Ecumenism report card mixed,
expert tells Seminary audience

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William G. Rusch

An unabashed ecumenist with a profoundly significant international portfolio on the topic gave a riveting review of the state of ecumenism at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (LTSP) March 19, featuring a summation of past achievements and shortcomings and predictions for the future. Along the way, the Rev. Dr. William G. Rusch, LTSP '63, gave his own denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, mixed reviews and occasional harsh criticism for retreating somewhat from the ecumenical scene.

Rusch brought his remarks to an LTSP convocation audience of faculty, staff and students representing the religious landscape he was seeking to define. While 63 percent of the student body is Lutheran, the Seminary's 430 students altogether hail from some 30 backgrounds.

Rusch is a Lutheran pastor who serves as Executive Director of the Foundation for a Conference on Faith and Order in North America. He has served as Director of the Commission on Faith and Order of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA and as Director of the Department of Ecumenical Affairs and Assistant to the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Rusch has also served as a member of the Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue and the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue.

Beginning with a definition, Rusch said his understanding of ecumenism is not "someone's idea of a mushy view of life and the church" filled with "polite, cooperative compromise." He said ecumenism is a constant search "for the unity and truth found in Jesus Christ, where the Holy Spirit leads…At its best, this movement has embodied a search for the will of God in every area of life and work." He said it is not an organization in Geneva, Chicago or New York, even though some people are convinced that it is.

Addressing the theme "Ecumenism in Two Centuries," Rusch said the last century marked the first time Christianity became a true world religion with mission influence in every corner of the globe, moving it beyond a Mediterranean and European context. He added the century was also marked by unprecedented persecution of Christians by totalitarian regimes. Other factors of note? An "insidious secularism" destroyed many Christian values, and the century was also marked by encounters of Christianity with other faiths with implications for the world religious scene that are still unfolding.

Rusch said the last century was the ecumenical century, even though the goal of unifying the church of Christ was not accomplished. It produced an ecumenical movement that moved and influenced history and gave churches a new orientation. "Prior to the ecumenical movement of the 20^th century, churches lived in indifference or hostility to each other," Rusch said. "Now many churches see themselves as sharing a communion, however imperfect, which reflects some agreement about baptism and the Lord's Supper, and joins them in the proclamation of the gospel and meeting the deep needs of the world." He said the ecumenical movement has produced a recognition of other spiritualities. "Each church or tradition can see a richness beyond its own borders," he noted. "Pick up any book of worship today and observe the presence of Asian, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, African, ecumenical and Orthodox songs and hymns."

He said the movement has promoted common thinking on social and ethical topics such as peace, justice, human rights, solidarity with the poor and care of the earth. A profusion of ecumenical dialogues has resulted too, he said. And such dialogues have helped the various traditions enrich their own perspective through the hearing and reading of them. And the collective impact of the dialogues has not been "the preserve or hobby of a few," he said. They were a critical factor in altering church relations between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church, the Moravian Church, three Reformed Churches and the Roman Catholic Church.

Despite this progress, he warned that all is not well with the movement, and said it is marked today by ambiguity "failures, fears and a deprivation of commitment….Some of its institutions, the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA exhibit a blatant irrelevance to the central tasks of the ecumenical movement. There is a retreat of ecumenical urgency." He noted a common tendency is to be content with the present level of ecumenical achievement and to promote the "existing peaceful and cooperative coexistence." A second major concern, Rusch said, is a tendency "to abandon the doctrinal consensus" achieved by the dialogues. He said this abandonment has brought out "the worst in churches and their members. Ecumenical reception will be costly and arduous." He said there is much evidence of an "unwillingness to pay the price." Another detrimental factor has been the polarization between "life and work," the struggle for communion in life and action, vs. "faith and order," the struggle for communion in faith.

Central to these difficulties, Rusch said, is "the lack of a carefully expressed goal. Is the goal still full communion, built on a consensus theology?" While Pope John Paul II has said so in one of his documents, the content offered by some churches and documents from the World Council of Churches make the matter less clear.

Rusch contended in his remarks that the ecumenical movement is in crisis now in part due to its earlier successes and that it is in passage from one century to another in a time of ambiguity.

Predictions? In the coming decades, Rusch contended that focus in ecumenical circles will likely be fixed on inter-faith matters rather than ecumenical issues "This is not all bad," he said, "but attention to inter-faith issues will never relieve Christians of their solemn concern for the unity of Christ's Church." He said he does not believe that "new and major theological breakthroughs will occur soon. The pressing issues….appear to be insoluble in the short term." He also advised of the danger that "mere cooperation will remain a strong temptation" and said he believes that "general ecumenical interest will continue to wane" as both denominations and congregations focus on survival. "Ecumenism," he said with a tinge of sadness in his voice, "at best will be perceived as an elective." And finally, he ventured, the necessary theological work, "especially the contribution of Lutherans, and some others, to consensus theology will remain endangered. The hard slogging of committed and qualified theologians will be unattractive and unsought."

But he noted the ecumenical ambiguity of the age and its attendant crisis is not an occasion for all gloom. Churches need to be reminded they are in a time between the already and not yet and some ecumenical issues may be solved.

Rusch called for "constant and renewed attention to reception," that process by which the hard work of ecumenical dialogues becomes part of the faith and life of the church. And that happens finally in local churches. He also called for expanding the range of participants in the ecumenical process and being determined to develop a "new generation of ecumenical leaders." The notion of "differentiated consensus" is also key, he said. That notion calls for recognizing each other's core beliefs, acknowledging secondary belief statements which "are different but do not contradict the core beliefs." He said the Joint Declaration on Justification between Lutherans and Roman Catholics is a model of the potential for such a concept.

Rusch singled out the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for approving significant ecumenical agreements and said "It is the only church in American church history which has taken official action to accept the historic episcopate for the greater unity of the Church." But he decried several developments – that much ecumenical debate within the denomination "was unrestrained, and leadership took no action to keep it in proper bounds," and that despite claims to the contrary, the denomination's Office for Ecumenical Affairs was downgraded to a department during restructuring.

"The ELCA has opted for an illusion of ecumenism, not informed by its confessional heritage or ecumenical statement," he said. "It has given little leadership to national and international conciliar ecumenism, with one or two exceptions. It has filled dialogues with good, well meaning persons, but by and large not with those who have the expertise for the assigned tasks." He said the denomination has "not implemented in the manner called for the agreements of full communion. The ongoing dialogue between the ELCA and the three Reformed Churches has not taken place. The ELCA has taken a unilateral action, unparalleled, on the bilateral agreement with the Episcopal Church. Its full effect is still to be determined. This unilateral action of a bylaw on ordination directly affects one of the key elements in this relationship of full communion."

He said the ELCA "seems on the verge of becoming an example of a church surrendering to an ecumenism of coexistence, willing to live in peaceful cooperation, avoiding the difficulties of reception and tempted by the attractions of Life and Work at the expense of Faith and Order. It appears open to the fashionable arena of inter-faith over the more costly visible unity of the Church." But he said all of these trends could be reversed if the Department for Ecumenical Affairs of the denomination "is allowed to discharge the responsibilities given to it in the documents of the church…."

Finally, Rusch said churches participating in the ecumenical movement, including the ELCA, "can live through this period of transition, experiencing a foretaste of that communion intended by the Triune God for the people of Christ."

But this will only happen," he said, "when the restless Spirit of God makes the churches dissatisfied with the peaceful coexistence which was their gift in the 20^th century and pushes them into being a reconciled communion in the unreconciled world of the 21^st century. Are we willing, as Albert Camus said, to listen for the rustle of that Spirit's wing and to act on it? Only this century will tell."