Sex, Moral Teaching, and the Unity of the Church. Timothy F. Sedgwick
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and between churches over moral issues are a sin that may be as great as or greater than particular acts. The acceptance of slavery and patriarchy are surely sins again God and neighbor. Abortion and same-sex marriage are equally viewed by many as matters of sin. What is often forgotten is the gospel demand that Christians should be one, as the Father and the Son are one. This is called the ecumenical mandate as given by Jesus in the Gospel of John:
I ask not only on behalf of these [who follow me], but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (Jn 17:20–23)
The sin of a divided church is that it weakens faith and witness to the gospel. Faith is weakened as attention is turned to who is right and away from the practice of faith in the love of God and neighbor. The witness of the gospel is weakened as faith becomes narrowed to right belief while the focus and resources for evangelism and service are compromised.
The gospel mandate for full and visible unity between churches stands at the heart of the ecumenical movement. This movement arose in the context of the missionary outreach in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries seeking to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. Formed in the mission field where many churches “competed” against each other, the Episcopal Church’s missionary bishop to the Philippines, Charles H. Brent, attended the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. Afterwards Brent proposed to the Episcopal Church a world conference on “faith and order.”
Under Brent’s leadership, in 1927 in Lausanne, Switzerland, delegates from 109 churches met at what was to be the first World Conference on Faith and Order. From this beginning the Faith and Order Commission was formed and has continued to meet, incorporating with the “Life and Work Movement” to form the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948. Similarly, at the national level, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC) was founded in 1950 and incorporated a Faith and Order Commission. The churches of the WCC and NCC joined together in consultations or dialogues about faith and order. The “multilateral” dialogues extended beyond the largely Protestant membership of Faith and Order to include the Roman Catholic Church and churches from other traditions, such as Evangelical and Pentecostal. At the same time, separate churches entered into “bilateral dialogues” about faith and order. Together these dialogues form a rich body of work on the nature of Christian faith and the church.
Ecumenical dialogues have from their beginnings sought to identify what churches share in common, especially in areas where differences seem apparent. For example, differences that have divided the church have included theological confessions of faith, understandings of baptism and eucharist, differences in liturgical practices, understandings of ministry and the nature and role of bishops, and matters of church order and governance relating local congregations to the church as universal. However, beneath these differences are also shared convictions on faith and order.
Understandings shared by the churches in ecumenical dialogue were drawn together in two convergence texts adopted by the Faith and Order Commission of the WCC. The first text, titled simply Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, was adopted at the Faith and Order Commission’s plenary meeting in 1982 in Lima, Peru. It is the most broadly read document of the ecumenical movement. Full and visible unity between churches is understood in terms of recognition of baptism, participation in eucharist, and shared ministry. The second convergence text, titled The Church: Towards a Common Vision, draws together the subsequent work of thirty years. The Faith and Order Commission adopted this second convergence text in 2012 at its meeting in Penang, Malaysia. That document identifies a shared understanding of the church as koinonia, as a fellowship given in participating and sharing together in the life of the church and its mission as God’s mission, missio dei. Ecumenically, together these two convergence texts articulate a shared understanding of Christian faith as given in the church in and through the gathering of the people of God and in sending the people of God into the world in mission.
Recognition of baptism has been most widely achieved among churches. When churches receive persons into their church, they don’t rebaptize those who have already been baptized in another church. Sharing in the eucharist has likewise been widely accepted, except between those churches for whom the eucharist is a sign of specific beliefs and ministry that need to be held in common in order for the eucharist to be a sacrament of unity. Such is the case, for example, for the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox churches, and some Lutheran churches. Agreement about the nature of ordained ministry and the structuring of authority for teaching is the remaining and most difficult matter in effecting full and visible unity between churches. In other words, the greatest impediment for full and visible unity among churches is a matter of teaching—not narrowly a matter of what is taught, but how churches teach.
Teaching for the Sake of Communion
Ordained ministry is an ordering of authority for teaching Christian faith. This is determined by the understanding of the church and how Christian faith is “passed on.” As the word “ecclesial” means in the Greek, the church is the assembly, the gathering, of the people of God. This is distinct from the church as a building in a particular place, which is what the English word “church” has too often come to mean (derived from the German die Kirche, meaning the physical building). As the assembly, in the local church people participate and are formed in the larger identity and mission of God. This larger life is variously expressed, for example, as witness and participation in the Kingdom of God, as joined in the body of Christ, as participation in the divine life, as a matter of obedience to God’s command, and as a life of faith active in love.
Ecumenically, this understanding of the relationship between the local church or assembly and the church as universal is expressed by the biblical understanding of the church as communion. As conveyed by the Greek word koinonia, communion connotes the complementary meanings of sharing in common, participation together, and fellowship. Such participation is given in worship and mission. Shared in common, a people are gathered together in fellowship and formed as one body, as one in Christ.
In terms of teaching, this means that the church must pass on the faith in such a way that the local church gathering in a particular time and place is united to the church as universal, sharing in a mission of reconciliation that is universal and not identified simply with a local church. In the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ, we know that the faith given to us cannot be simply local. As Paul says, “We have this treasure in clay jars [in earthen vessels], so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us” (2 Cor 4:7).
Teaching in the church is a matter of formation. Faith is not a body of knowledge but a way of life given together in relationship with God. This is expressed in the understanding of baptism as a rite of initiation, as breaking the bonds of sin and being raised into new life in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Formation in this new life is marked as beginning in baptism and deepened in the study of Scripture, in the celebration of the eucharist and more generally in prayer and worship, and in a life lived in love of God and neighbor.
In the Episcopal Church entering into this new life is referred to as the “baptismal covenant.” As detailed in The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) in the service of baptism, God’s grace as reconciliation and redemption is given as the new Christian is joined in the community of faith and commits her- or himself to life in Christ. The vows are to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, in prayers, in resisting evil, in the repentance of sin, in proclaiming in word and example the Good News of God in Christ, in seeking and serving Christ in all persons, in striving for justice and peace among all people, and in respecting the dignity of every human being (BCP, 304–5).
Entering this life in Christ as given in the life of the church is a matter of the community of faith as a whole. Having said that, ordained ministry is understood as having oversight in the teaching of Christian faith in which the local church is