Christians Come Together for Unity Week

Joining others around the world, Christians in California are in the midst of this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, eight days of ecumenical events designed to transcend theological differences.

“Jesus prayed at the Last Supper that all his followers be one,” said the Rt. Rev. Alexei Smith, in charge of ecumenical and interfaith functions for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “Sadly that’s not true today. So every opportunity that we have to pray with our fellow Christians for Christian unity should be observed.”

The idea behind the unity week, jointly sponsored worldwide by the Vatican and the World Council of Churches, is that Christians of different traditions have more that unites than divides them. Nearly 350 denominations in 120 countries are affiliated with the Geneva-headquartered World Council of Churches.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was started in 1908 by the Rev. Paul Wattson, co-founder of the Society of Atonement.

On Wednesday, the first day of the annual prayer week brought clergy and laypeople of Catholic, Baptist, Episcopalian and Presbyterian traditions to First Baptist Church of Los Angeles in the Wilshire Center for a communal meal, followed by a worship service and both traditional and contemporary songs accompanied by a pipe organ.

Representatives from the various Christian denominations as well as an official of the Islamic Center of Southern California read from the Bible during the service.

Jihad Turk, director of religious affairs at the Islamic Center, who read from Exodus in the Old Testament, said it is important for people of different religions to understand one another. “In this day and age, there is a lot of ambiguity as to who the other is,” he said. “We need to become familiar with one another so that we don’t imagine who the other is and thereby demonize them or vilify them.”

The Islamic Center is a member of the Wilshire Center Interfaith Council, where clergy and laypeople representing Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Islamic traditions meet monthly.

“It was a joyful celebration of our unity,” said the Rev. Charles Robertson, pastor of Wilshire Presbyterian Church and president of Wilshire Center Interfaith Council, which has worked with others to put on the local event for the second year in a row.

To participants, the week is not a time to talk about such stumbling blocks to Christian unity as abortion, priestly celibacy, ordination of women and papal authority. But those issues loom in the background.

“The dialogue on social and moral issues is very difficult,” said Father James Loughran, director of the Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute in New York, which is a leader in the unity week.

For example, he noted that there is a committed Catholic position against abortion but there is no universal Protestant position.

“We made tremendous progress in these 40 years, accepting one another as Christians,” he said, adding that much hard work remains.

For the unity week internationally, an ecumenical panel of churches in Ireland prepared this year’s theme and suggested texts. But local churches were encouraged to adapt those texts and commentaries, taking into account their own practices and cultures. The material is available on the council’s website, www.wcc-coe.org.

More than 4,000 churches across the nation observe the unity week each year, according to Loughran, whose group developed, adapted and published the texts in the United States. The Graymoor institute, begun in 1967, is a ministry of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement.

The main biblical text for this year’s prayer observance is a quote from Jesus in Matthew 18: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

The thinking behind it was to “to encourage and strengthen the fellowship of God’s people in small communities as well as in great gatherings, in daily life as well as in official, liturgical celebrations,” said the committee.

This year’s themes also include forgiveness, stressing Jesus’ instructing Peter that one should forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven.

Each day has an inspirational focus. Tuesday’s is to challenge Christians to welcome neighbors and strangers and to recognize the presence of Christ within all of them.

Los Angeles photographer William Smith Jr., a member of First Baptist, said he was moved by the service there.

“It’s good to meet with people from other denominations,” he said, adding that he felt the “presence of Christ” throughout the service.

A number of attendees said they were especially impressed by the sermon of the Rev. John Drane, an Episcopal priest from Scotland, who included the history of the 98-year-old ecumenical effort.

Drane told the gathering that nearly 70% of Christians in the world today are nonwhite.

“The typical Christian today is an African woman in her early 20s,” he said.

Some churches will participate just one day. Others have designated tomorrow as Ecumenical Sunday and are incorporating some of the suggested prayers and readings into their regular service.

Among the upcoming California ecumenical events is a prayer service involving 22 churches Sunday at 4 p.m. at Armenian Apostolic Church in Burbank. A discussion will follow at 5 p.m., according to Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Western Diocese.

At 7:30 p.m. Monday, St. Denis Catholic Community in Diamond Bar will be hosting Presbyterian, Lutheran and United Church of Christ congregations for a joint service.

In San Luis Obispo County, Old Mission San Miguel Parish has organized eight days of 7 p.m. prayer services and social hours at that Catholic mission and seven local churches of various denominations, according to Sister Loretta Guevarra of the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement, who has been coordinating the events for six years.

Tonight’s service will be at St. James Episcopal Church in Paso Robles. The site for Sunday will be Second Baptist Church, also in Paso Robles; Monday, First Presbyterian Church in Templeton; and Tuesday, North County Christian Church in Paso Robles.

The finale comes Wednesday at St. Rose Catholic Church in Paso Robles, where 400 people from 15 area churches are expected, said Sister Loretta, who served 31 years as a missionary in Brazil.

“After we pray together, we have a social event,” she said. “That’s where people meet each other.”