Relationship between Ecumenism and Religious Decline - Coursework Example

The growing weakness of the Churches has been either in their numerical support, in the vigor and distinctiveness of their message, or both. The protest is weakened as the circumstances of the protesters change: without the social basis for protestation, the ideological position is insufficient to command intense allegiance. Institutions lose distinctiveness, and there is increasing conformity to the expectations of the wider society. Hence mass-society conformity i.e. streamlined general public opinion grows and moral rigor diminishes. Such diversity exists in a lesser socially structured way within a range of individual choices offered by persuasive agencies. Among religious movements, especially as the generational transmission of religious commitment diminishes, the idea that different denominations represent diverse facets of the same truth grows.

Characteristic of the changed mood is that of the Committee of Anglicans and Presbyterians "...we have renounced, and believe that the Churches concerned should renounce, the method of selecting and measuring such faults and errors in the history of the Churches...as might be judged to be responsible for our present divisions....mistakes have been made on both sides and...Over the generations attitudes tending to bitterness and strife have been not infrequent, but the time has come when the voice of mutual recrimination should be silent (Rawlinson, 55).

It is now urged that "...each separate communion, recalling the abundant blessing of God vouchsafed to its ministry in the past, should gladly bring to the common life of the United Church its spiritual treasures (Ainslie, 7-12).

The language of condemnation and mutual approbation must strike those used to less evaluative disciplines than theology as curious. Division, apparently, must be a matter of blame or of error, not a matter of the perception of truth. This division was of a fact about what different parties took as the values in a given situation. The long process of discussion for reunion among the different divisions of Methodism in the last decade of the nineteenth century occurred among movements that had common and self-directed opportunities before them. The New Connexion, as the oldest division to break away from Wesleyan Methodism, pondered over to the Wesleyans and the Bible Christians in the later years of the century -- although the two represented extremely different wings of the movement which could certainly not then have been reconciled with each other.

And the Wesleyans themselves, in the early inter-war years of the twentieth century were troubled, considering a union with the Primitive Methodists and the United Methodists might evolve into a body further removed from the Church of England, towards which, even then, some Wesleyans were inclined. Similarly, in the period following the Second World War, the Church of England has made gestures to Methodists with their extensive proportion of lay preaching, and to the Presbyterians with their elective system, as well as to the Church of Rome.

“Each Church must move cautiously. Always there has been anxiety lest a Church leaning towards another, might split its following. It was after the famous Kikuyu affair in 1911 that Archbishop Davidson's judgment on this dilemma became so celebrated in words attributed to Mgr. Knox. A Kikuyu, there had been a missionary conference in which Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Methodists had participated” (Brewer, 400-408).

After a successful occasion of co-operation, the Bishop of Mombasa had celebrated Communion among those present. Opinion in England had been sharply divided. There were Anglicans who were delighted to see the spirit of ecumenicalism and Christian brotherhood give such practical demonstration. Others were appalled to think of the sacraments administered simultaneously to those in the Church and those outside it. The Archbishop was called upon for a judgment of Solomon and pronounced it by declaring in effect that whilst the events at Kikuyu had been most pleasing in the sight of Almighty God, they must under no circumstances occur again.

Ecumenicalism should have expressed itself in London at the periphery rather than at the center of the movement, which is not surprising. There are special circumstances in the mission field which tend to make denominational differences seem less significant. Just as historical development -- the changed temporal context -- diminishes these differences and accelerates the attenuation of protest, the adjustment to different geographical contexts has similar consequences.