Oh I entirely agree with that. I just don't think that unity should be used to create a union of bigots against a world of "sin", i.e. love.
Im pretty sure a union of bigots would be a long ay from christianity no matter what they called themselves.
Baloney. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches don't regard women as human beings on par with men. They're not using religion to bolster their existing prejudices. Those prejudices - against women and LGBTQ+ people - are baked into their theology.
I hope all such churches die as soon as possible, whether in a union of hate or one by one.
'I/We believe in the one holy,catholic and apostolic church'
This is one of the sentences appearing in the Nicene Creed to which many,if not possibly the majority,of those who claim to be Christian accept.
Each of these words is pregnant with meaning
I/We believe
one
holy
catholic
apostolic
church
Most of us can say these words with some sense of conviction and yet,as in so many other things the words can be interpreted in a multiplicity of ways.
There is the Church which the bishops in Nicaea in 325 saw (as guided by the Emperor)
There are the various other communities which have followed on each with its own interpretation. Ultimately if there is ONE God and ONE Lord there is only ONE Church and we are all part of it,all part of God's family.
The Church (and the churches ) which we see here on earth and which we argue about in human terms will be finally revealed in its oneness as the earthly veil is removed and we progress further to the new life of the Kingdom.
The meetings between the pope and the ecumenical patriarch have gone on for many years with the patriarch coming to Rome for 29th June and the pope or a high Vatican official coming to Istanbul for 30th November. (St Peter and St Andrew).
Most of us see differences in human terms which are usually dictated by our own individual experiences. Thus there are those who will talk about 'papal supremacy' and others who will talk about the 'Petrine ministry of union and service' - it is two different ways of saying the same thing.
On this board I think that one poster said that 'the pope was the head of the Catholic Church,but that Jesus was the Head of the CofE'. Both of these statements have an element of truth in them but they cannot be counted as a full and final explanation of the difference between the RCC and the CofE.
2nd December is the National Day in the United Arab Emirates and I received recently a charming picture of my grandson wearing, in honour of the day ,traditional Emirati Arab dress. I proudly showed the picture to a Christian friend who said it was lovely and asked if he was taking part in a Nativity play. Although I didn't say anything I thought my friend was silly to say this until I realised that,of course when she say this form of dress she would immediately be reminded of the traditional dress used in our Nativity plays.
I don't think the current Pope and Ecumenical Patriarch would be up for defenestrating anyone.
That doesn't mean that some of their followers wouldn't.
I'm not sure that a re-united Christendom would be any more or less prone to defenestration than the current divided condition.
If there were heavy-handed moves in any direction then there'd very quickly be further splits and schisms.
Whatever the case, at a conference I attended recently the more ecumenically-minded Orthodox (Fr Jack voice: 'Now that would be an ecumenical matter ...') were lamenting and acknowledging that the Big O's were no longer in a position (had we ever been?) to sit on a high horse and say to everyone else, 'Look at us, we've preserved unity ...'
Orthodoxy (both large O or small o) is always going to be work in progress.
As is unity.
I'm not sure anyone here envisages some kind of medieval universal pontificate or a restored Caesaro-Papist Byzantine or Muscovite empire. There are those out there who would, mind.
I don't think the current Pope and Ecumenical Patriarch would be up for defenestrating anyone.
Again, baloney. There are whole hosts of people who are unacceptable in their churches. Gay people who want to get married. Women who are called to the priesthood. Trans people who just want to be.
Meanwhile, I'm travelling at the moment so haven't caught up with what's being said on Orthodox social media. I tend to avoid that anyway as it's all too predictable.
From the little I've seen they seem to be saying that the Pope is disingenuous and that he'll offer rapprochement to Nestorians, Monophysites and Anyone Else provided they accept Papal authority.
Patriarch Bartholomew is dismissed as 'an old man in the Phanar'.
So no, that lot aren't going to budge. Whatever the Pope does they'll see it as some kind of Jesuitical subterfuge.
Even if the RCs, the Orthodox and the Copts, Armenians and so on were all reconciled, with the Anglicans and Lutherans forming a concentric ring around that like one of the rings of Saturn, that would still leave the non-episcopal Protestant churches in an outer ring.
It's all very depressing if our goal is some kind of institutional unity. I still remain optimistic though on a personal and individual level but perhaps even that is misconceived.
If any attempt at rapprochement is dismissed as some kind of Machiavellian Papist conspiracy then there ain't much hope ...
I do wonder what some of these people expect. The Pope to crawl to Constantinople on his hands and knees to fling his Triple-Tiara into the Bosphorus and publicly tear out the 'filioque' clause from the Creed and eat it stuffed into a dried dog turd?
IMHO we may be over-emphasizing organizational unity as if it were the only form of unity—and if we ever did achieve a single bureaucracy, no doubt we’d have a schism in 30 years tops. Is that even what Christ was talking about?
