Ecumenical climb: an interview with Joan Brown Campbell - General Secretary of the National Council of Churches - Interview

Christian Century, Nov 8, 1995

When she was installed as general secretary of the National Council of Churches in 1991, Joan Brown Campbell became the first ordained woman to serve in the top staff position at the NCC, which has 32 member communions, including Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox bodies. A minister in both the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the American Baptist Churches, Campbell was previously executive director for the U. S. office of the World Council of Churches. Before that she was assistant general secretary for the NCCs Commission on Regional and Local Ecumenism. Campbell is expected to be elected to another four-year term when the NCC's General Board meets this month in Oakland. We spoke with her recently about the state of the ecumenical movement and the role of the NCC in public policy debates.

Ecumenism may be alive in many places, but in its institutional form it seems to many observers to be stalled. How would you characterize this moment in the ecumenical movement?

I wouldn't define the movement as stalled so much as middle-aged. The National Council of Churches, the World Council and many of the local councils are about 50 years old, so some of the newness has worn off The excitement of Episcopalians going to church with Presbyterians has worn off. Some of the prejudices that, for example, made marriages between Roman Catholics and Protestants deeply divisive have passed away. In those early days, when relationship were beginning and walls were being broken down, there was a sense of excitement and a sense of accomplishment.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Edward-Cassidy, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian.Unity, has suggested that the ecumenical project is like the ascent of a very steep mountain. When people start the climb, a lot of people gather around and cheer. When the mountain climbers get out of sight, however, there's less cheering, and people just go about their work. I think the ecumenical movement, particularly in the form of the national structures, is a little out of sight.

A lot of strength is now in local ecumenical bodies, particularly those in which committed Christians and congregations come together. I began my ecumenical career in the Council of Churches in Cleveland, and I sometimes say the very best days of my professional life were back in Cleveland because of a strong hands-on experience

As I see it, ecumenism lives in your heart, is acted out in your life and shapes how you organize. In short, being ecumenical is a way of being Christian. From that point of view, the ecumenical movement is alive and well and very widespread. But if only local bodies existed, the movement would be weaker.

How so? What would be missing?

Having worked at both the WCC and the NCC,I know that those bodies bring a connectedness and a strength that local councils by themselves don't have because the tend to be related to the issues in the neighborhood or the city in which they find themselves. Take an issue like welfare reform: it is not a local issue only. And it's often policy set by the churches at the national level that feeds into the actions that are taken by churches at a very local level.

Also, as a national organization the NCC can serve as a megaphone for local activity. If we know that 50 local councils of churches are focusing on the homeless and all are saying that there are more homeless than they can bed down and feed, a national body is in a position to speak to the national policy-makers.

Given that the mountain climbers are out of sight now, what do you see as the chief task of the NCC, even if accomplishing it goes unnoticed and unheralded?

An image from the Bible may help: when Jesus came down from the Mount of Transfiguration, he faced disciples who could not cast out a demon from a young boy. The test of the disciples' faith was not if they could climb the mountain but whether they could heal in the valley The NCC has to live and draw the churches together in the valley.

One of our big challenges is to deepen the unity between the churches that are NCC members. We are beyond the getting-to-know-one-another phase. It's time for churches to be more intentional about their unity regarding some of the topics about which they are uncomfortable.

When they don't really know each other, they find themselves only superficially able to understand the reason another church will take a different position.

Can you give an example.?

One of the thorniest issues facing us is the issue of homosexuality. If we would rid ourselves of ideology and become more theologically rooted, then we would find that there is common ground on the issues we disagree on. We would also come to understand why the black churches take the position they do on homosexuality, why the Orthodox take the position they do, and why the United Church of Christ (the only church in the NCC that ordains self-acknowledged gays and lesbians) takes the position it does--that these positions are rooted in who they are.

And despite different stances on this matter, there is common ground on the issue of civil rights for gay and lesbian people. When I go to the state of Oregon, which has had an initiative to limit the civil rights of gay and lesbian being able to say that the NCC's member churches believe that gay and lesbian people are entitled to their civil rights. Now, that leaves unsaid a whole spectrum of issues that people don't agree on-ordination, affirmation or rejection of the lifestyle, and so on. A council that wants to maintain its diversity and its unity is going to have to find ways to seek common ground on these kinds of issues. Ignoring them is not the way of the future. We're going to have to find ways to deal with them that doesn't split us apart.