Search Results

Cardinal Yves Congar (1904-95) and Bishop Basil Christopher Butler (1902-86) were both dedicated to the renewal of Catholic Learning and to the promotion of Christian unity. Butler, a convert to Catholicism, followed a more ‘conservative’ line than Congar. For his part, Congar, the leading figure of the Catholic ecumenical movement in France and a member of the Catholic–Lutheran Commission of Dialogue since 1965, was profoundly influenced by Lutheran theology in the formulation of his later ‘progressive’ stance on ecumenism. This chapter explores the themes of Receptive Ecumenism and Catholic Learning as they relate to the thought of Congar and Butler, respectively. It also seeks to extrapolate ethical implications for the present-day ecumenical movement. Specifically, it attempts to draw Congar and Butler into dialogue on the central doctrine of the incarnation, regarded by the former as ‘the key to the whole mystery of the Church’.

Synopsis: This concluding chapter reflects on global Christianity and world order changes. It shows how at the Edinburgh 1910 conference little thought was given to Christianity's post‐Western possibilities. In the aftermath of Edinburgh 1910 and the 1914 war there was retreat and retrenchment. Then the churches launched the ecumenical movement to stem the tide of attrition. The chapter argues that the 20th century ended where it did not begin, i.e., in the post‐Vatican II unexpected post‐Western awakening and coming of World Christianity. The chapter looks at the statistics of global resurgence and expansion, and assesses Roman Catholic and Protestant responses. The chapter examines Marxist repression in Ethiopia as setback and turning point for World Christianity. The chapter considers the African Synod and flexible models of faith and action as renewal currents in the search for social harmony and cultural coherence, and concludes with the Gentile mandate of Third Wave resurgence and social recomposition.

This chapter examines the ecumenical movement. The twentieth century has sometimes been denominated by historians of Christianity as “the ecumenical century.” Narratives of the ecumenical movement typically begin with the World Missionary Conference, held in Edinburgh in June of 1910, which assembled some 1,215 Protestant delegates from various parts of the globe to devise a more effective common strategy for the evangelization of the world. Viewed with the benefit of hindsight, the Edinburgh conference has been widely identified as the birthplace of the formal ecumenical movement. Without it, there would be no World Council of Churches. Yet serious attempts to bridge divisions between Protestant Christians were already under way in India and China before 1910. Furthermore, the World Missionary Conference was precisely that—a gathering of mission executives and missionaries convened to consider questions of missionary policy. Delegates represented missionary agencies rather than churches, and discussion of questions of doctrine and church order was forbidden, in deference to the Church of England, whose endorsement would not have been given if the conference had been expected to discuss matters of faith and order with Nonconformists. The chapter then looks at the failure and success of the ecumenical movement.

This chapter discusses the nature of the dialogue between the European institutions and Catholic, Protestant and Anglican organisations. It investigates the intention of the Evangelical Church of Germany to have an official representation in Brussels in 1969 and the significance of the President of the European Commission’s refusal. In contrast, after de Gaulle’s resignation and the 1969 summit in The Hague, in 1970 the Holy See was able to establish diplomatic relations with the European Community. This chapter investigates Catholic–Protestant relations with European institutions which led to the 1974 Roehampton Conference. The conference focused on the finalité, the ‘nature and purpose’ of the European Community, and demonstrated the climax of religious cooperation after the Second World War with its decision to establish a joint Catholic–Protestant group assessing development policy.

While relations in the 1950s between churches and European institutions were rather informal, in 1963 churches from six member states plus Britain decided to establish a Consultative Commission of Churches. The Commission drew from the experience of Protestant and Anglican laymen on European affairs and discussed the response of churches to the evolution of the European Community. The Commission was crucial in establishing an Ecumenical Centre in Brussels which acted as a liaison between European institutions and wider ecumenical movement. It is particularly significant that most meetings of the Consultative Commission took place at the headquarters of the relevant European institutions, thus bringing together clergymen and top European officials. This chapter examines the ecumenical movement’s perception of the European Community and the institutionalisation of religious and political contact between churches and European institutions.

This chapter contributes to scholarship that has suggested that a good deal of twentieth-century internationalism was faith-based, even if this remained tacit. It offers insights into religious attitudes underpinning twentieth-century internationalism and the formation of international legal concepts and institutions. It looks at how religiously framed matters and articles of faith were given a ‘secular’ reinterpretation during the early twentieth century, in the name of peace and a just international order, and offers an account of the political theology that this reconceptualization of ‘the sacred’ in terms of ‘the secular’ expressed. It shows that liberal theological thought, with an optimistic outlook on man and history, a progression narrative, and an attempt to mediate between theology and the epistemological demands of the positive sciences—inter alia through dismissal of traditional metaphysics and turning to ‘ethics’/value judgments and ‘vocation’—formed the framework within which internationalist Christian action in this period was to a large extent grounded.

