Journal of Ecumenical Studies
Contents of Volume 58 (2023)
Spring 2023 Vol. 58.2
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Annual Meeting of the North American Academy of Ecumenists
October 7–9, 2022
Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine In New York City
Introduction to the Conference: Ecumenism and Asceticism
Hiding in Plain Sight
Diane C. Kessler
The fruits of the ecumenical movement often are harvested without thinking about who planted the seeds, who watered the soil, and what ingredients are necessary to make the ground rich for ecumenical gleaning. The result: no "move" in the movement! The ecumenical impulse is not fruitful unless it is conscious, intentional, habitual, and embodied. This essay draws on insights from the study document of the Joint Working Group's Ninth Report, "Be Renewed in the Spirit: The Spiritual Roots of Ecumenism," exploring the relationship between and among interiority, intentionality, and action. It considers practices of prayer and formation that nurture these qualities of spirituality and how they enable the aim of the ecumenical movement to promote Christian unity for the sake of the world.
New Communities, Old Traditions: Dangers in Recovering the Shared Ascetical Heritage
Sarah A. Wagner-Wassen
The twentieth-century publication of works of ancient Christian desert monasticism and Eastern Orthodox texts had an influence on Western religious institutes, particularly in communities formed after Vatican II, to have a "new charism" to bring monasticism into conjunction with the modern world. One community in particular, the Monastic Family of Bethlehem, is examined here for how borrowings from ancient or Eastern practices resulted in highly problematic structures that violated the members' internal forum and hampered their spiritual formation. By analyzing the system of asceticism practiced in the desert, particularly by Evagrius, with the view that it is an ordered system to restructure the self through practices to create inner freedom, we can understand why the practices adopted by the Monastic Family of Bethlehem failed.
Stoking Ecumenical Embers of Holiness: The Asceticism of Exchanging Saints
Kirsten L. Guidero
This essay explores how the legacy of asceticism from patristic spirituality may be retrieved alongside constructive ecclesiology and studies in embodied cognition to enliven modern ecumenical methods. Asceticism concerns the transformation of humanity into divine likeness by learning how to encounter God in the world. The essay discerns the major determining features of asceticism in individuals before showing how these characteristics can be pursued on communal levels. An ascetic ecumenism works from the ground up to facilitate sharing models of holiness across ecclesial communities.
Worship as Ascetic Experience and Facilitator of Unity in Maximus's Mystagogy
Thomas S. Drobena
In his Mystagogy, Maximus the Confessor explored the ritual space and action of the church, especially how liturgical progression through them both reflects and realizes spiritual progress. In this framework, Maximus presented a picture of the church's shared prayer as an ascetic experience that both spiritually transforms the individual and creates unity among its participants. Such unity is not merely formal or performative but, rather, is actualized though a self-forgetting that occurs when participants willingly attune to a common worship and, in love, make the church's prayer their own. Thus, the Mystagogy presents shared prayer as a type and even a prolepsis of the willing and loving surrender of the self in the eschaton.
"Mekille Stirrede in Charite to Mine Evencristene": Julian of Norwich as a Resource for Ecumenism
Jason A. Poling
Julian of Norwich has much to offer to those engaged in the work of practical ecumenism. Her written works are animated by a profound love for the whole of the church and evince a firm commitment to the church's wholeness. Her ascetical theology involves the development of charity toward others by means of receiving the grace of God toward oneself. Julian developed a theodicy by means of persistent questioning, coupled with a humble recognition of the limits that such questioning inevitably run up against, yielding a generosity of spirit toward herself and her co-Christians.
ARTICLES
Receptive Ecumenism and Assent
N. Ammon Smith
This essay engages Cheryl Bridges Johns's call at the 2007 Global Christian Forum gathering for a death of the "old mainstream ecumenical paradigm" and the current strategies employed within the modern ecumenical movement. Taking up this call, it begins by exploring new "ways of knowing," for which Johns called, and suggests the epistemological work of nineteenth-century theologian John Henry Newman as being a seedbed for alternatives that will enliven the ecumenical movement. Particularly, it offers a Newmanian reading of Receptive Ecumenism in order to suggest that this new paradigm must include ecclesial and personal transformation through the practice of assent between churches. Receptive Ecumenism calls for a posture of learning and transformation by attending to the needs or "wounds" of one's own church and to seek new ways forward through the reception of expressions of the church of Christ, or the reign of God, found within one's ecumenical other. This essay argues that, beyond simply notional learning, Receptive Ecumenism, read through the lens of Newman, offers a path forward for transformation through its emphasis on real apprehension of the ecumenical other and the practice or application of that which is received with "dynamic integrity."