I’m more inclined to look at what various Christians do — cooperation in feeding people, etc plus recognizing one another’s baptism. Speaking well of each other and pointing out the good to be seen in what each other does. Working together in evangelism, mission, materials development and publication, etc. A lot of this is already happening very quietly, it just doesn’t hit the secular news very often.
That one verse of John's gospel has compromised the preaching of a gospel of love more than any others.
Aye. It's pretty desperate. The idea that what Jesus had in mind involves organisational leaders making political declarations strikes me as bonkers.
As long as Christian unity is conceived as something that is created, or bought about, by Christian churches and Christian leaders reaching agreements, Christians aren't going to make any kind of progress towards practising the unity that they already have in Christ.
How is 'the unity they already have in Christ' expressed?
It used to be said that 11am on a Sunday was the most 'segregated' time in the USA.
We're all worshipping in different buildings on a Sunday, often in close proximity to other buildings with other Christians doing the same thing.
Only in a different way ...
I'm not saying we don't have some form of 'unity'. When I meet Christians of whatever stripe I recognise 'family', but all the splits and divisions over very minor issues are certainly a scandal.
We all talk about unity but what does it actually mean in practice and what does it look like?
If what we have now is 'unity' then why bother with ecumenical dialogue of any kind?
We dialogue because "jaw, jaw is better than war, war." It is through discussion that we discover that what believe now has developed from what we believed in the 6th or 16th centuries and is expressed differently from back then (thank you Newman.) And maybe we are closer than we thought in beliefs. But that's all above most of our pay grades. And views in the pews may differ. So maybe some of us could be bolder in challenging our own folk when they are uncharitable about other churches.
Even if the RCs, the Orthodox and the Copts, Armenians and so on were all reconciled, with the Anglicans and Lutherans forming a concentric ring around that like one of the rings of Saturn, that would still leave the non-episcopal Protestant churches in an outer ring.
Just noting that not all Lutheran denominations have bishops.
It's all very depressing if our goal is some kind of institutional unity.
Even if the RCs, the Orthodox and the Copts, Armenians and so on were all reconciled, with the Anglicans and Lutherans forming a concentric ring around that like one of the rings of Saturn, that would still leave the non-episcopal Protestant churches in an outer ring.
Just noting that not all Lutheran denominations have bishops.
It's all very depressing if our goal is some kind of institutional unity.
Should that be the goal?
I don't think institutional unity is the only or even the most important kind of oneness.
I wrote 'should that be the goal, not that itought to be the goal.
My point is that if we solely aim for institutional unity - whatever that might look like - then the barriers are such that we are going to be disappointed.
By the same token, should we tolerate a situation where umpteen flavours of Christianity coexist within the same town or suburb without much by way of meaningful interaction and sometimes open hostility?
I agree with the points @Alan29 and @Nick Tamen have raised but what and where is this 'oneness' we all say we'd like to see or consider to be a reality?
Is it a reality that has to be realised as it were?
What needs to happen to make it more apparent?
More 'jaw, jaw' or more 'do, do'? - as in more collaborative social or evangelistic projects?
Would persecution bring us closer as some claim? A claim I doubt.
I wrote 'should that be the goal, not that itought to be the goal.
Well, to quibble, you wrote “It's all very depressing if our goal is some kind of institutional unity.” The if there can be read a few ways, and I think that if prompts the question, as you and @Alan29 and others have noted, of whether “some kind of institutional unity” should be the goal, or a goal. Would we be better off, and we would be better at recognizing and fostering indications of unity if we took assumptions of some kind of institutional unity off the table?
How is 'the unity they already have in Christ' expressed?
By practising it! By putting into practice what you already know and believe about loving one another.
It used to be said that 11am on a Sunday was the most 'segregated' time in the USA.
We're all worshipping in different buildings on a Sunday, often in close proximity to other buildings with other Christians doing the same thing.
Only in a different way ...
I think that whatever you all get up to in different buildings on a Sunday is pretty irrelevant to Christian unity, except as a test run for how you treat other Christians. I rather doubt that anyone on the outside cares about what Christians get up to in their own buildings, as long as nobody's being abused.
I'm not saying we don't have some form of 'unity'. When I meet Christians of whatever stripe I recognise 'family', but all the splits and divisions over very minor issues are certainly a scandal.
I rather doubt that anyone outside Christianity, looking at how Christians behave, cares about the filioque clause, or any of the arguments that Christians have with each other, as long as nobody's being scapegoated.
On the ground, in person, I think that people pay more attention to whether churches get together to run food banks. Especially those people who going hungry.
We all talk about unity but what does it actually mean in practice and what does it look like?
Did you not read Lamb Chopped's post or wonder why I quoted it?
If what we have now is 'unity' then why bother with ecumenical dialogue of any kind?
To remind everyone just how far there is to go until the world can see the unity that Christians have in Christ. Failing that, to repeat Alan29's point, because it's less damaging than fighting each other.
I think people do notice the arguments that Christians have with each other and that it is in the strict sense a scandal. People definitely use this as an argument against faith - "see how these Christians hate each other".
