United and Uniting  🔗 **Source:** [United and Uniting]() ## Highlights - recovery of the vision is inevitably accompanied by a new appreciation of foundations that are not of our own making but upon which we have been privileged to build. ([Location 135](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=135)) - Tags: aqua - the need to be understood as well as to understand ourselves as Christ’s church requires that we acknowledge and accept that history ([Location 139](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=139)) - Tags: aqua - the historical context provided by the ecumenical movement keeps our perspectives of understanding in a universal, wholistic framework that counters the new parochialism in American church life. ([Location 144](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=144)) - Tags: aqua - the framework of understanding gained from the modern ecumenical movement yields critically important perspectives on the place of the church in the fulfillment of God’s mission in the world. ([Location 151](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=151)) - Tags: aqua - United as identity, and uniting as vocation have meaning that derives from two major sources: first, the imperative and character of Christian unity as interpreted in the New Testament; and, second, the story of modern ecumenism in which the imperative of Christian unity has gained new significance in a fragmented world. ([Location 182](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=182)) - Tags: aqua - “Calvinian, Lutheran, Wesleyan, Zwinglian and left-wing theological perspectives are not only indicated in the historical development of these [strands] but are clearly identifiable in the congregations of the United Church today.” ([Location 373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=373)) - Tags: aqua - the need to devise a viable form of the visible church that would express the unity of God’s people. ([Location 460](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=460)) - Tags: aqua - Confronting the divisions and hostilities of our world, and hearing with a deepened sense of responsibility the prayer of our Lord “that they all may be one”; ([Location 495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=495)) - Tags: aqua - The first consequence of the subordination of doctrinal differences to the goal of Christian unity through church union was an all-pervasive tendency during the first two decades of UCC history to neglect, and perhaps even avoid, ecclesiological questions. ([Location 505](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=505)) - Tags: aqua - both uniting bodies had more than two hundred years of experience in concentrating on issues of personal and individual faith but relatively little occasion to question the nature of the church.7 ([Location 508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=508)) - Tags: aqua - The second consequence of the practice of subordinating doctrinal differences was the increasing dominance of a social activism that often lacked clearly articulated theological grounding and consistent development. ([Location 517](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=517)) - Tags: aqua - “Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church unite in the United Church of Christ without break in their respective continuities and traditions.” ([Location 521](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=521)) - Tags: aqua - A foundational faith, that is, “a common basis of faith.” ([Location 808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=808)) - Tags: aqua - In fulfillment of its responsibility to its “sister” united churches, as well as to itself, the UCC has before it an unfinished task. Making the “historic faith its own” is a consequence only if each generation is involved in “unraveling the web of our beliefs.” ([Location 841](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=841)) - Tags: aqua - A covenanted commitment—“full commitment to one another.” To speak of full commitment to one another in a united church as covenanted commitment is to underline “the intrinsic mandate of Christianity,” which is “to share the claims of the other.”12 To live in covenant is to live for the sake of the other in a relationship where commitment is defined in the Christocentric terms of trust, love, and obedience. ([Location 846](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=846)) - Tags: aqua - they characterize a subversive ecclesiology in deep conflict with our conventions. It is important to see how extensively our usual notions of community are refuted here—notions which are either of communities of fate (into which we are locked without choice) or of convenience (in which we have no serious or abiding stake). Against both of these, we are to have a called community—not a voluntary association, but a people addressed and bound in a concrete and abiding loyalty.16 ([Location 876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=876)) - Tags: aqua - the inclusion of a constitutional provision that effectively limits accountability in the UCC. ([Location 886](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=886)) - Tags: aqua - A shared identity—which is accompanied by the “readiness to give up separate identities.” Organic unity raises the question of identity to existential levels. ([Location 896](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=896)) - Tags: aqua - The UCC Basis of Union clearly acknowledged that the faith communities known as Congregational Christian and Evangelical and Reformed would have to die in order that Jesus’ prayer could be fulfilled, “that all may be one.”* ([Location 900](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=900)) - Tags: aqua - The surrender of an identity is a subtle and complex process not only for individuals but also for organized communities. ([Location 903](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=903)) - Tags: aqua - “unity in Christ leaves no room for any autonomy of tradition, culture, ethnicity, race, class, sex, politics (or anything else that we call ’Christian pluralism’) by which we justify our divisions.”18 It is, then, the autonomy of diverse elements of identity that must be challenged and surrendered in a united church. For the UCC this aspect of identity poses problems deeply rooted in history. Diversity is one of its most, perhaps the most, remarked identifying characteristics. ([Location 905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=905)) - Tags: aqua - The experience of that oneness may be diverse, but the identifying mark is oneness, not diversity. ([Location 917](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=917)) - Tags: aqua - Absolutized diversity easily surrenders to a dogmatic pluralism that has become a distinguishing feature of our so-called postmodern culture. As a “prescriptive belief system”20 pluralism effectively denies the reality of the unity of God’s oikumene. Diversity as a cherished gift of God may contribute to the fullness of the experience of unity. ([Location 918](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=918)) - Tags: aqua - To surrender an identity is not to discard it but to subordinate it in the service of a new and larger identity.