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Not Strangers but Pilgrims’ the 1980S Inter-Church Process: from Councils of Churches to Churches Together

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Not Strangers but Pilgrims’ the 1980S Inter-Church Process: from Councils of Churches to Churches Together ‘Not Strangers but Pilgrims’ The 1980s Inter-Church Process: From Councils of Churches to Churches Together Colin Davey and Martin Reardon* COLIN: 1982: Success and Failure 1982 was both an ‘annus mirabilis’ and an ‘annus terribilis’ for the churches in Britain and Ireland. It was the year of the visit in May of Pope John Paul II to England, Wales and Scotland. And in his address in Glasgow the Pope turned to ‘the larger community of believers in Christ’ and said these words: We are only pilgrims on this earth, making our way towards that heavenly Kingdom promised to us as God’s children. Beloved brethren in Christ, for the future, can we not make that pilgrimage together hand-in-hand…doing all we can ‘to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds us together’? This would surely bring down upon us the blessing of God our Father on our pilgrim way.1 It was the year of the publication of The Final Report of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. This concluded with the conviction that The convergence reflected in our Final Report would appear to call for the establishing of a new relationship between our Churches as a next stage in the journey towards Christian unity.2 It was the year also of the publication by the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission of its Lima Report on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry with its invitation to all churches to prepare an official response to this text at the highest appropriate level of authority,3 an invitation which generated a massive amount of theological discussion and debate at all levels worldwide. * Prior to retirement, the Rev Dr Colin Davey was Church Life Secretary of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, while Canon Martin Reardon was General Secretary of the Church of England’s Board for Mission and Unity and then the first General Secretary of Churches Together in England. Both were members of the Steering Committee of the Inter-Church Process. This paper was given at a seminar at the Cambridge Centre for Ecumenical Studies in October 2004. 1 The Pope in Britain: Collected Homilies and Speeches, St Paul Publications 1982, pp 78-9. 2 Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, The Final Report, CTS/SPCK 1982, p 99. 3 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper No 111, WCC Geneva, 1982. 1 But 1982 was also the year of the failure in July of the proposed Covenant in England between the Church of England, the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church and the Moravian Church. Its failure to achieve the required majority in the General Synod of the Church of England meant that for the first time since 1954 there were no formal conversations about church union taking place in England. This was a heavy blow for ecumenists, although in Scotland, Wales and Ireland conversations which had also been the outcome of the 1964 Nottingham Faith and Order Conference were then still continuing. MARTIN: The Background In order to understand the effect of these events on the churches we need to look at the background. In 1982 the British Council of Churches had existed for forty years. At its 40th Anniversary Celebrations its President, Archbishop Runcie quoted the old song: Forty years on growing older and older, shorter in wind and in memory long, Feeble of foot and rheumatic of shoulder, what would it help you that once you were strong? He quickly corrected that sentiment by saying ‘We have never needed the BCC more’, but in fact many people, fully committed to the Council, had begun to question its effectiveness, and the BCC itself had established a Policy Review Group.4 Indeed, as early as summer 1982 Dr Philip Morgan, the General Secretary of the British Council of Churches, said publicly that the ecumenical events of that year had meant that the BCC should put its own existence ‘into the melting pot’. He envisaged a time when ‘a different kind of instrument than we have now at the BCC would be required’. What were the weaknesses limiting the BCC’s ability ‘to promote Christian Unity’?5 I list four: 1. Its structure was such that the decision-making bodies of its member churches did not need to take notice of its recommendations, and too often they ignored them. It had engendered good personal relations between the church representatives who met at its meetings; but far from drawing the institutional and decision-making structures of the churches closer together, it had become yet another institution alongside them. 2. Although it had at times (notably at Nottingham in 1964) done considerable and effective work on issues directly concerned with Christian Unity (Faith and Order), its member churches had from the start reserved actual unity negotiations to themselves. 4 See for example After Forty Years: The Church of England and the British Council of Churches, GS 548. 5 Articles of Amalgamation 1942. 2 3. While there were Irish, Scottish and Welsh national Councils of Churches or their equivalent, there was no English Council of Churches. This upset the Irish, the Welsh and particularly the Scots when they had to sit through BCC debates which concerned only England. It also meant that the BCC had not sufficient resources to put into supporting local and regional ecumenism in England. (In this regard it is significant that within days of the failure of the Covenant Proposals in 1982 Archbishop Runcie set on foot plans to permit Church of England local churches to engage more effectively in local unity, plans which led eventually to Ecumenical Canons B43 and B44.) 4. What was perhaps the biggest church in the British Isles as a whole, the Roman Catholic Church, was not a full member of the BCC, but only an active observer. It had in fact been discussing the possibility of becoming a member since 1970, but by 1982 it had effectively decided not to do so.6 I am not aware that it ever gave clear and specific reasons for this (except perhaps the cost) but I think that many were similar to the reasons which were beginning to cause unease among the BCC’s member churches. Roman Catholics were uncomfortable with the fact that the BCC was not directly answerable to its member churches. The Roman Catholic Church did not take decisions by majority voting, and the places where decisions generally were taken were not at national level, but at diocesan level by the bishop and at international level by the papacy. Moreover, looking at the BCC from the outside, as it were, it could not see that it had contributed much towards the search for a united church, nor discussed much the doctrinal issues that kept churches apart. The Papal Visit of May 1982 sounded an extremely positive note in what might otherwise have appeared a rather hesitant attitude of Roman Catholics to unity in Britain. In fact the BCC had sought an opportunity for an informal conversation with Pope John Paul II as soon as the visit had been announced on 31st August 1980; and Cardinal Hume and Bishop Cormac Murphy O’Connor wanted it to be an ecumenical visit, not just a pastoral visit to Roman Catholics. In a very important but largely unpublicised meeting in Canterbury with leaders of other churches in England, Scotland and Wales, the Pope issued an invitation to some of them to visit him in Rome to discuss further progress towards Christian unity in Britain. This visit took place in April 1983, led by the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Rt Rev Alastair Haggart, who was later to play a leading role in the Inter-Church Process as Chairman of its Steering Committee. As the report of the visit stated: ‘The question of the Roman Catholic Church in England & Wales and in Scotland becoming a member of the BCC was not directly on the agenda for either Canterbury or Rome. It was unavoidably in the background of all our discussions’.7 Then from January 9-12 1984 the Roman Catholic Bishops invited leaders of other churches in Britain to meet and pray with them. In return, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as President of the BCC, invited the Roman Catholic bishops to Canterbury to pray together with BCC member church leaders from April 6-9 1984. 6 See The Implications of Roman Catholic Membership of the British Council of Churches, BCC 1972. 7 Rome ’83: Returning the Pope’s Visit, BCC 1983, p 6. 3 COLIN: A New Initiative Significant and lasting ecumenical progress can only be made when there is a willingness to move forward simultaneously at local, national and international levels. And there is frustration when what is desired at two levels is blocked at the third – most usually either at the local, if people are unready to accept what has been proposed ‘from the top down’, or when a national synod or assembly or bishops’ conference blocks what has been proposed at the international level and/or lobbied for locally. So it was important that a new initiative was taken at the Spring Assembly of the British Council of Churches March 26-29 1984, which passed the following resolutions: 1 (a) to consult the member Churches and other Christian bodies on their readiness to share in a process of prayer, reflection and debate together centred on the nature and purpose of the Church in the light of its calling in and for the world; (b) to consider whether the focus of this process should be a major conference by the end of this triennium; 2.
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