00:00:03.760 - 00:00:42.960

And so in this first lecture, I will explore some steps toward Christian unity to address these historic divisions. Steps being taken by reformed churches through a sampling of dialogues in the company of the Catholic Church, the Oriental Orthodox churches, the organization of African instituted churches, and then in greater detail, the Lutheran Church. very different experiences. I hope that those of you who do not belong to any of these denominations will nonetheless find these experiences provocative in thinking about your own church's ecumenical experience.

00:00:43.360 - 00:01:18.960

Your church is probably engaged in these dialogues as well. The Reformed churches also support regional and interdenominational councils of churches and also international ones like the World Council of Churches as forums where historical theological divisions can be confronted and steps toward unity taken. But the Reformed churches are also supporting an emerging vision of a forum which might be convened perhaps in the near future.

00:01:19.480 - 00:02:09.200

of all the major families of churches, whether or not they currently participate in the World Council of Churches. Such a forum would include mainline Protestants, Evangelical Protestants, Pentecostals, the Orthodox, and the Roman Catholic churches. Two, Christian unity has been impeded by limitations on women's roles in church and society. In the second lecture, The Partnership of Women and Men in Diverse Cultural Contexts, we will be looking primarily at the churches, within the churches, at emerging visions to overcome the broken relationships between women and men, toward realizing the biblical vision of a community where there is neither male nor female.

00:02:10.160 - 00:02:50.880

Every Christian communion must struggle with these questions from within. And I will speak primarily about the experiences of the reformed family around the world. It is tragic that today, just as many churches are confronting as a matter of faith, not just a matter of convenience, the need to bring justice to the relationships of men and women within the church, the issue of the ordination of women has become recognized as a church dividing issue between communions. Healing one division may, at least for a time, create another in the journey of hope toward Christian unity.

00:02:52.400 - 00:03:24.480

Three, Christian unity has been impeded by the growing economic chasm between the rich churches of the north and the poor countries of the south. In the third lecture, I will focus on visions of unity as solidarity of Christians in the countries of the north and the countries of the south in confronting the devastating impact of economic globalization on the world's poor. Here, we must resist the division of the church along the lines of economic status.

00:03:27.280 - 00:04:27.200

Now, let us look at the official discussions that are going on among churches as we look for ways to bring about greater visible unity. And I will begin with talking about the Reformed-Catholic relationships. The World Alliance of Reformed Churches, which Ellen has very helpfully described for you, has participated in bilateral dialogues with all the major church communions, and also with some groups not organized into world communions, like the Pentecostal churches. We have had periodic dialogues with the Catholic Church since 1970, producing published reports on the presence of Christ in church and world, the theology of marriage and the problems of mixed marriages, which was done together with the Lutheran World Federation, and the most recent, Towards a Common Understanding of the Church.

00:04:28.200 - 00:04:59.120

A very especially interesting feature of this last report was the attempt of each of the partner communions to tell its story of the history of relationships between Catholics and reformed people starting in the 16th century. Each group first tried to tell the story from its own perspective. Then they came together and discussed these reports and meditated on them and went back and tried again.

00:05:00.320 - 00:05:29.960

And the final report does not yet present a single story. It still presents two stories, but nonetheless entitled Towards Reconciliation of Memories, a process of beginning to confront, frankly and openly, the very way we experience our history together. And this, of course, has been an inflammatory history in many ways. But this is surely an important step toward...

00:05:31.000 - 00:06:05.600

moving toward greater unity. In other ways, our communions have been able to accompany one another in their work. For example, we have been grateful that Monsignor John Rodano has been able to be an ongoing ecumenical consultant to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches as representative of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. He has attended nearly all of the Alliance Executive Committee meetings each year for several years, so he knows us and our concerns very well.

00:06:06.560 - 00:06:46.240

His presence has permitted many helpful discussions of difficult situations. I think especially of the Executive Committee meeting in Brazil, where serious issues of church-state relations in Latin America were being brought to us by the Reformed churches across the continent. They were concerned about laws prohibiting divorce, which have resulted in an extraordinarily high percentage of children being born out of wedlock. Laws which require obligatory instruction in Catholic faith in public schools and other similar issues.

