The Irish School of Ecumenics, where I work, annually produces resources for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. These resources are available online, and include an order of service, homily resources notes by Polish priest Marcin Lisak OP, and alternative hymns.

This is the homily by Marcin Lisak:

‘We will all be changed by the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor.15:51-58)

Saint Paul warns us and gives us encouragement simultaneously. Firstly, all people are touched by corruption, whether in a physical way – such as illness and death – or in a spiritual way – such as that caused by the deception of sin. The latter is far more radical and hazardous. Sin is the cause of death and as long as there is but one sin in this world, there will be death.

As Paul says, sin is strengthened by the law, but this does not mean that the law is sinful in itself. However, each of us breaks every God-given law multiple times. And that gives laws a strength to measure human weakness and judge over sinners. On the other hand, there can be a fascination that puts us at risk when we become fixated on the letter rather than the spirit of the law, or on strict formal observance without epikeia (reasonableness which allows for setting aside a rule to achieve a greater good).

Concurrently with the obtuseness of the law and the poisonous power of sin, every human person is saved and will be deeply and finally changed by the triumph of the Messiah who has fulfilled the law, cleansed us from sin and restored us to wholeness of life. With the victory of Jesus Christ, no longer is sin strengthened in the life of a believer. Rather, the grace of the Holy Spirit now carries the faithful across the road of despair into the life in God.

To understand better how promising is the hope given by Paul in his letter, we need to go back again to the warning text: “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law”. Then wherever there is sin, death can deal a fatal blow, but wherever sin has been paid for, forgiven, and removed death has neither a sting nor does harm. It is sin that is our real enemy. And I would like to call to mind that each and every sin has its social consequences.

I remember as a teenager living in Poland, my country of birth, in the grey and faded world where ordinary people did not trust one other and suffered a lot of pain. That was the time of so called “real communism” or “real socialism”. Making social distrust stronger was an agenda of the government which purposely followed the rule of divide et impera (divide and conquer). There were, of course, some physical attacks inflicted on ordinary people of the time – maltreatment, persecution, violence, martial law. But probably just social exclusion and disorder were the worst – a lack of transparency, a ban on freedom of speech and association can be a sickness far more devastating than physical persecutions or even death.

From that point of view it seems to be clear that social oppression, or we should rather say – social sin – is a real weapon against humanity, and accordingly, in Paul’s words – a sting of death. Avoiding defeatism in social life and working to prevent social mistrust were the most demanding challenges. In the end, the impulse of social solidarity emerged from the Christian calling to rebuild the community and strengthen solidarity with one’s fellow countrymen and women . Thus, determination, activity, creativity and the sense of human subjectivity became the very remedies for the social structures of sin. But the risk of social mistreatment is still not far away. It calls to my mind a warning of Pope John Paul II:

“[...] it is not out of place to speak of “structures of sin,” which. . . are rooted in personal sin and thus always linked to the concrete acts of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them, and make them difficult to remove… “Sin” and “structures of sin” are categories which are seldom applied to the situation of the contemporary world. However, one cannot easily gain a profound understanding of the reality that confronts us unless we give a name to the root of the evils which afflict us”. (John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, 36).

Social structures of sin had devastated the people living under the communist regime in Central and Eastern Europe. But even now, in our different corners of the world, we are not immune. Dangers lurk within the neoliberal economy: social irresponsibility, whether in economic management or money-making without any respect for “human ecology” reproduces other sinful structures. So, it is not only physical persecution and harassment that cause suffering and death. We should remember that sin is the sting of death – sin with all its social consequences.

Fortunately, we are promised that death shall vanish and we are not going to die. We will be changed by the victorious power of the risen Christ Jesus. With the birth, obedience, death, and resurrection of his Son, God made death to be swallowed up forever. St Paul says that death is defeated, but he warns that death still has its power to deceive (Hoses 13.14). Paul’s reference to the “sting” – as of a bee or a venomous snake – is reminiscent of Eden. If we want to realise how flourishing is the victory of Christ we need to distance ourselves from sin today, and work for reconciliation amid so many signs of social disorder, at one with Christ who breaks down the walls between people of different cultures and nations.

Marcin Lisak OP

I recommend you read the full post for yourselves. It covers a lot of ground, from Fischer’s description of the Conflict Transformation module to her thoughts on the hell debate sparked by Rob Bell’s Love Wins.

