wfn.org | COCU gets off to CUIC start

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Note #7021 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

19-January-2002
02031

COCU gets off to CUIC start

Leader of ecumenical group says talk is cheap, calls for action

by Jerry L. Van Marter

MEMPHIS, TENN. — Nine churches that have been in ecumenical dialogue for more than 40 years as the Consultation on Church Union (COCU) were challenged here on Jan. 18 to move from mere talk to a real commitment to live together as the church.

In a rousing address at the start of a weekend of events that will culminate in COCU's transformation into Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC), General Secretary Michael Kinnamon of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) described the organization as "a commitment, a substantive covenant, signifying that life together is an essential dimension of who we are as churches."

Kinnamon didn't lament that COCU failed in its original purpose of creating a merged "mega-church" of 22 million Christians. "Had it succeeded, we might have been less likely to repent, more likely to glory in our institutional power," he said. "No, I prefer to confess that God has led us to this moment."

Because the name change won't directly affect the member churches, he noted, "some of your local papers may hardly note this event."

But he said "the lack of structure" in the ecumenical organization "calls for imagination more than legal adherence" and "puts added responsibility on each of us -- church leaders, pastors, seminarians, people in the pews -- to be active advocates for this new thing that God is doing."

CUIC is based on eight "visible marks" of Christian unity among the member churches, which recognize each other as authentic expressions of the church and clear the way for greater cooperation in worship, witness and service.

Kinnamon said COCU decided in 1999, after years of failure to agree on such issues as the ordering of ministry (Presbyterians, for instance, ordain elders, while the Episcopal Church adheres to a doctrine known as the "historic episcopate," which holds that the ordination of clergy has descended in a virtually unbroken line from Peter), "that all issues of faith and order need not be resolved before our churches can give formal expression to the life that, in many places, we already share."

In other words, he said, the proper tone for the weekend's celebration is "already" rather than "not yet."

The only programmatic item on CUIC's agenda is combating racism. Because three predominantly African-American denominations have long been COCU members, racism has always been a primary COCU concern.

But the emphasis on racism does not mean that 
CUIC is "a social-justice coalition," Kinnamon said. "We are committed to combating racism together because of our shared understanding of what it means to be the body of Christ," he said. "CUIC is a sacrament-centered relationship. 
At the Lord's table we learn, over and over, that though we may look different in the eyes of the world, we are truly related to one another by blood."

He said the great danger that CUIC faces now "is not that our new relationship will be opposed, but that it will be ignored, since it does not involve a consolidation of structures."

After the festivities conclude on Monday with a Martin Luther King Day march from Memphis City Hall to the National Civil Rights Museum, 
Kinnamon said, "we can return on Tuesday to business as usual, to our normal patterns of benign neglect. Or we can go from here with clear resolve: Henceforth, we will live differently with one another!"

The COCU/CUIC member churches are the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Episcopal Church, the International Council of Community Churches, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church.

In addition, the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the American Baptist Church and the Moravian Church have participated in the work of COCU although they have not become formal members.

The full text of Kinnamon's address is available on the CUIC Web site, www.cuicinfo.org 
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