BOOK REVIEW:
Growing Toward Unity. Edited by Elisabeth Slaughter Hilke, with a postscript by Thomas Dipko. LTH: Living Theological Heritage, vol. 6. Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 2001. 784 pages. ISBN 0829811125.

This is a remarkable and worthy anthology. The sixth in a comprehensive series of anthologies that trace “the living theological heritage of the United Church of Christ,” its subject is the drive toward ecumenical unity, which resulted in the union of four denominations—the Congregational, the Christian, the Evangelical and the Reformed—first into two and finally into one body, the United Church of Christ, in 1957.

This volume depicts the movement toward union as an arduous process that lasted for decades: involving raised and dashed hopes, criticism, resistance, theological and practical arguments and negotiations—both within and among all four denominations. This struggle occurred within the broader context of a global ecumenical movement, which produced organizations like the National and World Councils of Churches. All this is recounted through scores of primary sources that have been expertly edited and introduced by Elisabeth Slaughter Hilke.

Hilke does an admirable job of including diverse points of view: both those of famous figures in American Christianity (Washington Gladden and the Niebuhrs) and ordinary people in the pews. More space is devoted to the proponents of church union, but opponents have a place as well: “They’re planning to take your church,” argued the League to Uphold Congregational Principles in 1956 (645). While the editor does have a stake in the outcome of the history she records—she occasionally uses the terms “fortunately” and “unfortunately” in her introductions—she also invites readers to draw their own conclusions. While the purpose of this series of volumes is to increase theological literacy in the United Church of Christ, Hilke does so by informing readers with a variety of theological perspectives, not by indoctrinating them with a single rationale for Christian unity.

Thus, the volume raises many questions about the pursuit of Christian unity, some of which are highlighted in a concluding reflection by Thomas Dipko. Others are implicit. The most basic question that occurred to me is, why pursue interdenominational unity at all? Specifically, why pursue Christian unity according to the pattern established by United Church of Christ in 1957: by means of merging denominational structures? Why not take the more clean-slate approach that recent “nondenominational” or “post-denominational” churches have taken: creating new congregations that stand, or at least appear to stand, outside the boundaries of denominational traditions, and which seek to attract both the “unchurched” and people from all denominational backgrounds? This question becomes especially pressing as such churches continue to gain members, while mainline denominations, including the United Church of Christ, continue to diminish in numbers.

The anti-traditionalist, clean-slate approach actually has some support in this volume. The most obvious example being members of the southern Christian conference, who until 1818 destroyed their written records, so fearful were they of burdening future generations with past baggage. Similarly, the Congregationalist missionary Margaret Slattery, attending the Lausanne Faith and Order Conference of 1927, bemoaned its preoccupation with “The Past—a long gone past” (98) and with “forms and phrases, traditional shibboleths, fine shadings in word meanings … these things filled my soul with rebellion” (103).

This antitraditionalist stance presses a valid point. To pursue Christian unity along denominational lines is to hold a stake in denominations and their histories. Is this proper? It is if one understands the goal of ecumenism to be not only to unite individual Christians, but to unite strands of tradition. Such an approach assumes that the Holy Spirit is alive and active within the particular structures, beliefs and practices of denominations, even if those particularities have separated denominations from each other over the decades. It assumes that these strands of tradition can be reconciled without diminishing their creative uniqueness.

This latter approach finds support in this volume as well, in the nineteenth-century Reformed scholar Phillip Schaff’s explanation of the origin and purpose of denominations and their place in the universal church. While Schaff concedes “no schism occurs in the church without guilt on both sides,” he also says that such divisions have a place in God’s providence (295). Schaff celebrates denominational variety as an aspect of cultural diversity. He argues that even the most divisive doctrinal differences are necessary, dialectical expressions of a broader, mysterious truth, which “is many-sided and all-sided.” He anticipates a day when “Every denomination which holds to Christ the head will retain its distinctive peculiarity, and lay it on the altar of reunion” (297). This volume includes many such documents, which are fruitful resources for contemporary theological reflection on Christian unity.

David Torbet
Instructor, Religion and Philosophy
Mt. Union College, Alliance, OH

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, WINTER 2004, VOL. 4, #1.