Faith & Order, Act II
Notre Dame Conference Plans New Faith & Order Effort
by Thomas C. Oden
One hundred twenty theologians and church leaders met October 7–9, 2001, at Notre Dame to consider a second North American Conference on Faith and Order. (The first North American Faith and Order conference was held in 1957.) According to the final report of the Notre Dame conference, today the ecumenical movement is “imperiled by ineffective institutions, outmoded methodologies, and above all, by an unclear vision and a weakness of faith.” The participants approved a Faith and Order Conference to meet in 2004–2005.
William G. Rusch, former executive director of Faith and Order of the National Council of Churches (NCC), resigned from the NCC last summer. He then formed the Foundation for a Conference on Faith and Order in North America (in Formation) for the purpose of examining the prospects and possibilities for a Second North American Conference on Faith and Order. Board members included Archbishop Demetrios, Thomas W. Gillespie, Robert Jenson, Cheryl Bridges Johns, William Cardinal Keeler, and Richard Mouw. Other members of the planning committee for the Notre Dame consultation included Augustine Di Noia, Douglas Jacobsen, and Philip Krey.
Norman Hjelm presented the final report of the Notre Dame conference to the foundation board. It acknowledged “the tension between ancient ecumenical witness and modernity. Those who take the ancient testimony seriously are marginalized within Protestantism.” It candidly acknowledged, “many at the consultation noted with dismay the increasing ineffectiveness of many 20th-century ecumenical institutions. Such institutions now represent only parts of the total Christian community, and their life and programs have also become at best only fragments of the total Christian witness to the world required in the present time. Many feel that in these institutions the essential role of Faith and Order has been marginalized.”
No NCC Fingerprints
Pentecostals made it clear that “if there is any visible tie or traceable evidence leading back to the National Council of Churches,” they could not participate. They cannot take anything back to their judicatories if it has NCC fingerprints on it. “Pentecostals cannot support the foundation unless it is disconnected with NCC. Faith and Order must make a clear break from the NCC,” stated the leading Pentecostal spokesman, Cecil Melvin Robeck of Fuller Seminary.
Lydia Veliko, ecumenical officer of the United Church of Christ, responded that there was no assumption that the NCC would remain a defining or controlling partner in future Faith and Order discussions. Robeck indicated that he was not asking member churches to disaffiliate with the NCC, but simply that the NCC disconnect from Faith and Order.
The idea behind the foundation is to provide something other than the NCC as a sponsoring entity. Consultants were assured that no one from the staff of the NCC is working on the next stage of Faith and Order planning. Faith and Order is to operate within the new, post-NCC configurations of the ecumenical movement and not within the NCC.
Robeck reviewed Pentecostal policy toward ecumenical participation, indicating that in March 2001 “the European Pentecostal Churches took an official action to bar all participation in such ecumenical activities by its members.” In May the presidium of the Pentecostal World Fellowship generally “opposed such engagements.” The General Council of the Assemblies of God officially disapproves “of ministers or churches participating in any of the modern ecumenical organizations on a local, national, or international level in such a manner as to promote the ecumenical movement.”
In his paper prepared for the Notre Dame consultation, Robeck noted,
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