That We All May Be One

Recently I was privileged to be invited to be an ecumenical guest at the General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in St. Louis, Missouri

The Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church share common histories that date back nearly to the founding of this country. It was less than ten years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence that Richard Allen, Absalom Jones and other African Americans walked out of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church having been segregated into an upstairs gallery of that church.

Three years later Black Christians organized the Free African Society, the first real African American society. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones were elected overseers.   

In 1792 they began to build a church which was dedicated two years later. Soon after, some applied for membership in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania on the following conditions:

1. that they be received as an organized body; 2. that they have control over their local affairs; 3. that Absalom Jones be licensed as a lay reader and, if qualified, be ordained as a minister. In October of that year, the church became St. Thomas African Episcopal Church and the Bishop of Pennsylvania ordained Jones as a deacon in 1795 and as our first Black priest on September 21, 1802.

Absalom Jones was an earnest and powerful preacher who denounced slavery and warned the oppressors to “clean their hands of slaves.” To him, God was the Father who always acted “on behalf of the oppressed and the distressed.” But it was his constant pastoral visiting and mild manner that made him beloved by his own flock and by the community.

We could have built on that rich beginning. But the legacy of slavery and racism in this country has affected – and infected – us in destructive ways. So much so that in 2006 our General Convention offered our church’s apology for its own involvement in and benefits from Slavery. It also called for a Service of Repentance to be held at the Washington National Cathedral as well as in Cathedrals in all dioceses.

2008 is the 200^th anniversary of the abolition of the international slave trade yet the effects of that heinous institution are still with us today. On October 4 at the Washington National Cathedral, our Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will preside at a Service of Repentance for our complicity in that institution for so long.

Yet there are signs of hope. Just over a week ago The Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton knelt before that same Altar at the National Cathedral and was consecrated as the 14^th bishop of one of our oldest dioceses, the Diocese of Maryland. He joins 18 other African American bishops and over 200 clergy in our predominantly white church. There was a deeply symbolic element to his election, Bishop Sutton said,

The church’s first Maryland bishop, Thomas John Claggett, was a slave owner. Sutton himself is a descendant of slaves! “The world is crying out for healing,” he wrote in his first message to his new flock in Maryland, “and wherever there is division and brokenness, we are called to build bridges.”

We have so far yet to go, dear friends. And yet our feet are set on the path. Let us pray that we can find new ways to make common cause toward that beloved community which is one the hallmarks of the Kingdom of God.

One of the freedoms I have as ecumenical officer and no longer a diocesan bishop is that I can, from time to time, worship on Sundays with full communion partners and other communions with which we are in bilateral conversation. It has been a joy to worship occasionally at St. Paul Lutheran here in Davenport, Iowa. The pastor is Peter Marty (Martin’s son) and it is a growing, alive congregation which seems to find a place for all and reaches out into the community and beyond in mission.

This morning I attended a local United Methodist congregation and, I must say, the experience was not as good. While one must be careful in generalizing and it is certainly true that we do not make ecumenical decisions anecdotally, but upon the official positions of Christian communions, the eucharistic practice in this particular parish left much to be desired.

Initially I was pleased that the Lord’s Supper was being observed as the principle act of worship on this Lord’s Day knowing that this is not invariably the practice among Methodists. I was expecting the “open communion” invitation to communion “All who have faith in Christ or desire faith in Christ are invited to communion at the Lord’s Table.”

This is fairly standard Wesleyan practice and not unknown in Episcopal churches (much to this ecumenical officer’s discomfort!). I was also prepared for the tiny cubes of what appeared to be Wonder Bread and the small thimbles of Welch’s grape juice. 

These are ongoing issues for our bilateral dialogue and, under the terms of our interim Eucharistic sharing, are not normally a problem. We require that wine be available at these celebrations even while recognizing that the Methodists equally require grape juice. Solution, a chalice of each.          

What I was NOT prepared for was the truncated Eucharistic prayer. I am uncomfortable when Lutherans sometimes use basically only the Words of Institution as a sufficient consecractory prayer. In this case it was just the opposite! There was a said Sursum Corda, a sung Sanctus, a freeform prayer giving thanks for our creation and and redemption in Christ (all fine) and then NO Words of Institution! Not even a recalling of the Lord’s Supper which the rubrics in the bulletin did indeed require. Then there was a sung Acclamation (“Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again”), more prayer and a sung Great Amen! 

During our interim Eucharistic sharing time, our requirement is that an ordained bishop or presbyter from each communion stand at the Table together and than an authorized rite from one of the two churches be used. In such celebrations in which I have participated I have been impressed with the way it has been done, honoring both traditions, but also living up to the expectations of good eucharistic practice.

We have some work to do before finding our way forward into a full communion relationship with the United Methodists. There will have to be a good bit of teaching and learning on both sides and some clear expectations as to how the Eucharist is to be celebrated on Sunday mornings. A certain diversity of practice is to be expected (and indeed, if we are honest, there is a good bit of diversity on Sunday mornings across The Episcopal Church!).

But both the liturgical and ecumenical movements have gone a long way over the last decades in providing clear guidance about what good eucharistic practice appears to be. All of us need to honor those principles if we are indeed to achieve “full” communion.     

Well, “that we all may be one,” our Presiding Bishop is in the process of reorganizing the national church center staff — her staff, to be accurate. One part of this is putting the various offices and ministry units together into ministry “centers.” There are four of them — Evangelism and Congregational Life, Mission, Advocacy, and Partnerships.

Ecumenical and interfaith relations are in the Partnership Center along with part of Anglican and Global Relations, Diocesan Services, overseas Covenants, and the United Thank Offering. The idea in the centers is to encourage more collaboration and become ever more familiar with one another’s work. All the units in this Center are involved, in one way or another, in building “partnerships” for mission.

The second piece of the puzzle is the opening of a number of “regional offices” hoping to relate more directly to congregations and dioceses, learning from what’s happening “on the ground” and helping to interpret the national perspective to “the grass roots.” We’ve had a Washington office for years, of course, doing advocacy on Capitol Hill through the Office of Government Relations.

Now, we’ll add Los Angeles (communications and Hispanic ministry), Omaha (ecumenical relations, small churches, and “lay” ministry), Atlanta (African American ministry, some theological education), and Seattle (was to be immigration, but I understand that’s being re-visited).

Of course, whether all this works or not remains to be seen. But my wife and I are now happily ensconced in the home we have owned for years in Iowa and I will relate to the Midwestern office in Omaha as well as some back-and-forth to New York. The Diocese of Nebraska’s Trinity Cathedral has given us the use of three offices and seem quite excited to have some national church staff operating out of there.

Otherwise, my work will remain pretty much unchanged — lots of travel, continuing to relate to the WCC and NCC, staffing bilateral dialogues, and being engaged in interfaith work. I do hope to focus more on “reception” of ecumenical agreements…in other words, trying to help these agreements live and function on the local level.

Crafting ecumenical documents and agreements is important. But if ecumenism is not all about “mission,” it is little more than what Frank Griswold used to call “ecclesiastical joinery!”