The premise of this gathering was a permeating sense of the deep crisis within the ecumenical movement characterized by a dearth of prophetic, intellectual, and moral substance and a dissonance with the peoples‟ movements for life, justice, and peace.
The specific objectives of this gathering were:
- To plant seeds of a transformative ecumenical movement that will grow out of people, their lives, and their struggles;
- To strive for an ecumenical movement that is committed to heal a broken and polarised world; and
- To free the ecumenical movement from patriarchal, bureaucratic, and business oriented leadership devoid of calling, spirit, and respect for the whole creation.
Our Conversations
A. Prophetic Bankruptcy
The ecumenical movement is undergoing a prophetic bankruptcy, due to its current inability to pay heed to authentic voices in the midst of various crises in today’s world. This is manifested in the overemphasis on bureaucratic, structural and institutional concerns that prevents the ecumenical movement responding adequately to issues of justice and peace. Reclaiming the prophetic voice must come from the movement’s ability to embody the voices of the marginalized people. The cries of those who are marginalized urge the movement to speak prophetically to the life-threatening powers of Empire, which are all-pervading and which present themselves in the guise of economic globalization and military hegemony. Failing to confront these powers is failing God and all of creation, as well as failing our ecumenical vocation.
Rejuvenating the ecumenical movement requires a new purpose and direction, allowing the Spirit to breathe life back to the movement and re-engage with the power of marginalized people. We must engage in a double-strategy approach of counter-culturally denouncing the current economy of greed while at the same time announcing an economy of life embedded in the egalitarian, interdependent, shared oriented praxis giving alternatives to the forces of globalization and the so-called free market. As Jesus turned the tables in the temple, the ecumenical movement should take the side of the oppressed as God has done throughout history. We aspire to reshape our tired EcuMENism so that it can be more inclusive and responsive to people from the margins rather than church bureaucrats.
- Intellectual Bankruptcy
Our language is stale, concepts are increasingly irrelevant, and our spirits are stifled because we are not focused on the challenges to life posed by the new world order that confronts and distorts us. Nor are we responding adequately to what we feel the Spirit is doing to bring transformation. Our vision is too limited to the narrow, abstract world of the Church and needs to be expanded by an openness to the life of the Spirit within the whole Creation.
The following ideas and insights came through our conversations:
– Many of our churches and leaders are captive to the seductive aspiration of power and privilege while many suffer from the negative consequences of the deliberate systematic exploitation of people and planet by dominant political economic and military systems. A transformed ecumenical movement is called to give its life and spirit to resisting this empire and offering alternative visions of life, challenging the legitimacy of technocratic power.
– We see the doctrine of the Holy Spirit offering us new impetus for fresh ecumenical action. The Spirit brings life and transforms life, but we see that all of life is at stake in the current crisis. By the power of the Spirit, we can find renewal for the struggle for justice. The Holy Spirit also enlightens our understanding of ecumenism, for the Spirit moves in the church but also beyond the church. The Spirit makes our margins new centres and helps us take up new positions at the edges of our world.
– We feel our praxis of ecumenism is too narrow and limited. The Spirit invites us to new dialogue with our neighbours as we discover many new partners in the common search for peace and justice. If there is to be peace on the earth, the world‟s religions need to develop new postures towards each other. The urgent need for dialogue extends to all the world’s faiths and to those secular movements seeking peace and justice. Through such dialogue and solidarity new vision and vigour can grow that will transform our common life together.
– This calls for new methods of sharing and interpreting. As ecumenism has become stifled by focusing on doctrinal matters, so dialogue between the faiths has been hampered by not focusing on our common search for peace and life. Indeed, we often misrepresent each other as forces of death and damnation. This new ecumenism needs to engage more companionably with our neighbours and movements of other faiths and read our Scriptures and share our experiences together and build new communities of peace and life.
– We feel a crisis in our language and discourse. Our familiar ecumenical language is inadequate to express the pain of Creation, or give true expression to the hopes of grass root movements as they seek to bring life in their own contexts. We look to wisdom methodologies like Ubuntu, Sang Saeng, and Convivencia to offer us these new concepts and insights for transformative ecumenism. This will entail fresh intellectual endeavors arising from different spiritual perspectives that till now the present ecumenical movement has largely censured and ignored.
– We recognise God’s Spirit is at work in the struggles of the people and the pain of creation. People are not suffering passively but actively challenging unjust regimes and powers and celebrating grace and life. We are called to leave our safe ecclesial home to journey to and with these movements without co-opting them to our institutional needs. In this confluence of struggling, celebrating people the Spirit is at work, and we are called to become one more channel and movement in this rolling river of justice. This moves us beyond the unity-diversity discourse and invites us to see ourselves in a confluence of movements, converging for life to counter the forces of death.
C. Leadership Crisis
The ecumenical movement and the churches are generally vested in the dynamics of power and money. There is an increasing bureaucratization of the movement. Corporate logic has infiltrated and taken over ecumenical governance resulting in ecumenical leadership that is not rooted in the struggles for life for people and God‟s creation. For this and many reasons ecumenical leadership and formation require renewal. The emergence of any new breed of ecumenical leaders must experience radical metanoia that facilitates hermeneutical repentance.
– We seek an ecumenical leadership which embodies competency, commitment, compassion, consistency, connectedness, and integrity and shares a covenantal leadership which exercises servanthood;
– We need new models of leadership to exercise power, confront power, share power and can lay down power when necessary;
– We seek to promote ecumenical and theological language or fresh expressions of ecumenism coined through relationality not elitism;
– We also need inclusive leadership and ecumenism crossing boundaries of religion in favour of life in fullness.
Our Way Forward
We have discerned an urgent need for ecumenism to be transformed, and for our model of ecumenism to be transformative. It seeks an understanding and praxis of ecumenism that is transformative and partners itself with the many justice movements around us.
The fruits of ecumenism should not simply be greater understanding but a deeper transforming and conforming of our lives and structures to the life of God’s Spirit bringing justice, joy and peace. We need an including wide ranging sharing of our visions of what is transformative ecumenism that grows from the insights of the justice movements, our biblical and theological heritage and our discernment of the Spirit’s life amongst us.
Our task is always to ensure an inclusive process that means we can learn from the full gifts and insights of God‟s people. We need to make an invitation to those who are not here, who are already struggling, to join us in developing this transformative ecumenical movement. This is a forum for developing new models of ecumenical sharing so we should consider how to invite people from other faiths and from justice and grassroots movements to participate in shaping this transformed and transformative vision. Transformation is not in our power but is the Spirit‟s gift when we come together seeking the justice and peace God offers the whole inhabited earth.