Reuniting the church so that civilization can be saved

Half a century after the Consultation on Church Union began, it is difficult to understand the sense of urgency that fired the movement during its early years. Eugene Carson Blake, the Presbyterian leader who launched the effort, can help us understand. During his formative years, he had read deeply in theological literature inspired by two crisis-oriented theological conferences held in Oxford and Edinburgh during the summer of 1937. Although Blake may not had have read Five Minutes to Twelve by Swiss theologian, Adolph Keller, he encountered similar ideas in the journal Christendom and in J. H. Oldham’s Christian Newsletter (Brackenridge, 107).

Christian leaders around the world recognized that the Great War that had been waged during Blake’ adolescent years had not solved the problems of the world. It had given way to the Great Depression and to the rise of new political powers that were struggling for mastery of the world: Fascism, Communism, and the “constructive idealism of which the League of Nations may be called the most conspicuous example” (Keller, 37).

Church leaders were convinced that only a united church shaped by the gospel and empowered by the Holy Spirit could be effective in the world that was coming to be. During World War II and the post war revival of religion, Blake was pastor of the 4,500-member Pasadena Presbyterian Church. Turning away from the traditionally conservative religious ethos of his boyhood years and the liberal theology that had taken its place, Blake was drawn to the neo-orthodox theology and activist approach of Reinhold Niebuhr, the theologian whose stern visage had been portrayed on the cover of Time during Blake’s Pasadena years (March 8, 1948).

Niebuhr provided a model for a theology that was seriously scriptural, consonant with the intellectual tradition of western culture, and actively engaged in the political, economic, and cultural struggles of the society. (For a description of Blake’s neo-orthodoxy and acknowledged dependence upon Reinhold Niebuhr, see Brackenridge, 37-40.)

The persistence of this mood into Blake’s COCU years are manifest in a series of sermons that he and Martin Niemöller delivered in Philadelphia during Lent 1965. During World War I, Niemöller had served in the German navy. Later he had become a Lutheran pastor, aligning himself with the Confessing Church, and endured eight years in a concentration camp. He was one of the presidents of the World Council of Churches, where he and Blake had become strong friends.

The Lenten series took place at The Church of the Holy Trinity (Episcopal) on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. In his sermon on the opening evening, Blake declared that the word that God had spoken to the churches in the book of Revelation was being repeated in their own time. They are “threatened with apostasy in forms caused sometimes by their ancient traditions and their rootage in separate and limited cultures.” These churches now stand before “an open door, [the] opportunity to move with boldness in the name of Christ out into an open sea of an ecumenical movement in a frail craft with a cross for the mast, leaving the safe moorings in the protected harbor of our past” (Maertens, 33).

Later in the series, he affirmed that there were “two realities toward which all of us ought to turn our attention as Christians.” One was the life and death power struggle between “atheistic communism and the traditional Western nations which once could be called Christendom.” The other was “the technological revolution” that was “changing both East and West at a speed with which neither Western nor communist ideologists are able to cope” (Maertens, 65). Blake closed this sermon with the exhortation that Christians “press forward…into increasing involvement in the world as servants of the Lord Jesus Christ” (69).

Both preachers were convinced that the ecumenical movement was a central factor in the process by which the churches could fulfill this urgent ministry in the world. In his concluding sermon, Blake stated that they had been “trying to persuade you who are leaders and pillars of the church in Philadelphia to follow that vision which has come to the church of Jesus Christ worldwide through the open door of the ecumenical movement of our time. The burden of much of what we have said has been to ask you to move out from the safe and comfortable tradition of the churches into the center of the stream of human history, to serve Jesus Christ your Lord in the world for which he died, to risk your lives and the life of the church itself in the many-fronted battle in which the loyal army of Jesus is now engaged” (Maertens, 101).

Whatever they may think about church reunion, Christians today are called upon to continue in this struggle for the well-being of the world and its people.

The Challenge to the Church: The Niemöller-Blake Conversations, edited by Marlene Maertens (Westminster Press, 1965). Eugene Carson Blake: Prophet With Portfolio (The Seabury Press, 1978). Five Minutes to Twelve: A Spiritual Interpretation of the Oxford and Edinburgh Conferences, by Adolf Keller (Cokesbury Press, 1938).

