Criticism of the Protestant ecumenical movement in America has soared to new heights. Laity and clergy inside the National Council of Churches, as well as Protestants outside the movement, even Roman Catholic leaders, are voicing stern disapproval of ecumenical trends in consequence of the Fifth World Order Study Conference’s “Message to the Churches.” Criticized many times for actions of the Federal Council of Churches and then the National Council of Churches, the ecumenical movement today faces widening deterioration of its already tenuous relationship to American churchgoers. At no time in recent years have the prestige and morale of ecumenism sagged so low.
The Ecumenical Dilemma
The dilemma of corporate Protestantism in America may be stated simply. On one hand, ecumenical leaders hail the National Council for achieving a new unity of the disjoined American churches. On the other, increasing numbers of churchmen and churchgoers publicly assert that ecumenical leaders speak neither authoritatively nor authentically for American Protestantism in their pronouncements on major issues.
The Cleveland Conference on World Order, convened by National Council mandate, commended to NCC’s 144,000 churches a message urging U.S. recognition and U.N. admission of Red China, and far-reaching socio-political changes. Although the NCC General Board emphasized that the study conference spoke only for itself, it defended the conference’s right to frame a position on these issues, did not repudiate its message, and some officers expressed private and even public approval of the action.
The NCC resolutions at Cleveland drew a thunderbolt of criticism. Government protested: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, himself an elder statesman in the ecumenical movement and former participant in similar world order conferences, commented that: (1) the action did not fairly represent “a cross section of the religious people of our country”; (2) issues were not adequately presented; (3) church pronouncements are to be respected in the realm of moral principles but carry no special competence in the details of political action. Roman Catholic leaders criticized: The Jesuit weekly America scored disregard of the anti-religious aspect of communism, called the action disheartening to “those who expected something more worthy of the cause of peace,” and sensed a reversion “to the strong pacifism characteristic of American Protestantism before the war.” Protestant groups outside the National Council condemned: Dr. Herbert S. Mekeel, speaking for the National Association of Evangelicals, and Dr. Carl McIntire, for the American Council of Churches, issued sharp reproofs, and in Formosa, Chinese pastors of 57 Protestant churches and organizations deplored NCC’s “terribly misguided judgment.” Protestant editors chided: Dr. Daniel A. Poling, of Christian Herald, said: “With every influence that I have, I repudiate it,” and Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, told the Washington Post that the Cleveland conference “would have put ahead the Christian cause had it prayed for the conversion of the Communist leaders … and had it set the world task of Protestantism in the historic context of foreign missions instead of in the modern framework of socio-political expedience.”
Within NCC circles criticism of the delegates’ action ran heavy. Representatives of the Greek Orthodox church disapproved the NCC General Board’s call to 33 Protestant and Orthodox denominations to study the Cleveland message, and the Rumanian Orthodox representative abstained from voting. Protestant members of the General Board did not repudiate the Cleveland action despite a tide of criticism from NCC churches indicating they had been unauthentically represented. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, one of the NCC’s radio voices, declared himself “completely opposed.” CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S poll of ministers and lay leaders ran 8 to 1 against the Cleveland action while the Committee of One Million tally (implemented by Christian Herald) ran 7 to 1 against.
Some significant comments: “I have always tried to defend the NCC liberal pronouncements, but this action was base betrayal of both God and man” (Reformed pastor); “Their abysmal ignorance of the price of freedom, their readiness to sell the ‘inalienable rights’ of others down the river, indicates not only their beclouded thinking but equally a decay in their moral fibre” (Episcopal rector); “Although an active member of the County Council of Churches, I am absolutely opposed” (Baptist pastor); “You could render the Protestant Church a service by shipping these Council men to Red China for a year” (Christian Reformed minister).
Threats To Unity
Tensions have always strained the ecumenical boast of a new unity of the scattered churches. These rise from the movement’s shallow devotion to theological truth, its persistent support of objectionable social views despite vigorous grass-roots dissent, and the leadership’s lack of democratic sensitivities to the local constituency.
Unity At Truth’S Expense
The ecumenical movement’s lack of depth in the concern for truth follows from the fact that the passion for inclusive unity outstrips the devotion to theological fidelity. Even the required minimal affirmation that Jesus Christ is God and Saviour—skeletal as it is alongside the great ecumenical creeds—is not viewed as a doctrinal formula by some NCC adherents. Hence the ecumenical constituency contains two significant groups among others: (1) Those who view the movement primarily as a platform for discussion; (2) Those who view the movement as a corporate Church based on an inclusive theological affirmation. Curiously, some non-related evangelical leaders intimate they would happily join the dialogue if NCC would set aside its “Jesus Christ as Divine Lord and Saviour” formula, thereby removing all theological criteria and precluding the option of an organizationally-structured super-church. For that matter, they say, participation in discussions ought hardly to require identification with the ecumenical movement. Thus the precedence assigned to enlarging the visibly structured Church above sound theological commitment supplies the movement with a perpetual temptation to disunity.