However @Lamb Chopped is on the money as ever. The limitation, as a friend once pointed out to me, is that only the members of each faction who are willing to work with each other get to experience the unity. Maybe that is unavoidable and of the essence.
I remember Michael Green saying that we cannot humanly create Christian unity: only the Holy Spirit can do that. But unfortunately we can humanly mar unity.
I'm not sure. Just because people don't talk about it doesn't mean they don't think about it. There are plenty of "stock" jokes/criticism of religion in general and Christianity in particular in circulation and division/sectarianism is right up there.
I'm not sure. Just because people don't talk about it doesn't mean they don't think about it. There are plenty of "stock" jokes/criticism of religion in general and Christianity in particular in circulation and division/sectarianism is right up there.
Most of the comments I see online about religion are about child molestation and control of members. Overwhelmingly.
I'm not sure. Just because people don't talk about it doesn't mean they don't think about it. There are plenty of "stock" jokes/criticism of religion in general and Christianity in particular in circulation and division/sectarianism is right up there.
Most of the comments I see online about religion are about child molestation and control of members. Overwhelmingly.
These days, you're more likely to see Christianity as a whole criticized for its mistreatment of people viewed as outside the Christian fold(eg. colonized non-westerners, LGBQT) than for inter-denominational fighting among Christians themselves.
And that's perhaps understandable(I'd say, for example, that more Catholics and protestants are hostile to LGBQT people than are hostile to each other), though it does lead, I think, to occasionally underestimating the significance of residual sectarianism among Christians, eg. when that right-winger shot up the Mormon church in Michigan last September, even some liberals, handed a perfect example of right-wing terrorism to counter the then-recent Charlie Kirk demagoguery, rushed forth to proclaim the guy's crimes a mental health issue. Whereas, in fact, the evidence strongly indicates that he had been immersed in the kind of anti-Mormon propaganda commonly propagated in conservative evangelical circles. But for a lot of secular people, the idea of one type of Christian hating another type of Christian just doesn't compute these days.
This thread has been touching on a number of topics related to gender and sexuality which have the potential to be highly personal to some participants.
Since these are not the principal subjects for discussion, we are not transferring it to Epiphanies. However, Epiphanies rules now apply to this thread.
Epiphanies rules can be found here if you need a reminder of them.
IMHO we may be over-emphasizing organizational unity as if it were the only form of unity—and if we ever did achieve a single bureaucracy, no doubt we’d have a schism in 30 years tops. Is that even what Christ was talking about?
I’m more inclined to look at what various Christians do — cooperation in feeding people, etc plus recognizing one another’s baptism. Speaking well of each other and pointing out the good to be seen in what each other does. Working together in evangelism, mission, materials development and publication, etc. A lot of this is already happening very quietly, it just doesn’t hit the secular news very often.
A salutary reminder.
I was also reminded of the words of the hymn And now, O Father, mindful of the love:
Draw us the nearer, each to each, we plead, by drawing all to thee O Prince of Peace
Unity will ultimately come from drawing closer to Christ.
That one verse of John's gospel has compromised the preaching of a gospel of love more than any others.
Aye. It's pretty desperate. The idea that what Jesus had in mind involves organisational leaders making political declarations strikes me as bonkers.
As long as Christian unity is conceived as something that is created, or bought about, by Christian churches and Christian leaders reaching agreements, Christians aren't going to make any kind of progress towards practising the unity that they already have in Christ.
This too. Jesus did say, "Without me, you can do nothing," and we're making that pretty obvious in our reliance on human political and diplomatic processes, etc. Leaders aren't going to be able to do it for us.
I'm pretty sure the only thing that WILL do it for us is listening to the Holy Spirit and practicing to obey what we know of Christ's wishes, with his help. And that, of course, is a largely individual endeavor, though the whole Church ought to (and sometimes does) support it.
And it's a freaking costly thing to do, which is why it's easier to yammer about unity than to actually enact it.
The limitation, as a friend once pointed out to me, is that only the members of each faction who are willing to work with each other get to experience the unity. Maybe that is unavoidable and of the essence.
This is an awesome observation! Got to go and think about this some more...
You know, it might even have been planned and intended that way. Christ did say to the Pharisees, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (Luke 17:20-21)
If I were a media person, that remark would depress me a bit. As an ordinary grass roots Christian who cooperates with a multitude of people from various denominations, it makes me happy.
Would persecution bring us closer as some claim? A claim I doubt.
What persecution would do is to remove the bureaucracy and the bureacrats who are presently taking up all the media space on the topic of Christian dis/unity. Given a state of persecution, this empty media space would NOT be filled with news about low-level, grass-roots interdenominational support and care (more likely anti-Christian rhetoric!). However, at the same time as the bureaucracy etc. vanished from the news, it would vanish from the mental space it currently occupies in a lot of Christians' brains, and I have some hope that they would fill that space with what they actually DO see around them--namely, an opportunity to get on with caring for one another (in very difficult straits) regardless of labels.
