Prospects for Ecumenism in the 21st Century

Towards an Ecumenical Theology of the Wilderness

By  Rev. Chad M. Rimmer

 

The Rabbi leaned back in his chair and said, "For us, Genesis is the story of a family history, growing through all of the stages - birth, discovery of self, adolescence, rebellion, adulthood, redemption." Rabbi Goldenberg and I had several conversations about the Genesis account of creation during the time of the evolution/intelligent design debate in Dover, Pennsylvania¹. I was serving a Lutheran parish that included many individuals living in the Dover Area School District, and I wanted to help them cultivate meaning in the contemporary conversation between theology and science. In order to do that, I needed to understand how Jewish faith communities understood the received text. I sought the Rabbi's help to articulate a faithful perspective on reading Genesis in a way that could yield prospects for new understanding in this new age. Rabbi Goldenberg had a great deal to say about the first two chapters of Genesis in light of the current issue. But in the end, he overwhelmingly reminded me that the first book of the Torah has a holistic, single integrity, with an original intent to describe not just the ultimate questions of the natural world, but the evolution of God's people growing through the stages of life as they tried to faithfully live within the oikoumene. The Rabbi reminded me that every individual, every family, every institution, every people with a purpose will grow and follow new paths diverging from our point of origin, as we discern more about the nature of our calling, and the living purpose of the one who calls us. And this is our story.

After six decades of infancy, growth, and maturity, the World Council of Churches (WCC) faithfully realizes that it is entering a new phase of life in a new millennium. This new age includes a generation of Christians who experienced nothing of the post World War II crucible that gave birth to the WCC from the seminal beginnings of the ecumenical movement. Much like the book of Genesis, the latest generation of our ecumenical family has received the ecumenical texts, the structure, the witness of history that has borne so much fruit throughout the 20th century. But as we grow along the path that has led us into the 21st century, we ask, what are the prospects for ecumenism that will yield a renewed ecumenical understanding in this new age?

Moving our focus from form to function:

In order to adapt to the changing global context in which we bear witness to God's reconciling work in Christ Jesus, the WCC has engaged in a task of "reconfiguration". Reconfiguration studies and mapping exercises² describe the relationships between different ecumenical expressions, from local/national councils, through regional councils and Christian world communions up to the World Council itself. The studies promote reconfiguring these relationships in ways that encourage efficiency, improve stewardship of resources, model visible unity and encourage local church bodies to commit to a sense of ownership and identity with the ecumenical movement. For example, the 2003 Antelias consultation on ecumenical reconfiguration recommends broadening, deepening, and strengthening relationships between "ecumenical actors" to ensure a coherence and effectiveness that renews our ecumenical commitment. These studies largely focus on reconfiguring the institutional forms of the ecumenical movement.

Right away, I want to suggest that we should first give thanks, realizing that the hard work of sustaining relationships between multiple layers of God's oikos is a result of good growth. We should not be too concerned that we are asking institutional questions at this point in our growth. These are surely the same questions that the 12 sons of Jacob asked when sustaining large households who had settled in a foreign land. They are the issues that Moses, Aaron and Miriam certainly faced when mobilizing a great people for sojourn through an unknown wilderness. Now that they had begun to realize God's gifts, they needed to discover how to faithfully administer that new life on a large scale. Growth that comes with God's blessing is a call to renew our way of life so that we can faithfully follow and administer God's gifts in hopeful new ways.

However, returning to the opening metaphor of science and religion, a study of evolutionary mechanics teaches us that as an organism adapts in response to new environmental parameters - form follows function. In other words, reconfiguring the form of an institution is only efficient, life giving and sustainable if it is adapting towards its evolving function. The body of Christ is growing in light of Christ's prayer that his disciples all be one. But we realize that the flesh and bones of our ecumenical institutions grew out of a context that has drastically changed within one generation. Now, 60 years from the conception of the WCC, we are facing a new set of questions and demands that stem from a "globalized" economy, new webs of power that are spanning old divides while marginalizing new segments of the world's population, and a new understanding of our calling to be stewards of creation.