00:06:47.600 - 00:07:29.120

Monsignor Rodano and Cardinal Cassidy also attended the Alliance Worldwide General Council meeting in Debretsen in 1997 as ecumenical guests. I can assure you that in the spirit of reformed egalitarianism, they were treated exactly like every other ecumenical delegate, and I think they enjoyed the experience very much. In a new approach to collaborative work on issues that affect us all, In 1993, the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity sponsored jointly with the Alliance and the Lutheran World Federation an international consultation on Christian fundamentalism.

00:07:29.920 - 00:08:08.560

This issue of fundamentalism cuts across all of our traditions, and so coming together to work on this issue was a very fruitful experience. The Pontifical Council also participated in the preliminary planning for a consultation jointly sponsored by the Alliance and the Lutheran World Federation on ethnicity and nationalism, a challenge to the churches. Again, this is an experience which all of us are confronting. They were also represented at a consultation on the first and second Reformations, an attempt to look at the history of the Reformation from some new perspectives.

00:08:09.680 - 00:08:44.720

We welcome this approach to common work as positive and fruitful. The Pontifical Council for Christian Unity has also invited the Reformed family to share in new ways in the life of the Catholic Church. Sometimes we have been able to participate with adventure in faith and sometimes not. For example, we were invited to send a representative as auditor to the Synod of Bishops in Rome in 1994, dealing with the consecrated life and its role in the church and the world.

00:08:45.680 - 00:09:25.440

We sent as our representative Sister Minka de Vries, prioress of the community of Groschamps, a community of women related to the Tesse community in France, and sharing its reformed roots. Sister de Vries was then invited by the Catholic Church, in a quite extraordinary way, to prepare meditations for the celebration in Rome of the ceremony of the Via Cruchus, the Way of the Cross, during Holy Week of 1995. One of the Grandchamp sisters participated in those ceremonies. This was a very positive experience for both our communions.

00:09:26.640 - 00:10:02.400

We were also invited to be represented at the Preparatory Committee for the Great Jubilee Celebration of the year 2000, and to be represented at that event, which took place just last January 18th. The Alliance respectfully declined to participate in the Jubilee Celebration, though some other Protestant communions were present. It was our judgment that the connection of the event to the traditional Jubilee indulgences was in conflict with the recently signed joint statement between the Catholics and the Lutherans on justification.

00:10:03.280 - 00:10:29.040

We stated our difficulties frankly and assured Cardinal Cassidy that we would nonetheless be continuing our dialogue toward more visible unity. And indeed, a new round of conversation with the Catholics is about to begin again on the doctrine of the Church. The search to maintain theological integrity as well as openness to new visions, is difficult but essential.

00:10:31.360 - 00:11:01.440

Two, the Oriental Orthodox and Reformed Dialogue. After several rounds of dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox churches, a dialogue was begun in 1993 with the Oriental Orthodox, those who do not accept the Chalcedonian Christological formulations. I'm sure those of you who learned church history from someone else than Professor Babinski may even imagine that, once these people were declared... heretics, they disappeared.

00:11:02.080 - 00:11:30.160

But as a matter of fact, they remain very much around and a part of the world scene of Christianity today. With this group, discussions have taken place on the relation of scripture and tradition, which is obviously a fundamental issue for Reformed and Orthodox. In 1994, an agreed statement on Christology was produced. based on the formula of union of 433.

00:11:30.720 - 00:12:04.400

Now this should send you back to reread your history of the Christological controversies. But it's an interesting experience of going back behind Chalcedon to an earlier stage of the discussion and identifying the common ground we do have with these Oriental Orthodox Christians. even though we are not able to agree on the Calcedonian formulations. Now let me say something about dialogue with the organization of African instituted churches.