Truthfully, I doubt anybody who's invested in hating other Christian groups is going to remain a Christian of any type under persecution. Hate is not the kind of motivator that allows people to keep going for the long term when they themselves are suffering and the outlook is nothing but bleak. Love, now...
Gamaliel, since you're looking for examples of practical low-level efforts by individual Christians toward promoting Christian unity by following Christ ...
These that follow are obviously from my own personal context, and skew heavily toward the Vietnamese and the pastoral, because that's where we live out our lives. But I think anybody could generate such a list of possibilities, starting with prayer and including self-education, visiting unfamiliar Christian groups, joining in cooperative efforts like feeding the hungry, and simply speaking well of brothers and sisters as the opportunity arises.
Anyway, ours:
1. I happen to be a writer. I produce Christian materials that are useful to people of pretty much any Christian background (they can be adapted, but they're such basic and Biblical materials that I've never had any kickback over them, and have had several amusing remarks reported, where folks who didn't know the author approved them as perfect examples of Methodism/Presbyterianism/Catholicism or what have you.
2. We make those materials available for free to anyone who wants to use them. We also promote them across the Christian faith, so people who need them (either Vietnamese or English speaking) can find them.
3. My workplace does the same.
4. My local congregation is involved in a three, four-church cooperative effort to reach the senior citizens of our neighborhood. Together we include RCs, Baptists, Lutherans, and possibly something else I've forgotten.
5. My family has housed Urbana mission conference attendees who were, I think, Tin Lanh (that is, Christian Missionary & Alliance). Not a problem for either side.
6. We do pastoral care (counseling, arranging practical details of funerals and weddings, finding financial aid, etc.) for the Tin Lanh people in our metro area, and for any RCs who can't access it in their own congregation due to, uh, personal problems of a particular leader who needs to wise up about the culture. Heck, we do it for the Buddhists. And doesn't that get interesting!
7. We borrow hymnbooks from the Baptists, who actually put good money into publishing one in a minority language (good on them!).
8. We borrow liturgical music from the RCs.
9. We've consulted with Presbyterians over needs they were facing in their own Vietnamese outreach.
10. My husband volunteers at an adult daycare run by a Pentecostal pastor, handling issues related to the language and culture of the Vietnamese participants and also doing personal counseling (yes, he's trained as a professional in that, has a second master's degree).
11. We had three children orphaned when their mother died shortly after coming to the States. Our Baptist brothers and sisters took the children into their households; the Lutherans handled the funeral (funding, coping with a government kerfuffle, and making sure the kids had a large choral funeral suitable to send pictures of back to Vietnam, as "doing things right" is a huge concern for families.)
12. Our host congregation is apparently hosting a Baptist congregation at the moment, from what my son says. I don't know, we're used to running into any number of people we don't recognize in the building on Sundays, from multiple ethnicities and languages, too.
13. Nobody within our rather isolated denomination (Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod) has ever said "boo" to us about our denominational line crossing. It's not a problem.
I think people do notice the arguments that Christians have with each other and that it is in the strict sense a scandal. People definitely use this as an argument against faith - "see how these Christians hate each other".
I think this conflates two rather different types of dispute. When I wrote
I rather doubt that anyone outside Christianity, looking at how Christians behave, cares about the filioque clause, or any of the arguments that Christians have with each other, as long as nobody's being scapegoated.
I was referring to the disagreements that Christians have about doctrine and churchmanship and many other aspects of Christian belief and practice. I wasn't referring to the hatred of Christians who have different beliefs, or sectarian conflict.
@Lamb Chopped yes, that helps and I'm thinking of examples in my own context, bearing in mind that I'm not as immersed/engaged in Christian ministry in as full-on a way as your family is.
FWIW I'm involved with the rather academic but well-meaning Fellowship of St Alban & St Sergius which meets in Oxford and exists to promote understanding between Orthodox, Anglicans and RCs, primarily, although we do have people from the 'Free Churches' involved from time to time.
It's very much past its hey-day but I enjoy the conferences and the contacts I've made through them.
I've also helped edit an ecumenical magazine for the last 9 years and will continue to do so for a while longer I think.
One of the issues we have across the small UK Orthosphere is that many enquirers, catechumens and new converts have first encountered Orthodoxy online - through the 'Interdox' - some of whom can be pretty virulent, anti-ecumenical, anti-everything and anything and pretty unpleasant pains in the arse around, to put it mildly.
I gently upbraided an 'enquirer' from an unchurched background during a study group session recently for referring to 'Protestant heresies'.
He had the 'solas' primarily in mind and has some pretty full-on conservative/almost fundamentalist Protestant friends.
I gave him some contextual background and opined that such views are more properly regarded as 'heterodox' than outright heretical - a term I would reserve solely for wonky Trinitarian views or outrageous health-wealth prosperity gospel teachings on the fringes of Pentecostalism outwith my own Tradition - and for wonky phyletism within it.