This new global theatre, coupled with the embrace of religious and cultural pluralism particularly among the three Abrahamic faiths, provides a new vantage from which to glimpse the breadth of God's oikoumene. This new global, economic, social, environmental, cultural and political milieu calls us to administer the gospel in ways that the church could not predict. Therefore, when we talk about "reconfiguring" the shape of the ecumenical movement, we must not simply talk about adapting our form to ensure institutional sustainability on such a large scale. We must discover our evolving function in the context of our changing environment. We must discover the questions being asked of ecumenism in this new age, so that we can understand how our body needs to adapt.

The WCC was constituted for the purpose of embodying a sign of visible unity, and has pursued this sign through different models such as common calling, koinonia, and eucharistic vision. In their text Councils of Churches and the Ecumenical Vision, Dianne Kessler and Michael Kinnamon encouraged an exploration of spiritual ecumenism, and increased efforts towards an interfaith oikoumene. These models matured our theological rationales in concert with the widening of the WCC's theological umbrella, and provided new fruitful ways to express a trinitarian vision of unity koinonia and diakonia in a world that needed healing from the great divisions of the 20th century.

The ecumenical movement was born in this modern period. Modernism was a period of grand schemes and sweeping movements. Political systems swept over continents, industries incorporated local economies, and governments formed alliances against common enemies. Even the ecumenical movement was seeking broad theological concord to unite church bodies. Upstream, united bodies were the expression of meaningful solidarity. But as we slip into the 21st century, everything has changed. We have a new way of understanding relationships, and even our vocabulary about the world is changing.

Now, words such as global, eco-, postmodern, cyber, sustainable, virtual, or interdisciplinary are readily used to describe "the web of mutuality" in which we experience life and faith. Our children are operating with new systems of meaning. As we pass on our experience of faith and life, the value of our relationships is being interpreted through new rubrics of belonging.

Globalism and postmodernity give us new ways to frame our relationship to the other, and a new way to understand the value of those relationships. Some see it as relativism that deconstructs the truth, but actually, postmodernism only highlights the relativity of our perspectives. In a recent podcast from Emergent Village called "God beyond Metaphysics", John Caputo said that postmodernism is not relativism, but an attention to the details of human life³. Instead of neglecting the universals, he suggests we are attending to the realities of our individual perspectives on that which is universal. In my pastoral ministry, I have experienced that most Christians who have been formed in this new age are reluctant to associate with the great, modernist systems that swept over nations and continents. We are much less likely to identify a sense of loyalty to large systems. We are less likely to describe ourselves as conservative or liberal, and more likely to point to our independent political ethics. We are less likely to describe ourselves as pietistic or orthodox, and more likely to talk about our personal spiritual disciplines.

Some may relate this new system of belonging to a denominational drawdown from previous ecumenical commitment, even individual reluctance to identify with a denomination. I do not believe that this trend is a judgment on ecumenism, only a struggle to understand how one's personal experience of faith fits within the system - first at the level of denomination (or perhaps congregation), and only then can that experience be understood within the Christian oikos and ultimately God's oikoumene.

This trend can be interpreted as individualism. But I believe this emerging postmodern spirituality is personal, but not private. It is the broad communal search of a whole generation to find meaning by discovering one's personal place within the oikoumene. And I believe that ecumenism has something to say about this desire to interpret one's strand within the web.

While initially disorienting to our polities and pieties, I believe churches can nurture this pursuit even from denominational perspectives. We can provide a supportive, ecumenical framework to articulate this search at the level of the parish. Even now, ecumenical forms of worship and diverse spiritual practices are rich sources for new life at the parish level. But upstream, we must discover how this spiritual pursuit to find meaning in the mystery can help the ecumenical movement discern fruitful questions about our emerging function within this new system of meaning. Ultimately, nurturing new systems of spiritual or liturgical belonging may be the function that helps us find a reconfigured form that creates a renewed commitment to unity.

The WCC is instituted for the purpose of embodying visible unity. At its conception, that belongingness was an ecclesial balm for post-World War II divisions. Then the WCC adapted to embody visible unity that spanned the East/West divide. Currently, we are still adapting to embody a unity that can bring a North/South differential into balance. In the course of 60 years, the WCC has shown that it can faithfully adapt its unity to apply to contemporary models of meaningful relationships.

