Survey of Church Union Negotiations 1996-1999

Ecumenical Review, The, Jan, 2000 by Thomas F. Best

The event brought global attention: visitors came bringing greetings from united and uniting churches in Africa, Asia, Eastern and Western Europe as well as North America; greetings were received from churches not personally represented, the WCC was strongly present, including the moderator and a staff member from its Faith and Order commission, and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Council for World Mission were there in force.

From the United States come important developments within the Consultation on Church Union (COCU). When the nine COCU churches met for the first time in ten years in plenary in St Louis in January 1999,(4) eight of them had formally approved (though with later reservations in one case) the 1988 text "Churches in Covenant Communion" as a basis for a future covenantal relationship. In St Louis delegates met often in groups of ten, one from each of the COCU member churches plus an ecumenical participant-observer. The fellowship discovered and nurtured within these groups was a foretaste of the promised covenant communion among the churches; this experience was brought into the plenary sessions, where it translated into a resolute determination to move forward with the union process.

And determination was needed: it became apparent that substantial differences still remain among some of the churches on issues of oversight (episcope). Furthermore, the churches -- not accepting the earlier proposal for "covenanting councils" to make unity visible at local, regional and national levels -- brought no concrete proposals for what might replace them. Finally, issues of racism have become not less, but even more serious in the time since the last plenary. Substantial decisions were taken in all these areas, with the leaders of the COCU churches committing themselves publicly to clarify the ecclesiological issues at stake in the debate about bishops (and the office of the elder), to seek alternate forms to make the unity of the churches plainly visible, and to establish a programme of study and action about the racism which marks the life of many churches today. Meetings of the COCU executive throughout 1999 have made substantial progress in these areas.

These examples -- taken from 1999 alone -- reveal a new global church union scene. Structural integration of church bodies is still the response necessary in many church and social situations; elsewhere other forms of making unity visible are deemed, at least at present, more appropriate. Whatever form of work towards unity is pursued, there is a renewed and strong emphasis on making unity visible and effective. In India the churches were already in a state of "full communion" but felt, strikingly, that more was needed: their "unity" must be made more evident in their own lives, more visible to the world, and more relevant to the world's need for "abundant life". Taken together these examples show how little today's church unions are merely matters of "ecclesial carpentry", or mainly concerned with the bureaucratic details of institutional life. In fact the unions are mainly about the renewed life of the church for the sake of Christ and of the world. They are about making the unity given by Christ actually "work" across the divisions imposed by history, ethnic identity and culture.