COCU Plenary to be held in January
United Methodist Reporter, December 2, 1998
Representatives of an almost 40-year-old dialogue of nine U.S. Christian denominations will gather Jan. 20-24 in St. Louis to consider whether their churches are ready to take a major step toward Christian unity at the beginning of the 21st century. Among the nine are three historically African American church bodies.
Planners of the upcoming 18th Plenary of the Consultation on Church Union (COCU) say that the St. Louis meeting is crucial for the future of the ecumenical movement in the United States.
Plenary delegates will seek to craft a document suggesting to the churches the next steps for COCU, whose quest for a workable, acceptable model of “visible unity” began in the early 1960s.
It has been a full decade since the convening of a Plenary, COCU’s top legislative body. During those 10 years, member churches have studied and acted on COCU proposals, as well as engaging in other ecumenical dialogues and unity efforts.
The COCU initiative is “one of two proposals for full communion of churches now on the American table,” said the Rev. Diane Kessler of Boston, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches and chair of the plenary’s program and planning committee. The other proposal involves the Episcopal Church, a COCU member body, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a non-member body.
The consultation is also significant, Dr. Kessler said, because it is currently the only multilateral dialogue in this country working toward an eventual goal of “full communion.”
‘No other table like this one’
“There is no other table like this one,” added the Rev. Thomas E. Dipko of Cleveland. Without COCU’s continuing life, no other multilateral unity conversation among different theological traditions would exist “at which African American churches could negotiate on an equal footing with predominantly white churches,” said Mr. Dipko, a United Church of Christ official and a UCC representative on the consultation’s executive committee.
COCU dialogues involve Episcopal, Presbyterian, Christian (Disciples of Christ), United, Community and Methodist bodies, including the three predominantly African American denominations.
According to the Rev. Lewis H. Lancaster Jr. of Louisville, interim general secretary, representatives of member denominations will report to the plenary on official responses taken by their churches on “Churches in Covenant Communion.” That proposal was unanimously approved by the 17th COCU Plenary in 1988 in New Orleans and sent to member churches for their endorsement. Eight of the nine church bodies have approved the document.
Planners say the St. Louis meeting will address racism as a “church-dividing issue,” considering a paper titled “A Call to Christian Commitment to Combat Racism.” Among other initiatives, the document proposes that churches “claim Martin Luther King Jr. Day observances… for dialogue leading to systemic change.”
Delegates also will have in their preparatory materials a report from COCU’s Theology Commission, which offers recomendations for a way forward for the consultation. The commission is chaired by the Rev. Cynthia Campbell, a Presbyterian and president of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Much of the work of the meeting – in both small-group conversations and plenary deliberations – will employ a style described by Dr. Kessler as a “discerning process” that is “less juridical, more dialogical and reflective” than standard parliamentary procedure. The meeting will also revert to traditional rules of debate and decision-making when necessary for taking votes, she said.
Named as “process leaders” for the meeting are Bishop Susan Hassinger, episcopal leader of The United Methodist Church’s Boston Area, and the Rev. Canon Edward Rodman, canon missioner for the Western Michigan Diocese of the Episcopal Church. Both have extensive experience in guiding process for decision-making groups, including bodies of bishops, Dr. Kessler said.
Writing team has been appointed
A four-member drafting team of experienced ecumenical writers has been appointed to craft a document reflecting the collective thinking of plenary delegates and to suggest COCU’s next steps toward “visible unity.”
If a document is approved by the plenary and subsequently endorsed by the denominations’ highest decision-making assemblies, the outcome could lead, early in the 21st century, to a new relationship for expressing unity among the churches. Various models of unity have been studied, debated and revised repeatedly by the consultation’s dialogue participants since the early 1960s.
COCU leaders emphasize that current thinking in no way envisions a structural “mega-merger” or the creation of a “superchurch” by the multiracial body of denomination – an assurance that has in past years often been misunderstood or mistrusted at the grass-roots level of the churches. Some COCU participants say new ideas for COCU’s next steps were sparked in part by the progress made in other ecumenical dialogues-notably Lutheran-Reformed and Lutheran-Episcopal.
At COCU’s organizational genesis in 1962, four churches were represented. Other bodies have since joined, two separate mergers involving member churches have taken place. The consultation, whose offices are in Princeton, N.J., now includes nine member denominations: African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Episcopal Church, International Council of Community Churches, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church.
Each denomination will have 10 official delegates at the St. Louis plenary. A number of ecumenical observers will attend from church bodies that are not COCU members. Plenary sessions will be open to the press and public.
COCU had its origins in a proposal made by the late Rev. Eugene Carson Blake, a high-ranking Presbyterian leader, in a historic sermon preached Dec. 6, 1960, at Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco. Dr. Blake was invited to the cathedral pulpit by the late Bishop James K. Pike, then head of the Diocese of California.
Dr. Blake’s sermon, which became front-page news, envisioned a new church that would simultaneously be “truly catholic and truly reformed.” Two years later, at the consultation’s first plenary, participants agreed to add a third description, “truly evangelical,” to Dr. Blake’s formula.