From what international conference and what American speaker did these
comments comes from:
"Today, in the ecumenical movement, the institutional church is
accepted as the given, and the relationship between churches is one of
dialogue primarily about their past and present. We tend to forget
that the ecumenical movement was not born through such a process. It
was rather the work of men and women who did not accept the given
forms of the church?s life and work, but who dared to step to the
front lines of the human struggle of their day, to give individual and
communal expression to a new response, and to run all the risks that
this involved?In other words, the paradoxical fact is that the concern
for unity and mission which produced the ecumenical movement was the
product of what might be called sectarian efforts.
Today we face a situation in which dialogue and unity among those who
represent the given structures of the church cannot get at the heart
of our crisis in church or world. Today our hope lies more in the
creation of the new than in the unification of the old.
In the last few days, we have had abundant evidence of this
problematic in our discussion. ? Our concern for society ? for the
social structures by which man?s life is shaped ? has been strong for
several decades; but we now know that this concern calls for new
politics, which offers a possibility of overcoming the present powers
of domination and creating new institutions in a new social order?
Where then lies our hope? In the possibility we have to make room
for the emergence of the new in our midst ? to allow constant
experimentation; to work for the creation and strengthening of those
new forms which call our thought, structures, and programs into
question, and then to confront them in such a way that we will not be
allowed to remain at peace with ourselves. |