00:12:05.600 - 00:12:45.680

Last October, the first session of this dialogue took place in Rwanda. The two teams affirmed a common triune faith and affirmed the Bible as authoritative, though they recognized differences in interpretation. The focus of this first discussion was on their common commitment to serve the African people and their complicity in the economic and political injustices affecting Africans. They committed themselves to work together for social justice, including full participation of women in church and society and against militarism, the drug culture, and environmental degradation.

00:12:46.560 - 00:13:26.320

But there are many interesting questions which lie ahead for conversation. the members of the African Instituted Churches asked the Alliance to show for the moment a little forbearance, for example, on the questions of monogamy, indicating that it was a pastoral problem which would take some time for their churches to work through. So we see that there will be many issues to be discussed, but that there is at least a beginning place of common ground from which to begin. But now I would like to say something about our relationship with the Lutherans.

00:13:30.480 - 00:13:59.200

We need to look in greater detail at Reformed relationships with the Lutheran family. Theologically, the Lutherans should be the closest of our ecumenical partners. Yet for historical reasons, we may not know them as well as we know even Methodists or Baptists or Episcopalians. And so it's of special significance, I think, that we look at what is happening to our relationships with Lutherans.

00:14:00.400 - 00:14:36.320

In other parts of the world, rapprochement between the Lutherans and the Reformed has come much sooner than in North America. and it has come in quite a wide variety of arrangements. First of all, under the Leuenberg Agreement, European Lutheran and Reformed churches have declared themselves to be in full communion since 1974. So already for a long time in Europe, the Reformed and the Lutheran churches have had full communion, full exchange of ministries, and are quite accustomed to this by now.

00:14:37.360 - 00:15:21.280

At least one Latin American church has also ratified the Leuenberg Agreement, though for the most part it is strictly a regional arrangement. It is significant that both the Lutheran World Federation and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches include churches with historical or contemporary ties to the other confession. The Lutheran World Federation includes some churches not typically Lutheran, such as the Moravian Church in South Africa and the Evangelical Church of Pomerania, a German Union church with Reformed roots. The Basel Christian Church of Malaysia has in its roots both Lutheran and Reformed traditions.

00:15:22.560 - 00:15:55.280

There is still another pattern of union within the Lutheran World Federation, shown by an Ethiopian church, the Evangelical Church Mekane Jesus. This was a Lutheran church which was a federation of autonomous synods. And in 1973, the Presbyterian Church Bethel of Ethiopia was integrated into the Church of Mekane Jesus as two synods among the autonomous Lutheran synods of this church.

00:15:55.920 - 00:16:25.440

So there's quite a variety of patterns of union. Within the membership of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches are also churches stemming from both traditions. The Church of the Czech Brethren in the Czech Republic understands that it has embraced both the Lutheran and the Reformed traditions. The same could be said of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Togo in West Africa and the Evangelical Church of the Rio de la Plata in Argentina.

00:16:26.240 - 00:16:51.680

This last church in Argentina holds simultaneous members. leadership in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Lutheran World Federation. Other patterns of growing cooperation can be seen. For example, at a local level in Africa, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe and the Reformed Church in Zimbabwe use a common hymnal in the Shona language.

00:16:53.280 - 00:17:44.880

A milestone in the ongoing relationship of the two families was a world-level bilateral dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation and the World Alliance, completed in 1989, which produced a report entitled Toward Church Fellowship. This report reviewed the varied relationships existing between the two families of churches around the world, found that nothing theologically or in terms of polity stands in the way of full church fellowship and urged all the member churches of both traditions to establish full communion with the churches of the other tradition. This would involve pulpit and altar or table fellowship with the necessary mutual recognition of ministers ordained for word and sacrament.

00:17:45.840 - 00:18:41.440

The report also urged commitments to growth in unity through new steps in church life and mission together. Among these steps was a resolution of those international bodies to work closely together. bodies met last November to begin a three-year study of the next steps possible in closer collaboration. One of the first tasks of this working group is to update the survey of styles of collaboration between Lutheran and Reformed churches around the world, and also to look at the meaning of ecumenical commitments, what it means to carry out these

00:18:41.760 - 00:19:13.440

obligations, even though they are not a part of the constitutions of our churches. The next meeting of the working group will be in Brazil, where some Lutheran and Reformed Church leaders will be invited together to discuss possible cooperative ventures in Brazil. As we grow closer together, we inherit each other's relations. I am speaking now metaphorically of the ecumenical relationships which each of us has been establishing and cultivating.

