3 - 2003

Ecumenical Kirchentag

The ecumenical journey

Thanksgiving and obligation

by Konrad Raiser

In one of the three main speeches on the theme "Seeking unity – encountering one another in diversity”, the WCC General Secretary described the journey of the ecumenical movement with its many way stations. He spoke with profound gratitude of all the ecumenical pioneers, including the mission movement, the Christian student movement, the positive role of Orthodoxy, resistance to fascism (Dietrich Bonhoeffer), the Ecumenical Decree of Vatican II, the anti-apartheid movement, the peace movement and the Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women. In the last part of his speech he focussed on that in the understanding of baptism which brings the confessions together, as an opportunity, to be grasped today, to develop an ecumenical spirituality out of confessional identity.

Our grateful remembrance of people and events which have marked the ecumenical journey so far impresses us inwardly with the need to commit ourselves to keep this heritage alive. The indecisiveness of our situation today keeps being interpreted as the effect of the ecumenical movement’s success. Important obstacles have indeed been cleared away. Yet there are still no tested models which can help the churches in the task of making their own the ecumenical agreements which have been reached, and of changing their teaching and structures accordingly.

Let me take one central point which has also played a role in the preparations for this Kirchentag. There exists today, at least among the churches of the Reformation together with the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church, a common understanding of baptism; we thus have the basis for mutual recognition of one another’s baptism.

The Christian Churches’ Working Group in Baden-Württemberg reached an agreement in 1998 on mutual recognition of baptism, which was also signed by the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan and the Serbian Orthodox Church. All churches agree that baptism is the sacramental act of becoming a member of the Body of Christ, and thus creates a communion among the baptised which goes beyond that of the individual churches.

What keeps the churches from recognising that this places them under an obligation to one another? They can no longer behave like autonomous bodies, making agreements to govern their relations with one another. Through the gift of baptism they have become "members of God’s household”, communities of God’s children, related to one another. We also cannot go on talking of a "certain, though imperfect” purely spiritual communion; instead, we have here a tangible sacramental reality. Through baptism, all ecumenical efforts towards unity are oriented first of all to Jesus Christ as the origin and guarantor of unity and not to agreements among churches on dogmatic or canonical problems.

Through baptism into this communion of the church, moreover, every individual Christian person would have an ecumenical calling. The focus of ecumenical efforts on sharing in celebration of the Eucharist has deprived the laity of their vocation, by putting the problem of ministry and thus the institutional identity of the churches front and centre. But baptism is bound up with the promise of the Holy Spirit and thus the gift of recognising the true fruits and works of the Spirit. This ecumenical responsibility is shared by all the baptised and not just those ordained to the ministry of the churches.

Through baptism all Christians enter into lifelong communion with one another. This communion is God’s gift in Jesus Christ; it is not at our disposal, and we cannot lose it. It goes before all the dialogues and efforts at agreement among the churches. If all this is true, than it is also true that in the end unity has to grow from the bottom up, from the local church members, and it does. Then it is not those who seek to deepen their communion in life and worship, including the Eucharist, who have to justify their actions, but rather those who try to prevent their efforts.

I would go even further and say that the really complete recognition of baptism among the churches would amount to a "Copernican revolution” in the ecumenical dialogue. Ecumenical relations among the churches would no longer be part of "external policy”, but rather ecumenical "internal policy”. The churches would commit themselves to mutual accountability in questions of faith and of church order. No church could decide for itself alone, for no church could "be church” in the full sense without the others.
The result for the further ecumenical journey would be a commitment to keep making more room for the Spirit of God to work among us. We can only find our way and our goal, on this journey, by walking together; as gifts of God they are not under our control. But the promise of the Spirit to lead us into all truth is for all Christians. All can listen to the voice of the Spirit in their consciences, and can trust in it. All can be open to new steps, and learn to see themselves anew through the eyes of sisters and brothers in other churches. All can recognise the voice of the one Spirit in the life and witness of the others.

If we see the ecumenical journey so far not only as the result of patient, or courageous, efforts by those who have gone before us, but as the work of the Holy Spirit, then these way stations can help us in reaching understandings with our travelling companions, and in the effort to stay together on the journey. In the spirituality of the pilgrimage, on this journey, the spiritual insights of all our travelling companions have the same weight; among penitent pilgrims there are no differences in spiritual rank.

For the early church in its first and second generations, the first ecumenical challenge was to be open to Gentile Christians. The preservation of communion between Jewish and Gentile Christians at the council of the Apostles was the first way station on the ecumenical journey. It was characteristic that on the central issue in dispute, that of the full requirement of the law including circumcision, no consensus was reached.

The Gentile Christians were only asked to obligate themselves to a few rules of behaviour, as a sign of the community and for its protection (Acts 15). We today also have some qualitative marks of our ecumenical fellowship. To hold onto these and not let them be questioned remains an important instruction for the continuing ecumenical journey.

For the journey of the ecumenical movement we may trust in the promise of blessing, as in the theme of this Kirchentag, which also calls on us to pass the blessing on, to become a source of blessing. In the end this points out to us the wide horizon of our journey, in which we are travelling not only with other Christians, but also with people of other religions and ways of believing. God’s blessing is not only for God’s people, from Jews and Christians; all the families of the earth, that is the whole inhabited earth, and God’s whole creation are included in the promise. Our journey will end only when God’s ecumenical community shall become visible in all its fullness.

Rev. Dr. Konrad Raiser is General Secretary of the World Council of Churches.