But our emerging global context keeps rearranging the boundaries of the neighborhood, widening the parameters of public faithful discourse, and redoubling the points of contact between the strands of our global, ecumenical web. Viewed through the lens of Kuhn's paradigm shifts, we are attempting to outline our ecumenical form by connecting the dots of a constellation that is morphing faster than we can make the connections. According to Kuhn, our old questions will not fit within the changing shape of a new paradigm. If the paradigm has truly shifted, then only new questions will yield answers. Jesus said, "no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins."

Perhaps our a priori questions of upstream theological concord are bearing less fruit throughout the ranks of ecumenism because we are truly in a new ecumenical paradigm.⁴ The WCC has adapted our function in the past, moving the goal of visible unity from theological concord, to common calling, to koinonia, to spiritual ecumenism, based on the way we derived meaning from our unity. Perhaps we now have a new system in which individuals and denominations may not derive complete meaning from simply being unified.

If we ask new questions about the function of the body of Christ in a new paradigm, perhaps they will yield the fruit of new forms. In the light of postmodern spirituality, we might shift our questions from, "What constitutes our unity?" to "Why do we need to be unified?" With respect to a globalized web of mutuality, we might shift our questions from, "How do we need to reconfigure our relationships to sustain unity?" to "What kind of unity will best administer God's healing to a broken world at this point in history?" If we ask the right questions, the answers will determine our function, and that function will determine our form. Then we will begin to see new meaning in the way this age is calling the body of Christ to faithfully adapt as it grows. But the question remains - how do we determine which questions will bear fruit for a living, sustainable ecumenism in a postmodern, globalized context? Hans Küng has written extensively about the way this new paradigm is calling the church to reformulate questions about its public witness with regard to economics, environment and basic human rights. He believes that we have been living in this new paradigm for quite some time.⁵

Küng and other interfaith and cultural leaders engaged in a conversation at the level of the United Nations⁶ have begun to articulate a vision for a global ethic of values that we hold in common with all faiths, cultures and classes. Many hope that such a pursuit will lead us to a united, global, human ethic of peace. Küng knows the ecumenical movement has a stake in this conversation.⁷ If the ecumenical movement is to contribute to a global conversation, then we need to have our oikos in order so that we can offer a helpful vision when we take a seat at the pluralized table. In terms of defining functional prospects for the future of the ecumenical movement, this is indeed a hopeful vision that calls us to consider what kind of fruit the ecumenical movement is cultivating for the next century. In terms of our advocacy, and diakonia, does our unity have the potential to lead towards a global ethos?

However, there are those who suggest that even with all of the ecumenical progress since World War II, the church is not yet ready to articulate that common voice towards a global ethic. In a 2004 dialogue between Jürgen Habermas and Pope Benedict XVI, who was at the time the Prefect of the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on "The Pre-political Moral Foundations of a Free State", hosted by the Catholic Academy of Bavaria, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger argued that while Küng's global ethic is certainly a noble and fruitful goal for the church to pursue (and presumably the ecumenical movement), he felt that the church was not yet at the place where it could find the concord to speak from such a unified perspective. He cited ethical uncertainties within cultural and moral expressions of faith as unresolved constraints. Indeed, achieving a high functioning ecumenism is complicated by the fact that many denominations are struggling to articulate ethical visions on various issues from within their own polities. Cardinal Ratzinger suggested that in the meantime, dialogue needs to occur between theological, social, scientific, cultural and philosophical disciplines in order to lay the foundation upon which such a global ethic could be determined. Indeed, he and Habermas agreed that the time (paradigm?) is right to make room for this conversation to take place, for the sake of making peace in our world.⁸

So where does that leave us? To summarize, in this new postmodern paradigm, ecumenism is growing from the latest working model of visible unity - spiritual ecumenism - and may be adapting towards the goal of discerning a unified Christian ethic that provides a compelling vision of hope in a pluralized, postmodern global ethos. However, while we are still seeking to understand the function of our unity within this global context, we have not found a form that allows us to embody that function just yet. This leaves us somewhere in between.

We can take heart knowing that God's people have been here before. We have been called to rise up and change the shape of our lives to follow God's purpose into a new land. We have followed that call of faith through unfamiliar territory and new constellations of meaning that have created new paradigms of faithful life before. Abram, the Israelites, the exiles, the holy family, the Magi - all called to live a life and faith by the unfamiliar waters of Babylon, Egypt, the Sinai wilderness, Trans-Jordan and Canaan.