00:19:14.480 - 00:19:48.560

The first point to be made is that in some cases, Lutheran and Reformed people have been engaged in ecumenical dialogue with the same partners. We have both had dialogues with the Anglicans, the Orthodox, the Roman Catholics, for example. The focus and the style of those dialogues, however, is sometimes rather different. As our Lutheran Reformed relationships deepen, we must look very carefully at what each of us has said to other ecumenical partners, as well as to each other as a check on consistency.

00:19:49.520 - 00:20:07.440

We do not expect identical voices in ecumenical statements from the Lutherans and the Reformed. We each have our own accents and perspectives. Still, we expect that together we can bring a Reformation voice that both can recognize as having an authentic ring.

00:20:09.360 - 00:20:44.640

We are celebrating these days in the United States, a new day of relationship of Lutherans and Reformed people. On October 4th, 1998, a formal declaration was made that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the ELCA, the Presbyterian Church USA, The Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ are now in full communion. In fact, of course, the three reformed groups were already in full communion with each other.

00:20:44.960 - 00:21:13.360

So the new relationship is between each of them and the ELCA. This declaration is the culmination of decades of conversation. beginning in 1961 with a dialogue sponsored by the North American Area of the World Alliance and the USA National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation. In the first two decades of the process, a wider spectrum of the two families was represented.

00:21:13.920 - 00:21:59.720

But along the way, the representation was narrowed to the four groups that now are present. Along the way, dialogue teams affirmed our church's essential agreement in faith, while noting the many distinctive accents or perspectives each tradition has given to Reformation theology. Some of these would be the Lutheran use of bishops, the Calvinist third use of the law in ethics, differing ways of expressing the real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper. That is probably the classic difference between us, but none of these distinctive elements was judged to be church-dividing by the 1980s.

00:22:00.160 - 00:22:31.840

the teams were also conscious that both Lutheran and Reformed people were deeply affected by their common engagement in the ecumenical movement, especially in relation to Roman Catholicism and orthodoxy. None of us is exactly the same as we were half a century ago because of our common engagement in the ecumenical movement. Yet the time never seemed ripe to move into a new relationship. but patience finally proved fruitful.

00:22:32.320 - 00:23:02.320

The formula of agreement produced by the most recent series of dialogues was strongly affirmed by the four participating churches with 81% of the vote in the Lutheran Church and near unanimous votes in the three reformed churches. Underlying the formula of agreement is the concept of the complementarity of mutual affirmation and mutual admonition. Let me quote from the formula.

00:23:02.720 - 00:23:27.840

Quote, This concept provides a basis for acknowledging three essential facets of the Lutheran Reformed relationship. One, that each of the churches grounds its life in authentic New Testament traditions of Christ. Two, that the core traditions of these churches belong together. within the one holy Catholic and apostolic church.

00:23:28.560 - 00:24:19.560

And three, that the historic give and take between these churches has resulted in fundamental mutual criticisms that cannot be glossed over, but need to be understood as diverse witnesses to the one gospel that we confess in common. A working awareness emerged which cast in a new light contemporary perspectives on the 16th century debates. The theological diversity within our common confession provides both the complementarity needed for a full and adequate witness to the gospel, that is, mutual affirmation, and the corrective reminder that every theological approach is a partial and incomplete witness to the gospel, that is, mutual admonition, end quote.

00:24:21.360 - 00:25:00.160

As I understand the import of this argument, we are no longer in a context where each feels the defensive need to persuade the other of the orthodoxy of our tradition. Rather, we are in a context where, in the first place, we affirm our kinship as authentic Christians and heirs of the Reformation tradition. In the second place, we listen seriously to the distinctive teachings of the other tradition and ask whether they may not serve to warn us against potential exaggerations of trends in our own, and to complement in certain ways our own teaching in a way which makes it richer and fuller.

