Religion: The Challenge of Unity

As bigwigs and littlewigs of the Protestant Episcopal Church gathered in Philadelphia this week for their triennial General Convention, one issue overshadowed all others: a proposal for union with the Presbyterians. Into the high-church v. low-church debate on that issue, the undenominational but ecumenical-minded Christian Century cast an all-out editorial. Excerpts:

“At. . . Philadelphia, a decision will be made which will have far-reaching significance. The plan of union with the Presbyterian Church, negotiated by a joint commission of the two churches, will be presented to the convention with the request that it be submitted to the respective churches ‘for study’. … A minority of the Episcopal members of this joint commission has issued a statement opposing even so tentative a commitment to the proposed plan of union, on the alleged ground that it ‘radically distorts the religion of our Lord’ and is equivalent to the ‘giving of a blank check in regard to Christian faith and practice’ [TIME, July 22].

“The decision to be taken at Philadelphia will deeply concern the Episcopal Church, but it also concerns the whole of Protestantism and will have profound implications for the ecumenical movement. This movement was originally launched by an action of the Episcopal General Convention of 1910 which arrested the attention of the Christian world. … It has already borne an interim fruitage in the implementation of a World Council of Churches.”

What Union Means. “. . . But if the petty sectarianism voiced by the minority statement should prevail, it would reflect upon the whole record of the Episcopal Church during the past 36 years. What Episcopalians mean by church union, and have all along meant, would be taken to be nothing less than virtual absorption of all other Christians into the Episcopal Church. . . .

“Not only did the Episcopal Church take the initiative in the general ecumenical movement, but it was upon its initiative that negotiations with the Presbyterian Church were begun. . . . The plan which the majority now presents deliberately omits for further consideration certain questions of detail (the functions of bishops in the united church, for example) and goes directly to the crucial matters of episcopacy, the ministry and sacraments. On these and other questions a surprising identity in principle was discovered. . . .

“The task, therefore, resolved itself into the purely constructive one of taking over from each body those elements of procedure and structure which would a) provide a sufficient sense of familiarity in the procedures of the united church to enable both groups to feel at home, and b) safeguard both the episcopacy and the presbytery, together with the administration of the sacraments, against any radical departure from the procedure now substantially identical in both communions.”

Over the Bridge. “. . . The [minority] statement uses again the fiction of the Episcopal Church as the ‘bridge church’ between Protestantism and the so-called ‘catholic’ churches of Christendom, including the Roman Catholic Church. This conception has long been used as a rationalization of inaction by the Episcopal Church. . .. The ‘bridge’ conception has no reality; it is fiction pure & simple. The Roman Catholic Church will never meet the Episcopal Church on that ‘bridge.’ Nor will the rest of Protestantism do so. . . .”