By Steve Harmon
Updating my Facebook status about being in England last week to participate in the final of current international theological conversations between the Baptist World Alliance and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity prompted a friend to respond: “What’s the big goal?”
A lot of Baptists probably share the question. Some may be intrigued that theologians from such seemingly opposite Christian communities would spend a total of five weeks over a five-year period in sustained dialogue with one another. What do they talk about? What are they trying to accomplish, and how?
Others may be suspicious. Are the Catholic theologians trying to convince Baptists to embrace Catholic teachings? Are the Baptist theologians faithfully representing the Baptist beliefs and practices held dear by the global Baptist community? Are the representatives of both communions pursuing a unity that compromises convictions?
Not all ecumenical dialogues are alike. Some have the expressed goal of removing all obstacles to mutual recognition of the validity of one another’s baptisms and ordinations, full sharing at the Lord’s Table and participation in a common structure of church governance.
The BWA Commission on Doctrine and Christian Unity engages in conversations that aim at fuller expressions of the unity for which Jesus prayed in John 17, but it does so in keeping with Baptist polity. Neither the BWA nor any of its member unions can make decisions about matters of structural unity on behalf of local congregations.
The BWA has previously held conversations with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Catholic Church, the Lutheran World Federation, the Mennonite World Conference and the Anglican Consultative Council. These conversations have the goal of responding to Jesus’ prayer for his disciples “that they may all be one…that the world may believe” (John 17:21) through making more explicit what we already share in common and addressing candidly the matters that continue to divide us.
The goal is explained more fully in a 2006 memorandum by which the BWA and the Catholic Church agreed to enter a second series of conversations. It is to “increase our mutual understanding, appreciation of each other and Christian charity towards each other; foster a shared life of discipleship within the communion of the triune God;” and “develop and extend a common witness to Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world and the Lord of all life.”
Those planning the conversations chose the theme “The Word of God in the Life of the Church: Scripture, Tradition and Koinonia” as a helpful focus to facilitate the fulfillment of these aims. In successive years we gave specific attention to particular aspects of this theme: Scripture and its relation to tradition; baptism and the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist; the role of Mary; and oversight and primacy in the ministry of the church.
During each annual meeting we presented and discussed papers on dimensions of those themes to help us go deep within our respective traditions to discover and find ways to articulate possibilities for consensus. Rather than negotiating compromises or creating new agreements, we worked to discern convergences that are already there in our churches yet have largely gone unrecognized by Baptists and Catholics.
This year we worked on drafting the final joint report at Regent’s Park College of Oxford University, a Baptist college nestled between two Catholic colleges of the university. This setting served as a fitting symbol of the good relations that exist between Baptists and Catholics in a country where both communions have the minority status of “non-comformists” and share an earlier history of persecution by the established Church of England.
But there were also many reminders in Oxford of the years when the successive Protestant and Catholic alliances between church and state violently denied religious liberty to dissenters. This kept us mindful of that fact that in some of the places where members of our delegations serve, notably Latin America, Baptists continue to feel that they are oppressed by the Catholic majority establishments. Therefore both Baptist and Catholic members of our joint commission have labored to be sensitive to those contexts in the way we express the convergences we’ve identified.
What’s next? After a process of official approval by the Vatican and the BWA General Council, the report will be published. That’s when the most significant work toward the big goal starts.
Our work means little unless pastors and priests read and discuss the report along with the members of their congregations and parishes. Christian unity doesn’t happen unless it happens at the grassroots, embodied in relations between the members of local churches and their joint witness to their communities.
That’s the big goal. Stay tuned for the report. Then ponder imaginatively its account of the faith we share.