The Case for Grace-Filled Naturalism: A Dialogue with Edward Schillebeeckx
Roger Haight
This essay makes the case for grace-filled naturalism by entering into dialogue with the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx. It first shows that God's creative action places God within all finite reality in an immediate way. It then shows how God as Spirit can be identified with God's primary or creating causality. Jesus' divinity can also be understood within the framework of a paradigmatic concentrated instance of God's creating presence. This construction yields a framework for a naturalist spirituality of union with God, constituted by God as Spirit, and mediated by Christ that is completely at home in today's secular, scientific world.
Exploration and Responses
A Reflection on Josef Ratzinger: "Say Nothing Malicious about Our Fellow Humans"
Leonard Swidler
Book Reviews
Catholics without Rome: Old Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and the Reunion Negotiations of the 1870s by Bryn Geffert and Leroy Boerneke (review)
Joseph Loya O.S.A.
Process Thought and Roman Catholicism: Challenges and Promises ed. by Marc A. Pugliese and John Becker (review)
Robert Nicastro
Teaching the Shoah: Mandate and Momentum ed. by Zev Garber and Kenneth L. Hanson (review)
Eugene J. Fisher
Winter 2023 Vol. 58.1
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ARTICLES
Georges Dandoy, S.J., The Doctrine of the Unreality of the World in the Advaita (1919)
Daniel Soars
This essay focuses on a particular facet of Christian-Hindu engagement. Its context is the “Calcutta School” of twentieth-century Roman Catholic Indologists and their comparative explorations in Thomist-Vedantic theology. The history of these interactions has been written about elsewhere, and certain figures (for example, Pierre Johanns and Richard De Smet) are reasonably well known. Here, I look at one of the lesser-known members of this “school,” Georges Dandoy, S.J., and his monograph on “The Unreality of the World in Advaita.” I seek to locate Dandoy in the Thomist currents of his time and show how these currents influenced his reading of the Advaita tradition.
Thrown into God’s Arms: The Sacrificial Grace of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Robert B. Slocum
Dietrich Bonhoeffer encountered Aryan nationalism and racism with sacrificial grace and Christian opposition. One of the first and the very few to speak out against the Nazis and to follow through with active resistance, he resisted Nazi intrusions into the life of the German church and the impact of Nazi bigotry on Jews and others excluded from full participation in German society. During his time in New York City at Union Theological Seminary and at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, he witnessed the impact of racism in the United States. Identifying with the oppressed in both the U.S. and Germany, he said the church of Christ lives in all people, beyond all national, political, social, and racial boundaries. Offering an ecumenical vision of the Christian church that greatly transcends the Christian nationalism of National Socialism, he moved from academic and pastoral ministry to direct action against Nazi oppression by smuggling Jews out of Germany, using ecumenical contexts to spread the word about resistance to the Nazis, and seeking the overthrow of Nazi leadership. Self-sacrificing in his devotion to public activism, he saw that God’s love for the world and incarnational Christian spirituality could be expressed through political action. He expressed faith through prayer and justice, not in powerful religious organizations, and sought a future form of the church that might be unexpected—nonreligious in a conventional sense, but able to convert and transform. He consistently sacrificed his own safety to resist the oppression of the German people, while expressing the unity of faith and action in the world through sacrificial grace.
Agree to Disagree? Allowing for Ideological Difference during Interfaith Dialogue Following Scriptural Reasoning
Elizabeth M. Pope, Trena M. Paulus
Interfaith dialogue is a promising conflict resolution method and encourages participants to learn about and appreciate religious diversity. Yet, participants often need a facilitator’s help to learn how to converse successfully across areas of ideological differences, such as religion. A valuable resource for facilitators and scholars of interfaith dialogue would be intricate knowledge of how successful dialogue happens, particularly when participants disagree with one another. In this study, applied conversation analysis was used to examine moments of disagreement in interfaith dialogue. Beginning with abdicated other-initiated repair, participants expressed differences in opinion through assertion and counter-assertion sequences where they followed both other- and self-selected turn-taking patterns and used membership categories to bolster their claims. This analysis offers insight into how specific conversational tactics might lead to successful interfaith dialogue during critical moments of disagreement.