While this essay will attempt to offer a suggestion towards the prospects for ecumenism in the 21st century, none of us can pretend to know where this will end. But my entire thesis rests on this assumption - to get "there", the ecumenical movement must adopt a faithful form that helps us journey through "the wilderness" of this new age. I am not going to propose new institutional forms for the WCC. Instead, I am proposing the need for the movement to embrace the wilderness. Ecumenism in the 21st century needs to be agile, travel lightly, and possess a willingness to get up from its established life to follow this faithful call through the unfamiliar new global paradigm that surrounds us, just as God's people have throughout faithful generations.

In some ways, the Council has acknowledged this calling in recent texts, not the least of which is "Towards a Common Understanding and Vision of the World Council of Churches". Paragraph 1.3 states:

As the member churches of the WCC seek together to discern the promises and challenges of a new century and a new millennium, the WCC and the ecumenical movement are passing through a period of uncertainty. There are signs of a weakening of ecumenical commitment, of a growing distance between the WCC and its member churches, and of a widespread perception among the young generation that the ecumenical movement has lost its vitality and does not provide relevant answers to the pressing problems of today.

We acknowledge the need to discern "the promises and challenges" of this century as we pass through this "period of uncertainty". However I want to suggest that this period is not uncertain. We should expect this. Throughout scripture, when God's people are called to sanctification, they are led on a sojourn through unknown surroundings and unfamiliar cultures on the way to becoming the new creation that God intends. God's faithful people have ventured into the wilderness with certainty, towards "ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown", not knowing where we go, but only that God's hand is leading us and God's love supporting us through Jesus Christ, as the vespers prayer reminds us.⁹

In the wilderness, nations are recreated, people are renamed, sacrifices are made, callings are discerned, spiritual acumen is honed, God's grace is revealed, and God's people are renewed. I do not believe that the WCC should approach the task of reconfiguration with a sense of uncertainty. Perhaps the new global, postmodern paradigm is unfamiliar territory leading the WCC to feel the need to reconfigure. If reconfiguration is a response to a perceived weakening ecumenical commitment we should be wandering in desperation, reconfiguring out of a fear for institutional preservation. But if God is trying to "reconfigure" us daily by our baptismal faith, then we should expect to enter the wilderness with faithful certainty that we will be recreated.

We should find our function by taking bold, faithful steps to create communities of faithful deliberation about our postmodern context, in order to discover the way that the gospel speaks a word of hope in these new systems of meaning.

To embody that purpose, our calling may not necessarily be ecclesiological concord for the sake of unity, but spiritual unity for the sake of discerning the pressing problems, and embodying "relevant answers for the pressing problems of today".

As Jesus approached Jerusalem, he wept, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes." (Luke 19:42) Time and time again, Jesus called the religious leaders of his day to step outside of their familiar structures so that they could administer peace, justice and agape love. I believe that the relevant answers we seek in this new paradigmatic wilderness require new ecclesial imagination to discern these ways that make for peace in a new world. This postmodern, global milieu is a seedbed for social imagination. The convergence of global culture, politics, law, science, arts, language and morality are part of the reason the territory looks so unfamiliar. But is not this the perfect storm that we need to discern new possibilities for the ways God is reconfiguring us to make peace in this new paradigm?

Jürgen Habermas and, then, Cardinal Ratzinger agreed that regardless of misunderstandings between secular societies and the church, the time is right for secular states/philosophies and theology to engage one another for the sake of finding sustainable rubrics for peace that have meaning within multiple disciplines.¹⁰ Besides, this generation is already out there in the wilderness, connecting the dots of this new constellation, weaving the strands of this web, and creating systems of meaning within this new paradigm with or without the church.

This sign will inspire "the young generation", to see the living body of Christ meeting them in this wilderness, and honestly engaging the pressing problems of today with the gospel of peaceful unity that we proclaim. This compelling vision corrects the belief that "the ecumenical movement has lost its vitality and does not provide relevant answers to the pressing problems of today." If we are to embody this compelling vision, then the future of our movement is a sojourn. For the sake of the oikoumene, we need this journey. If ecumenism embraces this pursuit, and meets humanity in the wilderness, then ecumenism can be the light, the salt, the streams in the desert that reveal new meaningful ways of speaking peace to the needs of the world. Our faithful pursuit will be the model of koinonia, diakonia, and martyria for a generation seeking to articulate the meaning of their faith within the web.

