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Ecumenism in Crisis?
By John W. Meister

Even though I was present at the time and witnessed the entire procedure, I found-and still find-it difficult to believe that what was happening actually did happen. The 184th General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., meeting in Denver on May 19, 1972, voted to disengage that denomination from the Consultation on Church Union (COCU). The move came without warning, and if there was an inner logic to the action it is not easy to find. As a result of it, one of the vanguard efforts at ecumenicity was unexpectedly stripped of a member which had helped to bring the Consultation into being-a church which until then had earned the reputation of being a reliable and generous participant in virtually all things ecumenical.

I

The action came on the evening of the first regular business day when the Assembly's Standing Committee on Bills and Overtures recommended concurrence with an amended version of Overture 140 from the Presbytery of Philadelphia. The original overture proposed that the Assembly "forthwith reject the document 'A Plan of Union for the Church of Christ Uniting,' while continuing ecumenical conversations through the Consultation on Church Union." This was changed by the Standing Committee to read, "discontinue participation in the Consultation on Church Union while continuing ecumenical conversations, and seeking joint effective ministries." The recommendation to concur with the amended version was passed by a vote of 411 to 310.

A predecessor of this General Assembly brought the Consultation into being. Barely ten years ago, in 1961, the 173rd General Assembly voted enthusiastically to ask the Episcopal Church to join the United Presbyterians in inviting the Methodist Church and the United Church of Chirst to initiate discussions "to explore the establishment of a united church truly Catholic, truly Reformed, and truly Evangelical." This action was in response to overtures from some 45 presbyteries calling for such exploratory discussions; and the overtures, in turn, bad been stimulated by the generally positive response to the famed "Blake-Pike Proposal."

John W. Meister is Executive Secretary of the Council of Theological Seminaries of the United Presbyterian Church. He was educated at Ohio University and Princeton Theological Seminary and has served churches in Ohio and Indiana. He is the author of What Baptism Means (1960).

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The original four denominations brought the Consultation into being almost immediately and during the next decade a total of ten churches became participants. (When the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged to form the United Methodist Church, the number was reduced to nine.) Included among them are three predominantly black Methodist Churches, representing a kind of "first" for black involvement in ecumenical discussions. Other churches, including the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran Council of the U.S.A., have consistently participated as observers. Throughout this period the United Presbyterian Church heartily supported the Consultation with the time and energy of its official leadership serving at the direction of the General Assembly, and with a reasonably high level of interest and concern on the part of rank and file members. This is not to suggest that everyone has been in favor of the Consultation. Many members do not know such conversations have been in progress. Some have been aggressively opposed to the Consultation process. But the general climate of opinion has been plainly in favor of " anything that will bring the churches together"-including the Consultation. In the light of such early and sustained involvement, the action of the Denver Assembly to withdraw from the Consultation seems at best out of character and at worst irresponsible.

II

Even the original wording of the Philadelphia Overture-to "forthwith reject the document 'A Plan of Union. . ."-was out of character for a church that thinks of itself as being "big" on the mind, reason, and objectivity. The 182nd General Assembly (1970) had placed the "Plan of Union" before the denomination for study, not for action. Other churches in the Consultation have meanwhile been similarly engaged in study. According to the Consultation time table, the two-year study period is only now drawing to a close and the next step is to re-draft the Plan to incorporate or reflect whatever suggestions the study process has produced. Presumably the revised Plan will also be placed before the Consultation churches for study before they are asked to vote acceptance or rejection. In short, the action of the Denver Assembly seems to say that the United Presbyterian Church grew weary of a discussion-study process which it once took the lead in initiating and decided to abort the Plan early in its gestation period-long before its final form could be known. This is not according to the historically typical method of Presbyterian procedure.

Equally out of character was the lack of graciousness which accompanied the action. During the debate, for example, the Moderator, C. Willard Heckel, suggested that permission be granted to President James I. McCord, who has been chairman of the Special

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Committee on the Consultation on Church Union from its beginning, to address the Assembly. The Assembly rejected the suggestion, thereby refusing the floor to the chairman of one of its own committees and thereby refusing to hear perhaps the best informed person on the subject before the house. This incredible refusal must be a sort of unfortunate "first" for General Assembly behavior. But the spirit of that refusal seemed to saturate the entire debate. Later, for instance, a floor motion asked that the Special Committee on the Consultation on Church Union be given until January 1, 1973, to disengage the church from the Consultation. Not only was this proposal voted down but in the process the Assembly decided not even to send official observers to Consultation meetings, as several other non-participating churches do.