* ([Location 925](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=925)) - Tags: aqua - Church union, therefore, is always a confession that the divisions healed in the uniting of two or more church bodies had their roots in human proclivities that make it difficult if not impossible for the world to believe. ([Location 930](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=930)) - Tags: aqua - Organic union cannot exist if openness is ruled out in advance. ([Location 940](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=940)) - Tags: aqua - interconfessional dialogue; expanding and intensified faith and order studies and consultations; and sharing in the exploration of a conciliar mode of church unity. ([Location 1082](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=1082)) - Tags: aqua - proposal to explore the establishment of a “united church, truly catholic, truly evangelical, truly reformed,”5 thus clearly giving priority to “faith and order” issues as foundational matters in union. ([Location 2086](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2086)) - movement-oriented rather than institution-oriented. ([Location 2177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2177)) - Feminist goals especially gave a new orientation to consideration of theological issues couched in traditional terms. ([Location 2188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2188)) - The faith which unites us and to which we bear witness is that faith in God which the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments set forth, which the ancient Church expressed in the ecumenical creeds, to which our spiritual fathers gave utterance in the evangelical confessions of the Reformation, and which we are duty bound to express in words of our time as God Himself gives us light. In all our expressions of faith we seek to preserve unity of heart and spirit with those who have gone before us as well as those who now labor with us.* ([Location 2237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2237)) - more characteristically religious, the other more secular: pietism and the Enlightenment. ([Location 2280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2280)) - free church adherents today tend to fail the moral obligations of their history. The result is a form of idolatry that expresses “the glorification of the human individual and the apotheosizing of the intimate fellowship to which he belongs.” ([Location 2303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2303)) - the objective was to overcome the severely inhibiting aspects of the traditional denominational form of church life. ([Location 2476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2476)) - The temptation to draw back and seek a return to less demanding ways of fulfilling the requirements of unity is always present. ([Location 2494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2494)) - Learning to be accountable to Christ and Christ’s Body requires a radical transformation for which many may not be ready. ([Location 2496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2496)) - United churches have contributed invaluable experience to the entire ecumenical movement by demonstrating the possibilities in living toward unity.4 They exhibit the reality that theological consensus is not an absolute precondition of union but the continuing, and potentially exhilarating, task of the community of faith living under the power of the gift of unity. ([Location 2498](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2498)) - Freedom to fulfill the responsibilities of fellowship under the lordship of Christ is a freedom never to be won or claimed; it is the gift of a gracious God in whose love humans need not justify themselves nor claim their rights. ([Location 2535](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2535)) - autonomy understood not as independence but as responsibility for self-rule in the awareness that in Jesus Christ all are one body in communion with him and with one another. ([Location 2541](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2541)) - Quite apart from the magnitude and complexity of such an effort, the baffling reality is that UCC organizational structure lacks a binding principle of accountable unity. Full communion, dependent on a local-church-by-local-church-decision process, appears as an absurdity when considered in practical and logistical terms. ([Location 2689](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2689)) - understanding. In a society in which the basic form of organization is voluntary, the church as an organized body not only is the beneficiary of the particular humanistic values of the voluntary association model of society but also is subject to its weaknesses and potential distortions.39 ([Location 2813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2813)) - 6 It is in the God-given koinonia in and with Christ that authority, responsibility, and accountability become expressions of true freedom. ([Location 2943](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=2943)) - This relationship is communion—koinonia—in which freedom flows from responsibility. ([Location 3008](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=3008)) - affirmation of the autonomy of the local church becomes a “red flag” in ecumenical relationships. Where is the church—as Christ’s koinonia—in the so-called United Church of Christ? Because it does not take autonomy seriously in a covenantal mode, the UCC undercuts the creative potential its ecclesial model has in this ecumenical age. ([Location 3077](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=3077)) - Empowerment is given by the community of faith for the meeting of its needs. It is a functional perspective. Embodiment characterizes a ministry based on God’s call in which divine gifts are provided for ministering, that is, for “building up the body of Christ. ([Location 3170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084YSX2C2&location=3170))