nominee over the Democratic nominee in the 2024 election by 58 percent to 40 percent. The idea that mainliners are liberal comes from an understanding of what many of us call The Gap, the great chasm between what church bureaucrats and leaders think compared to what common, ordinary church members think.

This is one reason why many of us are reluctant to abandon our mainline roots. I repeat what was said earlier: if there was ever a time when Christian churches (or Chistian people) needed to pull together, it is now. Despite the studies that indicate that church membership and attendance has been in decline, at least in America, there are still many promising things about Christians working together that are happening in the Christian world.

Our next article will deal with these promising developments.

More from IRD:

Part I: ‘Covenant Communion’ and the Failure of Quasi-Mergers

Part II: Promoting Better Cooperation Among Christian Churches