00:25:00.960 - 00:25:35.920

And third, we acknowledge that the Church's action in making these promises to each other will, quote, challenge their self-understandings, their ways of living and acting, their structures, and even their general ecclesial ethos. The churches commit themselves to keep this legitimate concern of their capacity to enter into full communion at the heart of their new relation, end quote. On the one hand, our relation is safer now. We can be fully open and honest with each other about our differences.

00:25:36.600 - 00:26:07.360

On the other hand, we are not simply signing up for relaxed hospitality. but should expect our common life to grow and be enriched and to develop. New relationships between Lutheran and Reformed people in America present a challenge for three reasons, at least. First, though we have grown comfortable in our separateness, the gospel itself confronts us with the challenge to work for more visible unity.

00:26:08.320 - 00:26:32.640

Two, Though Lutheran and Reformed people have had close ties of many sorts over the centuries, many local congregations do not know one another. Three, we have urgent work to do which we can do better by sharing each other's strengths. We will grow together in grace as we learn to work and worship together and find our unity at the Lord's table.

00:26:34.320 - 00:27:01.200

Let's think for a moment first about this need for more visible unity. Any conversation about our coming together must begin with the Lord's Prayer that we may all be one. It is the will of our Lord Jesus Christ that we be one body, with all the members working harmoniously together. All of the members are not identical, but nonetheless they must work harmoniously together.

00:27:02.320 - 00:27:29.960

That our alienation from one another be reconciled. that we witness to our common faith and our love for God and for one another so that the world may believe. In North American culture, even churches like the Lutheran and the Reformed, with a strong sense of the catholicity of the church, have grown comfortable with denominationalism. It seems normal to us to live side

00:27:30.080 - 00:28:00.720

by side without a sense of interdependence. We have lost the sense of the scandal of the divided table of our Lord, which has motivated so much ecumenical work over the last century. In a culture dominated by Protestantism, we lack that motivation to unity found in Lutheran and Reformed people who live as minority groups in cultures dominated by Catholicism, by orthodoxy, or by other religions.

00:28:01.920 - 00:28:33.360

It will not be calls for greater efficiency or cost saving of cooperation which will motivate us to develop strategies for a common future, but rather the call of the gospel to witness to our oneness. Our theologians in North America have been reassuring us for three decades that we can come together faithfully in full communion. Nothing prohibits our mutual recognition of sacraments and ministries.

00:28:34.320 - 00:29:04.320

Where greater unity is possible in faithfulness, there is an obligation to the gospel to affirm that unity and seek to make it visible to the world. So the gospel imperative is a challenge to our present situation. A serious challenge to our progress in unity is the fact that, for the most part, our Lutheran and Reformed people in North America do not know one another very well. There are ways to explain this phenomenon.

00:29:04.720 - 00:29:34.720

We are separated in some cases by historical accident, by ethnic ancestry, language, and culture of our forefathers and mothers, sometimes by distance and geography, and also by the quite legitimate concerns to be faithful to our own traditions. We have sometimes taken different approaches to ecumenism. Reformed churches normally invite all the baptized who profess their faith in Christ to the Lord's table.

00:29:35.600 - 00:30:08.720

Some reformed churches have been members of COCU, the Consultation on Church Union, whereas Lutherans have been observers. Still another distancing factor has been our liturgical traditions. In the 16th century, Lutheran and Calvinist Sunday liturgies were both revisions of the mass and had much in common. The Continental Reformed Churches and their descendants in America, like the Reformed Church in America, maintained those liturgical traditions, as did the Lutherans.

00:30:09.480 - 00:30:54.960

Descendants of the Scottish Presbyterians in America, however, brought with them the somewhat different English-speaking liturgical traditions, which usually called for Sunday services of the preached word, but only occasionally services of the Lord's Supper. Only since the middle of the century have many American Presbyterians begun to reclaim their continental reformed worship heritage. I often hear American people say, that differences in ethos and worship between the Lutherans and the Reformed, especially the Lutheran emphasis on frequent communion, is the most powerful barrier presently dividing us, not our doctrines of the presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper.

