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Ecumenism (also oecumenism, œcumenism) refers to initiatives aimed at greater religious unity or cooperation.
In its broadest sense, this unity or cooperation may refer to a worldwide religious unity; by the advocation of a greater sense of shared spirituality across the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Most commonly, however, ecumenism is used in a more narrow meaning; referring to a greater cooperation among different religious denominations of a single one of these faiths.
The word is derived from Greek οἰκουμένη (oikoumene), which means "the inhabited world", and was historically used with specific reference to the Roman Empire. Today, the word is used predominantly by and with reference to Christian denominations and Christian Churches separated by doctrine, history, and practice. Within this particular context, the term ecumenism refers to the idea of a Christian unity in the literal meaning: that there should be a single Christian Church.
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Christian ecumenism, in the narrower sense referred to above, is the promotion of unity or cooperation between distinct religious groups or denominations of Christianity. For some Catholics it may, but not always, have the goal of reconciling all who profess Christian faith to bring them into a single, visible organization, i.e. through union with the Roman Catholic Church. For some Protestants spiritual unity suffices.
According to Edmund Schlink, most important in Christian ecumenism is that people focus primarily on Christ, not on separate church organizations. In his book Ökumenische Dogmatik (1983), he says Christians who see the risen Christ at work in the lives of various Christians and in diverse churches, realize that the unity of Christ\'s church has never been lost (pages 694-700; also his "Report," Dialog 1963, 2:4, 328), but has instead been distorted and obscured by different historical experiences and by spiritual myopia. Both are overcome in renewed faith in Christ. Included in that is responding to his admonition (John 17; also Philippians 2) to be one in him and love one another as a witness to the world. The result of mutual recognition would be a discernible worldwide fellowship, organized in a historically new way (pages 707-708; also Skibbe, A Quiet Reformer 1999, 122-4; Schlink, The Vision of the Pope 2001).
Christian ecumenism is distinguished from interfaith pluralism. Ecumenism in this broad sense is called religious pluralism, as distinguished from ecumenism within a faith movement. The interfaith movement strives for greater mutual respect, toleration, and co-operation among the world religions.
Ecumenism as interfaith dialogue between representatives of diverse faiths, does not necessarily intend reconciling their adherents into full, organic unity with one another but simply to promote better relations. It promotes toleration, mutual respect and cooperation, whether among Christian denominations, or between Christianity and other faiths.
For a significant part of the Christian world, the highest aim of the Christian faith is the reconciliation of all humanity into a full and conscious union as one Christian Church, visibly united with mutual accountability between the parts and the whole. The desire is expressed by many denominations of Christendom, that all who profess faith in Christ in sincerity, would be more fully cooperative and supportive of one another.
Christian ecumenism can be described in terms of the three largest divisions of Christianity: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant. While this underemphasizes the complexity of these divisions, it is a useful model.
Like the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church has always considered it a duty of the highest rank to seek full unity with estranged communions of fellow-Christians, and at the same time to reject what it saw as promiscuous and false union that would mean being unfaithful to or glossing over the teaching of Sacred Scripture and Tradition.
Before the Second Vatican Council, the main stress was laid on this second aspect, as exemplified in canon 1258 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law:
The 1983 Code of Canon Law has no corresponding canon. It absolutely forbids Catholic priests to concelebrate the Eucharist with members of communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church (canon 908), but allows, in certain circumstances and under certain conditions, other sharing in the sacraments. And the Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, 102[http://www.adoremus.org/EcumenismNorms.html states: "Christians may be encouraged to share in spiritual activities and resources, i.e., to share that spiritual heritage they have in common in a manner and to a degree appropriate to their present divided state."
Pope John XXIII, who convoked the Council that brought this change of emphasis about, said that the Council\'s aim was to seek renewal of the Church itself, which would serve, for those separated from the See of Rome, as a "gentle invitation to seek and find that unity for which Jesus Christ prayed so ardently to his heavenly Father."Encyclical [http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_jo23ap.htm Ad Petri cathedram
Some elements of the Roman Catholic perspective on ecumenism are illustrated in the following quotations from the Council\'s decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio of 21 November 1964, and Pope John Paul II\'s encyclical, Ut Unum Sint of 25 May 1995.