The action of the Denver General Assembly regarding the Consultation was not only out of character when compared with the typical behavior of other General Assemblies; it was equally out of character when compared with its own other actions. There were times, especially when hallway conversations sounded as though the Assembly would choose St. Louis as the headquarters city and when the talk was of internal restructuring-as well as during the Consultation debate-when one had the eerie feeling that he was witnessing the birth of the Missouri Synod Presbyterian Church. But taken on balance this was not a reactionary General Assembly. Items: It elected on the first ballot a layman as Moderator who had frankly declared himself to be on the forward side of many sensitive issues. It rejected seventeen overtures which came as a harvest from the 1971 grant of $10,000 to the Angela Davis Legal Defense Fund and which would have restricted or eliminated the denomination's legal aid fund. It made an exceptionally strong statement against the war in Vietnam. It received a study paper on the Middle East which is somewhat creative and a distinct advance over most such documents. It endorsed school busing as an .acceptable desegregation tool." And it reaffirmed the denomination's stand on abortion adopted two years ago, declaring that women should have full decision-making powers in terminating pregnancies. It seems obvious that when a General Assembly which votes such actions also votes to disengage the denomination from the Consultation, we have an aberration on our hands.

III

The question then arises: How is such an aberration to be explained and interpreted? Some see it as an anti-establishment move. Others see it as a sign of reawakened denominationalism. Still others see it as almost the opposite: a sign that ecumenicity has advanced so far and denominations are so vestigial that the ecumenical movement has no time now to bother with the merging of

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denominations. Some see it as disappointment with the Consultation itself and some as disappointment with the proposed Plan. Some see it simply as weariness with tinkering with structures. In short, the action is open to almost as many interpretations as there are interpreters. It is likely that all of the explanations are somewhat accurate and that no one of them is adequate to explain what happened. With that disclaimer I shall set forth the major elements that I see in the aberrative action,

First, it appears that the action was partially the result of deliberate organized effort. The organization of conservative churchmen known as Presbyterian Laymen, Inc., has conducted a long, open and sustained campaign against both the Consultation and the "Plan of Union for the Church of Christ Uniting." Virtually every issue of that organization's newspaper in recent years has carried an attack on one or both, usually both. It seemed evident to me in Denver, although I admittedly could not prove it, that a corps of determined commissioners went to the Assembly with a plan to squelch the document and to remove the United Presbyterians from the Consultation process. It is probable that this group had other but less specific goals, which would help to explain the seeming use of parliamentary procedures as obstructionist tactics throughout the Assembly. However that may be, it seemed plain during the Consultation debate that well-organized floor managers knew where their votes were sitting and how to use the rules of the parliamentary game to keep them intact.

Second, whether or not there was such a planned effort this action was partially the result of an unplanned coalition. On the one hand were those, organized or not, who were firmly opposed to the Consultation or to continued United Presbyterian participation in the Consultation. These did not comprise a majority of the commissioners, as was demonstrated in the 396 to 244 vote to reconsider the action. (A vote to reconsider requires a two-thirds majority.) On the other hand were those who see themselves as ecumenists but who were willing for any of a variety of reasons to abandon the Consultation as a presently useful means of advancing ecumenical Christianity. Included among the latter were some who were earlier fascinated by the prospects for multi-denominational conversations that held the promise of massive institutional merger, but who have either grown weary of the effort or have come to believe it would not be significantly helpful even if successful. Included also were some who are friendly to the goal of denominational mergers but who have come to believe that the Consultation is not the organization through which they can most likely be achieved. And, of course, there were some who would gladly embrace the end result of the Consultation if it could be accomplished without planning and meetings and money-especially if it could have been

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accomplished ten years ago-but who have become tired and hypercritical in their well-doing. I doubt that these self-styled ecumenists: comprised a majority of the commissioners, but when their votes were added to those who were firmly anti-Consultation, the total was enough to carry the day.

Third, an element of confusion contributed to the action. While the vote on the critical motion was being tallied, a commissioner who had voted for withdrawal left the floor and we talked together. This commissioner holds a prominent office in a General Assembly agency, which suggests a certain ability to understand motions. When I expressed surprise that he had stood with those wanting to disengage from the Consultation he said, "But that is not what I voted for. I voted to reject the Plan of Union." We discussed how the original overture had been amended and bow the vote was upon the amended version; nonetheless, be was still convinced be had voted for rejection of the Plan. As indicated earlier, I would have had my own problems trying to understand that vote since the Plan is only a study document. But the point is that if one knowledgeable commissioner made this error, it is likely that some others did likewise.

