Move Toward Unity Seen in Protestant Churches

A new spirit of unity is taking hold in American Protestantism, thanks to a swell of ecumenical initiatives around the nation, proposals that could see millions of Christians put aside divisions on many topics, including how Holy Communion is understood.

For many Protestant leaders, the move is long overdue.

“The scandal of the broken church is that we cannot eat together,” said the Rev. Daniell Hamby, an Episcopal priest and longtime ecumenical leader, referring to sharing Holy Communion. “The goal is to restore table fellowship to a family that doesn’t eat together.”

At the heart of the new ecumenism are two sets of initiatives. One is a proposal by the Consultation on Church Union to form a Church of Christ Uniting among nine denominations, which would be able to share clergy and sacraments. Hamby is general secretary of that effort.

There also are plans for “full Communion” between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church. “Full Communion” would allow Lutheran and Episcopal clergy to preside over Holy Communion services in each other’s churches.

The Lutheran Church in America and three Reformed bodies--the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ--are also poised to act on a “full Communion” proposal.

These official proposals mirror the give-and-take among laity and pastors already taking place at the local level as more and more Americans church-shop, denomination-hop and marry outside the faith of their mothers and fathers.

“Every congregation is ecumenical now, even among Roman Catholics,” said the Rev. Wallace Ford, executive director of the New Mexico Council of Churches.

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Moreover, the formal dialogues have helped foster an environment that many clergy hope will make tolerance and cooperation among churches in cities and neighborhoods easier.

The initiatives are the fruit of more than three decades of often difficult and arcane theological dialogues driven by the exhortation of Jesus in the Gospels that his followers “be one.”

Theological differences have long kept many denominations separate and isolated from one another.

Lutheranism grew from the teachings of Martin Luther, who attacked established practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Presbyterianism is rooted in the theology of John Calvin, who affirmed Luther’s teachings but believed in predestination and wanted a more rigidly structured church. Methodism was founded by John Wesley, who broke away from the Church of England.

But after years of high-level meetings among top-level denominational leaders, many Protestants have come to believe that the differences that divided Christians for centuries are nowhere near as prominent as they once were.

And the growing rate of interfaith marriages has eroded the high cultural, ethnic and religious walls that for generations divided families and communities.

“People are chewing on things of faith everywhere,” said Kathleen Hurty, director of Ecumenical Networks of the National Council of Churches. “Conversations [about matters of faith] that go on in the workplace are like the ecumenical dialogues.”

The Rev. Paul Crow, president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) ecumenical agency since 1974, said the doctrinal agreements and the raft of unity proposals flowing from them are a testament to “the persistence and faithfulness” of ecumenical leaders.

The Consultation on Church Union “has been developing for 35 years,” Crow added. “To the faddish mind, that seems like an eternity. But the ecumenical movement was never intended to be a quick fix. We haven’t taken any shortcuts and we’ve learned to live with the fears that people have” about losing their institutional identity.

Those fears--that Lutherans would cease being Lutheran or that Methodists would no longer be Methodists, for example--have created resistance to unity efforts in the past.

The Rev. John Hotchkin, executive director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, calls the new development “phased reconciliation.”

“We are seeing developments that could lead, in the end, to increased direct participation in one another’s ecclesial [church] lives,” though without merging administrative offices, he said.

The most visible change at the local level will involve the ability of many worshipers to receive Holy Communion in denominations other than their own.

In the past, Protestant churches have been divided over how they understand the relationship of God’s presence to the bread and wine. The difference was considered serious enough to exclude members of one denomination from the Communion tables of other groups.

If the Lutheran-Reformed proposal for “full Communion” between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Reformed Church in America is adopted, however, that would no longer be the case. According to theologians, there is enough agreement on the essentials of the faith, including the nature of the Eucharist, to allow inter-Communion.

Adoption of the proposals in the coming 24 months is considered likely, though the initiatives face obstacles at the popular level, including apathy and a fear by some of losing denominational identity.

The Rev. Tom Prinz, pastor of Nativity Lutheran Church in Alexandria, Va., noted that people in the pews often “tend to conceive of ecumenical dialogues like labor negotiations or diplomatic treaties. People want to know who wins and who loses.

“But,” he added, “the idea is not to win or lose or to compromise on theological positions but to find what we share; then, on the basis of that convergence, to ask how much unity we can visualize.”

Hotchkin said the current set of proposals offers precisely the kind of model for ecumenism that does not threaten denominational identity.

“None of these new proposals envisage the disappearance of the present churches as we know them, or the emergence of new bodies replacing them,” he said.

Even if some of the fear has evaporated, though, some resistance remains.

“I expect the usual response to change--cautious suspicion,” Prinz said. “Parish pastors very much have their noses pointed at the communities they serve. We find it unnatural to work together except on special projects.”

Another obstacle to implementing the unity proposals is the ambivalence of local pastors and their congregations.

Ford, for example, said local congregations move back and forth across a spectrum that ranges from cooperation to competition with one another.

“Many local pastors, confronted with dwindling numbers and resources and yet called on to do more and more, believe the ecumenical movement has no real value to their survival,” Ford said. “They say, ‘What I need is a life-preserver, not a serenade.’ ”