Ten Ideas for Saving the Planet - Open Horizons

Ten Ideas for Saving the Planet - Open Horizons



Ten Ideas for Saving the Planet

by John B. Cobb, Jr.
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​1. Reality is composed of interrelated events.

2. There are gradations of intrinsic value.

3. God aims at maximizing value.

4. Humans are uniquely (but by no means exclusively) valuable and uniquely responsible.

5. Education is for wisdom.

6. The economy should be directed toward flourishing of the biosphere.

7. Agriculture should regenerate the soil.

8. Comfortable habitat should make minimal demands on resources.

9. Most manufacturing should be local.

10. Every community should be part of a community of communities.

​We live on a small planet orbiting a medium-sized star in a middle-sized galaxy. Long after we have destroyed so much life on our planet, Earth will continue in its orbit. We need not and cannot save the planet. We can simply be awed by the fact that, for a moment in cosmic history, we are small but included in a larger multi-galactic journey.

But in our time cosmic awe is not enough. It has never been enough. There is also biophilia, a more intimate appreciation of life on earth, including human life. Not only in its generality but in its particularities. It is the beauty and diversity of life on our planet that needs saving; and it is we who need saving, too. We need to be saved from our actions that do so much harm to life on earth and to ourselves. Can we find the wisdom? Can we hear the call to live with respect for one another and for the rest of life? Or is it too late?

Forty years ago I didn't think it was too late. I was developing a Christian theology influenced by the philosophy of Whitehead, and I was challenged by my children and others to address environmental issues. I realized that theology must be eco-theology if it is to be helpful to how we live in the world. The world, after all, is not simply a human world. It is a web of life.

Accordingly I wrote a book called Is It Too Late?, in which I developed the idea that, despite trends to the contrary, we might avoid destroying the life-support systems on which we and other living beings depend.

It was a hopeful book and in some ways I am a hopeful person. As a Christian I believe that God is present throughout the universe and in our planet through fresh possibilities, even when it seems too late for hope. I believe that inspiration within and beneath the creativity of the universe is divine. My hope is also inspired by the poignancy and beauty of the world itself: the poignancy and beauty of the natural world and of people, too, who are within and part of the natural world. We humans have the unique responsibility to protect one another and the rest of the natural world. We are beckoned by God to be caretakers.

But the powers of God are not absolute. God cannot reverse the past or manipulate the present like a puppeteer. God's power is that of persuasion not coercion, of love not manipulation. In many ways it is too late. Too much has been lost. Too much is being lost. The poor are the first to suffer.

We must be honest. We live in a terrible time. We know that our actions are destroying the ability of the Earth to support us, but we seem incapable of changing direction. We plunge blindly ahead, either ignoring the reality of what is happening or hoping that some technological miracle will save us. It will not. The modern world has overshot the limits of what the Earth can bear, and our civilization will collapse. The crucial questions now are (1) how much will be left, and (2) can we build something more sustainable in the ruins?

One reason we behave so badly is that the modern world has a misleading understanding of the nature of reality. What is mis-leading leads astray, and humanity collectively has been led far, far astray. Without a better understanding, the answers to the questions above will be (1) “very little” and (2) “probably not.” Those of us who have had good fortune to encounter a better way of understanding the world have a profound responsibility to share it.

For my part, I find the philosophy of Whitehead a better way. His philosophy of organism or process philosophy can help integrate the best of ecological thinking and the best of humanistic thinking, and it does to in a way that brings together scientific, religious, ethical and artistic insights. Like a small but growing number of people in our world, I am a Whiteheadian. This does not mean that I agree with everything Whitehead says, but it does mean that, like others, I think in a Whiteheadian mode.

In general our efforts to share the Whiteheadian approach have not been heard because most people have been satisfied with what they had or else convinced that there is no alternative. But today more people have come to see the insanity of our behavior and wonder whether there may be another way. My task is to sketch the better understanding and its more promising implications in ten points. I hope the ideas might be helpful.

1. Reality is composed of interrelated events.

The modern world settled on a view of nature modeled on a clock. The great medieval clocks not only gave the time but also, some of them, on the hour, provided a show composed of moving figures that appeared lifelike. This suggested that living things could ultimately be explained along with inanimate objects as complex mechanisms. The task of science was to discover this mechanism. The whole world consists, in this vision, of objects in motion. Science based on this model learned a great deal about the world, a very great deal.

The main point that gave it pause was that we humans, including the scientists themselves, did not fit readily into the world of objects operating according to mechanical laws. The founder of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes, was clear that human thinking was something very different from this world of objects. Alongside matter, he posited mind as a fundamentally different kind of entity. By limiting mind to human beings, he left the rest of the world to mechanistic science.

For practical purposes most moderns are dualists. When scientists experiment, make new discoveries, and formulate new principles, they do not really suppose that they are in fact doing so as part of the mechanical world that they study. But to consider themselves radically different from the rest of the world, including their own bodies created theoretical problems that deeply troubled subsequent philosophers.

The success of mechanistic science led to enormous confidence on the part of many that it could encompass even human experience in its domain. Evolutionary theory showed that human beings developed by gradual stages out of pre-human beings that were much like the other animals. This made it difficult to continue to affirm a radical difference between the human mind and everything else. The currently dominant version of modern thought theoretically affirms that all reality can be explained mechanistically.

Mechanistic thought is generally atomistic. The atoms are understood to be tiny bits of matter that cannot be analyzed into smaller bits. These atoms are thought to move and to cluster together, and all the complex entities studied by science are thought to be explained by these clusterings and movements. In such a world, qualities and values, feelings and beliefs, hopes and purposes play no causal or explanatory role. They are, at most, epiphenomenal. That is, they occur, but only as adjuncts to what is truly real.

In addition to the problem of fitting actual human experience into this world of objects in motion, this worldview experienced another shock. It turned out that what had been called atoms were not atomic. That is, they could be broken up into smaller entities. These subatomic entities did not behave in ways that science understood little lumps of matter should behave. Nor were they as independent of one another as little lumps of matter should be. They even seemed to relate to each other when spatially separated in ways that were generally forbidden by the principles of mechanistic science. The general response of science has been to retain its basic understanding and regard these problems, like those with human experience, as anomalies that will eventually be explained.

However, another response is possible. When evolutionary theory showed that human experience and thought are part of the natural world, some thinkers declared that nature is richer and more complex than the dominant model allowed. If human beings have feelings and hopes and purposes, then it seems likely (1) that their animal ancestors also had something of this sort and (2) that other animals today also share them. Perhaps to be part of nature does not mean to be only an object for human experience. Nature seems to possess experiential characteristics in itself. Quite remarkably and surprisingly, what scientists have found about the subatomic world fits better with a nature that has experiential characteristics than with a purely material one.

Perhaps science as we know it is forced to ignore this feature of nature. But if so, it should be very clear that much of what is most important about the world it studies is excluded from its grasp. Scientists should be careful not to treat their findings as exhaustive of the natural world. Alternately, perhaps science might free itself from subservience to the model derived from medieval clocks. Perhaps a different model would be able to include all the data.

Those who follow Whitehead adopt the latter alternative. To begin with, he proposes that we shift away from supposing that reality consists most fundamentally of things that endure through long periods of time. This is the idea of material substances. We actually have no idea what these can be, and philosophers have pointed out that they are posited as a convenience but with no actual evidence. Another approach is to imagine that the world is made up of events. There are great big events like wars or elections. These can be analyzed into many, many smaller events, ultimately into moments of animal experience, on the one side, and quantum events, on the other. These are examples of the indivisible events out of which the big ones are composed.

A moment of human experience is an event, and it is this event that we are in best position to analyze. Of course, it has many features that we would assume are absent in subatomic events, such as abstract thought and consciousness. But Whitehead discerns other features that may be shared with all events. It comes into being as the synthesis of elements of preceding events. It becomes a contributor to the events that lie beyond it. It participates in the act of its own becoming, so that if we explain why the event happens just as it does, the event must be included as one of its own causes.

This means the event is a subject in its own becoming as well as an object for future events. It is a subject both in that it is acted on and in that it acts both in its own becoming and in future events. As a subject, it has subjective characteristics. Whitehead proposes that it is primarily appetitive and emotional. It aims to achieve an emotional state that is satisfying. Whereas in the mechanistic worldview each entity is external to every other entity, Whitehead’s events are largely characterized as including features of past entities, and each event participates in constituting future events. Internal relations are primary.

Whitehead does not question that there is a distinction between the physical and the mental. But he holds that there are no events that are purely physical and none that are purely mental. Every event is in part physical. This means that it inherits much from its past. Every event is in part mental. This means that it includes possibilities among which it chooses.

For many of us who have studied both the dominant conceptuality underlying most modern science and Whitehead’s philosophy, it becomes impossible to doubt that Whitehead’s thought is more inclusive of the evidence. It has been adopted by a scattering of scientists in various fields. But most scientists want to pursue their research in the patterns to which they have been socialized. As long as they can develop new data in the established ways, they have no interest in considering a different approach. Our argument is that continuing in the present pattern underlies the many practices and policies that are leading toward a disaster of unimaginable proportions. There is very good reason for considering an alternative.

2. There are gradations of intrinsic value.

When we ask about how valuable something is, we often mean how useful or beneficial it is to human beings. This is an important question. Economists believe that they can provide the answer by the price that people pay for it in the market. They recognize, of course, that although we pay nothing for the air that we breathe, this is more important to us than the diamonds whose price is very high. To deal with this they have introduced more complex theories that take account of relative scarcity. But however we decide the value, we are talking about “instrumental” value, that is, how much something is worth to us.

But assigning instrumental value to something is meaningful only if that for which it is a value has another kind of value. If it improves the quality of a human life, adding enjoyment, for example, we take this as worthwhile in itself. Human enjoyment is not valued primarily in terms of how it contributes to something beyond itself. It is valuable in and of itself. It has “intrinsic” value. Of course, a person’s enjoyment may also have instrumental value. It may contribute to that of another.

