Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
Ecumenism has long been a dirty word among conservative Evangelicals in the United States. It brings to mind images of the World Council of Churches telling us that the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection never happened, but that we should all be happily united anyway. This kind of “unity” will always be rejected by Bible-believing Christians and rightfully so. However we also have the tendency to throw the spiritual babe out with the bathwater and one place that Evangelicals have been guilty of this is in rejecting unity out of hand. The fact is our Lord prayed that His people would be united. What is needed is ecumenism within orthodoxy. The confessing churches in America should move towards becoming the confessing Church.
Allegedly the biggest issue that prevents this from happening is the inability to corporately determine what is meant by “orthodoxy.” I submit that this is a smoke screen for the real issue. The Bible itself tells us that the basic, unchanging cornerstone of right doctrine is the full divinity and full humanity of Christ, His death on our behalf, His resurrection and the full atonement for our sins that results from that death and resurrection. It might be said that beyond this are only details. Often the real reason behind runaway denominationalism is the pride of men, not the Spirit of God.
According to the World Christian Encyclopedia there are more than 8000 Protestant denominations in existence today. This reality points out perhaps the greatest failure of the Reformation. While the Apostle Paul told us that believers would, indeed must, disagree to determine what actions are right in the eyes of God it is very doubtful that he had the creation of thousands of separate denominations in mind. The Body of Christ in America is rent with division at a time when genuine Christian unity is desperately needed to stand up to the forces of darkness that are on the march in our national life.
Unfortunately we live in a country in which the philosophy of radical individualism has become so deified as to co-opt even the Bride of Christ. Today it is as if the word “Ecumenism” almost carries the same connotation as the word “Communism” once did in some churches. There always seem to be a myriad of very debatable (and often minor) points being used to justify the continued existence of a multitude of Evangelical bodies. Real humility requires us to be very careful that our expressed opinions do not lead to unnecessary division, but how often is that kind of spirit being encouraged from American pulpits at the beginning of the 21st Century? Is this the kind of Protestantism that the reformers had in mind 500 years ago? Yes, they broke from a corrupt and monolithic brand of Roman Catholicism, but this kind of fragmentation could not have been a result they desired.
I knew a man who told me that he once had prayed against the persecution of the Church in this nation but lately had begun to pray for it. His reasoning was that such tribulation was the only thing that would unify Christians here. This may have been an overstatement but perhaps not much of one. At the very least we need to pray against divisiveness for the sake of divisiveness and begin to challenge conventional wisdom regarding denominationalism. This can only begin with repentance from factionalism across denominational lines and an embrace of Ecumenism within orthodoxy. Only this kind of repentance will reverse the trend towards radical individualism hiding behind the defense of truth. It is a fact that the gates of Hell will never prevail against the true historic Church but if we who make up the Church in America forever reject the call for a desperately needed unity, we may wake up one day to find that the World, the Flesh, and the Devil have won a terrible victory against us. And we will have only ourselves to blame.