Our deacon backed me up, I'm pleased to say.
Just to be clear, I do know that the 'solas' can be more nuanced than the strident sound-bite way in which they can be deployed and the somewhat caricatured way in which they are often presented by those who don't hold to them.
So, before anyone starts, I regard my Protestant brothers and sisters as fellow Christians in every respect, only with different doctrinal perspectives on certain issues.
Same with the RCs and Copts etc.
Our parish council will sometimes agree to donate money to initiatives undertaken by other churches to alleviate poverty and so on and I know other Orthodox parishes which do the same.
There is a long, long way to go though and 'convertitis' can be a debilitating condition.
I'm just trying to 'unpack' things a bit more and get some actual examples.
Coming back to "practising the unity that they already have in Christ", maybe I could put it rather simplistically that the unity Christians already have in Christ is invisible, as far as the world is concerned. It only becomes apparent when Christians put it into practice.
I (too) like TurquoiseTastic's observation about this being the context in which Christians are able to experience, and maybe even enjoy, this unity. It puts me in mind of one or two of the more uplifting moments of that period of my life.
I think most Christians are conscious of the fact that we're all in breach of Christ's command that we should all be ONE, but do many Christians care much about any of this? To reconcile the 45,000 iterations of Christianity that exist in our world today would be impossible, but all but two of them are Protestants, those two being the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, the "two lungs" of Christinity as Pope St John Paul II called them.
You, and the Pope, seem to have forgotten the various Oriental Orthodox churches - Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian and so forth - and the ancient Indian church. By ancient, I mean the Christian church which had existed in India for many centuries before the British occupation.
Here is how the World Council of Churches chooses to break down the plethora of church groupings. I am getting less and less happy about using the term denomination; it seems to me to come out of 19th-century missionary discourse riddled with colonial assumptions, and does not really suit the understanding of the vast majority of Christian groupings as to who they are. It is a way of ignoring the elephant in the room.
I think the World Council of Churches classification of various 'tribes' works but what do we call these 'groupings'?
The World Council of Churches calls them “families.”
At least in the US, I mainly hear “denomination” used to mean a distinct organizational structure rather than “groupings” or “families.” So, for example, I might hear the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Presbyterian Church in America, the United Methodist Church, the Global Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod referred to as denominations, but I don’t typically hear Presbyterianism, Methodism or Lutheranism referred to as denominations. Meanwhile, some groups, like the Southern Baptist Convention, have traditionally resisted being called denominations because they think the term doesn’t properly reflect their “no church beyond the local congregation” understanding.
Well, I am certainly not sure that the commonalities assumed between the EFCC (Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches) and the RCC (Roman Catholic Church) are the same sort of thing, yet according to denominations, they are. Families work on a bigger scale, and yes, I am happy for RCC to be one on its own. EFCC probably fits in Reformed or maybe Evangelical, depending on whether it favours its Congregational or Evangelical heritage more, most likely both. This, however, is the first level of conversation that needs to happen. Let's stop thinking that other Christians are just a reflection of us across a theological or practice divide.
I think this is worth saying. RCC wants to talk with familial bodies that are worldwide. With the Reformed, it could; the process for making the decision at the end is in place, and that the body is not authoritative does not matter. The Reformed structure is bottom-up. This would be a major decision, it would be made by the local congregations, whether their representative at consistory or by congregational meetings fed up to the next level of council. There is the rub. The RCC may think its bureaucracy is slow, but the time taken to consult those is painstaking in the extreme. Even then, the Reformed would never get a simple yes or no; there would be a complex outcome when even if at all levels the majority said 'yes', the dissenters would have to be free to continue being Reformed.
So I do not think the Roman Catholic Church would be interested.
I raised the term, and I simply can't think of a better synonym. Some say "churches," but I resist that because it looks like I'm saying "congregations" to some people, and to others it de-emphasizes the church universal to the point where they think it doesn't exist as a reality.
Comments
Im pretty sure a union of bigots would be a long way from christianity no matter what they called themselves.
Baloney. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches don't regard women as human beings on par with men. They're not using religion to bolster their existing prejudices. Those prejudices - against women and LGBTQ+ people - are baked into their theology.
I hope all such churches die as soon as possible, whether in a union of hate or one by one.
This is one of the sentences appearing in the Nicene Creed to which many,if not possibly the majority,of those who claim to be Christian accept.
Each of these words is pregnant with meaning
I/We believe
one
holy
catholic
apostolic
church
Most of us can say these words with some sense of conviction and yet,as in so many other things the words can be interpreted in a multiplicity of ways.
There is the Church which the bishops in Nicaea in 325 saw (as guided by the Emperor)
There are the various other communities which have followed on each with its own interpretation. Ultimately if there is ONE God and ONE Lord there is only ONE Church and we are all part of it,all part of God's family.