Almost by definition value is what we aim to increase. In the extreme instance, one may seek the increase only of the immediately becoming experience. In creatures like us, however, where there is a high degree of continuity from one experience to the next, there is concern for the intrinsic quality of the experience of succeeding events as well. Among many animals there is concern for infants and perhaps for other members of a group. Among human beings the breadth of concern for the increase of intrinsic value can be almost unlimited.

Enjoyment is a subjective state. A scientist may discover physical correlates of this state and indeed claim that subjective feelings are the byproduct of physical occurrences. But simply as physical occurrences, they have no intrinsic value. The idea of intrinsic value is bound up with the subjective world to which the dominant scientific worldview allows no real role in what happens. And where there is no intrinsic value, there is no instrumental value either. In principle, when one fully adopts the scientific worldview, one arrangement of physical objects is not better or worse than any other. Practically speaking, most scientists are dualists on this point. While for scientific purposes they may dismiss values altogether, for personal life, they care about their own comfort and about the wellbeing of others as well.

Whitehead’s thought contrasts dramatically with this value-free universe. For Whitehead every event is a subject as it happens, and every mode of subjective being has value in and for itself. Every event has, one might say is, an intrinsic value. Of course, this intrinsic value also has instrumental value for future occasions.

Indian thought has been most attentive to the intrinsic value of things other than human beings. The line of proper concern is usually drawn at the limits of sentience or the limits of life. The Jains go the furthest in seeking not to destroy creatures with intrinsic value. In the West, Schweitzer is famous for this teaching of reverence for all life. There is a sharp contrast between the common Western indifference to the destruction of living things other than human beings and having concern for every living thing.

Whitehead does not limit intrinsic value to living things. However, human actions have relatively little effect on the well-being of subatomic events. For practical purposes, drawing the line of concern at sentience of life makes sense. Whitehead is much closer to the Indians and Schweitzer than to Descartes and his Western followers. But he does not draw definite boundaries anywhere.

Whitehead taught that all “life is robbery.” That is, life depends on breaking down what is eaten. Some intrinsic value is destroyed in the process. Of course, less intrinsic value is destroyed if we humans avoid red meat, or all meat, or also all fish, or all seafood. We can rob more or less, but we will still “rob,” unless we simply allow ourselves to die instead, as some Jain saints have done.

Whitehead’s conclusion is not that we should draw the line of our robbery at any particular place but rather that “the robber requires justification.” Presumably, the destruction of some entities that have intrinsic value is justified by the contribution of that destruction to the well being of others. The assumption is that although every event has some intrinsic value, some have more than others. Indeed, the variation can be quite extreme. It is easy to justify killing ticks for the sake of a dog’s well being and bacteria for the sake of human well being. Few have any problem with killing vegetables for human consumption. All of this depends on the idea that there is a “gradation” of intrinsic values and that human beings are in position to make reasonable judgments of this sort.

There is a danger that the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental value lead to a depreciation of the latter. This would be very unfortunate. It is often the case that creatures that are low on the scale of intrinsic value are far more important to an ecosystem than those creatures that are individually of greatest intrinsic value. For example, plankton are far more important to the oceans than whales. Obviously we would sacrifice a considerable amount of plankton to save a whale. But if we had to choose comprehensively between the whales and the plankton, we would have to sacrifice the whales. This decision is easy because the whales could not, in any case, survive the end of the plankton, but I hope the point is clear.

Of course, many decisions are very difficult. What animals under what circumstances is it moral to kill for food? How far should we go to protect animal habitat from expanding agriculture? What experiments are justified on what animals in order to protect human beings from possibly harmful drugs? When should exotic species be destroyed to protect an indigenous ecosystem?

The last question points clearly to a critical question that is not highlighted simply by talk of intrinsic value. Ecological systems have intrinsic value only in and through the individual inhabitants that make them up, but these inhabitants are benefited chiefly be preserving the integrity of the system. In some cases human interference can take a region that supports very little life and turn it into one that supports a great deal. But this may destroy a rare ecosystem and add one that is similar to many others. What is the value of diversity of ecosystems? How much sacrifice should be required of human beings to safeguard a rare species of beetles?

3. God aims at maximizing value.

The questions go on and on. Whiteheadians do not have ready-made answers. Our contribution is to insist that these issues be discussed and to offer some clarifications about the relevant considerations. For us, the intrinsic value of an event, such as a momentary human experience is increased by the diversity of what it synthesizes. This gives added justification for the preservation of rare species. But it is hard to imagine that humans will ever be greatly benefited by learning of thousands of obscure species of insects or bacteria. We do not think, however, that our modest capacity to appreciate diversity limits its value.

We follow Whitehead in the view that in addition to the contribution of such diversity to us (and the often cited possibility of medical benefits, etc.), there is a deep and justified intuition that the immeasurable diversity of living things has value in itself or, better, for the whole. This intuition is fully justified only if the whole has, or is, its own unifying experience. Whitehead proposes that it is. We who follow Whitehead believe that to simplify the biosphere is to impoverish God. This does not make the preservation of diversity into an absolute requirement. We may cause God more suffering by denying economic opportunities to the poor than by surrendering to their use land that is needed for the survival of some unknown species of beetle. The point is only that decisions should not be made without considering many types of contribution to the value of the whole. Ultimately it is the value of and for the whole that we should strive to realize.

We believe that the universe is ordered to the increase of inclusive value. That means that such increase is the aim of God. God realizes this aim by divine immanence in every creaturely event. This immanence gives to every creature the aim to realize such value as is possible at the time and place. I noted above that this aim may be very narrowly focused on the event itself or may have a far more expansive horizon of concern. In Whitehead’s view, the breadth of concern is the measure of morality.

In the modern vision, purpose plays no role in what happens. In Whitehead’s view, purpose is fundamental to the coming into being of each event. In a world composed of bits of matter in motions that conform to universal laws, it is easy to see that there is no place for purpose. In a world composed of events that develop as synthesizers of elements of the past, the purpose to realize what value is possible at that time and place is fundamental. If God is allowed any role in the modern vision it is as creator of matter and lawgiver. For Whiteheadians every event derives its aim to become from the cosmic, universal aim at value. The universe thus participates in God and God participates in the universe.

God may have primordially decided on the most general features that promote the realization of value. This belief fits with what is miscalled the “anthropic” principle. For Whitehead we do not require millions of universes in order to explain why this one has that improbable set of constants that render it suited for life. The aim at value at the base of all reality suffices as explanation.

It may be worth noting that the affirmation of teleology in Whitehead is not a renewal of the teleology against which modern science reacted so strongly. For a Whiteheadian, modern science rightly rejected the use of final causes in medieval science and in the explanation of evolution in more recent times. We do not propose a recursion to those forms of teleology. But the allergy to teleology has led to absurdities of a different sort.

For example, modern neo-Darwinian evolutionists suppose that to be scientific they must deny that animal purposes play any role in evolution. The evidence indicates that animals adapt to changing environmental situations and that their new methods of finding food or defending themselves have an effect on which genetic changes turn out to have a positive effect. This almost certain fact is completely omitted from standard explanations of evolutionary change. It would open the door to a role for purpose, and many biologists suppose that purpose must be excluded at all costs, even the cost of rejecting the evidence.

This kind of mechanistic dogmatism is no better than the medieval science it supplants. Without a deep will to live, and to live well, and even to live better there would be no evolution. But the suspicion of the atheistic scientists is well-founded. If animal purpose plays a role in evolution, then subjective aspects of reality are, after all, important factors in explaining what actually happens in the world. And these factors, especially purposive ones, cannot be explained mechanistically. The door is opened to a role for God. And Whiteheadians have taken that step. The universe, or nature, or the Tao, or the Great Spirit, or the Creator, or, in Whitehead’s terminology and mine, “God,” is the source of the aim to live, to live well, and to live better that pervades the living world. This is the expression in the biosphere of the still more general aim at the realization of some value, which is the aim to be that pervades the whole of reality.

God’s aim in all things is the realization of value for the sake of the creatures and as a contribution to the divine life. That is the Whiteheadian vision. It conflicts with nothing that we know scientifically and offers a simpler explanation of the information science provides. It opens us to recognize facts that contemporary science conceals or obscures. It grounds intuitions that can often be detected among atheists as well as believers. It has no tendency to distract attention from what happens in this world, instead accentuating its importance. It deeply encourages ecological thinking. It grounds an urgently needed ethics, and it supports the finest form of religious spirit.

4. Humans are uniquely valuable and uniquely responsible.

I hope that what has been said above makes clear that for a follower of Whitehead there is no question but that human beings are a part of the natural world intimately interconnected with other creatures. Against the view that only human beings have intrinsic value I have followed Whitehead in affirming that all events have intrinsic value. Human beings are not the measure of all things. Our arrogance is enormous, and its consequences appalling.

But having said that, Whiteheadians do not follow those who assert that human beings are simply one species among others with no special claim to value or importance. We are, of course, one species among others. But there are important respects in which our species has differentiated itself from all the other species individually, and also from all of them collectively. Our claims to uniqueness, indeed, a quite special uniqueness, are justified.

Human beings are unique in our capacity to care for others – other humans, other species – and for the whole of which we are a part. To the best of our knowledge, while other living beings are loved by God, they cannot love God in the consciousness way that we can do so. And while they have remarkable capacities in their own right, we have powers and capacities that can be used in God’s service for the increase of value in the whole. But we are also unique in our capacity to ignore and deny God’s call and, instead of responding to it, use our capacities for far more limited purposes, purposes whose fulfillment works against the aims of God.

We believe that there is more value realized in human experience than in that of any other creature on this planet. Much as we have learned to admire the qualities of dolphins and whales, we know that much of what is most valuable in our experience is based on complexities of language that they almost certainly lack. This in no way means that we should be indifferent to their fate. But it does mean that our primary concern for our own is not simply a matter of arbitrary anthropocentrism or “speciesism.” We have some relatively objective understanding of what makes for greater intrinsic value, and we are justified in judging that our species has unique capacities for its realization. We should seek to preserve all species for their own sake and for God’s. But for God’s sake as well as our own, we should give the highest priority to preserving our own. We do not need to apologize for affirming our own unique importance in the scheme of things.