“A Proposal Toward the Reunion of Christ’s Church”

The sermon that Eugene Carson Blake, preached at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on December 4, 1960, is one of the great sermons of the twentieth century. Following the proclamation, James A. Pike, host pastor, declared: “His prophetic proclamation is the most sound and inspiring proposal for the unity of the Church in this country which has ever been made.”

Somewhat calmer was the assessment by Robert McAfee Brown two years later: “After much general talk for decades at high levels and low about ‘the imperative to unity,’ a responsible church leader has finally put the challenge to reunion in concrete terms. Unwillingness to examine the Blake proposal with full seriousness would be an abdication of ecumenical responsibility, and one more tragic indication that Christians are more proficient at mouthing their convictions than in acting upon them” (The Challenge to Reunion, 1963, p. 17).

Since this sermon is of such importance, I have been surprised that the actual text is not easily obtained online. To remedy this situation, I have prepared an edition and hereby make it available to all who are interested in bridging the chasms that divide Christians from one another and impede us from being fully faithful to the church’s mission in the world.

The sermon was preached prior to the triennial assembly of the National Council of Churches that was soon to meet in San Francisco. It was widely covered by the press, both religious and secular. Soon thereafter representatives of four churches that embraced the broad middle of American Protestantism (Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, and United Church of Christ) formed the Consultation on Church Union (COCU). Their purpose was to establish a reunited church that would be fully evangelical, fully catholic, and fully reformed.

Although this prophetic venture fell short of its goal, the impact upon American church life and upon American culture was profound. These documents deserve to be studied with great care. In God’s good providence, the time may yet come when this vision comes to pass.

The title to Blake’s sermon is: “A Proposal toward the Reunion of Christ’s Church.” He included a quotation from a statement by thirty-four leaders of  Reformed and Presbyterian Churches on the occasion of the 400^th anniversary of the Calvinist Reformation. Pike’s response consisted largely of quotations from a statement by Anglican bishops attending the Lambeth Conference of 1958.

The full text of sermon and response are filed in  the section of this website entitled Writings on Religion.

The image, which shows the interior of Grace Cathedral at the present time, comes from the website of Grace Cathedral.

A Sermon to Transform the American Church

In the 1950s two preachers commanded national attention because of their advocacy, in the name of the Gospel, of theological, cultural, political, and societal issues that challenged conventional American attitudes. In anticipation of a national gathering of church leaders in his city, one of them, James A. Pike bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California, invited the other, Presbyterian Eugene Carson Blake, to preach during the Holy Eucharist at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. In an earlier column, I  state why this sermon (preached fifty years ago, December 4, 1960) was so important. In this column I provide excerpts from the sermon.

The Proposal: “Led, I pray by the Holy Spirit, I propose to the Protestant Episcopal Church that it together with the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America invite the Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ to form with us a plan of union both catholic and reformed on the basis of principles I shall later in this sermon suggest. Any other churches which find they can accept both the principles and the plan would also be warmly invited to unite with us.”

Why Union? “I am moved by the conviction that Jesus Christ, whom all of us confess as our divine Lord and Saviour, wills that his church be one. This does not mean that his church must be uniform, authoritarian, or a single mammoth organization. But it does mean that our separate organizations, however much we sincerely try to cooperate in councils, present a tragically divided church to a tragically divided world.”

“Never before have so many Americans agreed that the Christian churches, divided as they are, cannot be trusted to bring to the American people an objective and authentic word of God on a political issue. Americans more than ever see the churches of Jesus Christ as competing social groups pulling and hauling, propagandizing and pressuring for their own organizational advantages.”

Principles: “Let me begin by re-emphasizing the requirement that a reunited church must be both reformed and catholic. If at this time we are to begin to bridge over the chasm of the Reformation, those of us who are of the Reformation tradition must recapture an appreciation of all that has been preserved by the catholic parts of the church; and equally those of the catholic tradition must be willing to accept and take to themselves as of God all that nearly five hundred years of Reformation has contributed to the renewal of the church.”

Cutting the Gordian Knot: “I propose that, without adopting any particular theology of historical succession, the reunited church shall provide at its inception for the consecration of all its bishops by bishops and presbyters both in the apostolic succession and out of it from all over the world, from all Christian churches which would authorize or permit them to take part.”