The Church (and the churches ) which we see here on earth and which we argue about in human terms will be finally revealed in its oneness as the earthly veil is removed and we progress further to the new life of the Kingdom.
The meetings between the pope and the ecumenical patriarch have gone on for many years with the patriarch coming to Rome for 29th June and the pope or a high Vatican official coming to Istanbul for 30th November. (St Peter and St Andrew).
Most of us see differences in human terms which are usually dictated by our own individual experiences. Thus there are those who will talk about 'papal supremacy' and others who will talk about the 'Petrine ministry of union and service' - it is two different ways of saying the same thing.
On this board I think that one poster said that 'the pope was the head of the Catholic Church,but that Jesus was the Head of the CofE'. Both of these statements have an element of truth in them but they cannot be counted as a full and final explanation of the difference between the RCC and the CofE.
2nd December is the National Day in the United Arab Emirates and I received recently a charming picture of my grandson wearing, in honour of the day ,traditional Emirati Arab dress. I proudly showed the picture to a Christian friend who said it was lovely and asked if he was taking part in a Nativity play. Although I didn't say anything I thought my friend was silly to say this until I realised that,of course when she say this form of dress she would immediately be reminded of the traditional dress used in our Nativity plays.
That doesn't mean that some of their followers wouldn't.
I'm not sure that a re-united Christendom would be any more or less prone to defenestration than the current divided condition.
If there were heavy-handed moves in any direction then there'd very quickly be further splits and schisms.
Whatever the case, at a conference I attended recently the more ecumenically-minded Orthodox (Fr Jack voice: 'Now that would be an ecumenical matter ...') were lamenting and acknowledging that the Big O's were no longer in a position (had we ever been?) to sit on a high horse and say to everyone else, 'Look at us, we've preserved unity ...'
Orthodoxy (both large O or small o) is always going to be work in progress.
As is unity.
I'm not sure anyone here envisages some kind of medieval universal pontificate or a restored Caesaro-Papist Byzantine or Muscovite empire. There are those out there who would, mind.
Again, baloney. There are whole hosts of people who are unacceptable in their churches. Gay people who want to get married. Women who are called to the priesthood. Trans people who just want to be.
Which won't offer any cold comfort of course.
From the little I've seen they seem to be saying that the Pope is disingenuous and that he'll offer rapprochement to Nestorians, Monophysites and Anyone Else provided they accept Papal authority.
Patriarch Bartholomew is dismissed as 'an old man in the Phanar'.
So no, that lot aren't going to budge. Whatever the Pope does they'll see it as some kind of Jesuitical subterfuge.
Even if the RCs, the Orthodox and the Copts, Armenians and so on were all reconciled, with the Anglicans and Lutherans forming a concentric ring around that like one of the rings of Saturn, that would still leave the non-episcopal Protestant churches in an outer ring.
It's all very depressing if our goal is some kind of institutional unity. I still remain optimistic though on a personal and individual level but perhaps even that is misconceived.
If any attempt at rapprochement is dismissed as some kind of Machiavellian Papist conspiracy then there ain't much hope ...
I do wonder what some of these people expect. The Pope to crawl to Constantinople on his hands and knees to fling his Triple-Tiara into the Bosphorus and publicly tear out the 'filioque' clause from the Creed and eat it stuffed into a dried dog turd?
Even then they'd say it was some kind of ruse.
I don't think anyone thought you were using "defenestration" to mean literally throwing people out of windows. But when you said...
...did you mean that they wouldn't promote any discriminatory policies, or just that they wouldn't engage in outright violence?
But if you're asking whether either of them will introduce female clergy or same-sex marriage, then no, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
As long as Christian unity is conceived as something that is created, or bought about, by Christian churches and Christian leaders reaching agreements, Christians aren't going to make any kind of progress towards practising the unity that they already have in Christ.
It used to be said that 11am on a Sunday was the most 'segregated' time in the USA.
We're all worshipping in different buildings on a Sunday, often in close proximity to other buildings with other Christians doing the same thing.
Only in a different way ...
I'm not saying we don't have some form of 'unity'. When I meet Christians of whatever stripe I recognise 'family', but all the splits and divisions over very minor issues are certainly a scandal.
We all talk about unity but what does it actually mean in practice and what does it look like?
If what we have now is 'unity' then why bother with ecumenical dialogue of any kind?
Should that be the goal?
I don't think institutional unity is the only or even the most important kind of oneness.
My point is that if we solely aim for institutional unity - whatever that might look like - then the barriers are such that we are going to be disappointed.
By the same token, should we tolerate a situation where umpteen flavours of Christianity coexist within the same town or suburb without much by way of meaningful interaction and sometimes open hostility?
I agree with the points @Alan29 and @Nick Tamen have raised but what and where is this 'oneness' we all say we'd like to see or consider to be a reality?
Is it a reality that has to be realised as it were?
What needs to happen to make it more apparent?
More 'jaw, jaw' or more 'do, do'? - as in more collaborative social or evangelistic projects?
