3 - 2002

Renaissance of spirituality

Spirituality and Ecumenism

by Dagmar Heller

Is there such a thing as ecumenical spirituality? When the Holy Spirit is at work in what we do, does it always point towards Christian unity? How should we treat a spirituality which is unfamiliar to us?

The word ”spirituality” is relatively new to the German language. It is a word borrowed from French Catholicism, spiritualité, and has only been in common use in Germany since the last third of the 20th century. A literal translation into German might be Frömmigkeit, piety or devotional practice. But this does not cover the full extent of its meaning, so the Germanised Spiritualität is gradually being accepted. A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (SCM Press), of Anglican authorship, defines spirituality as ”... those attitudes, beliefs, practices that animate people’s lives and help them to reach out towards super-sensible realities”. Some Roman Catholic authors such as Karl Rahner or Anton Rotzetter use the term in a way closer to mysticism and asceticism. According to a 1979 EKD study on ”Protestant Spirituality”, it is ”the behaviour of a Christian before God under the perceptible influence of the Spirit.” Thus this concept includes faith, devotional exercises, and the way one defines one’s life, all in one. In the German Protestant milieu there is an increasing tendency to equate it generally with ”lifestyle”.

The root of the word itself is the Latin spiritus, spirit. Thus there are various spiritualities, depending on which ”spirit” one chooses to guide one’s life. Here we are talking about Christian spirituality, which can only be grounded in the Holy Spirit of God. So the closest definition to the understanding of ”spirituality” on which this discussion is based is that of the Ecumenical Lexicon:   ”... spirituality consists in the development of a Christian life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

As the development of a Christian life, spirituality has to do with the very basic activities in one’s life which express one’s faith. They include personal prayer, reading the Bible, meditation, but also ethical decisions, defence of the environment, sharing money, working on behalf of marginalised groups, etc. Central to all of this is community worship and the actions in the worship service which make use of symbols and symbolic acts.

But it is just at this point that Christians experience strangeness towards each other. For many Protestants today it is still ”Catholic” to cross oneself on entering the place of worship, and an austere Good Friday service is, for Catholics, typically Protestant. The mutual alienation becomes even greater when Orthodox spirituality enters the picture. Orthodox Christians usually do not even experience Protestant worship, with its basically instructive and intellectual emphasis, as real worship, since their liturgy has so much more to do with a holistic experience of the relation to God in well-established symbols and rites. In extreme cases the Orthodox see Protestants as heretics and are forbidden to pray together with them. On the other hand, there can be Protestant Christians who dismiss the Orthodox liturgy as ”theatrical”. Any number of examples could be given.

In this way spirituality became the starting point for divisions among Christians. What happened in the 11th century - that led to the separation of the Eastern and Western churches - began as a mutual alienation due to differing experiences of the faith in differing contexts. Western ways of thinking and the mentality which shaped them brought forth a spirituality which differed sharply from that of the East. The result was the division of the church, when the resulting gulf of mutual misunderstanding and mistrust had become too great.
On the human side, spirituality thus contains the danger of division. But the difficulties we have indicated are not impossible to overcome. The history of the ecumenical movement shows that the painful awareness of separateness in the area of spirituality was an important motivation for bringing the different traditions together at one table.

The recognition that one Holy Spirit stands behind the diverse forms of our faith gave rise to the longing for visible expressions of this unity. The Holy Spirit is incomprehensible, but is also One, and this is an opportunity to transform the apparent situation of everyone-for-himself into a meaningful diversity.

An example of how this can be done is the so-called Lima Liturgy, created to express in liturgical form the convergences that had been achieved on the WCC’s document  ”Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry”. Its success can be seen in the widespread use of this liturgy, although it was intended originally only for one occasion - the celebration at the Faith and Order Commission meeting in Lima, Peru in 1982.

Most participants in such worship services describe them as a rich and intensive experience of community with other traditions. This makes it increasingly clear that spirituality is not only the point where we become particularly aware of the divisions among the churches; it can also be a means of growing closer together in the ecumenical movement.

It was with good reason that the World Council of Churches Assembly in Harare stated, in 1998, under the heading ”An ecumenism of the heart”, that ”the only sustaining path towards the heart of the unity we seek leads us together in worship, prayer and shared spiritual life”. And it even went on to say: ”Rather, worship and spirituality are an essential ‘method’ of our ecumenical journey. They shape and sustain our journey. Having experienced this again in Harare, we know that this dimension can never be marginalized in the life of the Council. Instead, we must fully utilise the rich resources that are so capable of nurturing our conversion and response to God.”

This makes an important point: spirituality is not an end in itself but rather it is ”talking and responding to God”. At the WCC Assembly in Canberra in 1991, this was expressed even more clearly. Spirituality means ”to allow the Holy Spirit room to act”. Thus spirituality is focussed, in a positive way, on the one Holy Spirit. The positive side, the opportunity for the human component in spirituality, is to make willingly room for the action of the Spirit. In this way spirituality can be understood as a means and a method of seeking unity.

The question that arises is whether there is now a particular spirituality, an ”ecumenical spirituality”, in addition to those which already existed. As we have already seen, there are a great many different forms of spirituality, which have very much to do with experience, thus with their contexts, and also with personal peculiarities. At the same time, spirituality has always also had a community aspect.

Thus when people who have been shaped by different spiritualities come together for prayer and celebration, they will be looking for common forms of expression, for ways to portray and emphasize what they have in common, the bonds of community among them. And there are, within the various forms of spirituality, aspects which are oriented towards ecumenism. These find expression in forms through which differing spiritualities experience the unity of the Spirit. Rather than an ”ecumenical spirituality”, it would be better to speak of a ”spirituality for the ecumenical movement (Spiritualität für die Ökumene)”, which will in each instance have different confessional and cultural characteristics.

The word Ökumene in German also reveals another aspect of such a spirituality. Like ”ecumenism”, it comes from oikoumene, which does not mean just the efforts toward Christian unity, but is rather the Greek term for ”the whole inhabited earth”. A ”spirituality for the ecumenical movement” would therefore be one which is oriented towards the world and towards the salvation of the world. This is also a characteristic of Christian spirituality in general, but it can take different forms.

Even though ecumenical spirituality cannot be pinned down as an established, recognisable phenomenon, some broad characteristics of a spirituality for the ecumenical movement emerge from the above considerations. These could be summarized in the following theses:

1. A spirituality for the ecumenical movement seeks to make room for the Holy Spirit.
   
   
2. A spirituality for the ecumenical movement lives by the conviction that Christian unity is the will of God, even though it is not yet clear what that unity will look like.
   
   
3. A spirituality for the ecumenical movement lives by the awareness that the truth is in God’s hands. In spite of my conviction that my own spirituality is the true and genuine gift of the Holy Spirit, I must acknowledge that this is also true of the other’s spirituality.
   
   
4. A spirituality for the ecumenical movement will allow itself to be enriched by other, unfamiliar forms of the life of faith.
   
   
5. A spirituality for the ecumenical movement is oriented towards the world.

If some of these characteristics also prove to be characteristics of spirituality in general, this only shows once again that spirituality for the ecumenical movement is not a new form of spirituality in addition to others, but is latent in every Christian spirituality.
Ecumenical work can only be fruitful if it is carried by a spirituality for the ecumenical movement. But reciprocally it must also actively promote such a spirituality.

Rev. Dr. Dagmar Heller worked from 1993-2000 as Executive Secretary for Faith and Order in the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Since October 2001 she has been Secretary for Ecumenical Affairs and Relations with the Orthodox Churches of the EKD in Hanover. The longer version of this article appeared in Ökumenische Rundschau, January 2002.