Former general secretary of the National Assembly of the Uniting Church in Australia, the Australian Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches in Australia Reverend David Gill gave an address at the launch in Brisbane recently of The Mission of the Church, a report of the national dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Uniting Church in Australia. This is an edited version of his address
IN July 1978, Anglican bishops from around the world had gathered at Canterbury, in Kent, for their 11th Lambeth Conference.
They were treated to, among other things, a series of devotional talks by the then Archbishop of York, Stuart Blanch, in which he explored the writings of the second century theologian Irenaeus of Lyons for what light they might have to cast on episcopal ministry today.
At one stage, the archbishop spoke of how perilously easy it is for a person to be distracted by peripheral matters and lose sight of what is central to a bishop’s calling.
He reached for a memorable sentence, a pungent phrase, that might drive the warning home. And he found one. Thus it was that 440 rather surprised bishops received the following piece of archepiscopal wisdom.
“Gentlemen,” he said – for in those days they all were.
“When you’re up to your (rear) in alligators, it is easy to forget that your original intention was to drain the swamp!”
Which brings us to the national dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Uniting Church in Australia.
Your document The Mission of the Church could hardly be more timely or its subject matter better chosen. Both our churches, right now, are all too familiar with alligators. In this country, at the present time, all the churches find themselves surrounded by the beasts.
And we know from painful experience that, with such major distractions constantly nibbling at our nether regions, it is oh so easy to lose sight of who we are and why we’re here.
Your report calls us to stop fretting about the alligators and refocus on the one thing that really matters: our shared participation in the mission of God.
The document is timely for another reason.
We launch it in the centenary year of a gathering that was also focused on mission, one that has been hailed as marking the start of the modern ecumenical movement.
In some ways that claims too much. The International Missionary Conference, in Edinburgh in June 1910, brought together representatives of missionary societies, not churches. It comprised only Protestants and Anglicans, and mainly English-speaking ones at that.
The focus was taking the Gospel to the world, not tackling Christian disunity. Yet much was to flow from Edinburgh 1910.
Thanks to those pioneers at Edinburgh, mission was to become the dominant motif of Protestant ecumenism.
Christian unity mattered because effective evangelisation required it. So we must fix the divisions, in order that the world may respond to the Gospel. Our Lord’s high priestly prayer, with John 17:21 “that they may be one … that the world may believe”, seemed to give this means-and-end approach a dominical sanction.
Undoubtedly, the early primacy given to mission helped win supporters for the ecumenical movement, at least within Protestant circles. It also helped save the movement from what might otherwise have been an introverted ecclesiasticism.
But it exacted a price. One result, alas, has been a tendency to see Christian unity in instrumental terms, rather than as an imperative stemming from the heart of the gospel.
When the question comes “Do you think ecumenism is really worthwhile?” it’s not just the great Australian pragmatism speaking. It is a century of mission-inspired calculation of costs and benefits, strategies and tactics, means and ends.
It is a failure to see that some things – like faith, hope, love and seeking the visible reconciliation of Christ’s fractious people – entail an obedience that transcends calculation.
Some years ago your report on Interchurch Marriages won enthusiastic recognition, not only here but overseas as well. It was hailed as a thorough and forward-looking piece of work, a helpful Australian contribution significant for the wider ecumenical scene.
The same reception, we hope, awaits today’s document.
You began with the common ground, Missio Dei, and the six sub-heads: worship, communion, proclamation, service, witness, teaching.
Helpfully, when identifying a point of difference, you tried to disentangle what might be substantial from what is merely terminological or a difference of emphasis, as well as the new learnings that emerged in the course of your work.
The encouraging thing is the recurring chorus that each church shares much common ground with the other.
Your final assessment – that there are “no substantial differences in our respective ecclesial visions regarding either the missional nature of the Church or what constitutes its mission” – would surely have the fathers from Edinburgh singing, amazed, a heavenly doxology!
