Dr. Espy Calls on Churches to Face Ecumenical Revolution
Diocesan Press Service. February 6, 1968 [62-8]
The top executive officer of the National Council of Churches, Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy of New York City, has called on the churches to face the challenge of the "ecumenical revolution" by taking the lead "both in their own life and in remolding (our) present ecumenical patterns."
Speaking to church leaders from the San Francisco-Oakland area at the annual Christian Fellowship Dinner of the Northern California Council of Churches, Jan. 18, the American Baptist layman said, "the churches in the face of the present world must change both spiritually and organizationally.
"To live in a secular, pluralistic, unconventional society requires new habits and new attitudes, scarcely the ones on which the ecumenical institutions which have been so meaningful for five decades have been bred. So the quest of the Church for her new and proper stance in today's world is a part of the ecumenical revolution, " he stated.
"The association of the churches in programs of cooperation have led to deeper questions of Christian unity" until -- both at home and overseas -- a search "for theological understanding and accord have become goals of the ecumenical adventure. "
He cited the Faith and Order Movement and church union conversations such as the Consultation on Church Union, which embraces ten denominations, and the "astounding acceleration" of the Roman Catholic Church "into the ecumenical arena" following Vatican II as tangible achievements of this goal,
But, Dr. Espey warned, the ecumenical movement has "not nearly achieved its full potential or measured up to its critical responsibility." ... The romance of discovering one another and learning again to celebrate our oneness in Christ may be yielding to the hard pressures of realistic assessment of ourselves, our institutions and our world."
We are not prepared for the "issues confronting us" as a result of "profound and rapid changes in our social environment. " He foresaw the need for an "adjustment in the ecumenical movement which may sometimes require fairly radical re-evaluation and re-tooling for the next steps in the quest for Christian unity and mission in obedience to our Lord and His Gospel."
He said that ecumenical bodies may "be geared entirely too much to the more comfortable period" when a loose confederation of churches seemed to have sufficient strength. "Now racial exploitation, riots in the cities, black power demands, economic deprivation, youthful intransigency, the new drug culture, Vietnam dilemmas and hundreds of other phenomena call for response faster than our institutions seem prepared to move," the church leader warned.
"The complex social, political and spiritual situations of our nation and the world are calling for new associations of Christian ministry, " he urged.
In a ten-point recommendation, Dr. Espy particularly urged that the ecumenical movement should have greater flexibility and responsibility, that it needs fuller support from churches, should be better geared to the critical plight of persons in the world, and must "provide a framework within which the Negro churches can express more adequately their ecumenical impulses and realize their own highest destiny. Above all," he said, "the ecumenical movement needs to define more clearly the nature of Christian unity as the goal of ecumenism. "