wfn.org | COCU Churches Lay Groundwork For "Churches Uniting in Christ"

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25-January-1999 
99031 
 
    COCU Churches Lay Groundwork 
    For "Churches Uniting in Christ" 
 
    by Jean Caffey Lyles 
 
ST. LOUIS--Delegations from nine U.S. Christian church bodies today 
approved a document that calls for inaugurating a "new relationship" to be 
called "Churches Uniting in Christ" as early as the year 2002. 
 
    Before a projected "public declaration and liturgical celebration" of 
the new entity can take place, the highest decision-making bodies of the 
member churches must agree to the proposal. 
 
    The action came as the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), a 
39-year-old unity dialogue, wrapped up its 18th Plenary meeting, its first 
in a decade. 
 
    "May God be praised!" exclaimed COCU president Vivian U. Robinson of 
Augusta, Ga., after all nine delegations had announced their agreement with 
the unity proposal, which was hammered out during the plenary.  Delegates 
broke into prolonged applause, with many embracing one another. 
 
    Of the nine denominations, only the Episcopal Church added a demur to 
its "yes" vote on the 16-page document.  Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank 
Griswold of New York told the gathering that his delegation would not be 
able to commend the document to the Episcopal General Convention until 
unreconciled issues relating to the ordained ministry are worked out. 
 
    The Episcopal Church is the only one of the nine bodies that has 
bishops in "historic succession" - an unbroken line of bishops ordained by 
laying on of hands, stretching back to the apostolic era of Christianity. 
 
    Given the Episcopalians' reservations, COCU faced the possibility that 
Churches Uniting in Christ may begin life with only eight denominations as 
full participants.  The proposal invites churches unready to enter the new 
relationship in 2002 to "be partners in continuing relationship to realize 
fully that unity for which Christ prayed." 
 
    COCU has from the outset found its ecumenical mandate in Scripture, 
including a New Testament passage from John 17, in which Jesus prayed "that 
they may all be one." 
 
    The hoped-for national inauguration of Churches Uniting in Christ would 
take place during 2002's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, an eight-day 
January period observed annually by Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, 
and Anglican bodies in the United States.  Celebration of the Rev. Martin 
Luther King Jr.'s birthday also falls during the week, the document 
observes. 
 
    Other COCU member churches are the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 
the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Christian Church 
(Disciples of Christ), the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the 
International Council of Community Churches, the Presbyterian Church (USA), 
the United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church. 
 
    The nine denominations have a total membership of about 17 million. 
The membership of three bodies - the AME, the AMEZ and the CME - is 
predominantly African American, and the proposal includes a strong 
commitment for the churches to work together to combat racism "by 
challenging the system of white privilege that has so distorted life in 
this society and in the churches themselves." 
 
    The group also adopted a separate document, "A Call to Christian 
Commitment and Action to Combat Racism," that, among other recommendations, 
suggests the King birthday holiday as a day that could be claimed by 
churches for dialogue "addressing racism and pursuing our unity in Christ." 
The document declares that racism "is the most church-dividing issue in the 
United States." 
 
    "I think we created a new relationship," said United Methodist Bishop 
William Boyd Grove. "I'm very pleased that we're leaving with everybody 
still at the table, but I'm disappointed that we can't move faster." 
 
    A 10-member drafting team headed by the Rev. Michael Kinnamon, a 
Disciples of Christ theologian at Lexington (Ky.) Theological Seminary, 
listened for three days to delegates' thinking, as expressed in small 
"discernment groups" and in plenary sessions.  Then the team, working in a 
Friday night marathon session, crafted a first draft that attempted to sum 
up the will of the body. 
 
    The team also incorporated material from a COCU Theology Commission 
report and the document on racism, as well as relying on work done in 
previous major COCU proposals. 
 
    With the first draft's unveiling Saturday, the drafters received 
extensive critiques and suggestions for revisions to make the document 
acceptable to all nine delegations.  The first draft came in for strong 
criticism from Presbyterians, who felt it did not allow for their corporate 
ministries of oversight, in which decision-making bodies (presbyteries) 
comprised of equal numbers of clergy and lay elders function somewhat as 
bishops do in Methodist and Episcopal churches. 
 
    The drafters pulled another all-nighter to produce a second draft, and 
delegates further amended the report Sunday morning before giving it a 
thumbs-up. 
 
    COCU had its genesis in 1960 with a sermon preached by the Rev. Eugene 
Carson Blake, who at the time was stated clerk of the United Presbyterian 
Church in the U.S.A. stated clerk, in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, at 
the invitation of  Episcopal Bishop James K. Pike.  Both men are now 
deceased.  The Blake-Pike proposal called for forming a church that would 
be `fully catholic" and "fully reformed."  COCU's first plenary added 
another phrase, "fully evangelical." 
 
