ATLANTA (ABP) — Four years in the making, a new group designed to be the broadest ecumenical coalition in American history was officially formed March 31.
Thirty-four denominational and parachurch groups, representing a broad spectrum of American Christianity, constituted Christian Churches Together during a closed-door session of the group's leaders near Atlanta.
The group is intended to facilitate cooperation across the broadest possible spectrum of Christian traditions — including Catholics, mainline Protestants, white evangelicals, African-American Protestants and Orthodox Christians.
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and other Baptist groups are participating, but the Southern Baptist Convention — the largest Baptist group — is not.
Christian Churches Together started with a 2001 meeting in Baltimore. Leaders had hoped to launch it last summer, and CCT's own rules would have allowed them to do so. But they decided to wait for an African-American denomination to give official approval to participation so the group would include black participation from the start.
In recent months, the National Baptist Convention of America and the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., signed on to CCT.
The group's goal, according to its mission statement, is “to enable churches and Christian organizations to grow closer together in Christ in order to strengthen our Christian witness in the world.”
“We finally found the courage to confront our obvious and longstanding divisions and to build a new expression of unity, rooted in the Spirit, that will strengthen our mission in the world,” Wes Granberg-Michaelson said in a CCT press release.
“We are filled with excitement, hope and expectation for how God will use this new expression of our fellowship together.”
Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, served as CCT's interim moderator.
Christian Churches Together is intentionally broader than older ecumenical groups in America. For instance, the National Council of Churches includes many Orthodox and mainline Protestant groups — including the American Baptist Churches and historically African-American Baptist groups — but most evangelical groups have pointedly refused to join it because of its liberal bent. The Roman Catholic Church, by far the nation's largest denomination, is also not a member of the NCC.
In an April 12 telephone interview, CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal said “it's a great privilege for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to be a participant in Christian Churches Together. It has great promise and hope for a broad ecumenical body that demonstrates our essential unity in Christ.”
Vestal also said the venture would provide “opportunities for us to do shared ministry and collaborative ministry while respecting and encouraging the ministries of each Christian body.”
He said CCT participants would focus, at first, “on nurturing our relationships with each other, getting to know each other, building relationships through prayer and worship.”
In the future, Vestal said, “I think there's a great yearning in all of us to demonstrate more visible unity within the body of Christ in the U.S., to encourage one another … to show more unity. I think there's a desire for us to find common voice on issues of justice and particularly for people who are marginalized in society.”
The 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, long suspicious of ecumenical involvement, has declined to participate in CCT and recently withdrew from the Baptist World Alliance, the largest network of worldwide Baptists.
But those groups participating in CCT represent denominations or coalitions of churches with more than 100 million members, according to the organization. Participants are grouped into five broad categories: Catholics, mainline Protestants, ethnic minority Christian groups, evangelicals and Pentecostals, and Eastern Orthodox churches.
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