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Ecumenical Formation in the Service of a Renewed Church - Africa - Statistical Data Included
Ecumenical Review, The, July, 2001 by John S. Pobee
However important theology, formation, education, ministry, ecclesiology and ecumenism are, it is ecumenism that gives them perspective. They foster the development of the ecumenical imperative and a praxis founded in scripture, as well as the formation of persons to work in the service of ecumenism.
Envisioning
In some circles, especially in the World Council of Churches (WCC), envisioning is often understood as being "prophetic". My aim is rather to forthtell, to articulate what we should or could be doing, so as to be viably church, faithful to the ecumenical imperative. Forthtelling engages with the contemporary reality of the context and lessons of history.
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Envisioning can also become ingenuous invention that does not exactly respond to the local contextual reality. For the vision to move peoples to live the ecumenical imperative, it must also be emotionally satisfying so that it challenges people to action. It should take seriously the language and idiom of the field of action. In the case of Africa, it may mean acquainting the people with the basic facts of ecumenism precisely because ecumenical formation has been minimal.
Memory
As we embark on this exercise, we need memory, not just to recall the past, but to make present and real the insights and teachings of history, experience and scripture (Luke 22:19). Memory and memorial are key to the central Christian rite of the eucharist; they are at the heart of the Jewish feast of Pesah (Passover), Sabbath, Yom Kippur, and the celebration of the holocaust. Six months of living in Israel have reminded me forcefully of the crucial importance of memory tot the life of the nation of Israel. I learn from this that theological and ministerial formation should aim at making the memory of our being as church a dynamic reality. As the philosopher George Santayana puts it, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (Life of Reason).
Experience
Experience is one of the cornerstones of religion(1) and therefore must be taken seriously: it should teach us much about ecumenism's successes and failures. In Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, Namibia and South Africa, there has been massive killing, genocide, fratricide and ethnic cleansing in which churches and Christians were accomplices. The Christian sense of mutual accountability to God the Creator of all and to one another in the una sancta has therefore failed. The achievements of the Faith and Order movement, the International Missionary Council, the Life and Work movement, the World Council of Christian Education, bilateral and multilateral ecumenism, and so on, must never be treated as passe they must be engaged with a view to refocusing, redirecting, re-envisioning ecumenism. Members of WCC assemblies and its central committee, and even staff, have sometimes been found wanting in their knowledge and memory of the ecumenical movement. Critical engagement with such knowledge will be conducive to viable memory. We are concerned with how programmes build upon the past -- memories and experiences -- so that ecumenism may become not only real but vibrant, viable and relevant.
This paper focuses on the educational stream of the ecumenical movement. While recognizing that the WCC is only "a privileged arm" of the movement, we shall draw on experience gained by the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, near Geneva; the Christian education tradition of the WCC; and the Theological Education Fund and its subsequent incarnations. The material is necessarily highly selective.
Africa
At the WCC's eighth assembly in 1998,222 out of the total church membership of 336 were third-world churches. Of these 222, 89 were African. To date, the inclusion of Africa in the movement has seemed rather cosmetic, barely taking seriously the implications and consequences of bringing in a people with different histology and culture. Here is a challenge for a genuine incarnation of the gospel in Africa, for Africa to be brought into the ecumenical dialogue, for a determined commitment to an African ideal.(2)
Ecumenism, properly understood, is a perspective of a movement and not primarily the institutionalized church. It is a renewal movement composed of diverse groups with a common "ideology" (i.e. ecumenism) for common action.
By definition and necessity a movement has political impact and implications because it affects the allocation of power and influence.(3) Those who accuse the ecumenical movement of politicizing faith fail to appreciate the nature of the situation. The ecumenical movement's selective support of the struggle against racism in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), apartheid in South Africa and colonialism in South West Africa (now Namibia) was consistent with the movement character of ecumenism. Similarly, the movement's emphasis on theology by the people, which seemingly challenges the hegemony of the clergy, or on the participation of youth and women, thereby challenging the status quo in churches, reveals its character as a movement.(4)
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