How are we to move forward from here?
Karl Barth, the 20th century’s most influential Protestant theologian, spent his early years attacking both Protestantism (for its pietism, captivity to culture and bad theology) and Roman Catholicism (for sidelining scripture, forgetting sola gratia – “by grace alone” – and smothering the Spirit).
He was stirred into a major rethink, however, by the Second Vatican Council and what it seemed to portend. As a child of the Reformation, Barth aired his soul-searching in print:
“I confess that I am secretly troubled by one problem …. How would things look if Rome (without ceasing to be Rome) were one day simply to overtake us and place us in the shadows, so far as the renewing of the Church through the Word and Spirit of the Gospel is concerned? What if we should discover that the last are first and the first last, that the voice of the Good Shepherd should find a clearer echo over there than among us?
“… We others might find more to learn from the Roman Church than Rome for its part would have to learn from us … The threat of an exchange of positions and roles is becoming visible today all along the horizon, an exchange in whose light our criticisms, justified as they are, of Mary and the infallible teaching office, would necessarily become uninteresting.” (“Thoughts on the Second Vatican Council,” The Ecumenical Review July 1963 pp. 364-65)
Good questions. They lead me to another. In the light of all that has happened between our churches and within them through half a century, is there today any compelling reason for the children of Luther, Calvin and Wesley to maintain their separation from the See of Peter?
I want to join my voice with those who in recent years have been calling for “a more receptive ecumenism” – meaning, as I understand it, that the churches should engage with each other not primarily in terms of what “we” have that “you” should accept, but trying to discern the gifts and graces your church has that mine should yearn to receive.
The emphasis is to be welcomed. But it must move us from the general to specifics, from peripheral issues to those at the heart of our divisions.
What such enhanced receptivity might mean for other churches is of course for them to say.
As a member of the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA), and in the light of the work done by your group, my question is this. Is the Uniting Church now prepared to go beyond a general commitment to unity, revisit the invitation of Ut Unum Sint – a remarkable document that has never had the attention it deserves – and indicate clearly and unequivocally that it seeks unity in communion with the bishop of Rome?
Nobody would imagine the way forward to be fast or easy, but a sharpening of the UCA’s intention in this dialogue – to prepare itself to receive the ministry of universal pastor – would help everyone.
We also need to move towards “a more self-critical ecumenism”. What is it about my church that makes it difficult for others to understand, to deal with or even to take seriously? Instead of what do we have that we believe you should accept, let us come clean about what we have that we fervently hope you won’t want!
Some of us in the Uniting Church, for example, wish we could draw a discreet veil over the liturgical anarchy that prevails in many of our congregations. Many of my Catholic friends seem eager to do the same with curial centralism. Other examples, alas, abound.
Let us not be afraid to identify our weaknesses and problems, even to ask for help and guidance.
We must aspire to “a more empathetic ecumenism”. Much progress has been made at the cerebral level on matters of doctrine and church order. For that we thank God.
But ecumenism is a journey of the heart as well as the mind. The challenge is not just to understand what another church believes, but to enter as far as we are able into what it feels like to believe that way: how the people of that tradition live their beliefs, pray in the light of their doctrines, cope with their form of the magisterium and survive under their particular ecclesial roof.
More receptive, more self-critical, more empathetic. To those three qualities, on this day, we should add a fourth.
Let me make a plea for “a more confident ecumenism”. Too many eyes are mesmerised by the problems, too much time is spent lamenting the frustrations, too many voices are speaking of an alleged ecumenical winter.
Of course there is some reality in all that. But Pope John XXIII was able to look at the tough realities of his time and proclaim, joyfully “This is the springtime of the Church”.
In like spirit, we should claim this as the springtime of the ecumenical movement. We have journeyed so far, as any reborn participant from Edinburgh 1910 would tell us.
We journey together still, as your report powerfully demonstrates. There is nothing to suggest God is about to bring our journeying to a screeching halt.