I believe this will be the prospect of ecumenism in the 21st century that will govern the reconfiguration of our form. We must find new ways to meet one another and prepare for this journey. I do not mean solely in the way of the Emmaus journey, even while eucharistic koinonia always remains the source of our nourishment along the way and our hope for the future, as article 15 of the ecclesiological text "Called to be One Church" reminds us. I am suggesting that the emerging ecumenical paradigm embodies an ecumenical theology of the wilderness.¹¹ And to develop a functional "Ecumenical Theology of the Wilderness" that can lead us to find new form, I suggest we glean from the central wilderness experience, the Exodus of the Israelites.

Faithfully following function

If the ecumenical movement is to function as a unified body on a wilderness journey through this unknown territory, we must learn from the first Exodus experience.

1) After leaving Egypt, the tribes of Israel united as one great body faithfully finding their way. However, each tribe had its own identity. There was a spiritual ecumenism that bound them; yet they each had their particular natures. The Levites had their duties separated from the other tribes, but they all travelled together. On the journey through the wilderness, they understood that their differences were not to be stumbling blocks or blessings. They were simply tribes with differences, travelling together towards the promise that God had in store for them. In this way, an ecumenical theology of the wilderness will make room for the fact that our call to unite for the sake of the journey supersedes our need to articulate confessional concord.

For instance, in the mission field where languages are unfamiliar or priests and pastors are not readily available, Christians meet willingly across denominational lines. In the international, ecumenical congregation of Copenhagen that I currently serve, the simple common denominator of language allows Christians of over 25 confessions to come together, and meet in our linguistic wilderness. Our different pieties, sacramental practices, biblical interpretations, manners of prayer, moral deliberations, and understanding of polity reveal different perspectives on the divine object of our faith. In the congregational setting, we are not burdened by the necessity for theological agreement. Nor do we shoulder such burdens when our churches meet one another on the ground to vaccinate children in Asia, dig wells in Africa, teach farmers in South America the ways of ecological sustainability, or help people in North America overcome destructive addictions. Networks of ecumenical Christians are not waiting for theological concord to engage science in the pursuit of technology that benefits life, the humanities to find wholeness, politics to promote freedom, and interfaith dialogue to find a common witness of peace. Out here in the wilderness of a new paradigm, quite far from our denominational amenities, we can journey with one another, learning about the breadth and depth of God who leads us towards the mystery that lies at the end of our journey.

The division that still exists between traditionally mainline churches which have been historically involved in the ecumenical movement and evangelical/free churches is still a source of great confusion for those looking at the church for a sign of hope. An ecumenical theology of the wilderness could free us to reallocate energy and resources from ecclesiological concord to diakonal deliberations that may compel other church bodies to meet in the wilderness, embodying a hopeful purpose for Christian unity within the new paradigm. Such diakonal deliberations, however, require vigorous theological engagement, the likes of which led to the birth of the ecumenical movement, in order to rediscover and appropriate the gifts that each of our church cultures offers to the whole. Like the magi bringing different gifts to the Christ Child, we need to meet on the journey with renewed theological exploration in order to understand how our theological, spiritual and liturgical gifts inform our individual approaches to the pressing questions of our age. By doing so, we can model the healing possibilities that united, deep theological engagement can offer to "the pressing problems of today". What is a more compelling witness to the gospel in our postmodern paradigm - an incomplete body defined by a clear ecclesiology, or a diverse body that is united in a common commitment to hopeful purposes in spite of differences? Perhaps our call to be communities joined in faithful, hopeful deliberation will bear meaningful fruit that calls this generation to come and see.

2) An ecumenical theology of the wilderness should also embody that part of the Exodus experience that realizes divine sufficiency. The WCC has been asking questions about what level of visible unity is "enough". And while we pray for the day that we celebrate visible unity in the form of full eucharistic hospitality in full realization of Christ's prayer that we may be one, we should realize that in the meantime, God nurtures us with enough. What is enough unity for growth and nourishment in the wilderness at this moment? We remember that some of the Israelites desired more than the share God was willing to give at that moment, and the extra they tried to keep spoiled. Should we expend extra energy gathering a bit more unity before moving on to the next stage of our journey, or is there enough unity for us faithfully to take the next step, trusting that God will provide along the way? An ecumenical theology of the wilderness would remind us of the manna. God will give us enough unity to nurture the body of Christ to meet the unknown steps of our journey.