This importance, however, is not only the unique potential for realizing value. It is also the unique responsibility we bear for destroying so much of the world we entered when our species evolved into existence. We are not the only species to have damaged the environment, but we have done so on a scale that is vastly larger than any other. Also we have consciously and systematically ignored information that was available to us. When other species acted destructively, there was no moral culpability. With us there is. We have collectively committed against the biosphere and against God a crime of incomparable magnitude. We are still engaged in doing so. This separates us drastically from all other species.

When we encounter another destructive species, for example, a germ that kills people, we can often contain its destructiveness and even wipe out the species. But when we humans act far more destructively, there is no other species that can contain our evil. Only we can do so. Our refusal even seriously to consider such containment continues unabated. We who actualize the greatest value in our individual experience are also the one immediate threat to the survival of the biosphere including ourselves.

Given this situation, it is not wise to call on human beings to reduce our pretensions and to take our place simply as one species among others in the interconnected whole. The damage we have done to the world is too serious for the world to heal itself. It is too late for that. We will do better to call on ourselves, not to abandon the extraordinary powers we have so misused, but to repent. To repent is to turn in a different direction and begin to use our powers for the sake of the whole biosphere of which we are an extraordinary part.

Where we human beings have not interfered, life has flourished and value has increased, but there is little left of “nature” in that sense. We are that part of nature that has upset the balances nature apart from us had achieved. We have blocked nature’s own evolutionary advance, substituting new species of our own creation. Instead of using our powers to work with God in the co-creation of values, we have taken the bit in our teeth and replaced God’s sustainable creation with our own unsustainable one. But we have also learned much about nature’s ways, and we could use our great gifts to work with God for the salvation of the world.

The emphasis on human responsibility for the near-mortal injury we have collectively inflicted on the Earth can itself be harmful. Collectively we human beings are guilty of terrible evil. But if that realization results chiefly in intense individual feelings of guilt and remorse, the result is the reduction, not the increase, of value. The need is for collective repentance, that is, changing direction. This will not occur without recognition of objective guilt and some feelings of remorse, but these are not to be cultivated. There is a danger that a highly sensitive individual may accentuate remorse in order to feel virtuous. One supposes that if one is sufficiently remorseful, this compensates in some way for the evil in which one has participated. It does not. Guilt feelings and remorse are a healthy response to the recognition of participation in collective guilt if they support repentance – not otherwise.

However, too much individual remorse about what humanity has done to its world is not the major problem today. The dominant worldview instead encourages individualism. Each individual is taught to feel responsibility only for acts he or she has performed. Further, if those acts are in accordance with what that person has been told to consider right, even if their consequences are extremely destructive, the individual is considered innocent. The blame falls elsewhere. The idea of participating in corporate responsibility does not fit into this dominant worldview.

Whiteheadians see things differently. One is not an individual apart from a community. What one is in every moment is a synthesis of past events. As just that synthesis, partly determined in the very process of its own becoming, one transcends the world out of which one comes. But one is still for the most part constituted by that world. And that world is highly structured. We are constituted primarily by our individual past and by the others who are closest to us. This past comes to us already self-interpreted. This interpretation largely determines our self-understanding.

For example, I understand myself as a Whiteheadian. This became possible to me through participation in a community of Whiteheadians at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. If I had gone elsewhere to study, it is unlikely that this self-identification would have occurred or, if it had, would have played the intensive role it has in fact played in my self-understanding.

This does not mean that my own decisions played no role. Quite the contrary. But the role they played was to confirm my identification with a particular community and then to participate in shaping and expanding that community. I take pride in what that community has done. This contributes to my self-understanding. But if pride in that community enhances my self-esteem, then recognition of its mistakes and limitations must also be a part of my self-understanding. This is true even if I have not actively participated in those mistakes or caused those limitations. For good and for bad I participate in a corporate reality with both its achievements and its failures.

I am an American. In this case, I was born into a community. It gave me certain status in the world, certain privileges. I took pride in my nation as I learned about it at home and in school. This added to my self-esteem. It would have been impossible for me to abstract my “self” from my American identity. Even if, in later life, I had renounced my citizenship, I would have remained an American who had renounced his citizenship. If I take pride in the accomplishments of my nation, I cannot separate myself from participation in its crimes, even if I have not myself supported them. To recognize my participation need not make me feel personally guilty. But if I fail to work for collective repentance, I do have some personal responsibility that I do not have when I fail to work for the repentance of another nation.

In short, for Whiteheadians, our individual identity is inseparable from our corporate identity. Perhaps the strongest form of that corporate identity is as human beings. If humanity as a whole has engaged in horrific evil, then as a human being who has always taken advantage of that status and justified many actions by it, I share in responsibility. In fact I continue to participate quite directly in the destructive activity of humanity. It might be difficult to survive without doing so. Indeed, the consequences of extracting myself might be worse than those of limited participation. There is no personal sin involved, if, in the ideal case, I do the best that is possible for me under the circumstances. But all the more, I share in responsibility to change the circumstances that force me into destructive action. Personal innocence is not the primary goal.

5. Education is for wisdom

The modern worldview has shaped education and transmits itself through the education it has shaped. Because that worldview is misleading and has let modern society astray, contemporary forms of education do more harm than good. That does not mean that they do no good. They do a great deal of good. But overall they contribute much more to human destruction of the Earth’s capacity to support life, and thus to human self-destruction, than to saving us from this fate.

The problem is not with the earliest years of education. In kindergarten, teachers focus on the children and their healthy development. But all too rapidly attention is redirected toward subject matter and skills needed to support and advance the economy. Given the ordering of society to the economy, and the nature of the economy to which it is ordered, there is no question but that fitting into the economy is essential for the well being of workers. And in these circumstances it seems rational to prepare children for this. The problem is that this kind of education only prepares children for participation in an economy that is necessarily coming to an end, an end that will bring with it enormous suffering. Those equipped only to fit into a destructive economy will cling to that economy as long as possible, however apparent its destructiveness becomes.

Higher education is much more problematic. The norm for this level of education has come to be the research university. It is understood that successful research isolates some one range of data and develops methods to study in that field. The result is called an academic “discipline.” The ideal is to organize all knowledge into disciplines each of which adds to the information available to human beings. To accomplish this, the disciplines must be value-free. One topic is as appropriate for research as any other.

To some extent research will reflect personal interests of researchers. However, as the low hanging fruit is picked, research tends to become more expensive. As a result, most of it is governed by the availability of funding. Since money is available chiefly for medical, corporate, and military purposes, most research is in these fields. Since the research university is value-free, evaluating research projects in terms of who is benefited and how is not its business.

The vast majority of research is strictly determined by the current status of thought in the discipline in which it occurs. Established methods are employed. What cannot be studied by these methods does not concern the researcher. In most disciplines there are debates about methods and theories, and this assures researchers of the intellectual substance of their work. But there is little study of the history of the discipline and little reflection about the basic assumptions in the context of which the debates take place.

The research university has vastly increased the amount of information that is available to humanity. But it has given little or no guidance as to how this information should be used. It offers little or no criticism of the assumptions of the modern world that have led to the extreme overshoot that now dooms it to collapse. It engages in little or no research about the changes in society and the economy needed to attain sustainability.

If we ask where in the university one can gain help in understanding what is going on in the world today, the answer is everywhere. But of course the information gathered in many independent lines of research has no coherence and provides little guidance. In any case the university does not judge that saving civilization from collapse is any more important than solving some problem for the military. That global warming is speeding up is an interesting fact, but it is no more important than information about football scores. Another interesting fact is that more people are interested in the latter than the former.

There are some professors who ignore disciplinary boundaries and think coherently about the global crisis, but they are not rewarded by the university for doing so. A recent book by Stanley Fish, a highly acclaimed writer on higher education, supports the value free research of the university over against concern for solving global problems. The title is “Save the World on Your Own Time.” (Oxford University Press, 2008) Concern for the world does not fit the modern university model.

The research university is typically composed of departments for numerous academic disciplines supplemented by professional schools. Whereas in the earlier years of education, pupils are prepared for the workforce, the university prepares people not only to be researchers and professors but also to be managers in the world of business, doctors, teachers, lawyers, engineers, and so forth. In each case specialized work in some disciplines provides important information, but the practical concern of the profession affects the professional school as it does not affect the disciplines.

The University of Phoenix has pioneered a new kind of higher education that bypasses the academic disciplines. It offers training for skilled jobs. It introduces information gained from research only as that is directly related to the work for which one is training. There is, clearly, a large market for this kind of education. Universities whose only value is to be value free are likely to respond more and more to this market.

In contrast to all of this, the Whiteheadian vision calls for an education oriented to wisdom. Of course, every society needs to prepare its youth to participate in the society including its economy. And of course, we need institutions where research can be conducted on many fronts and some members of the next generation can learn to do this research well. But we also need, with truly desperate urgency, institutions that seek wisdom and encourage youth to learn how to gain it.

The quest for wisdom is continuous with the concern for personal development in the early years. At least for Whiteheadians, wisdom is an important characteristic of the mature person. In past centuries higher education was more directed to personal development including wisdom. The liberal arts were thought to be beneficial in these respects. Even today there are liberal arts colleges that encourage a kind of thinking that does not fit into the academic disciplines. Sadly, they have difficulty finding teachers who have not been socialized into disciplinary research as the ideal.

A Whiteheadian will struggle to maintain a serious role for the liberal arts in higher education. Nevertheless, a return to classical understanding of the special role of the liberal arts will not fulfill the calling of higher education today. The liberal arts were developed at a time when there was no apparent threat to the biosphere on a global basis. They are anthropocentric, whereas we live in a time when the integration of human life and the rest of nature is of primary importance. They tend to encourage individualism, albeit one that accepts social responsibility. They tend to be elitist, separating those who have leisure and want to make good use of leisure from the ordinary people who only want to be entertained.

