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25 October 2005

Christian leaders warn unity movement could be halted in its tracks

Chris Herlinger
New York (ENI). International church leaders meeting in New York have declared that the movement for Christian unity will prosper in the future only if it becomes less tied to institutional structures and becomes more inclusive. Institutional ecumenism "is in stagnation. The challenge is, how can we go beyond institutional ecumenism and make it a healing reality," Catholicos Aram I of the Armenian Apostolic Church and moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) central committee, said in a speech at a 22 October symposium. The symposium focused on a subject of increasing importance to churches and church leaders: how to navigate the future of the ecumenical movement amid social and global changes that are shifting the centre of Christianity away from Europe and the United States to Africa, Asia and Latin America. Aram said the ecumenical movement can no longer afford to be "a private club for conference-goers and church hierarchs", a theme also sounded by the Rev. Samuel Kobia, a Kenyan Methodist who is the WCC's general secretary. He has declared the need for WCC member churches to be in dialogue with evangelical, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic groups that do not belong to the Geneva-based church grouping. "New conditions and trends may pose impediments to business as usual, blocking one's well-travelled way or making nonsense of comfortable custom," Kobia said, noting that no institution that has emerged out of the ecumenical movement, including the WCC itself, "is eternal". The WCC groups 347 churches, in more than 120 countries in all continents from most Christian traditions.

"If we are determined to act as we have always acted, to depend on institutions shaped entirely by past realities, we may be halted in our tracks," Kobia said. The present model may become "too clerical, too dependant on leaders ordained by member churches" and may lose "the energy provided by active laity including students, youth and women's fellowships", the Kenyan Methodist warned. The Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, said there needed to be new approaches, based on "compelling spiritual vision rather than predictable organizational momentum, and by deep change rather than incremental change".

• In New Zealand, the Conference of Churches in Aotearoa New Zealand announced it was closing at the end of September 2005. A group set up to reflect the main strands of Christianity in the country is urging a call for "prayer and dialogue to prepare the ground for a 21st century model of cooperation" between denominations and Christian groups.

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