22nd November 2018

(I am currently struggling to read books. I tell myself every day that I should read on my lunch breaks at work etc, but my mind races from one thought to another and I mainly fail at opening a book and discovering what is contained within. 

Today, I have decided to chain myself to my desk for much of my lunch breaks and copy from whatever book I have to hand.

It forces me to read, write and concentrate at the same time, in the hope that over time it may replace some bad habits with some good ones, and generally help me become a better reader and writer.)

 

 

The Kingship of Christ (1954)

THE STORY OF

THE WORLD COUNCIL OF

CHURCHES

BY G.K.A BELL

Bishop of Chichester

To

THE MEMBERS OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE

OF

THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

…

Divisions in the Church

But the Church charged by its Lord with this mission was one Church. It is now divided. The Church of which S. Paul spoke in his Epistle was one visible Church. There is one body and one spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism. (Ephesians 4, 4-5.) Now there are many bodies of Christians, separated from one another, teaching different doctrines, possessing different ministries, and acknowledging different systems of government. There is disunion and division, even conflict and antagonism. Therefore the work of the whole body of Christ suffers. The witness to the Kingship of Christ suffers. Jesus prayed for his apostles and ‘for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us; that the world may believe that thou didst send me . . . that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they be made perfect in one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me;. (John 17, 20-3.) This far reaching disunion is a terrible obstacle in the way of the world believing ‘that thou didst send me’.

   Division began in the early days of the Christian religion. The distinction between heresy and schism was not altogether simple. But generally speaking heresy means false doctrine, and schism an orthodox sect. Any body which had broken from the Church could be called a schism.* Certainly by the end of the fourth century after the birth of Christ a number of bodies were in existence which had broken away from the catholic (or universal) Church. And there is no doubt at all about the grave view taken by the Christian Fathers of the day of the sin of schism. It is an offence against the necessary unity of the body of Christ as laid down in Scripture. It is also an offence against the paramountcy of Christian love.

(*. S.L. Greenslade, Schism in the Early Church, p.28.)

   I have referred to the early days in the Catholic Church because they are often forgotten or overlooked. But the two principal breaches in the unity of the Church took place later, separated from each other by 500 years. The first breach between East and the West, and took place in 1054. It is known as the Great Schism. The grounds for this breach had been prepared long before. There were many reasons brought forward in justification, notably the addition by the Western Church of the words ‘and the son’ (viz. the filioque clause) to the article in the Nicene Creed which confesses that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father. But there were other causes of a non-theological character, national, cultural, political, in which the respective claims of the rival Sees of Rome (for the West) and Constantinople (for the East) became the subject of conflict. The final act which separated the Eastern and Western Churches took place on 16 July 1054, when Michael Cerularius was Patriarch of Constantinople; and the Legates of Rome laid an excommunication in writing on the high altar of the great Church of Sancta Sophia, and departed from it, shaking the dust from their feet and crying ‘Let God look and judge’.

   The second great breach was the Reformation in the sixteenth century. It was a revolution within Western Christendom against the authority of the See of Rome. It was affected by many circumstances, political, economic, geographical, philosophical. But fundamentally it was concerned with the deepest elements in religion. A reformation of the Church in its head and members was long overdue; and as a result the Western Church was riven in twain, Protestants against Catholics. But the revolution of the Protestants took many forms. In a large part of Germany and in the whole of the Scandinavian countries the Lutheran Churches emerged, with their doctrine of justification by faith, some with bishops, some without. In France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Scotland the Reformed or Presbyterian Churches emerged, under the leadership of Calvin and Zwingli, with Confessions and Synods, but no bishops. In England, where the same abuses and corruptions prevailed as in the rest of Europe, the Church of England underwent a conservative reformation from which it emerged with its Book of Common Prayer, and its combination of Protestant and Catholic factors in a single communion.

   These divisions in the Reformation were far-reaching and changed the face of Europe. The Roman Catholic Church outnumbers all other Christian bodies and is strong in all five continents, including both the Americas. In the East, besides the Lesser Eastern Churches which broke away long before the Great Schism, the Orthodox Church, whether Greek (looking to the Ecumenical Patriarch at Istanbul) or Slav (looking to the Patriarch of all the Russias at Moscow) is still the main Christian communion. Since the sixteenth century other Protestant communions have been formed by separation from parent bodies. In England these are known as the Evangelical Free Churches (i.e. as distinguished from the Church of England by law established) and include the Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, together with the Friends and the Salvation Army. And just as the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican Churches have spread all over the world, so theses post-Reformation Churches, especially the Baptists and Methodists, are found in considerable force in most continents. In the United States they are most numerous of all, and most diverse.