The first chapter examines the position of the ecumenical movement towards the reconstruction of post-war Europe. In May 1950 the Schuman Declaration challenged the ways in which both churchmen and politicians regarded European unity. A few months later, leading Protestant political leaders grouped around André Philip, a former minister in Charles de Gaulle’s government, established the Ecumenical Commission on European Cooperation, the first transnational ecumenical response towards European cooperation. It was composed of high-level clergymen and politicians from both of the states that had signed the Treaty of Paris in 1950 as well as from other Western European countries, and advised churches on European affairs. The chapter focuses on the first four years of activity of this Commission, which defined its ecumenical engagement with European institutions. The failure of the European Defence Community shifted the focus of the Commission to engage with officials working in European institutions rather than with national bureaucrats.

The expertise provided by officials working in European institutions, between 1954 and 1958 at the West European Union and NATO in Paris and post-1958 in Brussels and Strasbourg, was directly linked to church mobilisation. The second chapter discusses the Paris ecumenical network established by Noël Salter and the origins of a Brussels ecumenical group around Baron C. D. A. van Lynden at the end of the 1950s. In parallel with the dialogue between churches and individuals working in European institutions, the Cold War led to the establishment of the Conference of European Churches which brought together churches from both Eastern and Western Europe. This chapter discusses the significance of the term ‘European’ for the CEC. The difference between the ‘official’ path of churches engaged in the CEC and the ‘informal’ dialogue around local ecumenism emerged in 1963 at the time of Britain’s application for membership of the European Economic Community.

The conclusion offers an overview of the relationship between the ecumenical movement and the European Community, focusing on the main issues and patterns of dialogue at both national and supranational levels.

This chapter traces the involvement of Anglican Churches in the ecumenical movement from the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference 1910, through the Lambeth Conference 1920 and the Faith and Order movement, to unity initiatives in various global regions to date. It covers Anglican–Roman Catholic dialogue from the Malines Conversations to ARCIC III and notes the succession of meetings between archbishops of Canterbury and popes, as well as discussing Anglican relations with the major non-Anglican Protestant traditions and Eastern Orthodoxy. The chapter concludes with some brief reflections on the state of the ecumenical movement in the early twenty-first century and what it has contributed to the climate of understanding and cooperation between the Churches.

This chapter focuses on the response of evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons to the ecumenical movement in mainline Protestantism and the nation’s growing ethos of pluralism. Rather than embracing these religious trends, Catholics, Mormons, and evangelicals rejected ecumenism and asserted their own distinct faiths as the only authentic expression of Christianity and the sole path to salvation—positions that not only dismissed ecumenism but also challenged each other’s claims. The LDS Church led by David O. McKay expanded its national presence through a vigorous missionary campaign and a strident anti-ecumenism. Evangelicals organized across denominations, contrasting their “spiritual unity” against the “church unionism” of the ecumenical movement and establishing para-church organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today. The Catholic Church silenced John Courtney Murray’s ecumenical musings, insisting that Catholicism alone provided Christ’s true path of salvation.

This chapter details the congregation's work at four parishes, three located in the South and one, St. Brigid's, in New York City. Sisters assigned to these parishes conducted religious education classes and developed programs that would serve the needs of the area's residents. They also participated in various events connected with the civil rights and ecumenical movements. Social settlement workers believed in the importance of getting children out of congested urban areas during the summer, and Mother Marianne opened Camp Marydell in Nyack, New York, to give their neighbors on the Lower East Side a chance to spend some time outside of the city. The sisters viewed the camp as an important part of their apostolate, and former campers still return to visit with the sisters and reminisce about their experiences in Nyack.

This chapter charts various Reformation commemorations and remembrances that occurred in the twentieth century, beginning with the 400th anniversary of the Reformation in 1917 and concluding with the 500th anniversary of Luther’s birth in 1983. It shows how some of the signatures events and ideologies of the twentieth century colored memories of the Reformation; these include the two world wars, the rise of Nazism, the Cold War, securalsim, Marxism-Leninism, the division of Germany. The chapter also spotlights historiographical shifts in the century relevant to understanding Luther and the Reformation and explains how the Ecumenical Movement and the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) affected Reformation commemorations by adding a novel ecumenical dimension.

This chapter examines how the First World War devastated the missionary work of both the SVD and the BMS. The war humbled both missionary societies, and this chapter narrates how missionaries tried to reorient themselves in a dramatically altered global missionary landscape. Confessional differences shaped the responses of the missionary societies to their respective international missionary communities. After the war, German Protestants became increasingly nationalist and refused to work with their American and British rivals. The Catholic missionary society, on the other hand, embraced the Vatican and shed its nationalist character.