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ECUMENICISM

Consultation on Church Union

The 1970s opened with high hopes for closer relationships between various religious groups. The most obvious evidence was the developing plans for a merger of nine of the leading Mainline Protestant denominations in the Consultation on Church Union (COCU). Here representatives from the African Methodist Episcopal, the African Methodist Zion, and the Central Methodist Episcopal churches; the Christian church, or Disciples of Christ; the Episcopal church; the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.; the United Church of Christ; the United Methodist church; and the United Presbyterian church worked on a structure that would permit the creation of a denomination with about twenty-three million members. Observers found it interesting that the COCU denominations had lost nearly two million members since the project began a decade earlier.

Plan of Union

In 1971 COCU sent its Plan of Union, a document on how to create what would be called "The Church of Christ Uniting" to its member groups and immediately encountered opposition on the basis of governance, tradition, and theology. When the United Presbyterian church left the organization the enterprise collapsed, and in April 1973 delegates of the eight remaining denominations voted to postpone indefinitely the study of merger at the top and instead supported inter-church cooperation at the local level.

Presbyterian Reunion

The ecumenical surge had not crested, however. The United Presbyterian church and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (southern) voted once again to consider reunion. This movement gave some reason for optimism as conservatives in the southern church dropped out to align with other conservative denominations or to form an alternative southern Presbyterian church. These conservatives feared that what they considered a growing liberalism in their church home would lead to a merger with the unacceptably liberal northern church. The new southern denomination called itself the Presbyterian Church in America.

Catholic Openings

But interchurch cooperation strengthened across old, bitter divisions. The Roman Catholic church proved open to cooperation with other religious groups after the Second Vatican Conference in the 1960s. In 1970 new guidelines for marriages between Roman Catholics and other Christians erased some of the old reasons for tensions between the Roman Catholic church and other denominations. While non-Catholic spouses would be reminded that a child should be reared in the church, the non-Catholic partner would not be required to pledge that action.

Jews and Catholics

The Vatican also worked out new details on its relations with Jews, now that the old anti-Semitic charge that the Jews were responsible for the execution of Jesus had been expressly repudiated at the Second Vatican Council. The "Guidelines and Suggestions for Implementing the Councillor Declaration 'Nostre Aetate' [In Our Time]" referred to the "spiritual bonds and historical links" between Christians and Jews. It explicitly condemned anti-Semitism and recommended an extended interfaith dialogue.

Bridges for the Future

In March 1979 representatives of various Protestant denominations met with theologians from the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where they agreed to a document outlining their common understanding of the sacrament of baptism. New bridges were being built for the future.