Wisdom is expressed in the judgment of importance. The refusal of the research university to make judgments of this kind is an abnegation of responsibility for the fate of the Earth. A Whiteheadian judges that not only should the university make judgments as an institution, but it should also shape its curriculum as directed by critical reflection about what is important. Further, encouraging students to participate in this critical reflection and to relate it to their own decisions about research projects and careers should shape the life of the university as a whole.

This in no way means the abandonment of special foci. The world needs physicists and engineers, teachers of children and economists. But physicists and engineers should decide on their research and projects out of concern for the flourishing of the biosphere with particular attention to the human species. Teachers of children will need to reflect about how to introduce them to the realities of their time without overburdening them with anxieties before they are ready to cope with them. Economists should stop tinkering with their ideas about how to make the economy grow and ask what kind of an economy the world can afford and how to move quickly in that direction. In every field, basic assumptions should be constantly articulated and reconsidered.

I have discussed what it would mean to make wisdom the most fundamental goal of education only at the level of higher education. But this form of higher education should not be an abrupt break with earlier education. Reflection about the condition of the biosphere and the prospect for humanity in this context is important for younger adolescents as well. They, too, are capable of a measure of wisdom, if society encourages them in that direction.



6. The economy should be directed to the flourishing of the biosphere.

The most important revolution in history is the industrial one. Prior to it, there had been many important changes in the way of life of masses of people, but the capacity of people to produce goods and services in an agricultural economy had not varied greatly over time. In almost all societies the masses of people lived on the land at a subsistence level, while a few gained wealth by siphoning off what was more than needed for the subsistence of the farmers. This surplus supported life in towns and even cities, where a middle class of artisans, merchants, and professionals developed alongside an urban proletariat. A few lived in great luxury. In general, the limited availability of food for the poor played a primary role in preventing rapid population increase.

What was discovered in the eighteenth century was that the same number of workers could produce a great deal more. The early focus was on the production of clothing and furniture and household goods and tools and machines. It turned out that by organizing workers in assembly lines and supporting them with energy from coal, production per hour of work could be vastly increased. There could be abundance of goods that had formerly been scarce and their price could be greatly reduced. What had formerly been luxuries for the rich could now be made available to the masses.

From the beginning there was a price to pay. The satisfaction artisans felt in their work was denied to assembly-line workers. Factories brought with them pollution of a type not previously known. The aim at profit for the investors in a factory led to exploitation of labor that was in some ways more vicious than the exploitation of peasants in the countryside. Industrial cities were typically filled with slums. Unemployment became a problem rarely experienced in agricultural societies. The landed nobility saw that its power was passing into the hands of industrial capitalists. Noblesse obligegave way to a single-minded quest for profit. Not everyone was pleased by the changes effected by industrialization, but there was little prospect of turning back the clock.

Over time the industrial model was applied more and more widely. Eventually agriculture was also industrialized, and features of the industrial method were applied to merchandizing as well. Increasing productivity, defined as production per hour of labor became the norm everywhere.

The industrial economy required larger markets. There were economies of scale; so that one huge factory could often under price several smaller ones. But to sell its product it needed more customers. This affected international relations as industrial powers sought markets all over the world.

Factories often needed natural resources not plentiful locally. Hence nations whose policies were driven by economic concerns were also interested in securing supplies of such resources. There was another great advance of empire building. There was also a drive, especially after World War II to make of the whole globe a single market, so that goods could be produced wherever conditions were most favorable and sold wherever they were in demand.

Modern economic theory beginning with Adam Smith grew up alongside industrialization. The economists explained the benefits of industrialization and sided with industrialists against those who wanted to curtail their freedom. They saw not only factory production but the whole of the economy as ideally geared to “growth” measured by total production of goods and services per capita. They were strong advocates of the move toward a global market.

Mainstream economists have based their study and theories on industrial society. Today the financial sector has come to dominate the productive one. It clearly dominates government as well. Its control of the money supply is a major source of its power. Economists have far less understanding of this phenomenon than of the industrial economy it supersedes. Markets controlled by banks are not free.

We might expect that economic theorists would be concerned with the ability of the environment to supply all the raw materials needed for a growing industry. However, they have largely dismissed this problem. They note that as a particular resource becomes scarce its price rises. This leads users to be more frugal and efficient with this resource and also to seek more plentiful, and therefore less expensive, substitutes. Such scarcity also leads inventors to find new ways of meeting the need that do not require the scarce item. Economists assure us that economic signals lead to developments that by-pass the problem of scarcity. They do not view resource scarcity as placing any limit on growth. Although there has been less discussion of pollution until very recently, economists try to subsume this under the same type of response. Those few who argue against unlimited growth of the human economy are viewed as outsiders to the community.

The idea of “overshoot and collapse” comes from zoology and, as explained above, has no role in mainstream economic thinking. Today, the acute problem of global warming calls for the application of this concept to human affairs. But thus far it has been excluded from economic theory. Economists remain cheer leaders for economic growth everywhere and under almost any circumstances. They have been deeply misled by the modern worldview in its most harmful form.

Fortunately, largely outside of academic departments and of the economics guild, others are developing an ecological economics that emphasizes the issue of scale. They note that the human economy is a subset of the natural economy and must remain a limited portion. As long as the natural economy is limited, the human economy must also be limited. Herman Daly has long been the leader in this development.

Ecological economists redefine the goal of the economy. One important contribution to this task is the book, “The Economics of Happiness” by Mark Anielski. (New Society Publishers, 2007) We have found that the growth so prized by economists does not, in any regular way, make for the happiness of real people. To pursue growth when it does not contribute to the well being of people is quite mistaken. The task of economists is to find the ways of organizing the economy that contribute most to human well-being. The Kingdom of Bhutan now measures its wellbeing in terms of Gross National Happiness.

A major shift that helps redefine the goal of economics is that from the individualism that underlies all mainstream economic theory to an appreciation for community. We now know that, beyond a very limited level, personal happiness is more a function of human relations than of the quantity of goods and services consumed. Unfortunately, modern thought has led economists astray. They have ignored human relations other than those of contract and exchange. Often the way of benefiting people is to improve the quality of the communities in which they live, but the application of modern economic thought has systematically destroyed communities.

Focusing on community does not mean rejecting economic growth. Many communities are improved by increasing the supply of fresh water, food, improved shelter, education, and medical care. However, forcing people to leave their communities in order to find employment rarely adds to human well being.

Even “economics for happiness” does not go far enough in our time. As Anielski and the rulers of Bhutan fully understand, human happiness cannot be separated from the flourishing of the whole ecosystem. We need an economic theory directed to the regeneration of the global biosphere.

The move toward an ecological economy will require breaking the control of financial institutions over both industry and government. The key to this is recovering for community, at whatever level, the control over the money supply. Nationalizing the “Federal” Reserve system would transform the situation for the United States. State banks, like that in North Dakota, would greatly improve the financial condition of states. Money creation is possible at still smaller levels.

The present global economy is collapsing. Rather than trying to stave off this collapse, we can use the occasion to build local economies that serve their communities well. This will be a profound reversal of long-term trends. It may include state and municipal banks and local currencies that free the community from subservience to the international banks. Local economies can encourage frugality and sustainability instead of growth. They need not look to growth to solve the problems of the poor. Instead, the local community will accept responsibility for providing work for all who want it and for meeting the essential needs also of those who cannot work. We may exchange the “high” standard of living measured by the surfeit of goods for a secure place in a healthy human community in a healthy ecological context.

7. Agriculture should regenerate the soil.

Apart from human experience the normal situation is one in which the seasonal cycles gradually build up the soil. It becomes more fertile and thereby accelerates its own growth. When human beings lived by hunting and gathering, this increase of soil continued. The change came with the rise of agricultural societies. These found that they could produce a great deal more of the desired plant nearby if they cultivated the soil and planted only that one crop in a particular plot. Farming developed in many contexts and many styles. Some were far more sustainable than others, but all reversed the trend from building up topsoil to using it up, however slowly.

Some ancient civilizations ended when the land they farmed, for one reason or another, lost its capacity to support them. This should have been a warning to others of the applicability to agriculture of the “overshoot and collapse” model. But in general new lands were found to cultivate, and some of the old ones seemed to be inexhaustibly rich. In any case there seemed to be no alternative. Agriculture had produced the food that allowed population to grow. To sustain that population, the damaging cultivation of crops must continue. If that meant moving people to new land, so be it. As long as the global population was small in relation to the amount of cultivable land, the problem seemed minor.

For thousands of years the basic agricultural situation did not greatly change. But in the nineteenth, and especially the twentieth, centuries industrial methods were applied to agriculture. Family farms gave way to agribusiness. Agricultural science studied the chemical needs of plants and the ways that weeds and noxious insects could be killed. Fertilizers and poisons came into more extensive use. The condition of the soil became less important, since the needed nutrients could be supplied artificially. Monocultures became more extensive.

Genetic changes of plants were designed to adapt them to the new chemical regime. The wide variety of species of wheat or corn was replaced by the one species able to deal with these chemicals. Huge machines replaced both human and animal labor. Large areas of the countryside were depopulated.

The main gain from all of this was “productivity” as measured by produce divided by hours of human labor. Economic theorists celebrated this gain as releasing farm-workers to do other jobs. Ecologists fretted that soils were losing their natural fertility and eroding more rapidly, while agriculture was becoming more dependent on irrigation and petroleum products. They also worried about the loss of genetic diversity and about the effects of artificial varieties on natural ones, on the environment in general, and on the health of those who consumed them.

From a Whiteheadian perspective, ecologists are right to worry. Farming has kept the human involvement with nature very intimate for thousands of years. Despite human manipulation, agriculture was primarily a process of working with nature. The application to agriculture of modern economic theories developed in relation to industry makes the whole process highly precarious. It also makes it dependent on resources that are becoming scarcer and scarcer: fresh water and oil.

The risk is illustrated in the case of Cuba. In proper modern fashion, Cuba as a protégé of the Soviet Union was assigned a specialized task: produce sugar for the Soviet Union and its satellites. In exchange it would be provided with its other needs, including oil and food. Vast areas of Cuban agricultural lands were given over to industrial production of sugar.