The Conflict Transformation module features an intensive week at Corrymeela, where Little and Verwoerd guide the students through the process they use with various groups from opposing ‘sides’ in the conflict in and about Northern Ireland (and from other conflicts from around the world).

Fischer sees conflict as an inevitable part of life and she urges those in the emergent conversation to face up to – rather than hide from – it:

I bring this up here, because I see the danger of continuing a bad ‘family’ trait even into this new emergent generation.  I grew up in a non-christian home and a Christian extended family, both of which pretended that if we didn’t talk about conflict, it meant that we didn’t have any;  I studied theology at an inter-denominational college where conflict as a theme in and of itself was never addressed theologically; and I spent years in churches, seminars, conferences, retreats and missions (Evangelical, Charismatic, and Lutheran; in America, Sweden, Australia, PNG and Germany), where, besides an occasional reference to Matthew 18:15-17, and the ever-present lapel to forgive, there was no strategy and no underlying concept for helping their communities deal with conflict constructively.  The cardinal assumption being that good Christians don’t do conflict!

But rather than fostering fraternities exuding peace and justice in the world, this refusal to take conflict head on theologically, exacerbates the friction inevitable in any human plural, and conditions cultures to fester and fracture over matters both profound and piddling.  Of greater consequence even than the personal stories of disillusionment with Christian fellowships that abound, as grim as that is, however, is the general disconnect that many faith communities and institutions have toward complex societal ills, the prolific number of armed conflicts around the world, and trans-global injustices.  With the exception of my brief time in Church of the Savior, DC, of which Sojourners Magazine is a part, nary a mention of these realities in the Christian sub-cultures I’ve experienced in over twenty years!

She sees some of the present debate about hell, whether you agree with Rob Bell or not, as distracting from more important questions in the here and now such as dealing with conflict, and one of its roots, poverty.

As a lecturer, I’m of course pleased to see Fischer making links between one of our modules and debates in the emerging church. The emerging church is one of my current research areas and I’m always looking for connections between what I know from the fields of conflict resolution and reconciliation, and my work on the emerging church.

I’m also intrigued by her observation that Christians have refused to take conflict on theologically, other than issuing some rather glib urgings for victims to ‘forgive’.

This is not a million miles from the argument put forward in the new book about the churches in the Northern Ireland peace process by John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney: that the churches as institutions didn’t adequately analyse the conflict sociologically or theologically – meaning that they struggled to help transform it.

I look forward to the emerging conversation moving forward on these themes.

The talk, titled ‘Effective Non Violence in the 21^st Century,’ was co-hosted by the Irish School of Ecumenics and INNATE (Irish Network for Nonviolent Action Training & Education). You can listen to the talk here.

Given the non violent example of Jesus in the Gospels, non violence is a theme which I could fruitfully reflect on more often on this blog.

As regular readers will know, the theme of my blog is ‘building a church without walls’ – and that’s something that can’t be accomplished either through physical or psychological force.

Garate’s concerns weren’t specifically Christian or even religious, although he was keen to stress that WRI’s approach is a matter of principle, not simply of tactics.

WRI doesn’t choose non violence just because they think it works, they choose non violence because they think it’s the right thing to do.

Garate said the group’s two main guiding principles are:

• Refusing all wars
• Maintaining a strong commitment to non-violent resistance

The first principle of course means that WRI would not make room for Christian interpretations of ‘just war’ theory. The second means that apathy in the face of the violence and oppression of others should not be an option.

Like most of you, I don’t often get asked my opinion if a conflict is ‘just’ before the protagonists wade in, guns, bombs and drone missiles blazing. But I often choose the apathy option (out of apathy more than anything else!) when it comes to questioning, challenging or resisting the current array of wars, conflicts, etc in the world around me.

While of course welcoming pragmatic reasons for choosing non violence rather than violence, Garate said that it was his experience that many authors and activists who focus solely on tactics, at the expense of principle, tend to overlook ‘structural violence.’

Structural violence is a term associated with Johan Galtung, a giant in the field of Peace Studies. Structural violence is produced through social processes in which social, cultural and political structures (including inter-state, state and civil society institutions and laws, etc) keep some people mired in positions of poverty and disadvantage. I would add that the churches can sometimes contribute to the maintenance of structural violence.

So victims of structural violence may or may not face direct, physical violence – but they are exploited and marginalised – and this can often breed direct violence in the form of class conflict, riots, and so on.For Garate, then, structural as well as direct violence should be a target for non violent resistance.