Would persecution bring us closer as some claim? A claim I doubt.
What then?
I think that whatever you all get up to in different buildings on a Sunday is pretty irrelevant to Christian unity, except as a test run for how you treat other Christians. I rather doubt that anyone on the outside cares about what Christians get up to in their own buildings, as long as nobody's being abused.
I rather doubt that anyone outside Christianity, looking at how Christians behave, cares about the filioque clause, or any of the arguments that Christians have with each other, as long as nobody's being scapegoated.
On the ground, in person, I think that people pay more attention to whether churches get together to run food banks. Especially those people who going hungry.
Did you not read Lamb Chopped's post or wonder why I quoted it?
To remind everyone just how far there is to go until the world can see the unity that Christians have in Christ. Failing that, to repeat Alan29's point, because it's less damaging than fighting each other.
However @Lamb Chopped is on the money as ever. The limitation, as a friend once pointed out to me, is that only the members of each faction who are willing to work with each other get to experience the unity. Maybe that is unavoidable and of the essence.
I remember Michael Green saying that we cannot humanly create Christian unity: only the Holy Spirit can do that. But unfortunately we can humanly mar unity.
Most of the comments I see online about religion are about child molestation and control of members. Overwhelmingly.
These days, you're more likely to see Christianity as a whole criticized for its mistreatment of people viewed as outside the Christian fold(eg. colonized non-westerners, LGBQT) than for inter-denominational fighting among Christians themselves.
And that's perhaps understandable(I'd say, for example, that more Catholics and protestants are hostile to LGBQT people than are hostile to each other), though it does lead, I think, to occasionally underestimating the significance of residual sectarianism among Christians, eg. when that right-winger shot up the Mormon church in Michigan last September, even some liberals, handed a perfect example of right-wing terrorism to counter the then-recent Charlie Kirk demagoguery, rushed forth to proclaim the guy's crimes a mental health issue. Whereas, in fact, the evidence strongly indicates that he had been immersed in the kind of anti-Mormon propaganda commonly propagated in conservative evangelical circles. But for a lot of secular people, the idea of one type of Christian hating another type of Christian just doesn't compute these days.
I'm just trying to 'unpack' things a bit more and get some actual examples.
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This. Absolutely, this.
This too. Jesus did say, "Without me, you can do nothing," and we're making that pretty obvious in our reliance on human political and diplomatic processes, etc. Leaders aren't going to be able to do it for us.
I'm pretty sure the only thing that WILL do it for us is listening to the Holy Spirit and practicing to obey what we know of Christ's wishes, with his help. And that, of course, is a largely individual endeavor, though the whole Church ought to (and sometimes does) support it.
And it's a freaking costly thing to do, which is why it's easier to yammer about unity than to actually enact it.
This is an awesome observation! Got to go and think about this some more...
You know, it might even have been planned and intended that way. Christ did say to the Pharisees, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (Luke 17:20-21)
If I were a media person, that remark would depress me a bit. As an ordinary grass roots Christian who cooperates with a multitude of people from various denominations, it makes me happy.
What persecution would do is to remove the bureaucracy and the bureacrats who are presently taking up all the media space on the topic of Christian dis/unity. Given a state of persecution, this empty media space would NOT be filled with news about low-level, grass-roots interdenominational support and care (more likely anti-Christian rhetoric!). However, at the same time as the bureaucracy etc. vanished from the news, it would vanish from the mental space it currently occupies in a lot of Christians' brains, and I have some hope that they would fill that space with what they actually DO see around them--namely, an opportunity to get on with caring for one another (in very difficult straits) regardless of labels.
Truthfully, I doubt anybody who's invested in hating other Christian groups is going to remain a Christian of any type under persecution. Hate is not the kind of motivator that allows people to keep going for the long term when they themselves are suffering and the outlook is nothing but bleak. Love, now...
These that follow are obviously from my own personal context, and skew heavily toward the Vietnamese and the pastoral, because that's where we live out our lives. But I think anybody could generate such a list of possibilities, starting with prayer and including self-education, visiting unfamiliar Christian groups, joining in cooperative efforts like feeding the hungry, and simply speaking well of brothers and sisters as the opportunity arises.
Anyway, ours:
1. I happen to be a writer. I produce Christian materials that are useful to people of pretty much any Christian background (they can be adapted, but they're such basic and Biblical materials that I've never had any kickback over them, and have had several amusing remarks reported, where folks who didn't know the author approved them as perfect examples of Methodism/Presbyterianism/Catholicism or what have you.
2. We make those materials available for free to anyone who wants to use them. We also promote them across the Christian faith, so people who need them (either Vietnamese or English speaking) can find them.
3. My workplace does the same.
4. My local congregation is involved in a three, four-church cooperative effort to reach the senior citizens of our neighborhood. Together we include RCs, Baptists, Lutherans, and possibly something else I've forgotten.
5. My family has housed Urbana mission conference attendees who were, I think, Tin Lanh (that is, Christian Missionary & Alliance). Not a problem for either side.
