My Ecumenical Journey

I am not sure when I first heard the word, ecumenical.  That probably would be because if I heard it, I would not have known what it meant and, therefore, would have dismissed it.  I doubt that the word would have come up in conversation with the farm folks I hung around with when I was a kid.  I am certain it was not a common word among the Quakers in my part of the world.  There may have been pastors and the priest in town who knew the word, but I don’t remember ever hearing it.  But then, I don’t remember hanging out with these guys!  (And they were all guys then.) 

I suspect I learned what the word meant when I was in college.  Surely, I would have learned it in a Christian church history class.  By the time I got into college, Vatican II was well underway, but I don’t recall anything about that.  Vatican II entertained a number of very important things---not only for the Catholic Church, but with implications for all other Christian traditions.  Because I had no association (save having dated on Catholic girl in high school) with the Catholic Church, I had no real appreciation for the transformation that was in store for Catholics in the 1960s when Vatican II concluded its meetings and began to implement the changes. 

In graduate school, I am sure I knew what the ecumenical movement meant and I willingly became a participant in ecumenical activities.  I was in a major American city full of Catholics.  I had many Catholic priests and even a few nuns in class with me, so I became much more informed about their life, faith and ministries.  I actually did a few graduate school classes at the local Jesuit seminary.  I had little idea of who Ignatius of Loyola was (founder of the Jesuits) or who the Jesuits really were.  Now I know and dearly appreciate their witness and work.  I am honored regularly now to offer classes, etc. at my local Jesuit retreat center. 

In short, ecumenical means to promote cooperation or unity among Christians.  It sounds amazingly simple, but we all know how much disagreement and strife has characterized the Christian churches through the ages.  It is somewhere between embarrassing and tragic.  Thinking about my youth as a Quaker, I knew there was one Catholic Church in town.  I knew nothing about it and had never been in the building.  If asked how many Catholics there were in this country, I would not have had a clue.  I would have been floored to know one out of every four Americans was Catholic.  And I was ignorant, uncooperative and an alien to the Catholic world. 

It was easy for me to conclude that Jesus would have been appalled.  So it was in graduate school that I committed to working across Christian tradition lines.  For a Quaker to move into Methodist circles is pretty easy.  Some of the other mainline traditions were not too different.  Moving into this kind of interaction was good for me, too.  Fairly quickly, I began to grasp that it was my own Quaker tradition which seemed strange to many other Christians.  What was normal for me became abnormal in the more traditional Christian world.  For much of our history, Quakers worshipped in silence---at least, until someone would speak out of the silence.  Most Christian tradition have no role for silence.  The Word and words dominate. 

For my ecumenical journey the main focus has not been theology.  Theology and doctrine still divide.  It is difficult to get people to believe similar things or, even, to agree to disagree on some of this stuff.  So I became more interested in ecumenical service and action.  An early place for this practice in the 60s was the action against the Vietnam War.  There were other key arenas for action in the 60s.  The entire civil rights movement begged for attention if we were aware of the overt racism and injustice in our world.   

Sometimes, I realized I had more in common with my Catholic nun friend than I did the old Quaker farmer back in Indiana.  I learned to appreciate the zeal of my Nazarene friend, even though I knew we held different theological positions.  I knew he read the same New Testament a little differently than I did.  I learned that this was interesting, but that we were both on our journeys of faith.  At least for me, I wanted alignment of our hearts more than I did our theologies. 

My ecumenical journey has been a rich, blessed opportunity.  It leads me to appreciate the various ways God is at work in our world.  I has humbled me to accept that my experience is important, but no more important than any other person’s experience.  My humility enables me to be open and accepting of the faith journey of other folks.  Instead of judging, I want to learn and listen.   

Quakers always talked about unity vs uniformity.  I probably thought I knew what that meant, but now I know more deeply.  I am confident God calls all of humanity into unity.  I doubt that God cares too much about uniformity.  Uniformity insists we all believe the same thing and act in the same way.  Uniformity is cookie-cutter religion. 

My ecumenical journey has been a journey with others into a deeper unity.  Thank God.