“Ecumenism” and Other Dirty Words

I have given them the glory You gave Me, so that they may be one, as We are one. John 17:22

 

     As I write this, Christian churches around the world have just completed their Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  The event lasts from January 18^th through January 25^th each year, which, if you count on your fingers as I did, is actually eight days, not a week.

     Let me clarify, though.  January 18^th through 25^th is when northern hemisphere churches hold their eight-day week to pray for Christian unity.  Southern hemisphere churches celebrate it from the feast of the Ascension through the feast of Pentecost.  This year (2024), that’s from May 9^th through May 19^th, an eleven-day event held five months later.  Such feast-day markers wouldn’t work for northern hemisphere churches, since the Orthodox feast of Ascension is on June 6^th this year while Orthodox Pentecost is on June 23^rd, a spacing which would turn their week of prayer for Christian unity into an eighteen-day event.

     In summary: Even cross-church efforts to pray for Christian unity are embarrassingly ununified.

 

WHAT IS “ECUMENISM”?

     The spirit of ecumenism is the spirit of Antichrist.  Many people, especially new converts to Christianity, are naive concerning the evils of ecumenism.  This is a dangerous enemy of the New Testament church.  In fact, ecumenism is at the heart of the Devil’s plan for World Government (aka, the New World Order).

     Wait, did I forget to put quotation marks around that paragraph up there?  The above words actually belong to one David J. Stewart, compiler and author of articles at www.jesus-is-savior.com.  I selected his quotation because it captures the spirit of one extreme of reactions to ecumenism: that it’s really, really not good and plays a satanic role in many people’s “eschatology,” their expectations of the end times.

     (I neglected to put quotation marks around Stewart’s words because I wanted you to arch your eyebrows a little.  It’s good for the circulatory system, I promise.)

     Here’s the other extreme (I’ll play nice and use quotation marks this time): “Ecumenism is the name of a movement that promotes the recovery of Christian unity and works towards the vision of one undivided Church….  The vision includes the search for visible unity of the world’s Christian Churches and the move to make this goal the concern of all Christians.”  I pulled this quotation from www.anglicancommunion.org, where that denomination spotlights Christ’s desire for His followers to be one, even as He and His Father are one (John 17:22-23).

     Well, this is a pickle, isn’t it?  Either ecumenism is the very will of Christ or it’s a critical tool of the Antichrist.  How’s a girl to decide between such diametrically opposed opinions?  Could degrees in linguistics and some ancient Greek terms be of any help here?

 

YOU KNEW I’D GO TO THE GREEK

     The word “ecumenism” to indicate church unity has only been around for a century or so.  However, the word’s roots go back to New Testament scripture and earlier Hellenic writings.  The Greek term oikouménē gives us the English “ecumenical,” popping up a little over a dozen times in Matthew, Luke, Acts, Revelation, and other NT areas.  If you do a quick classical-languages dictionary search, you’ll find many translators render it as “the inhabited land.”  That’s not a bad translation … depending.

     When Luke 2 uses the term oikouménē to discuss Augustus Caesar’s taxation efforts, “the inhabited land” would be a decent translation, despite many Bible versions opting for “the whole world” as the translation in that verse.  “The whole world” is certainly a less-than-ideal translation.  Augustus wasn’t taxing the Han Dynasty in China or the Olmec peoples of Mesoamerica – he didn’t know they existed.  He was taxing his own empire, the only land he accepted as valid civilization.

     Two chapters later, though, Luke’s gospel again uses oikouménē when Satan tempts Jesus by showing “all the kingdoms [of the] oikouménēs,” a much, much grander use of the term, covering a lot more territory.  One assumes the Han and the Olmecs popped up for that display.  Here the translation “the whole world” is more fitting.

     A term meaning just Augustus’s territories in one place but the entirety of the world a few chapters later?  Two meanings of the same word?  Perhaps that shouldn’t be shocking to English speakers who park their cars to walk in a park and who left their phone on that car’s left seat so they could be mobile without their mobile… but what does any of this have to do with the unity of the Body of Christ, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing in modern times?

     Hang with me for one more linguistic juggle.  Our target term, oikouménē, is one of three koine Greek words for “the world.”  The others are kósmos, referring to the ordered, natural world, the entirety of creation itself; and gē, usually meaning the physical land, which we see used in our words geology and geography.  Oikouménē is distinct from those other terms because of its association with households and families.

