Abstract
In writing about ecumenism, Ron Anderson draws on the concluding image of Brian Wren's hymn text “I Come with Joy” penned in 1968: Together met, together bound, … we’ll go our different ways.
The 1960s, particularly 1968, is often painfully regarded as a polarizing era—one of the most tumultuous and divisive decades in world history—that witnessed worldwide escalation of social conflicts:
* antiwar protests * political assassinations * civil unrest in France, punctuated by demonstrations and wildcat strikes * the “Troubles” in Northern Island * guerrilla warfare opposed to military dictatorship in Brazil * protests against lack of freedom of speech and violation of civil rights in Eastern Europe (e.g., Prague Spring; Warsaw, Poland; Yugoslavia) * Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City * civil rights movements * “generation gap” * counterculture movements
People metaphorically not only went different ways but staked out their turf and cordoned off their territory from perceived adversaries. Perhaps Wren's line is a most fitting summary of that era: “Together met, together bound, … we’ll go our different ways.” Amen!
How Did We Get to That Point?
Following the apocalyptic-like horrors of World War II and its weapons of mass destruction slaughtering tens of millions, the world stepped back to focus on promoting cooperation (e.g., United Nations, Marshall Plan) and churches commenced conversations about unity among Christians. The 1950s heralded the initiation of a crescendo of cross-religious emphases within the context of the post-World War II ecumenical era, notably manifested by:
* the first conference of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam in 1948 * a dozen ecumenical bodies organized as the National Council of Churches in Cleveland, Ohio in 1950 * three Protestant churches united to form the United Church of Christ in 1957 * Pope John XXIII established the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity in 1960
A significant undertaking in the movement toward ecumenism in the United States got off the ground in 1962 with the convening of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU). Its initial founding task was to negotiate a consensus among its member denominations (Episcopal Church, Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, and United Presbyterian Church, USA). What began with these four Protestant denominations soon burgeoned to 10 members in the Consultation plus another half-dozen member communions participating as observers. By 1966, COCU (now standing for “Church of Christ Uniting”) produced a timetable for union within a little over the ensuing decade; in hindsight, it was the heyday of worldwide ecumenism, even seemingly on the cusp of unity. Some even posit the ecumenical efforts of COCU as the apogee of engendering church unity in the United States.
The year 1970 then arrived with COCU's “Plan of Union” on which agreement had been hammered out on the anvil of intense negotiations and compromises regarding organic union, membership, living the faith, worship, ministers of Christ, and so forth. But when it came to the specifics of “ministry”, such widespread disagreement erupted that the Plan of Union was soon rejected because various communions were unwilling to implement changes that required them to give up their position (dare we say importance if not hubris?). In short, people did want to cede their status—thus, an elegy to self-preservation was intoned. So, after a propitious launch, COCU glumly lived out Wren's text: “Together met, together bound, … we’ll go our different ways” clutching their autonomy and identity.
The death of organic union, however, did spawn deliberations regarding “intercommunion” (akin to cohabiting without benefit of clergy) in which member churches would “retain their own autonomy and identity” (still clinging to self), while recognizing the validity of the rites, membership, and ministry of the others and accepting them as true churches. Increasingly, the common cooperative campus model came into vogue as post-Christendom became a lived-out reality. Ron Anderson relates his personal experience of churches across denominational lines seeking to reduce expenses by sharing such physical space. Other than finances, some primary benefits included cooperation, awareness, education resources, youth ministry, shared ministries, and closer personal relationships among the various denominations. A secondary effect, however, laments Anderson, was that “We could share property but not worship” even to the extent of “simultaneous worship services occurring each week within the same edifice” (p. 7), much less even contemplating taking baby steps toward organic union. So, people “retained their own autonomy and identity” and went their different ways as depicted in Wren's 1968 version.
As with many hymn writers, however, Brian Wren periodically revisits his texts. And, in 1993, Anderson notes, Wren revised the last phrase to: Together met, together bound, … to give the world the love that makes us one.
Yes, the default (“the given”) is that Christ's church is, by definition, “one”: There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)
As Paul wrote, when we share the bread and the cup in Jesus’ name, “we who are many are one body” (1 Corinthians 1:17).
At the table, we humans broke the bread (a gift from God) but in the world we broke the body of Christ (also a gift from God)—the one holy Christian church—and then went our different ways.
Is Wren's modified version illustrative of our hope for a reconciled future? Keep in mind that what seems to have gotten lost or overlooked were the benefits of receiving gifts from others as well as “the spirit of humility,” writes Ivana Noble, “which includes not only a willingness to recognize the presence of the divine in other Churches, but also it transforms our whole way of perceiving the gifts, the givers, and takers.” (p. 27) So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the [one] household of God. (Ephesians 2:19)
The hymn text's primary image clearly focuses on the Lord's Supper as a symbol of our relationship to Christ and to one another. Whether gathering at the Lord's table symbolizes our sought-after unity in Christ, or as the end goal of reconciled followers of Christ, Wren's words present the ongoing challenge before us: if we meet and are bound together “by all that God has done,” then we are called to “go with joy to give the world the love that makes us one.”
“From the [Second Vatican] Council's perspective”, writes Dorothea Sattler (p. 84), “the sought-after unity of the churches is a spiritual gift of God, not human work alone (cf. Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio [UR] 1–2).” Asks Sattler, “why do we not trust more in the gifts of God's Spirit in all churches?” (p. 96)
Our charge is to let go of our “autonomy and identity” and to accept the gift that we all are children of God who already are one holy, Christian church in the name of Christ.
-–pcb