00:30:56.240 - 00:31:29.440

To some degree, our distance is the result of unfavorable stereotypes and caricatures of each other that we have inherited. Perhaps to some degree, however, the lack of initiative to become better acquainted results from the fact that we know we are closely related. And so we seek out Christians who are more obviously different from ourselves for conversation and dialogue. As our dialogue teams have pointed out, there is very little in the way of mutual condemnations between us in our history to be reconciled.

00:31:30.200 - 00:32:00.320

Our traditions did not cultivate the sort of canon law process that produces official condemnations. In fact, there have long been some Union Lutheran Reformed congregations in North America, sharing a pastor and celebrating the sacraments together. Yet we find ourselves only in 1998 celebrating an official decision to declare this full communion among us. Some additional changes are coming in North America.

00:32:01.040 - 00:32:33.040

One significant change, I think, is that it is increasingly common for our theological students to attend each other's seminaries, and for Lutheran or Reformed seminaries to appoint professors from the other tradition. As a result, the next generation of our theological students will be more accustomed to each other. But still we have to say we have urgent work to do at the congregational level together, sharing our strengths. What are some of the tasks before us?

00:32:34.160 - 00:33:03.200

First, helping our congregations to know one another, bringing denominational level decisions into the experience of the grassroots. One of the common criticisms of the Leuenberg Agreement in Europe is that despite its beautiful theological work, Very little changed at the local level this may be partly due to the fact that many European churches are established. churches in rather homogeneous societies.

00:33:04.080 - 00:33:27.280

There are relatively few reformed congregations in Scandinavia, for example. This fact alone, however, cannot fully justify the lack of grassroots engagement. What could we do differently in the United States? After the publication of an invitation to action in 1983, the dialogue recommending movement toward full communion,

00:33:27.920 - 00:33:52.880

My Presbyterian congregation contacted the local Lutheran congregation. There was no animosity between us. We simply had had no contact. So in response to an invitation to action, we invited the Lutheran congregation to form a joint task force with us to study the report and make recommendations to our congregations about its meaning for them.

00:33:54.080 - 00:34:37.840

After six weeks of study and visits to each other's congregations, the task group had many more questions than they had at the outset, and much more enthusiasm for developing a long-term relationship. What did each team most want to learn from the other? The Presbyterians had been deeply touched by the richness of Lutheran worship, and especially by the beauty of the chant. and they wanted to learn much more about Reformation liturgics, they arranged to have their congregation's committee on worship and music meet with the Lutheran congregation on Sunday morning and plan for some longer term study of Reformation worship.

00:34:39.200 - 00:35:06.320

The Lutherans were impressed by the Presbyterian Congregation's Committee on Church and Society and its program of engagement with community issues. They wanted to learn how that worked and what resources could help them pursue such a program. So the results were modest, but nonetheless meaningful with long-term possibilities for growth together. We could broaden our experience of Reformation Sunday.

00:35:07.120 - 00:35:55.920

We could indeed sing A Mighty Fortress is Our God, and we could also sing Calvin's hymn, I Greet Thee Whom I Sure Redeemer Art, or a Genevan Psalm. But beyond Reformation Sunday, adult study groups might explore significant confessional documents of the partner tradition. Such a study would introduce the somewhat different way in which confessional documents function in the two traditions, especially the reformed habit of writing new confessions to speak to new situations, in contrast to the unique role of the Augsburg Confession in Lutheranism. Reformed people might start by studying Luther's Small Catechism, a very accessible and critical key to understanding Lutheranism.

