Report from Lee and Caroline:

Annual Conference at DABCEC:

Churches Together in the North East of England join in research of the Theology Dept of Durham University. 15/10/11

On 15th October we attended the annual conference of “Mission and Unity” at our Catholic Education Centre in Crawley. “Mission and Unity” is the department within the Education Centre which supports Churches Together and Cross-Link representatives in Catholic Churches.

Once a year the department invites a speaker from anywhere in the UK or beyond to bring us up to date with what is going on outside our own area of Arundel and Brighton. So we found ourselves with a group of around 100 participants from Surrey, Hampshire West and East Sussex, and about 25% of those present were not Catholics, but were people, mostly clergy, from other Christian  traditions…. Anglicans and Methodists were in evidence at all question times.  We began at 9.15am and
finished at 4pm. The invited speaker was Professor Paul Murray from Durham University’s Theology Dept.

Professor Murray explained how he and the Theology Dept. of Durham structured research into the effectiveness of Churches Together and like groups of churches who met and worked together in their communities throughout the north east of England, Hexham to the Scottish Borders. The research first sought the views of the Christian leaders, bishops, moderators etc.. Everyone was in agreement that this research was needed and would be greatly valued by all. Church leaders were most helpful, donating financially and opening up records and any archives which might be helpful to the research group. The programme of research would be in three sections. Two sets of three years, six years in total, were to be spent among the grass roots of all the churches.

First: Seeking to discover where the recognised differences lay, and what the dislikes and misunderstandings of the various church traditions were acknowledged to be.
Second: The writing up/recording of major misleading beliefs held against each other.
Third: The means to a healthier understanding of these misunderstandings and negative attitudes.

The final two years consisted of a programme to include the leaders of the churches, the bishops, moderators, etc., sometimes meeting with, and sometimes without, grass-root people, (people like us who get together fairly frequently in Churches Together meetings), and the findings of the previous 6 years would be discussed to discover if and how changes could be made in thinking and practice to make a cohesive Christian presence in the North East of England.

Who were the churches who agreed to work together? Church of England, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, URC, Assembly of God, Salvation Army, Pentecostal and Independent, in total 9 different traditions of Christians. All these churches had the genuine desire to become more united as Christians.

The research began with governance; who led the church, who took control of finances, who elected the minister to each church etc. What could be learned from other traditions which your church did not embrace. This was the warm up.
Eventually the real wedges of difference between the churches came about, and it seemed it was all about vocabulary, e.g: ‘righteousness’ not really understood by Catholics, but ‘grace’ and ‘by the Grace of God, through the Grace of God’ was Catholic speak for righteousness. There were many phrases and words in use by some traditions but totally misunderstood by other traditions.  And so a simple dictionary of vocabulary was compiled. Was this misunderstanding the fruit of Babel when people could no longer understand each other, and so became at odds with each other?

To elaborate further would take too much space, but the research is published in a book costing £25. The book: RECEPTIVE ECUMENISM, Making an Ecumenical Gear-Change, by Professor Paul Murray, was based upon the questions, answers and discussions compiled from the grass-roots meetings. The basic leading question “Ask not what do the other traditions first need to learn from us? But, what do we need to learn from them? ” became a focused listening and learning point.

The final two years of the research concerned the bishops, moderators etc., who were to review and discuss the findings of the people at the grass roots. The leaders of those nine different Christian traditions who had worked together for 6 years, refused to participate and fulfill the last section of the research programme. The book by Professor Paul Murray has been published without their participation.