Blake's Second Thoughts

Eugene Carson Blake's 1960 proposal to merge four major Protestant churches into one seemed a lightning flash illuminating a hopeful abstraction, an ex citing new vision. Now the Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church sees his idea as more possible than before, more urgent than ever, and beset by subtle dangers. Last Sunday, shortly after returning from a meeting of the World Council of Churches' Central Committee in Nigeria, he went to San Francisco's Grace Episcopal Cathedral, where he had first called for a united church "truly catholic, truly reformed, truly evangelical," and spoke his second thoughts.

Miraculous Renewal. Blake's original idea was for his own Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, the Methodists and the United Church of Christ--who have since been joined by the Disciples of Christ and the Evangelical United Brethren--to undertake a series of theological conversations exploring the possibility of union. Two good omens for the future, said Blake, are the favorable response to his suggestion from those churches, and the "amazing and miraculous renewal" of Roman Catholicism visible at the Second Vatican Council, which "has made more important and urgent the effort to unite major Protestant churches."

Yet other developments, Blake said, may have diminished the prospect of merger, and he warned that "church union delayed is church union denied." One is the tendency of U.S. churches to become involved in their own worldwide confessional relationships. The Episcopalians, for example, are committed to help weaker Anglican churches abroad through a "mutual responsibility" program that was proposed at the Toronto Anglican Congress in 1963.

The churches' participation in the civil rights revolution has united a wide variety of Christians committed to equal justice for the Negro; it has also raised the threat of denominational schism between the socially concerned and those who feel that their church should stay out of politics. Finally, warned Blake, union is threatened by lethargy and by "an actual hardening of opposition to church union proposals"--most notably, although Blake did not say it, among Methodists.

Outmoded Triumphalism. "To put dead churches together," warned Blake, "to unite dying or faithless bodies, is not to produce a union in obedience to Jesus Christ." Thus he argues that "we must be against any church union that is established at the expense of truth"--any union that denies the insights of "our several traditions." Equally deplorable would be union undertaken in a spirit of "outmoded triumphalism"--seeking to dominate the world rather than serve it.

Finally, Blake declared that "we must be against any church union that would in any way threaten the ecumenical movement" or diminish the obligation to cooperate with the many Christian bodies--ranging from Roman Catholicism to Pentecostal sects--that would remain outside the merger Blake proposed. The only truly Christian union, he concluded, would be one undertaken in humility, mutual forbearance, and a genuinely selfless love.

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