    Over the years, four previous major COCU unity proposals have been sent 
to the churches for their endorsement.  In the course of four decades of 
ecumenical dialogue, COCU's goal has changed from one of  "organic union" 
to the present aim of "full communion," mutual recognition of one another's 
ministries, and eventual "reconciliation of ministries."  The last step, 
projected for the year 2007, would allow ministers of one church body to 
serve and function in all the others. 
 
    The present proposal in no way envisions a "megamerger" or a 
structurally united "superchurch."  COCU long ago abandoned that model of 
unity. 
 
    Reflecting the long and sometimes tedious struggles that have led COCU 
to its present stage of incipient unity, the new document's introduction 
quotes a gospel song by African American composer James Cleveland: "I don't 
feel no ways tired. I've come too far from where I started from.  Nobody 
told me the way would be easy. But I don't believe God brought me this far 
to leave me." 
 
    Some delegates felt that the adoption of the name "Churches Uniting in 
Christ" would help reinvigorate an enterprise that had lost momentum since 
its enthusiastic beginnings.  Some said they would welcome jettisoning the 
acronym "COCU."  Kinnamon, asked by a reporter how to abbreviate the new 
name, quipped that "CUIC" could be pronounced "Quick" -- the word that 
describes the speed with which some delegates declared they are ready to 
move forward, if not the almost 40 years of theological study, deliberation 
and drafting. 
 
    The new 16-page document describes nine "visible marks" of Churches 
Uniting in Christ: 
 
    1. Mutual recognition of each other as authentic expressions of the one 
church of Jesus Christ (including publicly recognizing each other's faith 
in God, commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior, faithfulness to Scripture as 
the ultimate standard of faith, and commitment to faithful participation in 
the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper). 
 
    2. Mutual recognition of members in one Baptism. 
 
    3. Mutual recognition of ordained ministry (recognizing that the 
ministries are instruments of God's grace, seek to be faithful to Jesus 
Christ, possess the inward call of the Spirit and Christ's commission 
through the church). 
 
    4. Mutual recognition that each affirms the apostolic faith of 
Scripture and tradition in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. 
 
    5. Provision for celebration of the Eucharist (Lord's Supper) together 
regularly, acknowledging the sacrament as being at the heart of the 
church's life. 
 
    6. Regular engagement together in mission, especially shared mission to 
combat racism. 
 
    7. Commitment to oppose exclusion in church and society based on "such 
things as race, age, gender, forms of disability, sexual orientation, and 
class." 
 
    8. An ongoing process of theological dialogue. 
 
    9. Appropriate structures of accountability and means for consultation 
and decision-making (described as flexible and adaptable to local 
circumstances). 
 
    The document also envisions a "fuller unity" and a process "by which 
the ministries of each participating church can become one ministry in 
Jesus Christ in relation to all."  This process "has already begun and yet 
seeks its fulfillment," says the report.  "We acknowledge that up to now we 
have not been able to find ways of completing this process that are 
agreeable to all." 
 
    The report notes that the "ministry of oversight" needs special 
attention so that churches with bishops in historic succession and those 
with other kinds of oversight structures "can be reconciled in a way that 
invites universal recognition." 
 
    COCU's Executive Committee is asked to convene "in the near future" a 
meeting to clarify the meaning of "reconciliation of ministry." 
 
    The proposal calls for expanding the circle, inviting churches that 
have been "advisory participants" to join-the Reformed Church in America 
and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. 
 
    "We seek dialogues in ever widening circles, including discussions with 
the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches, the churches of the 
Pentecostal, Holiness, and Baptist traditions, and other historic black 
churches," says the paper. 
 
    Looking to expand the circle of ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, the 
new entity will "seek to be in conversation with representatives of Judaism 
and Islam and other living faiths." 
 
    A section of the report is devoted to a pledge to "combat systematic 
white privilege," calling that vow a "hallmark" of the Churches Uniting in 
Christ. The term "white skin color privilege" based on "power plus 
prejudice" is to be opposed, it says, and "the sin of racism" is called 
"the most divisive issue" confronting the new entity. 
 
    Also addressed in the document, among other matters, are implications 
for local and regional church life and actions to be taken by COCU's 
Executive Committee to implement the new unity relationship.  The executive 
committee is scheduled to meet in late March. 
 
    About 200 people attended the five-day plenary meeting at the Hyatt 
Regency St. Louis at Union Station. Each of the nine churches had ten 
voting delegates. 
 
(Jean Caffey Lyles, a widely known and highly respected religious 
journalist, managed the Press Room at the plenary.) 

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