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Mcgeoch, Graham Gerald (2015) Liberating n McGeoch, Graham Gerald (2015) Liberating Ecumenism: an ecclesiological dialogue with the Final Report of the Special Commission on Orthodox participation in the World Council of Churches. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6466/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Liberating Ecumenism: an ecclesiological dialogue with the Final Report of the Special Commission on Orthodox participation in the World Council of Churches Graham Gerald McGeoch PhD University of Glasgow School of Critical Studies Department of Theology and Religious Studies February 2015 © Graham Gerald McGeoch, 2015 2 Abstract The thesis attempts to address Orthodox Church concerns about the Protestant nature and ethos of the ecumenical movement, as it is encountered in the World Council of Churches, by examining Orthodox theological contributions to ecclesiology. This preliminary work is undertaken, as a first step, to establish points of dialogue with the theology of liberation and wider critical theories, in the search for a liberating ecumenism. At the same time, and in a second step (to follow the epistemology of the theology of liberation), this Orthodox theology is placed in a critical dialogue with the theology of liberation in the search for liberating ecclesiological perspectives that can contribute to the movement in ecumenism. This uneasy dialogue helps to recover absent epistemologies from ongoing ecumenical dialogues by re-reading orthodoxies, both ecumenical and ecclesiological, from a liberationist paradigm, and sets ecclesiology within the wider framework of contributions from critical theory. This dialogue between Orthodox theology and the theology of liberation helps to construct an ecclesiology that liberates ecumenism by setting ecclesiology and the ecumenical movement in the wider context of social movements. This thesis calls the ecumenical movement to ‘another possible world’ influenced by people-centred ecclesiologies, which transgresses the canonical boundaries in the ecumenical movement. To be ecumenical implies an Orthodox content to ecclesiology, otherwise the ecumenical movement is open to charges of pan-Protestantism. It is by embracing Orthodoxy that the ecumenical movement can move beyond hegemonic colonial projects and find a liberating praxis. This thesis proposes a dialogue that reflects the structure of the Final Report of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the World Council of Churches. However, it engages with Orthodox ecclesiology and ecumenical histories from the perspective of the theology of liberation in the search for a liberating ecumenism and proposes a praxis that develops movement in the ecumenical and the ecclesiological through developing an ecclesiology from different peripheries of the Church. 3 Table of Contents Prolegomenon…………………………………………………………………………...4 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………8 Chapter 1: Ecclesiology – Part I.....................................................……………..28 Chapter 2: Social and Ethical Issues……………………………………………….55 Chapter 3: Consensus Model of Decision-making………………………………78 Chapter 4: Membership and Representation…………………………………..…98 Chapter 5: Common Prayer………………………………………………………...114 Chapter 6: Ecclesiology – Part II…………………………………………………..134 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….....169 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………..177 Appendix I……………………………………………………………………………..179 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………..181 4 Prolegomenon In 2006 I was elected to the World Council of Churches central and executive committees. The Church of Scotland had included me on its delegation to the Ninth Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil, because I was living in São Paulo, Brazil. I was living in the city because the Church of Scotland had supported me in accepting a scholarship to study theology in Brazil as part of my formation for Ministry of Word and Sacrament. The world that I encountered at Porto Alegre in 2006 was fascinating. I always recall the dissonance between the place where I was living in São Paulo and the world that met me when I arrived in Geneva for my first WCC meeting. Bossey Ecumenical Institute is situated in the grounds and buildings of a château, on gently sloping land on the shores of Lac Leman. From the lake-facing windows, it is possible to see the snow-capped peaks of the Alps, including Europe’s highest mountain, Mont Blanc. Set against a clear blue sky, and in the chill and still of winter, it is a breathtaking setting for any ecumenical meeting. I had walked down a gentle slope in São Paulo, to exit the favela, Paraisópolis, and make my way to the international airport. Paraisópolis, translated as the Paradise City (it is anything but) is one of the biggest favelas – slum areas of the city – in São Paulo. It is home to about 80,000 people living in improvised housing on the invaded land of a former farm in Morumbi, which is paradoxically one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in São Paulo. The favela, which sits inside a kind of crater, jostles for space amidst the wealth. High-rise buildings – luxury apartment blocks – and trees tower above the bustling world of the favela below. I lived in a two-roomed penthouse! The narrow alleyway (beco) that led from Rua Ernest Renan was dotted with doors and window frames. At the end of the beco, to the left, was a narrow set of home-made concrete stairs. At the top of the third flight of stairs was a flat roof. Across the flat roof, perched on the western corner, was my house. It offered extensive views across the favela to the Morumbi football stadium and the State Governor’s Palace beyond: improvised houses hugged steep slopes, roads and becos rounded rugged outcrops, kites almost always danced against the blue sky and home-made firecrackers would boom in the night sky. Music blared almost 24 hours a day, from neighbours’ houses and souped-up cars. There was chattering and laughter, which only ever seemed to cease in the wee small hours. I also recall the open sewers and the wretched smells that would rise into the polluted sky and the screams of children, which it was not always possible to identify as either being of 5 joy or pain. Then there were the women who worked in the luxury apartments in Morumbi during the day, and continued to work in their own homes in the evening: cooking, cleaning, and caring for children all while being faced with machismo from their husbands, fathers and sons, and prevailing social prejudices. There was also the sporadic sound of gunfire. As my first WCC meeting approached there was a curfew placed on the favela as the police surrounded and invaded under superior orders and in response to a wave of violent attacks that had swept through the city. There were restrictions on entry and exit, whereby inhabitants of the favela had to pass through police roadblocks and show identification. There were occasional questions, barked aggressively. It was doors locked and lights out by 9pm: and then the gunfire would begin. I walked down the gently sloping Rua Ernest Renan towards the police roadblock at the one side of the favela which was bordered by the foot of the hill at the main road. I trailed a suitcase in one hand and carried my passport in another. A British passport can take you many places, but would it get me out of a favela under curfew? In the early morning half- light, the policeman who addressed me looked astonished, and then let me through. I jumped into a waiting taxi – taxis do not always enter the favela – and the equally astonished driver took me to the airport, after he had clarified the destination multiple times. I was met at Geneva airport by a driver and taken to Château de Bossey in a luxury German car. The violence in São Paulo received extensive coverage in the Brazilian media. On the 15th of May 2006, the Folha de São Paulo, a leading daily newspaper in Brazil, reported on the violence. According to the article, the state government of São Paulo released preliminary statistics showing that there were 180 violent attacks co-ordinated by the group Primeiro Comando da Capital. There were unconfirmed reports of 91 deaths in the violence, including police, prison officers, prison inmates and 38 further people, while 49 people suffered serious injury (Folha de São Paulo, 15 May, 2006).1 The news of the violence in São Paulo also reached the deliberations of the WCC executive committee, under the influence of its Brazilian Moderator, Rev. Dr Walter Altmann from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil. I played no part in drafting the 1 ‘SP sofre ao menos 180 ataques criminosos: mortos passam de 81’ in Folha de São Paulo, 15 May, 2006. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/cotidiano/ult95u121535.shtml (accessed July, 2014). 6 letter issued by the WCC general secretary, as a result of the deliberations of the executive committee, other than to show my orange card (a sign of consensus in the WCC) when asked in the plenary.2 In fact, I told no one at the meeting about my place of residence or the details about my journey to the meeting. Nor did I mention that my wife and other family members were still under curfew in Paraisópolis, with bullets ricocheting through the air and finding stonework or (God forbid) people. An open letter, even one from a WCC general secretary to the Brazilian churches, seemed a distant response to the immediate distress in São Paulo.
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