While some Eastern Orthodox Churches commonly baptize converts from the Catholic Church, thereby refusing to recognize the baptism that the converts have previously received, the Catholic Church has always accepted the validity of all the sacraments administered by the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches.
The Catholic Church likewise has never applied the terms "heterodox" or "heretic" to the Eastern Orthodox Church or its members. Even the term "schism", as defined in canon 751 of its Code of Canon Law ("the withdrawal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or from communion with the members of the Church subject to him"), does not, strictly speaking, apply to the situation of the concrete individual members of the Eastern Orthodox Church today as viewed by the Catholic Church.
For more details on the on-going dialogue between Anglicanism and the wider Church, see Anglican communion and ecumenism.
Both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican Church work to embrace estranged communions as (possibly former) beneficiaries of a common gift, and simultaneously to guard against a promiscuous and false union with them. The Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, whose divisions date back to the fifth century, have in recent years moved towards theological agreement, though short of full communion. Likewise, the Eastern Orthodox have been leaders in the Interfaith movement, with students active in the World Student Christian Federation since the late 19th century and some Orthodox patriarchs enlisting their communions as charter members of the World Council of Churches. Nevertheless, the Orthodox have not been willing to participate in any redefinition of the Christian faith toward a reduced, minimal, anti-dogmatic and anti-traditional Christianity. Christianity for the Eastern Orthodox is the Church; and the Church is Orthodoxy—nothing less and nothing else. Therefore, while Orthodox ecumenism is "open to dialogue with the devil himself", the goal is to reconcile all non-Orthodox back into Orthodoxy.
One way to observe the attitude of the Orthodox Church towards non-Orthodox is to see how they receive new members from other faiths. Non-Christians, such as Buddhists or atheists, who wish to become Orthodox Christians are accepted through the sacraments of baptism and chrismation. Protestants and Roman Catholics are sometimes received through chrismation only, provided they had received a trinitarian baptism. Also Protestants and Roman Catholics are often referred to as "heterodox", which simply means "other believing", rather than as heretics ("other-choosing"), implying that they did not willfully reject the Church.
The contemporary ecumenical movement for Protestants is often said to have started with the 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference. However this conference would not have been possible without the pioneering ecumenical work of the Christian youth movements: the Young Men\'s Christian Association (founded 1844), the Young Women\'s Christian Association (founded 1855) and the World Student Christian Federation (founded 1895). Led by Methodist layman John R. Mott (former YMCA staff and in 1910 the General Secretary of WSCF), the World Mission conference marked the largest Protestant gathering to that time, with the express purposes of working across denominational lines for the sake of world missions. After the First World War further developments were the "Faith and Order" movement led by Charles Henry Brent, and the "Life and Work" movement led by Nathan Soderblom.
Eventually, formal organizations were formed, including the World Council of Churches in 1948, the National Council of Churches in the USA in 1950, and Churches Uniting in Christ in 2002. These groups are moderate to liberal, theologically speaking, as Protestants are generally more liberal and less traditional than Anglicans, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics.
Protestants are now involved in a variety of ecumenical groups, working in some cases toward organic denominational unity and in other cases for cooperative purposes alone. Because of the wide spectrum of Protestant denominations and perspectives, full cooperation has been difficult at times. Edmund Schlink\'s Ökumenische Dogmatik 1983, 1997 proposes a way through these problems to mutual recognition and renewed church unity.
In 1999, the representatives of Lutheran World Federation and Roman Catholic Church signed The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, resolving the conflict over the nature of Justification which was at the root of the Protestant Reformation, although some conservative Lutherans did not agree to this resolution. On July 18, 2006 Delegates to the World Methodist Conference voted unanimously to adopt the Joint Declaration. [1] [2]
The original anathemas (excommunications) that mark the "official" Great Schism of 1054 between Catholics and Orthodox were mutually revoked in 1965 by the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. But just as the original schism developed over time rather than erupting overnight, reconciliation is proceeding slowly.
The year 2006 saw a resumption of the series of meetings for theological dialogue between representatives of the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches, suspended because of failure to reach agreement on the question of the Eastern Catholic Churches, a question exacerbated by disputes over churches and other property that the Communist authorities once assigned to the Orthodox Church but whose restoration these Churches have obtained from the present authorities.
