The Quest for Unity

Across the sun-dappled campus of Ohio's Oberlin College, Eastern Orthodox patriarchs in flowing robes and beards strolled alongside Baptist ministers in business suits and Salvation Army officers in uniform. All were delegates to the North American Conference of Faith and Order convening last week for eight days of open-minded probing and discussion of Christendom's most elusive quest--church unity. Participating were 289 delegates representing 34 Protestant denominations and five Eastern Orthodox bodies.

In a keynote address, Protestant Episcopal Bishop Angus Dun of Washington, D.C. stated the theme of the conference: "The real question is not whether the long-divided Christian family should be reunited but the nature of the unity God wills for us."

Practical Plans. In sectional reports, the delegates explored grounds for unity, sometimes finding hope in unexpected places. Mobile American families switch church affiliations just about as frequently as they move (20% per year), reported Rev. Roswell P. Barnes, associate general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ. Concluded he: "This constant shifting around tends to de-emphasize denominational differences and smooth the path toward Christian unity."

Some of the conferees upheld the value of preserving diversity within unity. Asked the Tennessee delegation: "If competition between Chevrolet and Pontiac works so well within the same corporation [General Motors], why not let the Congregationalists and Episcopalians compete within one big church?" The two practical plans for unity which will be offered at Oberlin embody just this principle. One plan would join all churches that function "episcopally, congregationally and presbyterially," leaving local congregations free to administer the sacraments of Baptism and Communion in their own manner. A second plan is for a "federal union" in which each denomination would remain an entity, e.g., "the Methodist branch of the United Church of Christ."

Special Conditions. The dilemma that must be resolved before any genuine progress towards Christian unity can occur was pinpointed best by Theologian Lewis Seymour Mudge, a Presbyterian, writing in the Christian Century: "Our problem no longer centers on the 'divinity of Christ' [but on] the humanity of Christ. Christ became man and died for all men. We know that this is so, but our theologies and our church structures make it appear that he died for only some men or for a curiously fragmented sort of man . . . We are able to say no more than that God became man under certain special conditions--Presbyterian or Anglican or Methodist or Lutheran conditions . . . This comes to saying that ... the human race is one--but not really."

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