Then came the American blockade. Cuba could not export its sugar and could not import oil and food. The adjustment was difficult. However, there was no massive hunger. The peasants who still had their holdings were able quickly to shift from oil-dependent production of sugar to organic production of food. Fortunately, research and experiments with organic farming were already far advanced, and when the need arose, the peasants learned quickly.

It is noteworthy, however, that the industrialized sugar producers were not helpful in the transition. Those farms were organized for sugar production. Their equipment was for that purpose, and the workers knew nothing about other crops or other forms of farming. In any case there were too few of them to engage in traditional farming. Fortunately for Cuba, peasant farming had not yet been wiped out by the industrial form.

As Whiteheadians look to the future, we see what is needed as evolving from traditional family and peasant farming, hoping to recover the land now used for agribusiness in a more traditional way. We certainly affirm the organic form of production to which the Cubans were forced by the lack of oil. But we recognize that even organic farming is exploitative of the soil, and as the soil diminishes, the future looks dim. The task is to stop the exploitation and find ways to follow the natural processes that build soil instead.

There have been many positive developments alongside the negative ones involved in agribusiness. No-till agriculture shows that the plowing that exposes the land to the wind can be avoided. Certain combinations of plants can greatly decrease the loss to insects. Irrigation can be accomplished with much less water by systems that use it only where directly needed.

We who are rich have become accustomed to having almost any food at any time of year. This is a luxury afforded to us by the global economy. As we prepare for its collapse, we will think of eating locally-grown food instead. That will reduce variety, but it can also have advantages. Fresh food organically grown has its own excellence.

A movement in this direction is already well advanced. There are thousands of farmers markets all over the country, encouraging this change in eating habits as well as the farmers who are growing the food. There is also a widespread movement of urban agriculture. It may be most fully developed in Detroit where there are many vacant lots and houses and many people unemployed. In the residential area of Los Angeles County in which I live there are efforts to make unused land available to unemployed Immigrants from Mexico who know how to use it. Thus far these movements of local food production are marginal to the food industry as a whole. But their growth will make a great difference with respect to who and how many can survive the collapse of the global system.

Where land is limited and the need for food is great, extremely intensive food production will be needed. Examples of this already exist. A family of six in Pasadena feeds itself on food from its own quarter-acre lot. It also sells some specialty items to nearby restaurants to earn cash.

Another development may be even more important in the long run. Although intensive labor methods can do much to end the erosion of the soil, we can also learn quite new methods of farming. Wes Jackson at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, has noted that the vast American prairie developed its rich topsoil during millennia in which it was covered by a polyculture of perennials. When European farmers came, they replaced this with a monoculture of annuals. The loss of soil began.

We have generally assumed that the grains that are so essential to our food supply must necessarily be annuals. Jackson notes that there are perennial forms of corn and wheat, but that their yield is far less than that of the annuals we have cultivated. However, he does not believe that perennials are inherently less productive of the seeds that humanity needs. He has set out on a fifty year experiment in developing highly productive perennial grains, and he has made great progress. This is the kind of research to which our universities should be devoted instead of the study of how to make tomatoes that are better able to withstand shipment over long distances.

Another change in eating habits will enable more people to survive the collapse. Most of us are addicted to eating meat. We eat far more than most people through human history. And we eat far more than we need for health or is even healthy for us. In many instances ten times as many calories of grain are fed to the animals than are present in the flesh that we eat. Dramatic reduction of meat eating will enable more grains to be available for more people.

When we approach the question of meat-eating with this question alone in mind, the goal will be to end the eating of grain-fed animals, but not complete vegetarianism. There is land that is suited to pasture but not to farming, and producing meat may be its best and most sustainable use. Also, the most fully integrated use of a small farm often includes animals. They can eat what would otherwise be wasted and produce natural fertilizer for use on plants. The consumption of surplus animals is an efficient contribution to our food supply.

A Whiteheadian vision leads many, however, to become vegetarian on other grounds. The animals we kill have their own intrinsic value. Killing them may not be as destructive of value as killing other human beings, but it is the same kind of evil. Such killing, a Whiteheadian may well believe, should be reduced as much as possible. Avoidance of eating meat can be our contribution.

There is yet another Whiteheadian argument. From the Whiteheadian perspective inflicting suffering is inherently evil. Whatever may be theoretically possible, the reality is that today much, probably most, of the meat that is served to us has been raised in ways that are cruel to the animals. Their suffering is often life-long rather than only a matter of the moment of death. Our consumption of meat supports an industry that is brutally indifferent to animal suffering.

8. Comfortable habitat should make minimal demands for resources.

In the days of cheap land, cheap transportation, and cheap utilities we built millions of large, poorly-insulated homes on large lots in suburbia. We used a lot of lumber in home constructing, sacrificing our forests in the process. Our individualism led to nuclear families replacing extended ones and to separating ourselves even from our neighbors. We typically found our communities with like-minded people elsewhere than in our neighborhoods. Our homes were for ourselves and our children, and we expected others to respect our privacy as we respected theirs.

We are now entering a world in which land will be needed to produce food locally, and transportation and utilities will be expensive. We will need to increase tree cover rather than further decimate our forests. How will we make the transition?

Obviously, much of our task will be improving what we have. We can greatly reduce our use of utilities by insulation. We can generate some of our own energy with solar panels. We can also work to develop cooperative relations with neighbors to save on the number of separate car trips that are needed and perhaps buy some kinds of equipment for the neighborhood. And we can use some of our land to produce food.

This is important and for some time it may be the best contribution we can make to staving off collapse. However, in this section I want to focus on the kind of construction that should, over time, replace what we now have. Fortunately, there has already been a lot of experimentation with buildings that provide comfortable habitat without requiring the further decimation of forests or extensive use of utilities for heating or cooling.

One example is called superadobe. Traditional adobe was far less demanding on the environment than the kinds of homes we moderns have been building. But it required lumber, and had other limitations. A superadobe building derives more than 90 percent of the building material from the land on which it is built. It uses no lumber. Thus its construction depends only a little on transportation and not at all on increasingly distant forests. Like adobe in general, its thick walls provide excellent insulation. It is built to last. Obviously it has little vulnerability to fire. It uses small steel rods to secure its walls in case of earthquakes. It is the sort of building that can now be constructed as a transition to a very different future.

Replacing contemporary suburban buildings with ones like this will be an excellent move, but it solves only part of the problem of habitat. The inhabitants will still be distant from most places of employment and from many of the services they need. We can hope that bicycles can connect them to some of these, but the need for transportation remains.

Paolo Soleri has been considering this problem for a long time. He has envisioned a profoundly different city from those we have been building. Its construction would require far more resources than the super-adobe building, but it would put an end to most of the current needs for transportation. He calls the cities he proposes “architectural ecologies” or “arcologies.”

He sees the arcologies as the natural development out of what is already happening in the downtown areas of some cities. One may today be in a hotel from which by foot, escalator, and elevator, without crossing any street, one can visit department stores, restaurants, professional offices, commercial establishments, and theaters. Sometimes even an indoor park is included. One can imagine enlarging this complex to include a school and a hospital. One can imagine that in addition to a hotel, or partly in its place, there would be apartments for permanent occupancy.

This is possible in a small area, of course, because of the height of the buildings. A single building of eighty stories covering ten acres will have as much usable space as one story buildings covering eight hundred acres. Indeed it will have a great deal more, because it will use for indoor purposes all the space devoted to streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and filling stations as well as the space between and around buildings. It could contain all the facilities an urban family needs for the greater part of their lives. Within this building there would be no need for motor transportation, indeed, no possibility for it. Everything would be accessible by foot, or, for those who need help, by wheelchair or other equipment.

For some people, this may sound nightmarish. They imagine it as claustrophobic. But it need not be so. Living quarters might all be on the outside walls so that people would have views of what is without. Furthermore, rather than imagining such a building as surrounded by city streets and other buildings, let us imagine it as standing alone with only the great outdoors outside it. From anywhere in the building a short walk could take one outside for gardening or outdoor recreation of many kinds. In other words, one would have far better access to rural areas than do the great majority of city dwellers today. If one just had to drive a car, one would be available for rent. There would also be public transportation to other cities.

Soleri has proposed that an arcology be built on the top of a hill with greenhouses covering the slopes below. Air entering the greenhouses would be heated as it passes through them and would provide energy for heating and other uses in the arcology. Industry would be located in the basement levels with surplus heat used for the rest of the building. The arcology itself would be well insulated and built to take maximum advantage of sun and shade according to the season. Direct and indirect solar energy would supply all the needs of the arcology.

Once built, therefore, an arcology would have no need for fossil fuel. Everyone in the arcology would have access to everything in it without motor transportation. The problem, in comparison with the superadobe house, would be construction. This would be less costly in money and materials than building a city in the present form, but it would still require a wealthy society and elaborate transportation system. Arcologies would have to be built soon, while resources for such things still exist. They could then survive the collapse of the global economy far better than other cities.

9. Most manufacturing should be local.

It is fairly obvious that when humanity finally decides to end its suicidal burning of fossil fuels, producing goods in one place and shipping them around the world will end. This is one part of the collapse of the current civilization that is readily predictable. Of course, one possibility is that our addiction to fossil energy will persist so strongly that we will turn to fracking and to the tar sands of Camada to keep the global civilization going at whatever cost to human life and the biosphere. If so, we will probably destroy the capacity of the planet to support any human life at all. If we turn to nuclear energy on an ever larger scale, the threat to survival will change its nature but not be removed. This paper is presupposing that the human race will stop short of suicide.

If we do, the question of how we can live in a sustainable way confronts us. Which of the good things we now receive from our global civilization will we be able to continue to enjoy. We have considered thus far only food and shelter. But there is a vast world of manufactured products that we would like to retain. Can we do so?