The movement’s definite social and political commitments, even in details, contrast with its theological vagueness. This fact has prompted some observers to comment that American ecumenism rests in the hands of church politicians more than of church dogmaticians. A leadership that scorns theological infallibility ironically assumes its special competence in politico-economic pronouncements on details of social action in the name of the Church.
Distorted Church Mission
Disregard of scriptural authority by ecumenical leaders leads them far beyond theological license; it involves their loss of the controlling principles of revealed ethics as well. Instead of championing revealed social principles, and justifying man’s freedoms and duties by divine imperatives, and then urging churchgoers to apply these in good conscience to pressing issues of the day, ecumenical spokesmen repeatedly neglect the principles and instead pledge the consciences of their constituencies in advance to specific social programs and actions.
The tendency to seek social change primarily through legislative and other non-spiritual means, moreover, is now so characteristic of social action groups as to raise a question as whether they any longer understand the Christian mission in the world. Displacement of evangelism and missions by social action, or the more subtle remodeling of evangelism and missions into a socio-political program and the promotion of secular notions of world redemption, are perils inherent in this shift of emphasis. The conflicting perspectives emerge repeatedly in the opposition of social action enthusiasts to cooperation with the Graham crusades and other evangelistic efforts. Seldom are leaders in the vanguard of social action conferences churchmen known throughout their denominations for evangelistic zeal. Their promotion of legitimate humanitarian objectives through objectionable means such as government intervention and compulsion, in fact, has sometimes ranged social action not only in competition with the spiritual mission of the Church, but in violation of divine moral law.
Many observers today feel that the basic error of the Fifth World Order Study Conference was its reliance on world systems for the redemption of humanity, and its bestowal of the Church’s blessing upon specific socio-political programs as the route to rescue.
Tilting To The Left
Criticisms of ecumenical social action strategy run deeper yet. The fact that church pronouncements in the politico-economic realm repeatedly have tilted to the left—advancing the cause of government controls, weakening free enterprise traditions, and enlarging government paternalism and the welfare state—has been a mounting source of complaint. Communist infiltration of the churches is no idle dream; it is an announced Communist objective. More than 20 years ago Communist Party leadership acknowledged its close cooperation with dozens of churches and religious organizations in economic and political matters. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in his recent book Masters of Deceit declares that “the Party is today engaged in a systematic program to infiltrate American religious groups.” Some Protestant lay leaders hold that the collectivistic assault on American free enterprise traditions has made its greatest progress through the support given quasi-collectivistic programs by leaders professing to speak for the corporate Church. The House Un-American Activities Committee has done much to publicize the left-wing associations of certain clergymen active in political and social agitation, and it is the object of bitter cross-fire from ecumenical leaders. [The Committee has made mistakes, but its constructive service far outweighs its failures. Yet some ecumenical leaders who participated aggressively in the World Order Conference (John C. Bennett, Eugene Carson Blake, John A. Mackay among them) are urging the 86th Congress to abolish the Committee.] M. G. Lowman, head of Circuit Riders, a Methodist lay movement to counteract left-wing social propagandists, charges that at least 105 of the 237 clergy registered for Cleveland have Communist affiliations. After Cleveland, the Communist organ The Worker approvingly featured World Order action, referring to “some 600 spokesmen for 38,000,000 churchgoers,” and commended participating churchmen.
Lack Of Democratic Vision
During the past ten years Protestant groups outside the NCC orbit have been steadily driven to distinguish their identity from the ecumenical body, in view of a wide impression that NCC alone is the authentic voice of American Protestantism. The growing organizational power of the Federal Council of Churches provoked evangelical churches still outside that frame to gather beneath the banners of the National Association of Evangelicals and the American Council of Churches. Meanwhile, large denominations like Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans maintained independence and isolation from all groups. To this day, 23 million of the 60 million American Protestants remain outside NCC. These groups have made significant gains in distinguishing their points of view from ecumenically structured Protestantism.
