The Flip Side of Ecumenism

When I was in middle school it was somewhat remarkable that one of my best friends was Roman Catholic. In 1963 Protestants and Catholics were (mostly) courteous to each other, but they weren’t friends. Bill and I even pushed the envelope further as eighth graders when we each attended the other’s worship service on Easter. Neither of us was about to convert, but we thought it would be interesting to see how the other person worshiped.

There were also fairly clear divisions among Protestants. In Sunday School we debated theological differences between Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists and Pentecostals, and in Youth Fellowship we agreed it was better not to date someone not from our theological family.

Ecumenism was a controversial topic in the Sixties. How can we affirm our essential unity in Christ while insisting on the distinctives that each denomination prizes? For the most part ecumenism was an unfulfilled dream, accepted in theory and rejected in practice.

That all seems so quaint today. In ensuing decades people stopped caring about theological differences. Brand loyalty (to one’s own denomination) went out the window. Bucking this trend today are fire-breathing Calvinists, and I’m sure there are other purist sub-groups, but in the main it is getting harder for Christians to verbalize their faith with enough precision to distinguish their views from other Christians.

In my camp, the Presbyterian Church (USA) trumpets its motto – Reformed, and always being reformed according to the Word of God – yet it is the rare teaching elder or ruling elder who holds to the Reformed faith in the way it is laid out in the church’s historic confessions.

It gets worse. Today I hear Presbyterians referring to the historic confessions as just that – dated, barely usable formulations of our faith that are no longer relevant or true. Our ordination vow to “be instructed and led by those confessions” is interpreted by many that they will give a nod to what Christians formerly believed as they formulate a fresh version for today.

Where is this coming from? It is not enough to lay this theological looseness at the feet of post-modernism, with its aversion to standard, verifiable truth. Post-modernism, to be sure, is a strong factor in the erosion of confidence in any kind of truth statement. But there are other factors to consider.

To draw a line from the clear theological distinctions of the 1960s to the a-theological atmosphere among Christians today, we have to take into account the new ethic of tolerance, with the corresponding unwillingness to offend. Also, as Christians feel more vulnerable in the face of strident anti-Christian voices, they may think it pointless to argue fine points when they are huddled in the same lifeboat.

Whatever the reasons, it seems that ecumenism has triumphed, and the flip side of this affirmation of Christian unity is that Christians are less able or less willing to contend for the faith in a way that reflects the hard-won theological distinctions that previous generations treasured.