     Oīkos is the Greek source word of our ecumenism term.  Oīkos is both the physical structure of a house and the household itself, the family that gathers within.  It’s the place; it’s the people.  We see this type of place-means-the-people application in English, both in secular use (“Fall of the House of Usher”) and in Scriptural translation (Paul’s baptizing of the “house” of Stephanus in 1 Cor. 1:13).  It’s a nuance that’s missing when we translate oikouménē as “the whole world” in our English Bibles.  Lost is the sense that it’s a word about people, our people, our homies and in many scriptural contexts our vast, extended human family.  We could translate the term oikouménē as “the realms of the human family” in place of “the world.”  That would certainly bring an original-language depth and beauty to such verses as Hebrews 1:6: 

… [W]hen God brings his first-born into the realms of the human family, He says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.”

 

SO, BACK TO TODAY’S ECUMENISM

     It strikes me that one of the main concerns revolving around accepting or rejecting ecumenism today is which version of oikouménē we are expected to adopt.  On the one hand, we could be like Caesar, reaching out only to the community we already know and inhabit.  On the other, we could be reaching out to the whole of Christendom through all the lands it touches.  Which is more likely?  I confess a bias toward thinking it applies to the whole of Christendom, since someone saying “I am in global unity with every one of my fellow Anabaptist Hutterites” doesn’t sound a lot like unity to me.

     So, let’s ask: Why is there Christian pushback against the idea of uniting the Christian family in its efforts to spread the Gospel and to share the fruits of the Spirit with each other and with the whole of the world?

     I suspect one of the issues is a suspicion about non-Christians the modern application of oikouménē might include.  Is it meant to embrace the beliefs of every religion and non-religion on the Earth, a literal acceptance of the entire human family?  The only sites online I’ve seen suggesting that meaning are those arguing ecumenism is a Satanic plot.  All the pro-ecumenism congregations I’ve read up on in my limited month of research seem only to mention other Christian groups as part of their outreach.

     But maybe it’s more limited than that, even.  Should “ecumenism” reach out only to those who are in our own genres of Christianity – a unity of mainstream Christians if we’re mainstream, of independent Evangelicals if we’re that, of all salvation-by-faith believers, of all who agree with us on the nature of God and Christ?  Paul uses the term oīkos, ecumenism’s Greek root word, in his Galatians 6:10 mention of “the household of faith,” but exactly who does the household of faith interact with as part of the acceptable family?  What are the boundaries?  Where are the property lines?

• Agreement over the nature of God?  A number of Christians wouldn’t consider themselves fellow household dwellers with Latter Day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses, since neither group sees Jesus as part of the Godhead.  How far does that extend?  Do we exclude those of a Oneness tradition, who see God in an indivisible, singular entity with no Trinitarian breakouts into divine Persons?  Do we exclude followers of John Calvin, the Reformer who insisted there was no human element of Christ distinct from the Word nature of Christ, thus making human and divine indistinguishable natures?  Do we exclude higher-criticism theologians who search for the Historical Jesus as distinct from the Scriptural presentation of Christ?  And do we exclude the Health & Wealth-ers who see God’s nature as a cosmic Door Dash delivering goodies to all who ask in faith?  Is that a concept I want in my faith household?
• Agreement over the nature of salvation?  Perhaps our acceptance of ecumenical interaction – and our boundaries -- should be determined by our soteriology (which is a fancy word for our theology of salvation).  After all, salvation’s what it’s all about, right?  Shall we exclude those who insist that a physical act of baptism is necessary for the salvation of our souls?  Contrariwise, shall we exclude those who say it isn’t required by a God who saves through faith alone?  Should we reject those who add on a requirement for ongoing sanctification after rebirth?  Should we boot any congregation not requiring evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in Christian walks?  What about tongues-speaking – are you “in” if you do, “out” if you don’t?  And what if a church baptizes babies?
• Agreement over the nature of assurance?  If there’s a congregation that doesn’t accept that salvation is permanent – “Once Saved, Always Saved” – do we need to make sure we don’t have ecumenical fellowship with such doubters?  If there’s a denomination that insists salvation was determined and foreordained from before the foundations of the Earth were laid, do we count them out?  If they’re softies who think even Catholics can be saved, shall we avoid being unequally yoked with them?  And if they don’t share our futurist, catastrophic end-times eschatology and rapture ideology, do we cut them off?
• Agreement over the nature of worship and church structure?  If I hop on board with this ecumenism thing, what do I do about churches that have those old-fashioned pipe organs and almost no guitars?  Am I expected to tolerate a church that has more video screens than hymnals?  What if their congregation votes, votes mind you, on church direction, rather than submitting to the strong leadership of a singular apostle?  And if they have youth ministers and a separate youth ministry – a church structure found nowhere in the New Testament that has led to horrific outcomes in numerous Southern Baptist churches – must I come into forced ecumenical fellowship with them?

 

HOW TO GET THERE: COUNTING THE WAYS

     A whole section of questions!  I haven’t done that in a while.  I think I decided to write it that way because I have no answers to the real question: Can Christian denominations ever really get along if they have doctrinal differences?  The lines that can never be crossed are different for each group, and overcoming them would require significant revival throughout all corners of the Body of Christ.

