RITE AND REASON: In this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity,Archbishop John Neill asks what sort of unity is being talked about
Each year at the end of January, the churches in Ireland and elsewhere pray for unity. What do these prayers mean? What sort of unity is envisaged?
Such questions are not too far removed from the debate about the European Union. Does unity mean the loss of independence/sovereignty? Where does real power lie? How can individual identity be preserved/celebrated? Churches value denominational identity in much the same manner as nations do national identity.
The "common currency" of sacramental/ministerial sharing raises specific questions. The ecumenical movement has found it difficult to define the vision to which it is committed. The goal of organic unity - one united worldwide church - has been clear for Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican traditions.
This goal has been important for churches which emphasise in particular the continuity of sacramental life and of the historic threefold ministry.
For these churches the scandal of institutional disunity is extremely painful and undermines the credibility of the church. The Roman Catholic Church in particular deals with this by seeing the fullness of the Catholic Church as already subsisting within that tradition.
The churches of the reformation, and indeed the many newer churches, have expressed their vision of the goal of the ecumenical movement more frequently in terms of a federal solution. This involves distinctive denominations co-existing, respecting each other and co-operating as much as possible.
If the organic vision seems totally unrealistic, the federal vision presents little challenge to a rather tired ecumenical movement. Is there another way of expressing a vision for the ecumenical movement?
The way forward is to look at what is happening within the churches themselves.
From the very beginning of the church, there has been a real concern as to how one local church relates to another. The concept of local varies between the diocesan model (episcopal churches) and the congregational model more common in the reformed (Presbyterian) tradition.
Whichever concept is assumed, issues arise over accountability, interchange of membership and of ministry, the sharing of financial and material resources and especially of the freedom to make local decisions.
The freedom of any local or indeed national church to make decisions brings questions of the understanding of unity into very sharp focus. Anglicanism recently faced this on the freedom of the Diocesan Synod of New Westminster (Canada) to provide for "same-sex blessings".
Roman Catholicism faced this a few years ago when the German hierarchy found itself in conflict with the Vatican for its practice of providing certificates of counselling that could be used by those seeking abortions. The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, in its support for apartheid, presented the World Alliance of Reformed Churches with hard decisions during the days of the white minority government.
In each case, the issue of relationships within the respective Christian world communions was quite different and yet comparable tensions were raised within each.
This is significant in that each Christian world communion by its own internal relationships attempts to express for itself a vision of what unity might be. The difficulties encountered in each have relevance for all.
What is happening, therefore, is that there is an ecumenism within the Christian world communions (or denominations) that, though expressed in a variety of ways, is facing issues of interdependence, accountability and autonomy.
This applies whether the particular communion is organised on an organic unity model (Roman Catholicism) or on a federal model (Reformed Churches).
Those who aspire to the organic model often tend to reflect more of the federal model (Anglicanism).
While these questions engage the churches within their own structures, there are positive signs of a broader vision for the ecumenical movement, which moves totally beyond structures. That vision which is articulated frequently now is that the goal of the ecumenical movement cannot be limited to church unity, but that it involves the vision of the unity of humankind and indeed of the whole created order.
This vision, which is quite explicit in the New Testament, makes unity and mission quite inseparable. Mission includes evangelisation, but mission also has a broader focus. It includes issues of justice and peace and of the integrity of creation. This is the direction to which ecumenical effort has been increasingly drawn in the last decade or more.
The vision of unity for which churches are praying needs to be restated - and it is to be hoped that the real concern will be to offer a vision of visible unity.
Unity to be visible does not have to employ the organic model in an "all or nothing" sense, but nor can it rest easy with a loose federation where every church simply does "what is right in its own eyes". The vision of visible unity implies a real commitment to mutual accountability and acceptance, but leaves space for the celebration of and maintenance of individual traditions. The vision of visible unity implies a church with a concern for the real world in which it lives.
The vision of visible unity implies that the church with a message to convey to the world is actually concerned about the way it is perceived as the medium of that message. The vision of visible unity challenges the reticence over sacramental and ministerial sharing - the common currency of the church - and therefore entrusts to the ecumenical movement a long agenda yet to be realised.
The goal of visible unity is more dynamic than that of an institutional or organic unity and less comforting than the goal of a federal solution. It is about being one "so that the world may believe".
Most Rev John Neill is Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. He has been involved for many years in the ecumenical movement and was president of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.
He is a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches and chairman of the Porvoo Contact Group involving Anglicans and Lutherans.