   The mere rehearsal of these divisions is enough to show the immensity of the obstacles with which Christian men and women are faced in declaring their witness to the Kingship of Christ in the world today. Although all believe in the divinity of Christ, they are separated from one another by their denominational differences. Although in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bondman or freeman; and although, the Catholic or Universal Church, so called because it is ‘spread throughout the whole world from one end to the  other’** – is the Church of all nations and classes, Christians are neither united in one Church, nor are they in any sort of position to suppress the evils of nationalism, or to correct injustice in the society around them. No wonder that a movement which seeks to overcome divisions within the Church, and to draw the various Christian communions together, should be a matter of the highest importance to Christendom as a whole. No wonder Archbishop William Temple should acclaim this ‘world-wide Christian fellowship, this Ecumenical Movement as it has been called, as the great new face of our era’. Nor should we be surprised that an unusual word should be used to describe it. The word ‘Ecumenical’, as we shall use it, means both ‘world-wide’ (literally ‘the inhabited earth’) and ‘that spiritual traffic between the Churches which draws them out of their isolation and into a fellowship of conversation, mutual enrichment, common witness and common action’.***

** J.W.N. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, p. 385.

*** W.A. Visser ‘t Hooft, The Meaning of Ecumenical, p. 28.

2

LOOKING TOWARDS UNITY

The scandal of disunity has been felt in all ages by thoughtful Christians of many Churches. There have been a number of efforts of varying significance towards reconciliation or reunion. Some have been by church authorities, others by individual pioneers. There have been attempts, especially in the centuries immediately after the Great Schism, to reunite East and West; but they have come to nothing. Thought has also been given to the problem of finding a basis on which a Church which has separated from Rome at the time of the Reformation might be restored to communion; but here again with no success. Nor have efforts such as those in the seventeenth century to bring about ‘a universal blessed union of all reformed Churches’ fared much better. Some Church unions have indeed taken place between Churches of similar order and doctrine in a particular country. There are also examples of a relationship between different denominations, falling short of union, such as an agreement to allow communicant members of one confession to receive Holy Communion in the church of another confession. But it was not till the twentieth century that a real movement to draw the Churches together on a world scale commenced.

A World Missionary Conference

The first real step forward in this direction arose from the missionary work of the Churches overseas, notably in Africa and Asia. A World Missionary Conference was convened at Edinburgh in 1910. Its purpose was officially defined as ‘research and conference regarding missionary work and problems’, face to face with all other (non-Christian) religions. But no resolution was allowed to be presented which involved questions of doctrine or Church policy, as to which Churches or societies taking part differed amongst themselves. The Student Christian Movement of Great Britain and Ireland had an important had an important share in the preparations, and some 1,200 delegates from Missionary Societies of the Anglican Church. A Continuation Committee was appointed, which developed later into the International Missionary Council. And it is remarkable that two of the principal architects of the Edinburgh Conference, John R. Mott (U.S.A.) and J.H. Oldham (Great Britain) and one of the ushers, a young Oxford tutor named William Temple, were destined to play a great part in a later stage of the movement towards reunion, in the formation of the World Council of Churches.

Faith and Order

At this very first stage, the clear connexion between the mission of the Church and the unity of the ~Church received a powerful testimony. As the Edinburgh Conference closed, Charles Brent, first Anglican missionary Bishop of the Philippine Islands, told the delegates of a new vision which the conference had given him. It was a vision with a very wide range, for he was clear that the ultimate goal must include the whole of Christendom, with Rome. Three months later, in October 1910, he attended the General Convention of the American Episcopal Church at Cincinnati. He records in his diary that at the early Eucharist on the opening day there came upon him vividly a conviction that a world conference should be convened to consider matters of faith and order. At a great public meeting attended by all the Bishops and Deputies, with delegates from the Women’s Auxiliary, he spoke of his vision. Before the Convention closed, on the proposition of the Reverend W.T. Manning, later Bishop of New York, it was unanimously agreed that a Joint Commission be appointed ‘to bring about a Conference for the consideration of questions touching on Faith and Order, and that all Christian communions throughout the world which confess our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour be asked to unite with us in arranging for and conducting such a conference’. Bishop Anderson of Chicago was elected President, and Robert Gardiner, an influential layman, Secretary. Bishop Brent became a member of the commission; and thus the project, the most far-reaching of any effort in his crowded life (says his biographer), was launched.***  It was born in prayer, and every step the Bishop took in promoting it began and ended in prayer. Other Churches in the United States were inspired by the same vision, and appointed c0-operating Commissions. Similar Commissions were also set up in Great Britain and Ireland, representing the Anglican, Presbyterian, and Free Churches; and interest spread far and wide, not only in Europe but also in Asia. Deputations to the Vatican and the Orthodox Churches were already planned when the First World War broke out, and all immediate activities in this field had to cease.

***. A.C. Zabriskie, Bishop Brent, pp. 147-8The First World War

While the war effectively stopped all immediate plans for an intenser working for a world-wide Christian unity in this field, by its very nature it brought the need for unity home in another way to churchmen with a greater urgency than ever. Already between 1907 and 1913 groups of men in different countries, especially America, Britain, Germany, and Switzerland, had been thinking about the philosophy of life. Churches’ Councils for Promoting Friendly Relations between Great Britain and Germany were founded in those countries in 1910. In the United States the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America started a similar movement; and the Church Peace Union was formed, Mr Andrew Carnegie handing a very large sum of money to a body of trustees for the general purposes of the peace work of the Churches. A project for a similar Council was set in motion in the Swiss reformed Churches. Mr J. Allen Baker, M.P., and Mr W.H. Dickenson, M.P., visited France, Belgium, and Germany, and secured the consent of leading members of the Protestant Churches in those countries to take part in an International Conference of Protestants.

   Three moments during the five years stand out as of special importance in linking the movement for Christian unity with the search for international fellowship and peace.

(To be continued . . .)