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'So which church is going
to close, then?'
Reflections on ecumenical dialogue
by Ross Collins
The fourth glass of wine was too much: the Irish's nun's true feelings could not be contained any longer. 'Well,' she declared to me, 'there's the whole question of Oliver Cromwell!'. With that, I knew I could never be a priest in her eyes.
Another vision of ecumenism occurred outside Sonny's (well, this is Barnes). 'Ross, about these Methodist-Anglican talks...'
'Yeeeesssss' I replied, nervously.
'So which church is going to close, then? Do we start with Holy Trinity or the Methodist Church?'
Talks between churches seem to sway between obscure, historical points much beloved by theologians and the fears of churchgoers about who is going to lose out. For decades, official inter-church talks worked on this basis.
For example, there is the question 'Is the Apostolic Succession maintained in the Anglican tradition?'. If 'No', then Anglican priests are not priests. If 'Yes', then maybe they are. It sounds important, but in the end much of the debate ends up about who made it to an East End pub in the 17th century in time for an ordination. If God's kingdom depends on that sort of obscure, historical hair-splitting, I'll join another one.
Fear is seen in various ways too. ARCIC (the Anglican-Catholic dialogue) spent years looking at the eucharist asking what we believed about it, where our disagreements came from and came up with the conclusion that we actually believed the same thing. Do we? Even within our congregations? Of course not, but theological fudge was supposed to deal with the fear of disagreement.
A new model has been seen in a number of recent ecumenical dialogues and the Methodist-C of E one is, to my mind, a shining example. Instead of pretending that we are the same, it faces up to the fact that we are really quite different and (a scary thought to many church leaders) that does not always matter. This model accepts that even when our churches work in different, even contradictory ways, God is still present in each in equal measure. For example, the way we have expressed how our clergy are connected to the apostles may be different, but we are still equally valid ministers of God's grace and sacraments.
To some, this may seem like an abandonment of truth – we can believe anything without it mattering. However, to my mind, it reflects a deeper understanding of truth. Jesus said 'I am the way, the truth and the life'. He didn't just tell and show us the truth – he was and is the truth – a living being that evolves over time as all living entities do. It will continue to evolve until the end of time when God's truth will not just have been revealed to us but will be grasped completely by us in the light of eternity.
I'm not sure this answer would satisfy my Irish interrogator, but for us in Barnes, I believe the question is emphatically not about 'which church will close'. The Methodist-Anglican covenant declares more clearly than ever that each of our traditions is valuable in God's sight and we must not just preserve them, but enhance and develop them. The difference is that this development should happen together rather than separately. In Barnes, this is not about closing churches but about celebrating all that God has given to each of our churches, both in what we share and when we disagree.
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