The answer is that no one knows just what will be possible. We can say, however, that a shift from manufacturing for global distribution to more local production is a given. The ideal would be a rather gradual transition. As transportation becomes more expensive, heavy and bulky items will be increasingly produced nearer their destination. If common sense leads to greater restrictions on burning fossil fuels, this tendency will be accelerated and even smaller and lighter goods will be produced more locally. A transition of this type would be far less disruptive of our lives and societies than was the globalization of production that has caused so many of our problems. It will, of course, be part of the localization of the economy discussed earlier.

However, transportation of goods is not the only problem. Industrial production has been based on fossil fuels. A great deal of thought is now directed to other sources of energy. The most promising are wind and direct solar forms. Small scale local production can be based on wind and solar energy far better than the huge centralized productive facilities now dominating the scene.

The most difficult problem is that many of the natural resources needed for manufacturing are not locally available in most places. To whatever extent their shipment is ended, the goods made from them cannot be produced. This will call for a great deal of ingenuity. As long as this is available, many needs can be met with locally available materials.

Consider, for example, clothing. Cotton and wool are major raw materials for much of this. But there are many parts of the world where neither is available. Fortunately, we have long since learned that clothing can be made from fibers of many sorts. Stores would not carry the vast variety of clothing we now take for granted. But the real need for clothing could be met almost everywhere in the world.

One obvious problem with local production is that it is impractical for many of the things we take for granted. The automobile is an example. A city, even of a million people, could hardly produce automobiles efficiently, if its market was limited to that city. Certainly the city could not support several competing companies.

The ideal response is that cities should be so constructed as to make automobiles unnecessary, and we may indeed hope that they will move in this direction. We can imagine that private cars can be eliminated without disaster, difficult as that will be. But public transportation requires vehicles the local production of which in many places would be even more impractical. It is difficult to imagine a painless transition in transportation from the collapsing global society to a sustainable local one.

Two directions of change in regard to urban transportation may take place. One is the abandonment of public transportation as well as private cars. This would force city dwellers to organize life in relatively self-sufficient neighborhoods within which bicycles would be the major means of transportation. The other is for megacities to develop the capacity to produce what they need for public transportation. Powering this system of transportation, as well as the factories that manufacture the vehicles, without fossil fuels is a separate problem.

Another broad change can be imagined and encouraged. We have become accustomed to cheap mass produced goods. Most of us Americans have far more goods than we need. Our problem is to store them or clear out our closets to make room for new ones. This flood of goods replaced a situation in which most of the things people really needed were produced by hand. Today handiwork is more of a hobby than a primary occupation, but a shift back in this direction would be a welcome one. If handiwork were prized and its products could be profitably sold, unemployment would cease to be a major problem. We would use fewer resources and own fewer goods, but what we would have would bring us greater satisfaction and its production would be a creative rather than a routine act.

Finally, we may hope that the vast world of electronic communication can survive the collapse of the global economy. In the new order, the travel we have so enjoyed would become a rare luxury. But this would not need to disconnect us with the rest of the world. We could be citizens of the world in touch electronically with likeminded people elsewhere. When successful adaptations to the new global situation are developed in one place they can quickly be shared with people around the world quickly. People in obscure villages could listen to the lectures of the world’s most advanced thinkers. The best knowledge in medicine could be made universally accessible. We need not consider localization of production the enemy of wide horizons of thought and action.

10. Every community should be a part of a community of communities.

The collapse of the global economy and all the institutions connected with it will force people to make do with local resources. If they approach this task with the same mindset that has created the unsustainable global economy and the overshoot of the earth’s resources, the future for humanity is very bleak indeed. This paper is written to encourage an alternative. Humanity will have the opportunity to construct local communities.

A community is not automatically generated by people living in close proximity. Most suburban neighborhoods today are not communities. A community gives identity to its inhabitants. That is, I identify myself as a “Pilgrim” because my participation in the life of my retirement institution, Pilgrim Place, is part of who I now am. It is a community in which I participate. Pilgrim Place is a community because participation in it means sharing in concern for the well being of other Pilgrims and taking some responsibility for the whole. We work all year to raise money for those whose funds are exhausted. We are committed to preventing anyone from having to leave because of financial problems.

When nation states arose, they intended to be communities. Their citizens identified themselves in large part by their nationality. They expected the nation as a whole to take some responsibility for the welfare of all its citizens and were willing to make some contribution to enabling the nation to do so.

The organization of Europe in terms of nation states was part of the rise of modernity. It weakened local communities and communities based on religious identity for the sake of strengthening the national community. Nevertheless, much of the economy remained local, and local community remained strong. The industrial revolution greatly weakened local economies and increased mobility within the nation. Local communities lost much of their importance and often ceased to function as communities. This whole process was strengthened by the individualism that was encouraged by Enlightenment thinking.

This individualism has now been turned against the national community as well. The economic elite no longer identify themselves particularly as American. If they belong to any community, it is a transnational one of wealth and power.

It is no longer self-evident to many Americans that they should be prepared to contribute to meeting the needs of all Americans. That idea, rooted in the very meaning of community, is dismissed as “socialist” by an increasing, and increasingly influential, segment of the population. They believe the national government should give them freedom and support their interests. It should protect them from interference by other people. But it should not expect any contribution from them for other purposes.

The now developing global crisis can lead to fresh reflection that will make people aware of the importance of community. If it does so, this will express itself most clearly at the local level. Confronted by acute shared problems, we may hope that people will agree that they need to work together for their solution and to build a new life. The preceding sections have sketched, in the most hopeful way, what will be possible.

The major problem with communities is that they are in danger of defining themselves over against other communities. Individuals who identify themselves strongly with one community may perceive others as actual or potential threats. The we/they understanding of the world easily arises, with “they” understood negatively. A world composed of local communities all of which face scarcities of important types is threatened by conflict that can easily become violent. That sort of world is unsustainable.

Hence the goal must be not only to have strong, healthy local communities, but to have also communities of communities. We can see something like this in the world of sports. Consider the high school teams of small towns. The citizens of those towns feel a strong sense of identification with their teams and root for them vociferously. But the teams that compose a particular league also gain some of their identity from their participation in that league and want it to be strong and healthy. Also when wider concerns are in view, those who root for their teams show their concern for the other towns that support the other teams. The rivalry among the teams is contained in a context of sportsmanship, and the teams learn the importance of respecting their rivals.

Healthy local communities will have as part of their basic self-understanding a respect and appreciation for other communities and their citizens. If one community suffers a natural disaster, its neighbors will come to its aid. It is healthy to have competition and rivalry, but this is not healthy unless it is contained within a wider context of respect and cooperation.

Local communities will have their relatively self-sufficient economies, but there will be economic issues that require cooperation with their neighbors. Those that only compete will not survive, and they will destroy others along with themselves. Healthy communities will participate in communities of communities. Although each will have considerable autonomy, any effort to be completely independent will misfire. Communities of communities will also need the authority to make decisions. And the same is true of communities of communities of communities. Even in a world in which the focus is on the local, there will be need for some governance at the global level as well.

A political structure of this sort will be sustainable only if we overcome individualistic ways of thinking. In the modern world this individualism has expressed itself not only in the erosion of community at the local and national levels but in the idea that at one level or another there must be “sovereignty.” That need springs from “substance” thinking. Process thinking is community thinking. Individuals become healthy persons only in community with others. The people are not sovereign, and neither is the community. The community shapes the people and gives them freedom. The people shape the community and give it a measure of authority. Local communities are not sovereign. They can be healthy and strong only through their relation with other communities in a community of communities. That inclusive community is not sovereign. It exists to serve the communities that make it up, but these communities need for it to have its own measure of authority over them.

Substance thinking leads to the idea that if one institution increases in power, other institutions must lose power. Process thinking argues instead that no one can have any significant power except through cooperation. Increasing the power of the agencies of cooperation increases the power of those who cooperate through them. The most important form of power is that which empowers others. A world in which that is deeply understood can be a sustainable world.

Ecumenism - Wikipedia

Ecumenism - Wikipedia



Ecumenism
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A common symbol of ecumenism symbolises the Christian Church as a cross depicted as the mast on a boat at sea.[1]
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The term "ecumenism" refers to efforts by Christians of different Church traditions to develop closer relationships and better understandings. The term is also often used to refer to efforts towards the visible and organic unity of different Christian denominations in some form.
The adjective ecumenical can also be applied to any interdenominational initiative that encourages greater cooperation among Christians and their churches, whether or not the specific aim of that effort is full, visible unity. It can also be applied in the same way to other religions or to refer to unity between religions or between people in general - in this sense it means non-sectarian, non-denominational.

The terms ecumenism and ecumenical come from the Greek οἰκουμένη (oikoumene), which means "the whole inhabited world", and was historically used with specific reference to the Roman Empire.[2] The ecumenical vision comprises both the search for the visible unity of the Church (Ephesians 4:3) and the "whole inhabited earth" (Matthew 24:14) as the concern of all Christians.
In Christianity, the qualification ecumenical was originally and still is used in terms such as "ecumenical council" and "Ecumenical Patriarch", in the meaning of pertaining to the totality of the larger Church (such as the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church) rather than being restricted to one of its constituent local churches or dioceses. Used in this sense, the term carries no connotation of re-uniting the historically separated Christian denominations, but presumes a unity of local congregations in a worldwide communion.


Contents
1Purpose and goal of ecumenism
2Historic divisions in Christianity
2.1Christian denominations today
2.2Ancient apostolic churches
2.3Great Schism
2.4Western schisms and reformations

3Modern ecumenical movement

4Three approaches to Christian unity
4.1Catholicism
4.2Orthodoxy
4.3Anglicanism and Protestantism
4.3.1Anglicanism
4.3.2Protestantism

5Contemporary developments
5.1Catholic–Orthodox dialogue
5.2Issues within Protestantism

6Opposition to ecumenism
6.1Opposition from some Protestants
6.2Opposition from some Orthodox Christians

7Ecumenical organizations

7.1Councils of churches
7.2Ecumenical institutes and offices
7.3Ecumenical monastic communities and orders
7.4Interdenominational ministries
7.5Political parties

8Ecumenical symbols

8.1Ecumenical symbol
8.2Christian flag

9See also
10References
11Bibliography
12External links

Purpose and goal of ecumenism[edit]

Historically, the word was originally used in the context of large ecumenical councils that were organized under the auspices of Roman Emperors to clarify matters of Christian theology and doctrine. These "Ecumenical Councils" brought together bishops from around the inhabited world (that is, οἰκουμένη) as they knew it at the time. There were a total of seven ecumenical councils accepted by both Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism held before the Great Schism. Thus, the modern meaning of the words ecumenical and ecumenism derives from this pre-modern sense of Christian unity, and the impulse to recreate this unity again.