6. We do pastoral care (counseling, arranging practical details of funerals and weddings, finding financial aid, etc.) for the Tin Lanh people in our metro area, and for any RCs who can't access it in their own congregation due to, uh, personal problems of a particular leader who needs to wise up about the culture. Heck, we do it for the Buddhists. And doesn't that get interesting!
7. We borrow hymnbooks from the Baptists, who actually put good money into publishing one in a minority language (good on them!).
8. We borrow liturgical music from the RCs.
9. We've consulted with Presbyterians over needs they were facing in their own Vietnamese outreach.
10. My husband volunteers at an adult daycare run by a Pentecostal pastor, handling issues related to the language and culture of the Vietnamese participants and also doing personal counseling (yes, he's trained as a professional in that, has a second master's degree).
11. We had three children orphaned when their mother died shortly after coming to the States. Our Baptist brothers and sisters took the children into their households; the Lutherans handled the funeral (funding, coping with a government kerfuffle, and making sure the kids had a large choral funeral suitable to send pictures of back to Vietnam, as "doing things right" is a huge concern for families.)
12. Our host congregation is apparently hosting a Baptist congregation at the moment, from what my son says. I don't know, we're used to running into any number of people we don't recognize in the building on Sundays, from multiple ethnicities and languages, too.
13. Nobody within our rather isolated denomination (Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod) has ever said "boo" to us about our denominational line crossing. It's not a problem.
Does any of this help?
FWIW I'm involved with the rather academic but well-meaning Fellowship of St Alban & St Sergius which meets in Oxford and exists to promote understanding between Orthodox, Anglicans and RCs, primarily, although we do have people from the 'Free Churches' involved from time to time.
It's very much past its hey-day but I enjoy the conferences and the contacts I've made through them.
I've also helped edit an ecumenical magazine for the last 9 years and will continue to do so for a while longer I think.
One of the issues we have across the small UK Orthosphere is that many enquirers, catechumens and new converts have first encountered Orthodoxy online - through the 'Interdox' - some of whom can be pretty virulent, anti-ecumenical, anti-everything and anything and pretty unpleasant pains in the arse around, to put it mildly.
I gently upbraided an 'enquirer' from an unchurched background during a study group session recently for referring to 'Protestant heresies'.
He had the 'solas' primarily in mind and has some pretty full-on conservative/almost fundamentalist Protestant friends.
I gave him some contextual background and opined that such views are more properly regarded as 'heterodox' than outright heretical - a term I would reserve solely for wonky Trinitarian views or outrageous health-wealth prosperity gospel teachings on the fringes of Pentecostalism outwith my own Tradition - and for wonky phyletism within it.
Our deacon backed me up, I'm pleased to say.
Just to be clear, I do know that the 'solas' can be more nuanced than the strident sound-bite way in which they can be deployed and the somewhat caricatured way in which they are often presented by those who don't hold to them.
So, before anyone starts, I regard my Protestant brothers and sisters as fellow Christians in every respect, only with different doctrinal perspectives on certain issues.
Same with the RCs and Copts etc.
Our parish council will sometimes agree to donate money to initiatives undertaken by other churches to alleviate poverty and so on and I know other Orthodox parishes which do the same.
There is a long, long way to go though and 'convertitis' can be a debilitating condition.
I (too) like TurquoiseTastic's observation about this being the context in which Christians are able to experience, and maybe even enjoy, this unity. It puts me in mind of one or two of the more uplifting moments of that period of my life.
You, and the Pope, seem to have forgotten the various Oriental Orthodox churches - Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian and so forth - and the ancient Indian church. By ancient, I mean the Christian church which had existed in India for many centuries before the British occupation.
I think the World Council of Churches classification of various 'tribes' works but what do we call these 'groupings'?
At least in the US, I mainly hear “denomination” used to mean a distinct organizational structure rather than “groupings” or “families.” So, for example, I might hear the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Presbyterian Church in America, the United Methodist Church, the Global Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod referred to as denominations, but I don’t typically hear Presbyterianism, Methodism or Lutheranism referred to as denominations. Meanwhile, some groups, like the Southern Baptist Convention, have traditionally resisted being called denominations because they think the term doesn’t properly reflect their “no church beyond the local congregation” understanding.
I think this is worth saying. RCC wants to talk with familial bodies that are worldwide. With the Reformed, it could; the process for making the decision at the end is in place, and that the body is not authoritative does not matter. The Reformed structure is bottom-up. This would be a major decision, it would be made by the local congregations, whether their representative at consistory or by congregational meetings fed up to the next level of council. There is the rub. The RCC may think its bureaucracy is slow, but the time taken to consult those is painstaking in the extreme. Even then, the Reformed would never get a simple yes or no; there would be a complex outcome when even if at all levels the majority said 'yes', the dissenters would have to be free to continue being Reformed.
So I do not think the Roman Catholic Church would be interested.