00:35:56.880 - 00:37:04.960

Lutherans might study Calvin's Geneva Catechism, not so well-known but extremely revealing of Reformed accents in theology and, of course, intended for lay people. Another intriguing possibility would be to study together the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563, prepared at the time of intense rivalry between Lutherans and the Reformed by the irenic team of Caspar Olivianus, preacher to the city of Heidelberg, and Zacharias Orzinus, professor of theology, to help with reconciliation. This catechism has often been adopted as a confessional document by reformed churches outside Germany, and it functions in this way for both the Presbyterian Church USA and the Reformed Church of America today. I think Lutherans would feel very much at home with many aspects of its warmly pastoral approach, which is deeply indebted both in content and even in some places in wording to Luther himself.

00:37:05.760 - 00:37:46.000

suffused with confident trust in God, who created us and cares for us, and in the Christ who redeemed us and calls us to live in gratitude. One can see there the common roots of Reformation faith presented, yet with a characteristic Reformed accent and theological structure. Luther's Small Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism would make a fine set of companion documents for a joint Lutheran reform study group. It would be revealing to lay people to realize how much we have in common in our fundamental theological heritage.

00:37:47.880 - 00:38:20.900

An important message of the American formula of agreement leading to full communion is that we agree in essential things, and we recognize with respect and appreciation the special theological contribution of each tradition. We do not claim to speak with identical voices, but if we are to profit from the strength of each tradition, We must find a way not only for professional theologians to explore the two traditions, but also for our lay people to do so.

00:38:21.780 - 00:38:54.580

There is a challenge for pastors to lead lay people into these theological ventures with openness and respect. Getting acquainted with one another is important, but we have important things to do besides. Each of our traditions in North America continues to struggle with the fact that some of our more conservative kin are outside the ecumenical framework. For Lutheranism, there is, of course, the Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod.

00:38:55.220 - 00:39:30.820

Conversations go on with the ELCA again, but finding a united Lutheran voice remains elusive. Presbyterians have similar difficulties. The Presbyterian Church in America, the PCA, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the EPC, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church are examples of groups outside this agreement. PCUSA has undertaken to reopen conversations with some of these groups.

00:39:31.700 - 00:40:12.500

In our joy at full communion between the principal bodies of American Lutherans and Reformed people, we must not forget our ongoing responsibility to gather up our own families in reconciliation, a very necessary step toward greater Christian unity. We have urgent work to do in mission, work which can be more effective if we share our strengths. In every local community, there are unchurched people who need to understand the gift of the gospel, people we have not been able to reach. In every local community, there are other human needs not yet being met.

00:40:12.980 - 00:40:59.060

Food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, jobs for the unemployed, childcare for working parents, adequate public education, and medical care for all. Christ has taught us that we minister to him when we minister to the most vulnerable of Christ's brothers and sisters. As our communities across the country struggle to adapt to the new situation where welfare as we know it is gone, churches are being called to carry even heavier responsibility to accompany the poor as they attempt to become self-supporting. Even beyond our local communities, we face a world where everywhere the rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer.

00:41:00.260 - 00:41:53.860

As the report of the International Lutheran Reformed Dialogue said, quote, There is no area of life, indeed, in all creation, which does not belong to Jesus Christ, who sends us into all the world to be a sign of God's kingdom, and to preach and live the gospel of reconciliation in a common concern for justice, freedom, peace, and care for the creation, end quote. As Lutheran and Reformed Christians come to know one another as brothers and sisters of the Reformed family, as we work for further unity of Christ's Church, as we join in the struggles for justice and respect for the human rights of all God's children, we will be preparing ourselves for the joy of common worship and sharing together in the Lord's Supper.

00:41:55.540 - 00:42:50.220

I hope this survey does not limit itself in your thinking to just the groups we have been talking about, but rather may have stimulated you to think about new ways in which you and your congregation in your own situation can identify and support emerging visions of Christian unity. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Professor Douglas, for your words of wisdom and challenge to us as we think about Christian unity around the world in the context of our diversity. Now I invite you to our reception in the McCord Atrium, directly behind the chapel.

00:42:50.700 - 00:43:11.740

We will reconvene for our next lecture at 10:15. I also would like to remind you that conversations will take place with each of the lecturers in the McMillan classroom building down the driveway on the left, beginning today at 3:30 this afternoon. Thank you for coming, and we hope to see you back at 10:15.