I think that this resonates with liberation theology’s preferential option for the poor – as well as Jesus’ preference for the poor as portrayed in the Gospels.

Garate also provided descriptions of a few examples of WRI’s work, including support for the Right to Refuse to Kill programme for conscientious objectors, a Campaign of Military Counter Recruitment in Europe, work on War Profiteering, and recent research on the impact of drone missiles.

He claimed that the keys to effective non violent campaigns are unity, planning and non-violent discipline – as well as a spark of creativity.

Being creative can mean catching your adversary off guard through mass demonstrations, humour, or targeted networking campaigns. As an example of creativity he cited the ‘War Starts Here’ campaign, in which activists camped out and used pink paint to try and cover a major NATO military base in Sweden.

Garate added that in the past year three significant movements have employed non violent tactics to effective ends, although it remains to be seen how much these movements will accomplish.

The movements are: a student’s movement in Chile which self-organised a nation-wide referendum on free education; a movement for direct democracy in Spain; and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Garate also provided a useful list of sources for people interested in learning more, ranging from the work of Gene Sharp (whose From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation was famously used by activists in the ‘Arab Spring’ movements) to recent academic scholarship by authors such as Maria Stephan and Diana Francis.

(Image: Protesters from the War Starts Here campaign, after using pink paint to decorate part of the NEAT military base in Sweden. Photo by Natverket Ofog, sourced on flickr)

Sources:

International Centre on Non Violent Conflict

Documentary and video game: A Force More Powerful

Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (2011) Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan

From Pacification to Peacebuilding: A Call to Global Transformation (2010) Diana Francis

Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratization and Governance in the Middle East (2010) Maria Stephan

Handbook for Non Violent Campaigns (2009), War Resisters International

People power and protest since 1945: a bibliography of nonviolent action (2006) compiled by April Carter, Howard Clark and Michael Randle.

From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation (1993, 2012) Gene Sharp

Gandhi as a Political Strategist (1979) Gene Sharp

The Politics of Non Violent Action (1973) Gene Sharp

Tea/coffee, nibbles and live traditional music will feature from 6 pm. At around 6.45 Glenn Jordan, Director of EBM’s Skainos project and author of Not of This World: Evangelical Protestants in Northern Ireland (Blackstaff, 2002) will speak about the book. He will be introduced by Prof Geraldine Smyth, Head of the Irish School of Ecumenics.

Please RSVP to me, Gladys Ganiel (gganiel@tcd.ie) by Tues 25 October. You can also RSVP on our Facebook page.

Evangelical Journeys will be available at a special price of £15 at the launch.

It is published by UCD Press.

A review of the book is available here.

A flyer for the launch is available here.

Hurley’s definitions are taken from a chapter in the book called, ‘Ecumenism, Ecumenical Theology and Ecumenics.’ Hurley’s main purpose in the chapter is simply to define these terms.

If you are like many people, you may not have thought about the value of drawing distinctions between these terms. I hope today’s post demonstrates the value in doing that, not least because I think defining the terms can help us to think about what it means to be an ‘ecumenical Christian’ in new ways.

And as I said last week, given his Irish Times epithet as the ‘Father of Irish Ecumenism,’ I think Hurley’s definitions continue to deserve a wide reading.

So today I will quote directly from the chapter, in the sections in which Hurley defines ecumenical theology and ecumenics:

What is Ecumenical Theology?

Hurley distinguishes between three types of ecumenical theology:

1. Ecumenical theology in a general sense: Hurley writes that there are three aspects to ecumenical theology in a general sense: a) ‘if we no longer make a priori assumptions about the falsehood of the positions held by members of other denominations, but seek to understand these positions even though we may eventually have to disagree with them’ (p. 107); b) a detailed study of a tradition other than one’s own (p. 107); c) theology with an inter-denominational aspect – ‘if it takes into serious consideration the corresponding contributions by members of other traditions … above all, if the work is carried out in collaboration with these [other traditions]’ (p. 108)

2. Ecumenical theology in the strict sense: Hurley writes that, ‘The ecumenical movement has by this stage developed a whole history and literature of its own. To concentrate on this corpus, to excavate in this quarry, to study this material in particular is to engage in ecumenical theology in the strict sense’ (p. 109).

