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Controversy
Still Rages Over
The United States alone has more than 250 separate
denominations. Major ecumenical movements are aloot to
bring all dillering
and
conflicting sects
and
denominations
together. But what are the chances lor
success?
Will the
near
future
see all Christians united?
"HOLY
FATHER,
keep through
your own name those whom
you have given me, that they
may be one even as we are one,"
prayed Jesus Christ, the founder of
Christianity, just before His crucifixion.
Later, the Apostle Paul, in writing to
the early church at Ephesus, stated,
"There is
one
body, and
one
Spirit,
even as ye are called in
one
hope of
your calling,
one
Lord,
one
faith,
one
baptism" (Eph. 4:4-5). But is there
really
one
faith, body and baptism in
Christendom today? Hardly.
Today Christians are anything but
"one." The divisions of Christendom
are blatantly obvious for all to see.
With more than 250 conBicting, con–
tending sects and denominations in the
United States alone, church leaders
sometimes appear - aod feel - like
Madison Aveoue merchandise hawkers,
trying to prove that their "brand" is
better than the one down the street.
No wonder a "solid majority" of
by
Leste r
L.
Grabbe
Catholics and Protestants recently told
American Gallup pollsters they were in
favor of sorne kind of church unity.
Perhaps that is why the decade of the
60's saw more spectacular ecumenical
moves than any otber: Vaticao 11, Upp·
sala, Consultation on Church Union,
not to meotion the many small-scale
church mergers.
With the flurry of publicity over the
ecumenical movement, are strides really
being made toward
effective
church
unity?
Just what are sorne of the problems
involved - and how likely are they to
be overcome? Can we expect church
unity even in this century? Are
Protestants and Catholics - or even the
major divisions of Protestants - too in–
compatible to ever get together?
Perhaps even more fundamental is to
ask
how
and
why
did churcb DIS-unity
begin. Certainly the One who said He
would build a united Church is not the
author of the current confusion.
Wby DISun.ity?
If
the New Testament Church had
unity of belief and unity of Church
structure, why are churcbes
di·vided
over
doctrine and organization? Oid the
early Churcb "go bad"?
Protestants as a whole claim to take
their beliefs aod practices directly from
the 8ible. But there is little agreement
either on what the Bible says or what it
means.
The Catholic Church does not appeal
to the Bible alone but claims to trace its
history to the Apostolic Church. How–
ever, the present-day Catholic Church is
far ditferent from the Catholic Church
of Justin Martyr, Origen, and Eusebius.
And, according to church historians,
1ha1
early Catholic Church of the second,
third, and fourth centuries ditfered
greatly from the
original
New Testa–
ment Church of the first century A.D.
Notice what one church historian has
written on the subject: "For fifty years
after St. Paul's life a curtain hangs over
the churcb, through whicb we st rive