Nonetheless, the bulk of Protestant publicity, prestige, and power has fallen to the ecumenically-organized church, on the assumption that NCC leadership authentically represents the denominationally-diversified churches. Until recent years there was little disposition to question this representation, despite the fact that in many denominations the question of membership in the Federal Council, and later the National Council, was not in fact ever presented on the local level to constituent churches. Leaders in some communions whose denominational distinctives included such tenets as the autonomy of the local church nonetheless united in deliberate commitments of their constituencies to the ecumenical movement in the absence of consent. To this day, the memory of this overriding of the conscience and will of local churchgoers remains as a source of local distrust of denominational leadership in some communions, and is one factor responsible for the continuing lack of grass-roots enthusiasm for ecumenism.
Deteriorating Relationship
This relationship between ecumenical leadership and denominational constituencies is now rapidly deteriorating. At no time in recent years has the NCC seethed as now at the local level with dissent and dissatisfaction over official pronouncements.
The “widening cleft” between clergy and laity in ecumenical ranks has been one major source of stress. After “the Protestant position” had been officially relayed by church leaders, and given great weight in government circles, some congressmen reported hundreds and sometimes thousands of letters from laymen in affiliated churches expressing an opposite point of view. Laymen complained that a comparatively small group of carefully screened delegates meets for study conferences with a small circle of specialists and, after a week of lectures and discussions, the vote of several hundred men somehow emerges as the voice of American Protestantism. Lay leaders also protested the growing tendency of ecumenical and denominational leadership to make pronouncements in areas wherein they lacked a mandate to speak for their churches and constituencies. Such continued pronouncements were viewed as violating the right of fair representation by lay leaders who resented issuance of official statements without proper consultation of the constituency, and who voiced confidence that a majority of NCC’s own constituency resolutely opposes the sentiment of many top-level pronouncements.
Revolt Of The Laity
This issue came to a head in 1954, when 171 members of the National Lay Committee (presumably named to give the laity a larger voice in ecumenical affairs) presented the NCC with an “Affirmation on the Subject of Corporate Pronouncements of Denominational or Interdenominational Agencies.” The General Board (by a 77 to 4 vote) defeated a proposal to print this Affirmation, while accepting a statement prepared by its ministerial leaders on “Christian Principles and Assumptions for Economic Life.” The Christian Century hailed the statement as “a landmark for Christian thinking” that had won its way against “the conviction … of some that economic life should be outside the scope of church and National Council concerns.” But the laymen’s affirmation had expressly declared: “We believe the pervading purpose of God’s will extends to every aspect of life and suggest no limitation on its application to the affairs of men.” What the National Lay Committee really opposed was not the social relevance of the Gospel, but the supposed relevance of socialism as a strategy of Christian ethics.
Clergy Protests Grow
In recent months ecumenical troubles have worsened. The avalanche of protest in the wake of the Cleveland conference came not simply from the laity but from the clergy. For the first time it was clear as day that ecumenical leaders had not only failed the laity, but also the clergy. The objectionable conclusions of the Cleveland conference, moreover, were not spontaneously arrived at. They were hailed openly as the prelude to a year-long ecumenical peace offensive in the 144,000 churches of the NCC beginning next June, and social action champions in major denominations rose during the plenary session to indicate the extensive preparations already underway to implement that program throughout their churches, and the availability of foundation funds to help implement it.
The Future Of Ecumenism
The sense of indignation at grass-roots—where the ecumenical movement has always been weak—now clamors for official expression. The conviction is widening that leaders who propagandize their own views, and then catapult these into prominence by exaggerating their known support, border on a type of misrepresentation specially despicable in Christian circles professing an attachment to democratic concerns. Almost every city and village across America today houses clergy and laymen, presumably represented by NCC, who sense that the Cleveland misrepresentation of their convictions must lead to vocal protest or to a deterioration of personal integrity. What the NCC does to give free expression to its own constituency may well be determinative of ecumenical morale and prestige in the immediate future.
In the long run, however, the fate of ecumenism hangs on deeper issues. Instead of moving theological concerns to the sidelines and substituting the babel of ecumenical tongues, will American Protestantism find its way to the theology of special revelation and recover the authoritative note found in the sacred Scriptures? Instead of seeking the redemption of the world through a reliance on secular agencies and world systems, will American Protestantism return to the service of the incarnate, crucified, resurrected and exalted Lord, and to the mission of evangelism which he has assigned as the Church’s primary task? Instead of preoccupation with mere temporary programs and parties, will American Protestantism find the controlling guidelines of policy and action in the revealed truths and principles that the Holy Spirit has plainly enunciated to the churches? Upon considerations of this kind depends the legitimacy of the ecumenical vision.
Let men of spiritual dedication pray and speak and work for these great concerns. In the long run these will prevail, while the works of men, even good and mighty men, will wither.
END
Braille
Blessed are the blind
who stretch forth hungry hands
and touch the very word of God,
feeding their souls
through sentient fingers.
TERENCE Y. MULLINS