There are a variety of different expectations of what that Christian unity looks like, how it is brought about, what ecumenical methods ought to be engaged, and what both short- and long-term objectives of the ecumenical movement should be. Ecumenism and non-denominational or post-denominational movements are not necessarily the same thing.

Historic divisions in Christianity[edit]
Christian denominations today[edit]

If ecumenism is the quest for Christian unity, it must be understood what the divisions are which must be overcome.

Christianity has not been a monolithic faith since the first century or Apostolic Age, if ever, and today there exists a large variety of groups that share a common history and tradition within and without mainstream Christianity. Christianity is the largest religion in the world (making up approximately one-third of the population) and the various divisions have commonalities and differences in tradition, theology, church government, doctrine, and language.

The world's 2.2 billion Christians[3] are visibly divided into different communions or denominations, groupings of Christians and their churches that are in full communion with one another, but to some degree exclusive of other Christians.

The exact number of these denominations is disputed, based on differing definitions used. The largest number often quoted is "approximately 45,000" from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.[4] The World Christian Encyclopedia lists "approximately 33,000" in 2001.[5] Yet, at the same time, the World Council of Churches counts only 348 member churches, representing more than half a billion members.[6] This, with the Catholic Church's 1.25 billion Christians,[7] indicates that 349 churches/denominations already account for nearly 80% of the world's Christian population.

One problem with the larger numbers is that single denominations can be counted multiple times. For example, the Catholic Church is a single church, or communion, comprising 24 distinct self-governing particular churches in full communion with the bishop of Rome (the largest being the Latin Church, commonly called "Roman Catholic"). Further, the Catholic Church presence in each country is counted as a different denomination—though this is in no way an ecclesiologically accurate definition. This can result in the one Catholic Church being counted as 242 distinct denominations, as in the World Christian Encyclopedia.[8]

Additionally, single nondenominational congregations or megachurches without denominational affiliation are effectively counted each as its own denomination, resulting in cases where entire "denominations" may account for only a handful of people. Other denominations may be very small remnants of once larger churches. The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing (Shakers) have only two full members, for example, yet are a distinct denomination.

Most current divisions are the result of historical schisms—a break in the full communion between previously united Churches, bishops, or communities. Some historical schisms proved temporary and were eventually healed, others have hardened into the denominations of today. However individual denominations are counted, it is generally acknowledged that they fall into the following major "families" of churches:
The Catholic Church;
Evangelical and Pentecostal churches;
Mainline Protestant, Old Catholic, and Anglican Communion churches;
The Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Assyrian Church of the East;
Independent or marginally Christian groups and sects (Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarian Universalists, Christadelphians, etc.)

In the United States, the historic racial/ethnic churches are sometimes counted as a distinct family of churches, though they may otherwise fit into any one of the previous categories.[9]

Some of these families are in themselves a single communion, such as the Catholic Church. Other families are a very general movement with no universal governing authority. Protestantism, for example, includes such diverse groups as Adventists, Anabaptists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Evangelicals, Holiness churches, Lutherans, Methodists, Moravians, Presbyterians, and Reformed churches. Many of these have, as a result of ecumenical dialogue, established full or partial communion agreements.

Ancient apostolic churches[edit]
Further information: Christology § Post-Apostolic controversies

The oldest lasting schism in Christianity resulted from fifth-century disagreements on Christology, heightened by philosophical, linguistic, cultural, and political differences.

The first significant, lasting split in historic Christianity, the so-called Nestorian Schism, came from the Church of the East, consisting largely of Eastern Syriac churches outside the Roman Empire, who left full communion after 431 in response to misunderstandings and personality conflicts at the Council of Ephesus. After fifteen centuries of estrangement, the Assyrian Church of the East and the Roman Catholic Church entered into an ecumenical dialogue in the 1980s, resulting in agreement on the very issue that split them asunder, in the 1994 Common Christological Declaration, which identifies the origin of the schism as largely linguistic, due to problems of translating very delicate and precise terminology from Latin to Aramaic and vice versa.

As part of the then-ongoing Christological controversy, following the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the next large split came with the Syriac and Coptic churches dividing themselves. The churches dissented from Chalcedon, becoming today's Oriental Orthodox Churches. These also include the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church in India. In modern times, there have also been moves towards healing this division, with common Christological statements being made between Pope John Paul II and Syriac patriarch Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, as well as between representatives of both Oriental Orthodoxy and the Eastern Orthodox Church.[10]

Great Schism[edit]
Further information: East–West Schism

Although the Christian world as a whole did not experience any major church divisions for centuries afterward, the Eastern, predominantly Greek-speaking and Western, predominantly Latin-speaking, cultural divisions drifted toward isolation, culminating in the mutual excommunication of Patriarch of Constantinople Michael I Cerularius and the legate of then-deceased Pope of Rome Leo IX in 1054, in what is known as the Great Schism. The canonical separation was sealed by the Latin sacking of Constantinople (1204) during the Fourth Crusade and through the poor reception of the Council of Florence (1449) among the Orthodox Eastern Churches.

The political and theological reasons for the schism are complex. Aside from the natural rivalry between the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire and the Franco-Latin Holy Roman Empire, one major controversy was the inclusion and acceptance in the West in general – and in the diocese of Rome in particular – of the Filioque clause ("and the Son") into the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which the East viewed as a violation of ecclesiastical procedure at best, an abuse of papal authority as only an Ecumenical Council could amend what had been defined by a previous council, and a heresy at worst, inasfar as the Filioque implies that the essential divinity of the Holy Spirit is derived not from the Father alone as arche (singular head and source), but from the perichoretic union between the Father and the Son. That the hypostasis or persona of the Spirit either is or is produced by the mutual, pre-eternal love between God and His Word is an explanation which Eastern Christian detractors have alleged is rooted in the medieval Augustinian appropriation of Plotinian Neoplatonism. (See Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate.)

Both West and East agreed that the patriarch of Rome was owed a "primacy of honour" by the other patriarchs (those of Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Jerusalem), but the West also contended that this primacy extended to jurisdiction, a position rejected by the Eastern patriarchs. Various attempts at dialogue between the two groups would occur, but it was only in the 1960s, under Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras, that significant steps began to be made to mend the relationship between the two. In 1965, the excommunications were "committed to oblivion".

The resulting division remains, however, providing the "Catholic Church" and the "Orthodox Church", both of which are globally distributed bodies and no longer restricted geographically or culturally to the "West" or "East", respectively. (There exist both Eastern Rite Roman Catholicism and Western Rite Orthodoxy, for example.) There is an ongoing and fruitful Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.

Western schisms and reformations[edit]
Main articles: Protestant Reformation and Catholic Reformation

In Western Christianity, there were a handful of geographically isolated movements that preceded in the spirit of the Protestant Reformation. The Cathars were a very strong movement in medieval southwestern France, but did not survive into modern times, largely as a result of the Albigensian Crusade. In northern Italy and southeastern France, Peter Waldo founded the Waldensians in the 12th century, which remains the largest non-Catholic church in Italy and is in full communion with the Italian Methodist Church. In Bohemia, a movement in the early 15th century by Jan Hus called the Hussites called for reform of Catholic teaching and still exists to this day, known as the Moravian Church. Though generally counted among Protestant churches, groups such as the Waldensians and Moravians pre-exist Protestantism proper.

The Protestant Reformation began, symbolically, with the posting of Martin Luther's "Ninety-Five Theses" in Saxony on October 31, 1517, written as a set of grievances to reform the Western Church. Luther's writings, combined with the work of Swiss theologian Huldrych Zwingli and French theologian and politician John Calvin, sought to reform existing problems in doctrine and practice. Due to the reactions of ecclesiastical office holders at the time of the reformers, the Roman Catholic Church separated from them, instigating a rift in Western Christianity. This schism created the Mainline Protestant Churches, including especially the Lutheran and Reformed traditions.

In England, Henry VIII of England declared himself to be supreme head of the Church of England with the Act of Supremacy in 1531, repressing both Lutheran reformers and those loyal to the pope. Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury introduced the English Reformation in a form compromising between the Calvinists and Lutherans. This schism created today's Anglican Communion.

The Radical Reformation, also mid-sixteenth century, moved beyond both Anglican and Protestant reformations, emphasizing the invisible, spiritual reality of the Church, apart from any visible ecclesial manifestation. A significant group of Radical reformers were the Anabaptists, people such as Menno Simons and Jakob Ammann, whose movements resulted in today's communities of Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, and Brethren churches, and to some extent, the Bruderhof Communities.[11]

Further reform movements within Anglicanism during the 16th through 18th centuries, with influence from the Radical Reformation, produced the Puritans and Separatists, creating today's Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers, and eventually Unitarian Universalism.

The Wesleyan and Methodist churches grew out of a revival within Anglicanism, especially in England and the American colonies, under the leadership of the brothers John Wesley and Charles Wesley, both priests in the Church of England. This movement also produced the Holiness movement churches.

The Old Catholic Church split from the Catholic Church in the 1870s because of the promulgation of the dogma of Papal Infallibility as promoted by the First Vatican Council of 1869–1870. The term "Old Catholic" was first used in 1853 to describe the members of the See of Utrecht who were not under Papal authority. The Old Catholic movement grew in America but has not maintained ties with Utrecht, although talks are under way between some independent Old Catholic bishops and Utrecht.

