wfn.org | Walls Between Churches must Come Tumbling Down

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28-January-1999 
99039 
 
    Walls Between Churches must Come 
    Tumbling Down, Bishop Says 
 
    by Jean Caffey Lyles 
 
ST. LOUIS - It is God's will that Christian churches live together in 
unity, representatives of nine U.S. denominations were told during a 
communion service closing their Jan. 20-24 meeting. 
 
    United Methodist Bishop William Boyd Grove, of Charleston, W.Va., 
paraphrased a Robert Frost poem, declaring, "Someone there is who doesn't 
love our walls, Who wants them down." 
 
    Grove delivered his sermon less than two hours after the delegations 
approved a document describing the next steps to be taken by Consultation 
on Church Union (COCU), which has been seeking a workable form of church 
unity for almost 40 years. 
 
    The report issued by COCU's 18th Plenary calls for a broad affiliation 
called "Churches Uniting in Christ" to take effect in January 2002. Before 
that can happen, the member churches' top decision-making bodies must 
approve the recommendation. 
 
    Grove said his own passion for ecumenism was deeply influenced by 
Frost's poem, "Mending Wall," whose central image is that of a stone wall 
separating neighboring farm fields in Vermont. 
 
    In the famous poem, Frost declares that before building such a wall, 
"I'd ask to know what I was walling in and walling out," and casts doubt on 
the notion that "good fences make good neighbors." 
 
    Grove said his ecumenical commitment was crystallized when he read the 
Frost poem in a college English class. He said he also was affected by 
"Aria da Capa," a verse play by poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. 
 
    In the now seldom-produced play, two shepherds play a game of building 
a wall between them, an exercise that leads eventually to anger and murder. 
Grove repeated the play's refrain, "Over there belongs to you, and over 
here belongs to me." 
 
    Nations, families, political structures, and churches have suffered 
because of such walls, he said, "but the church has another story." 
 
    Borrowing again from Frost's poem, Grove told worshipers, "Beyond the 
cold winter of our theological and racial divisions, there will come God's 
`spring mischief,' surprising us by "tumbling down the churches' own 
dividing walls." 
 
    Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold of the Episcopal Church, another COCU 
member body, celebrated the eucharist during the closing service. 
 
    The Episcopal Church is the only one of the nine churches that added a 
reservation to its "yes" vote on the new unity document. It had problems 
with some provisions relating to orders of ministry. 
 
    The other member denominations are the African Methodist Episcopal 
Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Christian Church 
(Disciples of Christ), Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, International 
Council of Community Churches, Presbyterian Church (USA) and United Church 
of Christ. 
 
    About 200 people attended the plenary meeting, 90 of them official 
delegates of their denominations. The COCU churches have a total membership 
of about 17 million. 

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