3. Denominational or confessional theology: Hurley calls this, ‘from the point of view of positive theology … the study of denominational sources, of the Council of Trent, for instance, or Karl Rahner or the Westminster Confession’ (p. 111). It seems Hurley sees denominational or confessional theolgoy as integral to ecumenical theology because they provide the solid foundations on which general and strict ecumenical theologies are built.

What is Ecumenics?

Because I work for the Irish School of Ecumenics, not the Irish School of Ecumenism, Hurley’s definition of Ecumenics is of particular interest to me. Here is a full version of Hurley’s definition (p. 112):

The word ‘ecumenics’ is German in origin and has not equivalent in any other language except English, but even in Germany it is not too much used in ecumenical circles. Ecumenics is not just another word for ecumenical theology. Neither is it just another word for ecumenism.

Ecumenics is the scientific study of ecumenism, of the movement to promote inter-Church and inter-faith unity. This movement, we have seen, has many aspects. The disunity it seeks to overcome is not just theological, but also involves cultural and other factors. The unity it seeks to promote is not just a unity of beliefs, but a unity of believing peoples in all their diversity.

To do justice, therefore, to the ecumenical movement historians, sociologists, social-psychologists and others are needed as well as theologians. Ecumenics as the scientific study of ecumenism is necessarily multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary. It is a whole of which ecumenical theology in the strict sense is indeed a part, and an important part, but only a part.

In that definition you can see the logic behind why the Irish School of Ecumenics offers inter-disciplinary Master’s programmes in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation and International Peace Studies, as well as its Master’s in Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies.

The busy-ness of the start of term has meant that I haven’t yet had a chance to blog about the book. But as I’ve dipped in and out of it, I’m struck both by how much and how little has changed since 1998.

Today I want to focus on a chapter in the book titled ‘Ecumenism, Ecumenical Theology and Ecumenics.’

As a staff member of the Irish School of Ecumenics, I am acutely aware that it can’t be taken for granted that people understand what these terms mean or even that they have heard of them – beyond the Fr Ted catchphrase, ‘that would be an ecumenical matter.’

Hurley’s main purpose in the chapter is simply to define these terms. Given his Irish Times epithet as the ‘Father of Irish Ecumenism,’ I think it’s safe to say his definitions continue to deserve a wide reading.

Today I will quote directly from the chapter, in the sections in which Hurley defines ecumenism:

What is Ecumenism?

My approach to this first question is to concentrate on the subject rather than the object and to attempt a description of the ecumenist. It may sound contradictory but in the first place I would see ecumenists as in a very real sense intolerant persons. They will be wholly in favour of pluralism but firmly opposed to a plurality of Churches: they exist to put an end to this plurality. If that sounds paradoxical it is because ecumenism has mistakenly, however understandably, been identified with tolerance (p. 103).

… Ecumenists are intolerant of many Churches for a very particular reason. They are intolerant because they are convinced that the present situation is intolerable. They experience it as something which ‘openly contradicts the will of Christ, provides a stumbling-block to the world, and inflicts damage on the most holy cause of proclaiming the good news to every creature.’[1] (p. 104)

… Ecumenists, in the second place, are those Christians who have come to realise how much they have in common with the members of other Churches … The remaining differences are not denied but take very much second place. They see the way forward, therefore, as that of theological dialogue in the name of the Spirit, who alone can lead our partially united Churches into the fullness of truth and unity. (p. 104)

… [Ecumenists believe] Christians must ‘do everything together as far as conscience permits’ in the name of the Father, who creates and sustains. The ecumenist sees such co-operation as liberating the Churches from their ancestral prejudices and antipathies, and as deepening and developing their existing unity. … Ecumenists … accept that, in the words of the New Delhi Assembly of the World Council of Churches, ‘the achievement of unity will involve nothing less than a death and rebirth of many forms of Church life as we have known them.’ (p. 105)

… the ecumenist is someone who is painfully wondering whether and to what extent ecumenism is applicable to religions as well as to Christian traditions. … all over the world, although still very tentatively, inter-faith dialogue is now considered to be a necessary part of ecumenism. (p. 106)

Reading Hurley’s descriptions of ecumenists, could you describe yourself as one?

Do you know people who would look like the ecumenists that Hurley describes, but would shun the term ecumenism and shudder to think that they might be called an ecumenist?

In future posts, I’ll consider Hurley’s definitions of ecumenical theology and Ecumenics.

[1] Decree on Ecumenism, Vatican Council II, ed. Austin Flannery OP (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1992), p. 452