wfn.org | General Assembly Backgrounder: The Consultation on Church Union

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

11-June-1999 
99221 
 
    General Assembly Backgrounder: 
    The Consultation on Church Union (COCU) 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
    The 211th General Assembly will be asked to approve entry of the 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) into a new relationship with as many as eight 
other denominations to be called "Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC)." 
 
    Before a projected "public declaration and liturgical celebration" of 
the new partnership can take place - hopefully during the Week of Prayer 
for Christian Unity in 2002 - the highest decision-making bodies of the 
COCU member churches must agree to the proposal. 
 
    The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will be the first of the COCU churches 
to vote on the proposal, which came out of the 18th COCU plenary in 
January.  The 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 Episcopal Church, the International Council of Community 
Churches, the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church. 
 
    CUIC is similar to the "full communion" agreement approved last year by 
the PC(USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Church 
of Christ and the Reformed Church in America.  Each church would continue 
to maintain its own structure and polity, with no merging of any church 
structures nor the creation of a separate CUIC structure. 
 
    The 16-page CUIC proposal describes nine "visible marks" of the 
partnership: mutual recognition of each other as authentic expressions of 
the one church of Jesus Christ; mutual recognition of members in one 
baptism; mutual recognition of ordained ministry; mutual recognition that 
each of the communions affirms the apostolic faith of scripture and 
tradition as expressed in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds; provision for 
regular celebration of the Lord's Supper together; regular joint engagement 
in mission; commitment to oppose exclusion in the church and society based 
on race, age, gender, forms of disability, sexual orientation and class; 
ongoing theological dialogue; and appropriate means for consultation and 
decision-making. 
 
    Of the nine denominations, only the Episcopal Church added a demurral 
to its "yes" vote on the CUIC proposal when the 18th plenary approved it. 
Episcopal presiding bishop Frank T. Griswold III told the gathering his 
delegation would not be able to commend the report to the Episcopal General 
Convention until the issue of ordained offices of ministry are ironed out. 
 
    That issue has plagued COCU since its inception in 1960.  The Episcopal 
Church is the only one of the nine COCU bodies that claims an episcopate in 
"historic succession" - an unbroken line of bishops stretching back to the 
early church. 
 
    Previous COCU proposals have floundered over "historic succession" and 
Presbyterian concerns that the ordained office of elder be incorporated 
into COCU agreements.  Early COCU leaders, including the late Eugene Carson 
Blake of the PC(USA) envisioned an organic merger of the member churches, 
an idea long since abandoned. 

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