Operaciones de Pesca

The belief in organic unity came in a particular time and context. In the sixties there was much talk about mergers, take-overs, the uniting of the small into the larger. The drive towards European Union got under way. Bringing together the British car industry was going to revolutionise it. Uniting churches reflected the same mood. In the seventies, however, contemporary culture began to emphasise the local rather than the national, and a non- denominational religious culture began to develop in which the uniting of institutional

structures no longer had the same priority. By the end of our period all this no longer seemed as compelling, and little in the experience of the United Reformed Church appeared to

confirm it. Rather there was an increasing stress on the value of diversity alongside unity, in a way which made organic unity seem less desirable. As Michael Davies says:

I think we have now concluded that if God had meant us all to be the same, he would have made us that way. I think there is a great deal that is complementary among the denominations. I think there has to be some coming together for purely practical reasons but that is a different matter… I think this may be the Lord’s will (interview, p.2).

A number of factors pointed in this direction. One factor was biblical – a greater realization of the diversity of Scripture and the implications this had for the unity of the Church. A WCC study in 1949 (at a time when the biblical theology movement was in its brief vogue) had stressed the unity of Scripture and argued, with amazing naivety, that a common reading of Scripture could help bring the Church to one mind on formerly divisive issues. By the 4th World Congress on Faith and Order at Montreal in 1963, however, Ernst Käsemann was arguing that:

156 The tensions between Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian Churches, between Paul and the Corinthian enthusiasts, between John and early Catholicism, are as great as those of our own day… To recognize this is a great comfort, and as far as ecumenical work today is concerned, a theological gain (Kinnamon and Cope, 1997, p.97) Freed from the illusion that there was a single New Testament model for the Church, people were liberated to explore a diversity which reflected the diversity of Scripture. Oscar

Cullmann went so far as to argue that “the richness of the full measure of the Holy Spirit rests in plurality. Whoever does not reflect this richness, and wants uniformity, sins against the Holy Spirit” (1988 p.17). In Britain this was developed especially by the work of James Dunn, in his Unity and Diversity in the New Testament. All of this may be compatible with organic unity. It does however invalidate any attempt to ground a simplistic theological case for denominational unity based on texts like John 17.11 “May they be one as we are one”. To apply texts which were addressed to local churches experiencing factionalism to the

relationships of differing denominations, as if the two issues are the same, is to misuse Scripture.

It could be that the multiplicity of belief and organization which the canon legitimizes is best preserved in a variety of churches with their own theologies and organizations. Indeed you could argue that the biblical text, in so far as it witnesses to diversity and unity within the Trinity, itself offers a model of something other than an undifferentiated unity. This was reflected in the conclusions of the Nairobi Assembly of the WCC in 1975 which argued: “It is because the unity of the church is grounded in the divine trinity that we can speak of diversity in the church as something to be not only admitted but actively desired” (Kinnamon, 2003, p.57). At least from this perspective the theological debate is much more open. As the Canberra Assembly of the World Council of Churches concluded in1991: “diversities which are rooted in theological traditions, various cultural, ethnic or historical contexts are integral to the nature of communion” (ibid. p.124).

The fact that the expected missionary advantages of ecumenism did not materialize, and that the fastest church growth was found in those churches which were least interested in structural ecumenism, also took away a significant part of the case for organic union. Instead it now appears that a diversification of distinct religious options may be more effective as a missionary strategy than the appeal of a united church.

The experience of the United Reformed Church did little to offset this. As so often happens when two organizational structures merge, the end result in the United Reformed Church was more office jobs, a more expensive bureaucracy than either of the two uniting churches, and a financial system which arguably proved to be a disincentive from innovative fundraising. The United Reformed Church declined faster than either of its predecessor churches, though at a roughly comparable rate to similar mainstream churches. None of this can be taken as proof that the two churches would have done better separately, though it is difficult to believe they could have done significantly worse.

157 Diversity cannot be a value in itself but requires the commonality shared in Christ to be expressed in diversity in unity. A situation in which churches simply competed with each other or lived in isolation from each other would be an impoverishment of the Christian life and denial of the work of Christ in bringing all together as one. But as a way of maintaining unity in diversity organic union now looks fraught with difficulty. Just as single congregation LEPs often end up theologically monochromatic, so church unions can lead to a loss of diversity. This is one reason why very many members of the URC were unreceptive to a union with the Methodists, which they feared would extinguish their tradition without advancing the kingdom.

ECUMENISM IN THE POST-DENOMINATIONAL RELIGIOUS MARKET