An ecumenical form that embodies an ethic of "enough" would present a meaningful alternative to the excesses of our age. How does structural efficiency within the ecumenical movement reveal an alternative way for organizations to function practically without making excess demands on the environment, economies, workers and trade systems? How can our structure and polity provide a compelling model of Christian stewardship, justice and mercy to those seeking to bridge the ever widening economic and humanization gaps between classes, genders and races? Perhaps in this regard, a deep revisit to the outcomes of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC would provide a good model for reconsidering the ways in which our structure has the potential to reflect our organic, incarnate ecclesiological realities and models with sufficient sustainability.

3) An ecumenical theology of the wilderness should also reveal the connection between Sabbath theology¹² and the new demands of our global wilderness. The Sabbath, after all was given as a gift in the wilderness. We remember the hunger, the thirst, the worrying, the despair, the confusion, the reluctance that accompanied the Israelites. But we do not often recall the way the Sabbath gave hope and identity in the wilderness. The Sabbath gave the Israelites permission to rest and be recreated. The Sabbath gave God's people the vehicle to exercise trust in God's providence and refrain from the need to acquire. The Sabbath gave them the vehicle to exercise their trust in God and refrain from the need to overwork the land or their bodies. The Sabbath gave them the vehicle to exercise trust in God's control and relinquish their ownership. Walter Brueggemann¹³ reminds us that one of the central gifts of the Sabbath was the freedom for social imagination. In the wilderness, God's people were free from past social constructs that enslaved them, and they were free to discover how to reconfigure their social order, economy, legal system, relationships in a way that reflected God's call to be a light to the nations. In the wilderness, their new Sabbath function freed them to discover their recreated identity as God's people.

Embodying the Sabbath will yield great benefits for reconfiguring the WCC and the ecumenical movement in the 21st century. The Sabbath was handed down through the generations, received, but perhaps misinterpreted. By the time of Jesus, the Sabbath had become a burden. It was seen as an obligation, even keeping God's children from the possibility of healing on that day. Jesus was quick to remind the religious leaders of his day that the intention of the Sabbath was not an obligation, but a gift that set them free to be the instruments of God's peace. In the same way, Christ's prayer for Christian unity is a gift to the church. Now, many could interpret it as a command, which Christians must fulfill if we are to be faithful. However, if we understand Christ's prayer in the light of our ecumenical theology of the wilderness, we can rediscover Christ's will for this point of our journey. We can be released from the obligation of achieving unified ecumenical structures, and embrace our unity as the freedom to discover a new ecumenical social imagination. If we are freed from our need to embody structural unity, might we find imaginative new ways to be a united instrument of God's peace? Is not postmodernism searching for socially imaginative ways to understand meaning, identity and imaginative answers for peace in our world? The Exodus reminds us that if God gives a defining gift, we must not allow the administration of that gift to detract from its purpose of leading us to the new reality that God has in store.

A new social imagination is one great benefit of a functioning ecumenical theology of the wilderness, and can free us to realize a new form that we never could have imagined. The Israelites were re-formed as God's people with a new system of meaning, a new identity and a new law to discern the landscape along the way. If we are faithful to follow God into the unfamiliar wilderness of this new age by an ecumenical theology of the wilderness, we can be certain that a new social imagination for God's people will emerge.

Finding form in the wilderness

In a sense, we are already seeing the fruits of this new age in churches emerging from past paradigms of colonialism, specifically in the African context. Many African theologians are embracing new faithful imaginations. Theological voices from the African churches are beginning to share new visions of African agency, biblical hermeneutics, social justice, social formation, gender roles and new ways to articulate trinitarian theology, which could already help us to reorient our understanding of the way unity reflects the nature of the Trinity.