     That would include revival for Mr. David J. Stewart, the gentleman I quoted without quotation marks up top.  This is a brother in Christ who looks with far more than suspicion on anyone who would utter the words, “My prayer is that they may be one.”  Such unity, in Stewart’s eyes, is evidence of an end times Whore of Babylon world religion poised to stamp us all with sixes and make us kneel before Illuminati altars.

     But he’s an obvious case.  What about the less blatant barriers to unity?  We’d also have to convince Trinitarians that they can find some footing with Oneness believers.  We’d have to convince Southern Baptists that it’s not the end of the world when Lutherans baptize their infants in family acts of dedication.  Christians who accept evolution would have to embrace die-hard Creationists.  United Methodists would need to tolerate the gambling habits of Bingo-loving Catholics (I mean, seriously, what is it with Bingo and those guys?  Is it their eighth sacrament or something?)  I, myself, would have to embrace the Pentecostals who told me that my failure to get healed of my childhood deafness and muteness means I can never have the Holy Spirit in my non-tongues-speaking Christian life.

     All my misgivings aside, however, here seem to be the only paths I can imagine toward ecumenical unity.

• COMPROMISE: Accept that someone’s view of God’s nature or particulars about salvation vary from yours, and make peace with it.  If you’ve read my last blog post, you’ll probably guess that I see this as the least likely option for Christendom as it’s now constituted.
• DOMINANCE: Having one church exert power and authority over another to change its doctrines.  Lately this has been done in covert ways, groups seeding existing churches with members of their own congregations to take over from within and change policies and doctrines.  This practice of “steeplejacking” eventually leads to the hijackers taking power and severing ties with the congregation’s denomination.  Haven’t heard of it?  It’s a thing.
• COMPARTMENTALIZING: This approach, unlike compromise, has more of a psychological denial element to it.  It’s a type of selective ignoring – you preach that a Catholic will burn in hell on Sunday, then stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him the next Tuesday to protest outside an abortion clinic.  This “don’t think about it too hard” approach has been somewhat successful in limited social efforts, but hasn’t really made inroads into shared worship, fellowship, and mutual acceptance overall.
• CELEBRATING THE SIMILAR: This would be the flipside of compartmentalizing – tallying with other believers all of the faith elements distinct Christian groups have in common.  Where do we overlap?  Let’s rejoice in that.  What’s our shared heritage?  We’ll build bonds from there.  Where will we spend eternity?  We can laugh a thousand years from now about how petty we used to be.  Who is on the throne of our hearts and our lives?  We’ll make that, make God, the first item in our makeshift credos of unity.  In effect: I don’t have to compromise what I believe in order to rejoice in common ground with you.
  
  

     Will it be easy?  I dunno.  But I recently felt a glimmer of hope by the examples of a duo of preachers in the virtual world of Second Life, one a Trinitarian and the other a Oneness pastor.  The first spoke publicly about the second, saying (I have to paraphrase, since I wasn’t taking notes at the time): “I’ll be a Trinitarian my whole life, but that man is a great guy, my brother in Christ, and you just know that the Lord is using him!”  That same week (and for several Sundays after), I heard the Oneness pastor ask all of us in his virtual church building to pray for the churches in Second Life, all of the churches, because they’re all trying to bring Jesus to the visitors on that virtual platform.

     I know I’ve leaned negative during much of this post.  I close it on that positive note, though.  Seeing a couple of guys with completely different takes on the existential nature of the Godhead speaking with generosity and love about those with different doctrines, I retain a small ember of hope for long-term Christian unity that may, in the end, overcome the exploding divisions of the past 300 years.

     “Of the increase of His government and of peace there will be no end,” says Isaiah 9:7 in a passage I sincerely feel maps the non-catastrophist future of His church.  “The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this,” it promises.  His zeal – not my efforts, not an ecumenical movement, not steeplejacking operations or hostile takeovers, but Him and His zeal.  As I learn to celebrate other believers’ similarities without sacrificing my own faith community’s standards, I might be able to join in on that zeal and contribute to the increase of peace.  I long to see the swords beaten into ploughshares, the wolf living with the lamb, the Calvinist leopard lying down with the Armenian kid.  I’m one who sticks her nose into dangerous doctrinal areas of discussion, so I especially hold out for Isaiah 11’s promise that a child can stick her hand into the adder’s den with no harm, no foul.

            That’s my eschatology.  That will truly be a time (to borrow from Acts 17:6) that “turns the oikouménē, the realms of the human family, upside down.”

 

Marana Tha,

Yolanda Ramírez / YoYo Rez