The dead-end ecumenical path
The Layman December 2004 Volume 37, Number 5, December 28, 2004
There is no doubt that Clifton Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA), is a Goliath in today’s ecumenical movement.
He has been a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches and the Executive Committee of the National Council of Churches. From the gifts of Presbyterians, Kirkpatrick helps to harvest millions of dollars each year for the shrinking ecumenical organizations.
As one of the most influential leaders in the faltering ecumenical movement, Kirkpatrick shares much responsibility for shaping its voice, which has become a cacophony of liberation theology, socialism, anti-capitalism and – yes – even Marxism. It is a stammering, leftist voice that has supported guerrillas who murdered missionaries, Castro’s Cuba, abortion and Nicaragua’s Ortega – and abandoned the very purposes for which worldwide institutional ecumenism came into being.
The World Council of Churches was established in 1947 as “a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Savior according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
The National Council of Churches (nee, the National Council of Churches in Christ) emerged in 1950 as a “community of Christian communions, which, in response to the gospel as revealed in the Scriptures, confess Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, as Savior and Lord.”
But those noble priorities – the Lordship of Jesus and Scripture – have been abandoned. In Brazil and other parts of Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, in Eastern Europe, in Russia, in China, burgeoning Christian communities are aghast that the PCUSA and its leftist alliances have turned their backs on the foundational teachings of the Bible. Increasingly, they don’t want PCUSA missionaries deceiving the faithful. Some have severed the partnerships that they once gratefully welcomed.
The PCUSA is being judged faithless by those to whom this denomination once carried the life-giving gospel. But does that mean that ecumenism is dead – or should be dead? Not at all. For most Christians around the globe, there remains an essential unity – one Body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God. And there are many in the Presbyterian Church (USA) who are discovering a ecumenical kinship with Christians, who find their joy and place their hope in the Triune God and trust that Scripture is an infallible revelation of his glory and his divine will.
Thomas C. Oden, a premier theologian in the United Methodist Church, offers some good news: The confessing movements within mainline American denominations are reaching out for partnerships and mission, learning greatly from the churches that are alive in Christ and sharing their dreams and dollars with Christians whose faith has withstood the ravages of cultural aberrations, wars, famines and unimaginable political persecution.
This new ecumenism has no office or fax, no bureaucrats or political agendas. But it has Jesus, the Word of God and the most powerful force in the universe: the Holy Spirit. Take note of the new ecumenism – or, as Oden says, the old ecumenism before it was hijacked by leftists.
It could dramatically change how you and your congregation invest your prayers and dollars in mission.