Catholic and Orthodox bishops in North America are engaged in an ongoing dialogue. They are meeting together periodically as the "North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation". It has been meeting semi-annually since it was founded in 1965 under the auspices of the Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA). The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops officially joined the Consultation as a sponsor in 1997. The Consultation works in tandem with the Joint Committee of Orthodox and Catholic Bishops which has been meeting annually since 1981. Since 1999 the Consultation has been discussing the Filioque clause, with the hope of eventually reaching an agreed joint statement.
Similar dialogues at both international and national level continue between, for instance, Roman Catholics and Anglicans.
Organizations such as the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches USA, Churches Uniting in Christ, and Christian Churches Together continue to encourage ecumenical cooperation among Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and, at times, Roman Catholics. There are universities such as the University of Bonn in Germany that offer degree courses in "Ecumenical Studies" in which theologians of various denominations teach their respective traditions and, at the same time, seek for common ground between these traditions.
Influenced by the ecumenical movement, the "scandal of separation" and local developments, a number of United and Uniting churches have formed; there are also a range of mutual recognition strategies being practised where formal union is not feasible. An increasing trend has been the sharing of church buildings by two or more denominations, either holding separate services or a single service with elements of all traditions.
A very sizable minority of Christians oppose ecumenism. They tend to be from churches of fundamentalist or charismatic backgrounds and strongly conservative sections of mainline Protestant churches. Greek Old Calendarists claim that the teachings of the Seven Ecumenical Councils forbid changing the church calendar through abandonment of the Julian calendar. They regard ecumenism as compromising essential doctrinal stands in order to accommodate other Christians, and object to the emphasis on dialogue leading to intercommunion rather than conversion on the part of participants in ecumenical initiatives. The Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece, organized a meeting in September 2004 entitled "The Inter-Orthodox Theological Conference \'Ecumenism: Origins – Expectations – Disenchantment\'", whose negative conclusions on ecumenism can be read on the Orthodox Christian Information Center site. Traditionalist Roman Catholics also see ecumenism as aiming at a false pan-Christian religious unity which does not require non-Catholics to convert to the Catholic faith. Traditionalist Roman Catholics see this as a contradiction to Catholic interpretations of the Bible, Pope Pius XI\'s Mortalium Animos, Pope Pius XII\'s Humani Generis and other documents. Some evangelical and many charismatic Christians view ecumenism as a sign of end times apostasy before Jesus Christ\'s return as prophesied in the Bible, and see substantial similarities between the doctrinal stance of end-times false teachers, as described in 2 Peter 2:1-2, and the theological pronouncements of certain leaders of ecumenical movements.
A majority of Evangelical churches, including most Baptists, a minority of Lutherans, Seventh-day Adventists, non-denominational Christians, and Evangelical Christian denominations such as the Christian and Missionary Alliance church, do not participate actively in the ecumenical movements. The doctrine of separation is adopted by some Evangelical churches towards churches and denominations that have joined ecumenical activities. Many Pentecostals, such as Assemblies of God, shun ecumenism, but some organizations, including some Pentecostal churches, do participate in ecumenism. Some of the more conservative Evangelicals and Pentecostals view interdenominational activities or organizations in more conservative circles such as the National Association of Evangelicals or Promise Keepers as a softer form of ecumenism and shun them while others do not. Other American conservative Protestant Churches, such as the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, Presbyterian Church in America, and Free Methodist Church, often view ecumenism in ways similar to their evangelical counterparts. Many Baptists in the United States have notoriously opposed ecumenism and even cooperation with other Baptists, as illustrated by the recent example of the Southern Baptist Convention\'s decision to withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance. The Baptist World Alliance, while seeking co-operation among Baptists, is not specifically a staunch ecumenical body, and yet conservative fundamentalist elements within the Southern Baptist Convention have forced that denomination to withdraw from even that small effort to ecumenical cooperation. In 2001 a group of Pentecostals broke from traditional opposition to ecumenical movements and formed the International Circle of Faith.
A rather large minority of Catholic opposition to ecumenism centers on Traditionalist Roman Catholics and associations such as the Society of St. Pius X. In fact, opposition to ecumenism is closely associated with antagonism, in the case of Traditionalist Roman Catholics, to abandonment of Latin in the celebration of Mass, and, in the case of Greek Old Calendarists (who speak of "the arch-heresy of ecumenism"), to abandonment of the Julian calendar.
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