The Church Uniting, Slowly

For a decade, mainstream U.S. Protestantism has been groping toward institutional unity. Now it has a concrete proposal to bring it about. Last week a 15-man commission headed by Southern Presbyterian William Benfield Jr. announced a detailed, 147-page plan to bring together the nine denominations-that belong to the Consultation on Church Union.

The unity proposal is a lucid, ingenious compromise that strives to preserve the best elements of widely varying traditions of piety and polity. Tentatively called "The Church of Christ Uniting" to imply its openness to other groups that may want to join, the proposed superchurch will be theologically broad-minded in its approach to doctrine but notably bureaucratic in structure. In many ways, it suggests a kind of Episcopalianism writ large and Low. It will also be pointedly interracial.

"Parishes" will be formed out of several existing member congregations, chosen not necessarily from the same neighborhood but specifically to give them a social and racial mix. (Planners are already wary of reactions from congregations who may resent their loss of independence.) Above the parishes will rise a hierarchical pyramid: districts, regions (both presided over by bishops) and finally a powerful national church government: a biennial national assembly and a standing general council headed by a presiding bishop. Partly to appease the growing separatist feeling in the three black churches participating in the Consultation, the plan requires that the first presiding bishop be black.

Sensibly Ambiguous. Bishops as well as district and parish committees will have to approve any parish's choice for a new minister, or "presbyter," as he will be called. Bishops will be elected to renewable four-year terms, not for life. All bishops and ministers in the new church's member denominations will be accepted without reconsecration or reordination--a provision that is likely to disturb High Church Episcopalians, who may not feel that a projected unification rite is enough to assure "apostolic succession," an unbroken link with the Apostles.

The plan's references to doctrine and scripture are intentionally, and perhaps sensibly, ambiguous. The church "accepts the Apostles' and Nicene creeds as witnessing to the mighty acts of God recorded in Scripture," but they are not to be used "coercively" as the norm of doctrine. The Bible is vaguely described as the "unique authority," which "witnesses to God's revelation," rather than God's written word. The church will allow both infant baptism and believers' baptism, the latter to include confirmation. The Lord's Supper of the "Church Uniting" will be open to anyone now admitted to Communion in any Christian church.

Grass-Roots Criticism. The plan will certainly be modified by the COCU delegates who will meet during March in St. Louis to analyze it in detail. Episcopalians, for instance, are likely to object strongly to the new church's recognition of women clergy, while the Disciples of Christ, who have traditionally opposed a strong central authority, will probably want more congregational autonomy. But grass-roots criticism from the member churches themselves may take a different tack. Theological conservatives are likely to be far more disturbed by the proposal's secularistic definition of the church's mission than by the structural problems. As the drafters put it: "The affirmation of Christ's Lordship over creation, including the secular city, must be related to the real struggles of the people in the social, economic, and political structures of this day."

Many laymen and clergy today believe that their churches have already gone too far in playing up social activism to the point of ignoring personal redemption and preaching of the Gospel. Partly because of the growing squabble over activism, and partly over the issue of ecumenism itself, total enrollment in the nine Consultation churches is down more than 1,000,000 members in the past three years alone.

-The nine, in order of size: the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the United Church of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern), the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church.

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