Fourth, I think this action reflected the prevailing national mood regarding religion and the churches. It is almost impossible to over-estimate the effect of President Nixon's evident disdain for the churches of America and his embracing of the Billy Graham type of palace religiosity. We are also reaping the results of a generation-long barrage of propaganda from spokesmen of the far right against the main-line churches and especially against the ecumenical enterprise. Insofar as the war in Vietnam has revealed the impotence of the churches in contributing to the formation of corporate morality on the national scale, it has bred a vast indifference towards the churches. And, of course, the mood has been substantially induced by the churches themselves through their masochistic self-criticism, their lack of creative leadership, and their theological confusion coupled with an apparent lack of faith. However the mood is explained, it is with us and we can be certain it subconsciously influenced some commissioners. Insofar as that is the case, the influence would be on the side of parochialism and withdrawal and quietism.

Fifth, I believe there was an element of the accidental involved in the action. As noted earlier, this item was on the agenda-quite logically and properly so-for the evening session of the first regular business day. The commissioners bad met in plenary sessions for the celebration of Holy Communion, the election of a Moderator, and the election of Standing Committees. Thus, when the Consultation came before the house the commissioners bad not yet engaged in enough give-and-take of debate to have been developed into a

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unified or distinct corporate personality. Thanks largely to this action and the manner in which it was accomplished, the Assembly never did become a truly integrated whole. It behaved more like a young neurotic trying to find himself than like a mature and self-assured adult. If this item had come later in the Assembly, the outcome may have been different-if only because the first-time commissioners would have been aware of the impropriety of voting before hearing from the responsible committee.

IV

So much for analysis of what happened. How does this action of the 184th General Assembly (1972) affect the ecumenical enterprise and what does it portend for the future?

The most immediate result is seriously to weaken the Consultation. The United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. not only helped to initiate the Consultation but brought to it a disproportionate measure of leadership and vitality. Ecumenical projects are fragile at best, and a loss like this one for the Consultation cannot be taken lightly. But while the disengagement of the United Presbyterians weakens the Consultation it does not leave it hopelessly crippled. On June 5, 1972, the Executive Committee of the Consultation said, "The Consultation on Church Union will go forward in its original purpose to seek a united church 'truly catholic, truly evangelical and truly reformed."' There is, in fact, some evidence that the action of the United Presbyterians may serve to strengthen the involvement of the remaining member churches in the Consultation process. At the time of this writing the annual General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) and the General Board of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) had reaffirmed the participation of those two churches in the Consultation, and the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America had voted to continue its observer status. It may well be that other churches will follow their lead.

A less obvious but potentially more serious result is likely to be the negative effect of the total United Presbyterian-Consultation experience upon the conciliar movement. United Presbyterian leadership has been substantial in both the National Council of Churches and the Consultation. During the decade of United Presbyterian involvement in the Consultation, there has been an understandable tendency to find in other participating churches the natural partners for joint projects in mission. Insofar as these joint projects have been developed outside the administrative framework of the National Council of Churches, the exploration of merger possibilities through the Consultation has contributed to the weakening of conciliar vitality. It is possible, therefore, that the United Presbyterian participation in and sudden disengagement from the

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Consultation has served to weaken both the merger and conciliar expressions of the ecumenical movement.

V

The effect of the Assembly's action upon the ecumenical enterprise in its largest meanings-that is, beyond mergers and beyond councils and beyond ad hoc structures-is probably not great. To paraphrase ancient Gamaliel, if this idea of ecumenicity is from God-as I personally believe it is-then the action of one General Assembly will never be able to put it down. judging from the countless statements of individual United Presbyterians which have been made public since Denver, there is nothing about the action to portend that the people of the Church are any less ecumenically- minded. For that matter, even the General Assembly itself repeatedly pledged the involvement of the denomination in other existing ecumenical projects and in the initiation of new forms of ecumenical endeavor.

In all likelihood, the effect of the action will be greatest upon the denomination itself. If disengagement from the Consultation should lead to a series of similar decisions by future General Assemblies or by other judicatories, then one can anticipate that the denomination will soon change character in ways that are dismal to contemplate. My own anticipation, though, is that the disengagement action will arouse United Presbyterians to a new awareness of their church's tradition for assuming ecumenical responsibilities and to a new appreciation of the Biblical understandings which underly that tradition. Should that happen the next General Assembly may well decide to re-enter the Consultation. But that is almost incidental. Of far greater significance, there would be reason to expect a period during which the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. will engage in the various manifestations of the ecumenical movement with more seriousness and commitment than in any prior time.