Neo-Perennialism: A Trap to Avoid or a Valid Research Program?
Christopher C. Knight
In a previous essay in this journal, I suggested that the kind of perennialism associated with the names of René Guénon and Fritzjof Schuon may—despite its obvious defects—remain relevant to our thinking about religious pluralism. Anything that seems to echo the perspectives of their classic perennialism is, however, often dismissed by scholars in the field of religious studies as invalid. Here, I suggest that this dismissal is often based on what sociologists call “recipe knowledge” and that a number of factors point toward the possibility of developing a more nuanced kind of perennialism. These factors include developments within the cognitive science of religion and of anthropology, which are reinforced by considerations related to psychology and sociology that allow a new appreciation of the notion of archetypes to be found in the writings of C. G. Jung and Mircea Eliade. All these factors, when viewed in light of empirical research into religious experience of the kind initiated by Alister Hardy, point toward the way in which religious experience is to be understood as a significant factor in exploring religious pluralism. In the “neo-perennialism” that I shall advocate, the valid aspects of current thinking within religious studies are affirmed, while, at the same time, the recipe knowledge that tends to distort judgments within that field is discarded.
The Broken Body of the Whole Christ: Augustine’s Totus Christus and Intra-Christian Ecumenism
Adam Ployd
This essay argues that Augustine’s doctrine of the totus Christus, the “whole Christ,” provides a fruitful starting point for ecumenical theology. The whole Christ signifies the church as the body joined to Christ as its head. I suggest that we must seek where else the body of Christ is manifest in the world, especially upon the cross and in the eucharist, to flesh out the ecumenical import of the totus Christus. In both theological moments, the body of Christ is revealed as broken, crucified on the cross, and fractured in the sacrament. Yet, in both breakings we find grace, salvation, even wholeness. The whole Christ, as it exists in this world, is always, in one way or another, broken, yet this broken body is no less joined to the one head who is Christ. A theology of ecumenism, therefore, can be drawn from Augustine’s totus Christus by expanding our vision of what the ecclesial body of Christ means in light of the broken sacramental and soteriological bodies. The essay examines both Augustine’s theology of the totus Christus and its original polemical context, which suggests the possibilities of the doctrine along with its historical limitations. In expanding the significance of the “whole Christ,” it also engages the author’s own Wesleyan tradition. For the broken body on the cross, it draws from Charles Wesley’s hymns’ imagery for appreciating the depths of such brokenness. For the broken body of the eucharist, it draws upon the liturgies of the United Methodist Church and concludes with a vision of the healed body of Christ that will be fully realized only in the eschaton.
Christian and Zen Contemplative Practices: The “Mysticism” of Evelyn Underhill and D. T. Suzuki
Taehoon Kim
This essay aims to analyze comparative similarities and differences found in Christian and Zen Buddhist forms of “mysticism.” Drawing on the works of Evelyn Underhill and D. T. Suzuki, it explores how the Christian prayers of Recollection, Quiet, and Contemplation can be paralleled by various aspects of Zen meditation, such as koan and zazen. The main comparative analytical tool critically adapts two connected but distinct methodologies from Donald Mitchell and Michael Washburn. It also draws on aspects of New Comparative Theology. While maintaining a critical stance toward syncretism, it argues that the mysticism of Underhill and Suzuki provides multidimensional and interreligious paths to spiritual transformation, contributing positively to creative exercises in comparative theology.
BOOK REVIEWS
American Christians and the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry: A Call to Conscience by Fred A. Lazin (review)
Eugene J. Fisher
That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart (review)
Glenn B. Siniscalchi
The New Diaspora and the Global Prophetic: Engaging the Scholarship of Marc H. Ellis ed by Susanne Scholz and Santiago Slabodsky (review)
Seth Ward
Peace and Faith: Christian Churches and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict ed. by Cary Nelson and Michael C. Gizzi (review)
Jonathan C. Friedman
Love or Perish: A Holocaust Survivor’s Vision for Interfaith Peace by Harold Kasimow (review)
Peter A. Huff
The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy by Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry (review)
David M. Krueger