“I mention first this principle of visible and historical continuity not because it is necessarily the most important to the catholic Christian but because it is the only basis on which a broad reunion can take place, and because it is and will continue to be the most difficult catholic conviction for evangelicals to understand and to accept. My proposal is simply to cut the Gordian knot of hundreds of years of controversy by establishing in the united church an historic ministry recognized by all without doubt or scruple. The necessary safeguards and controls of such a ministry will become clear when I am listing the principles of reunion that catholic-minded Christians must grant to evangelicals if there is to be reunion between them.”

Worship: “In worship there is great value in a commonly used, loved, and recognized liturgy. But such liturgy ought not to be imposed by authority or to be made binding upon the Holy Spirit or the congregations. More and more it would be our hope that in such a church, as is here proposed, there would be developed common ways of worship both historical and freshly inspired. But history proves too well that imposed liturgy like imposed formulation of doctrine often destroys the very unity it is designed to strengthen.”

Notes: In my search for an online publication of this sermon, I have found only one, a “full text of the sermon,” that was printed twenty-five years later in “The Ecumenical Review” 38/2 (April 1986), 140-148. Copyright restrictions do not allow me to post this document, but I will continue my efforts to find a copy that can be posted. The photo owned by Presbyterian Historical Society is published in “Eugene Carson Blake” by R. Douglas Brackenridge.

An American Church That Might Have Been

On Sunday December 4, 1960, a sermon preached in San Francisco seized the imagination of people across the United States and much of the English-speaking world. Two of the highest profile Christian leaders in the nation—Eugene Carson Blake, Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, and James A. Pike, widely-known Episcopal bishop—conducted worship at Grace Episcopal Cathedral high atop Nob Hill. As bishop of the Diocese of San Francisco, Pike  was host pastor, and Blake was guest preacher.

Among the worshipers who crowded into this very large church that Sunday were delegates to the triennial assembly of the National Council of Churches, which was about to begin in that city. It is hard to imagine any gathering at that time that would have brought together such an impressive array of the nation’s Christian leaders.

Blake’s sermon was the catalytic agent for a long period of significant ecumenical development. He declared that the time had come for churches to take decisive steps to move out of their divided way of life and become one church that could more fully manifest the gospel and serve the needs of the people of their land.

His specific proposal was that his Presbyterian Church and Pike’s Episcopal Church invite the Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ to join them in creating a new church that would be recognized globally as fully Catholic and fully Reformed. Already, these churches were sufficiently agreed, Blake declared, in faith, worship, and other central issues that they could achieve this long-sought but often-frustrated goal.

Representatives of these churches soon established a process called the Consultation on Church Union (often referred to by its acronym COCU) and extended an invitation for others to join them. At the high point, nine American denominations were full participants in COCU and several others were active observers. This union movement continued to function until 2002 when it was reconstituted as CUIC—Churches Uniting in Christ.

By the end of its first decade, the COCU churches realized that the goals so clearly stated at its origin were more challenging than had been realized in the early years. The creation of a new kind of church at the center of American life was not realized at a time when such achievements seemed both possible and desirable. Half a century after that Sunday in Grace Cathedral, the kind of union then hoped for seems even less attainable.

COCU deserves remembering for three reasons: 1) It represented the culmination of a period of time, starting in the crisis between the two world wars, when many people believed that civilization was threatened and that a united church might have been the only power capable of saving the civilized world of the time.

2) It was the American version of a process that had been widely successful in countries around the world, especially in South India, to overcome the historic divisions in the church that had prevented Christians from worshiping freely in one another’s churches.

3) It responded creatively to previously ignored challenges in American life, such as racism, and in this regard became what may have been the most prophetic of all unity movements in the twentieth century.

I was a doctoral student at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley on that important Sunday. Although I was not in the cathedral congregation to hear the sermon and response, I immediately was captured by the vision. My career as seminary professor began a few months later and during most of my years as scholar and church leader, I represented my church on COCU’s commission on worship.

From time to time, I intend to post columns about the Consultation on Church Union in the hope that they can keep alive the memory of a movement that had a profound influence on churches in North America and around the world. The first of these, an anniversary edition of “An Order of Worship,” will be posted next week. The subtitle of this posting is “The COCU Liturgy of 1968: A Model for Christian Celebration.”

Note: The image below pictures the 1989 Disciples COCU delegation. KeithWatkinsHistorian is third from left in front row.