One such voice is Emmanuel Katongole, a Roman Catholic priest and theologian from Uganda, currently a professor at the Duke University Center for Reconciliation. He writes that in the context of the so-called "African Renaissance" (a new paradigm of culture, politics, economics, human rights, arts and identity within post-apartheid Africa), a new theological narrative is emerging to connect the dots and draw meaning in the wilderness. Already, Katongole suggests that we must move from the meta-narrative perspective to a Christian narrative on the ground. In other words, Katongole sees promise in the new postmodern attention to personal perspective and the place of the individual within the web of mutuality. He suggests that global economic and political meta-narratives run the risk of constructing new forms of exclusion, while the faithful antidote to this risk lies in collecting personal narratives of Christianity on the ground.¹⁴ Local ecumenical networks around the globe that do not necessarily fit within national, regional or Christian world communions are waiting for their stories to be woven into the emerging ecumenical web of meaning. By turning from the sweeping meta-narratives to discovering how individual strands of the web are creating faithful meaning in this new paradigm, the church can begin to articulate the ethical realities of life and faith in this new territory, and strengthen the web with imaginative connections.

Instead of ecumenism from the top down, an ecumenical theology of the wilderness can help us function according to a new social imagination from the ground up. Something like a Christian narrative from the ground up can be found within the field of Theopoetics.¹⁵ A theopoetical approach is based on a narrative methodology, which invites individuals or denominations to tell our story from within the emerging web, and adapt our form according to those stories. These new imaginative forms of constructing meaningful theology also reflect the postmodern spiritual pursuit.

In some way, the WCC study "Mapping the Oikoumene" discovered some of these adaptations already occurring. By mapping the content and development of relationships within the ecumenical layers, it found that promoting contextual activity at the regional and local levels helped those relationships adapt imaginative initiatives in response to evolving needs, as borne out by Israel Batista and many others in the report. They found that as they shifted programme decisions to increasingly local levels, levels of involvement and commitment to the national council increased, which was returned to the local levels to empower local partnerships to develop on the ground in more imaginatively faithful ways.

As I suggested at the outset, postmodernism may mean resistance to grand movements, but it also means a return to a constitutive understanding of the way one's faith works within the ecumenical system. By linking ecumenical formation with practical engagement, the ecumenical movement can nurture and equip individuals to lead their denominations with faithful, theological vigour from the ground up in real time ecumenical work that reflects our yearning for the pressing problems of today. An ecumenical structure that encourages individuals, networks, and denominations to bear meaningful witness formed by their own ecumenical experience can create a compelling web of meaning that invites people to weave their strand in this communal search for a faithful place within God's oikos.

Conclusion

If we faithfully and boldly engage an ecumenical theology of the wilderness, we can relinquish our obligation to construct the gift of unity, and be freed to follow God's gift of social imagination. If we are free to explore, then we can begin to articulate the function of ecumenism in this new context from the ground up. We can collect and codify our ecumenical understanding of ways that make for peace through a new form of theology, not by ecclesial concord alone, but with a theopoetical form of Christian narrative that empowers individuals to find meaning in this new postmodern paradigm, articulate their story and discern where it fits into the web of ecumenical faith active in the world.

I do believe that this vision of ecumenism will be compelling to a generation of folks wandering through this global wilderness in search of meaning and belonging. They will see an ecumenical network that takes shape around developing themes that hold constant throughout the global Christian village. From a dizzying constellation of global economies, unfair trade practices, environmental injustice, gender inequality and health crises, the world will see a diverse, faithful body of God's people sojourning through this new paradigm with a word to share.

That humble, truthful word of hope that resonates with the incarnational mystery of ecumenical gatherings … God is here. As the body of Christ we can walk the paths, engage the questions, discern the landscape from the ground up and find new ways to speak peace to this chaos.¹⁶

By a wilderness pursuit, we can reclaim the ecumenical purpose of our calling, which began with Abram and continued to the disciples. We are not called to have definitive answers but to be a light to the nations, so that the world will be compelled to come and see. In the wilderness, ecumenism is not a goal, but a way of being. I believe that this will be our collective witness in the 21st century, at a time when the world needs to see something meaningful develop from a vast, cluttered, global landscape. This can be our powerful contribution to the global ethic that may yet be in our near future.

For now, 60 years on, let us celebrate how far we have come, and embrace our "between time". Let us not just seek visible unity, but seek to be a united body that is visible in the wilderness, confidently seeking God's discernment towards the pressing problems of today, boldly embracing a new ecclesial imagination that will be a compelling invitation from God's people to live faithfully in the oikoumene, for the healing of the world.

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