The Evangelical movement takes form as the result of spiritual renewal efforts in the anglophone world in the 18th century. According to religion scholar, social activist, and politician Randall Balmer, Evangelicalism resulted "from the confluence of Pietism, Presbyterianism, and the vestiges of Puritanism. Evangelicalism picked up the peculiar characteristics from each strain – warmhearted spirituality from the Pietists (for instance), doctrinal precisionism from the Presbyterians, and individualistic introspection from the Puritans".[12] Historian Mark Noll adds to this list High Church Anglicanism, which contributed to Evangelicalism a legacy of "rigorous spirituality and innovative organization".[13]

Pentecostalism is likewise born out of this context, and traditionally traces its origins to what it describes as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on 1 January 1901 in Topeka, Kansas, at the Bethel Bible College. Subsequent charismatic revivals in Wales in 1904 and the Azusa Street Revival in 1906 are held as the beginnings of the Pentecostal movement. For a Spirit-believing Christian, it is not coincidence that these started just a few hours after Pope Leo XIII lead a prayer Veni Spiritus Sanctus during his urbi et orbi message, consecrating the 20th century to the Holy Spirit and through this prayer to the reunion of Christianity.[14]
Modern ecumenical movement[edit]

One understanding of the ecumenical movement is that it came from the Roman Catholic Church's attempts to reconcile with Christians who had become separated over theological issues.[15] Others see the 1910 World Missionary Conference as the birthplace of the ecumenical movement.[16] Others yet point to the 1920 encyclical of the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Germanos of Constantinople "To the Churches of Christ Everywhere" that suggested a "fellowship of churches" similar to the League of Nations.[17]

Nathan Söderblom, Archbishop of Uppsala, the head of the Lutheran church in Sweden, is known as the architect of the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century. During the First World War, he called on all Christian leaders to work for peace and justice. His leadership of the Christian "Life and Work" movement in the 1920s has led him to be recognised as one of the principal founders of the ecumenical movement. His was instrumental in chairing the World Conference of Life and Work in Stockholm, Sweden in 1925. At the Stockholm Conference in 1925, the culminating event in Söderblom's ecumenical work, the Anglican, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians were all present and participating, with the exception of the Catholic Church, which was a much regretted absence. He was a close friend of the English ecumenist George Bell. In 1930 was one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, for the:Cooperation between Christian Church Communities Brings Peace and the first clergyman to receive this prize.[18][19]

After World War I, which had brought much devastation to many people, the church became a source of hope to those in need. In 1948 the first meeting of the World Council of Churches took place. Despite the fact that the meeting had been postponed due to World War II, the council took place in Amsterdam with the theme of "Man’s Disorder and God’s Design".[15] The focus of the church and the council following the gathering was on the damage created by the Second World War. The council and the movement went forward to continue the efforts of unifying the church globally around the idea of helping all those in need, whether it be a physical, emotional, or spiritual need. The movement led to an understanding amongst the churches that, despite difference, they could join together to be an element of great change in the world. To be an agent of hope and peace amongst the chaos and destruction that humans seem to create. More importantly the council and the movement lead to not only ecumenism but to the forming of councils amongst the denominations that connected churches across continental lines.[15]

Today, the World Council of Churches sees its role as sharing "the legacy of the one ecumenical movement and the responsibility to keep it alive" and acting "as a trustee for the inner coherence of the movement".[20]

There are non-denominational ecumenical fora that provide chapel services regardless of ability to access a church, synagogue, mosque or other form of religious or theological formation. The first known Christian ecumenical chapel founded on Facebook that is available to all 2.4 billion plus users is "Internet Chapel" found at https://www.facebook.com/InternetChapel/
Three approaches to Christian unity[edit]

For some Protestants, spiritual unity, and often unity on the church's teachings on central issues, suffices. According to Lutheran theologian Edmund Schlink, most important in Christian ecumenism is that people focus primarily on Christ, not on separate church organizations. In Schlink's book Ökumenische Dogmatik (1983), he says Christians who see the risen Christ at work in the lives of various Christians or in diverse churches realize that the unity of Christ's church has never been lost,[21] but has instead been distorted and obscured by different historical experiences and by spiritual myopia.

Both are overcome in renewed faith in Christ. Included in that is responding to his admonition (John 17; Philippians 2) to be one in him and love one another as a witness to the world. The result of mutual recognition would be a discernible worldwide fellowship, organized in a historically new way.[22]

For a significant part of the Christian world, one of the highest goals to be sought is the reconciliation of the various denominations by overcoming the historical divisions within Christianity. Even where there is broad agreement upon this goal, approaches to ecumenism vary. Generally, Protestants see fulfillment of the goal of ecumenism as consisting in general agreements on teachings about central issues of faith, with mutual pastoral accountability between the diverse churches regarding the teachings of salvation.

For Catholics and Orthodox on the other hand, the true unity of Christendom is treated in accordance with their more sacramental understanding of the Body of Christ; this ecclesiastical matter for them is closely linked to key theological issues (e.g. regarding the Eucharist and the historical Episcopate), and requires full dogmatic assent to the pastoral authority of the Church for full communion to be considered viable and valid. Thus, there are different answers even to the question of the church, which finally is the goal of the ecumenist movement itself. However, the desire of unity is expressed by many denominations, generally that all who profess faith in Christ in sincerity, would be more fully cooperative and supportive of one another.

For the Catholic and Orthodox churches, the process of approaching one another can be described as formally split in two successive stages: the "dialogue of love" and the "dialogue of truth".[23] Examples of acts belonging to the former include the mutual revocation in 1965 of the anathemas of 1054 (see below Contemporary developments), returning the relics of Sabbas the Sanctified (a common saint) to Mar Saba in the same year, and the first visit of a Pope to an Orthodox country in a millennium (Pope John Paul II accepting the invitation of the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Teoctist, in 1999), among others. The later one, involving effective theological engagement on matters of dogma, is only just commencing.

Christian ecumenism can be described in terms of the three largest divisions of Christianity: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant. While this underemphasizes the complexity of these divisions, it is a useful model.

Catholicism[edit]
Main article: Catholic Church and ecumenism

Te Deum Ecuménico 2009 in the Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral, Chile. An ecumenical gathering of clergy from different denominations.

The Catholic Church has always considered it a duty of the highest rank to seek full unity with estranged communions of fellow-Christians and, at the same time, to reject what it sees as a false union that would mean being unfaithful to or glossing over the teaching of sacred scripture and tradition.

Before the Second Vatican Council, the main stress was laid on this second aspect, as exemplified in canon 1258 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law:
It is illicit for the faithful to assist at or participate in any way in non-Catholic religious functions.
For a serious reason requiring, in case of doubt, the Bishop's approval, passive or merely material presence at non-Catholic funerals, weddings and similar occasions because of holding a civil office or as a courtesy can be tolerated, provided there is no danger of perversion or scandal.

The 1983 Code of Canon Law has no corresponding canon. It absolutely forbids Catholic priests to concelebrate the Eucharist with members of communities which are not in full communion (canon 908), but allows, in certain circumstances and under certain conditions, other sharing in the sacraments. The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism, 102[24] states: "Christians may be encouraged to share in spiritual activities and resources, i.e., to share that spiritual heritage they have in common in a manner and to a degree appropriate to their present divided state."

Pope John XXIII, who convoked the council that brought this change of emphasis about, said that the council's aim was to seek renewal of the church itself, which would serve, for those separated from the See of Rome, as a "gentle invitation to seek and find that unity for which Jesus Christ prayed so ardently to his heavenly Father".[25]

Some elements of the Catholic perspective on ecumenism are illustrated in the following quotations from the council's decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio of 21 November 1964, and Pope John Paul II's encyclical, Ut Unum Sint of 25 May 1995.


Every renewal of the Church is essentially grounded in an increase of fidelity to her own calling. Undoubtedly this is the basis of the movement toward unity … There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without a change of heart. For it is from renewal of the inner life of our minds, from self-denial and an unstinted love that desires of unity take their rise and develop in a mature way. We should therefore pray to the Holy Spirit for the grace to be genuinely self-denying, humble. gentle in the service of others, and to have an attitude of brotherly generosity towards them. … The words of St. John hold good about sins against unity: "If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us". So we humbly beg pardon of God and of our separated brethren, just as we forgive them that trespass against us.[26]


Christians cannot underestimate the burden of long-standing misgivings inherited from the past, and of mutual misunderstandings and prejudices. Complacency, indifference and insufficient knowledge of one another often make this situation worse. Consequently, the commitment to ecumenism must be based upon the conversion of hearts and upon prayer, which will also lead to the necessary purification of past memories. With the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Lord's disciples, inspired by love, by the power of the truth and by a sincere desire for mutual forgiveness and reconciliation, are called to re-examine together their painful past and the hurt which that past regrettably continues to provoke even today.[27]


In ecumenical dialogue, Catholic theologians standing fast by the teaching of the Church and investigating the divine mysteries with the separated brethren must proceed with love for the truth, with charity, and with humility. When comparing doctrines with one another, they should remember that in Catholic doctrine there exists a "hierarchy" of truths, since they vary in their relation to the fundamental Christian faith. Thus the way will be opened by which through fraternal rivalry all will be stirred to a deeper understanding and a clearer presentation of the unfathomable riches of Christ.[28]


The unity willed by God can be attained only by the adherence of all to the content of revealed faith in its entirety. In matters of faith, compromise is in contradiction with God who is Truth. In the Body of Christ, "the way, and the truth, and the life" (Jn 14:6), who could consider legitimate a reconciliation brought about at the expense of the truth?...Even so, doctrine needs to be presented in a way that makes it understandable to those for whom God himself intends it.[29]


When the obstacles to perfect ecclesiastical communion have been gradually overcome, all Christians will at last, in a common celebration of the Eucharist, be gathered into the one and only Church in that unity which Christ bestowed on his Church from the beginning. We believe that this unity subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time.[30]

While some Eastern Orthodox churches commonly baptize converts from the Catholic Church, thereby refusing to recognize the baptism that the converts have previously received, the Catholic Church has always accepted the validity of all the sacraments administered by the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches.

The Catholic Church likewise has very seldom applied the terms "heterodox" or "heretic" to the Eastern Orthodox churches or its members, though there are clear differences in doctrine, notably about the authority of the Pope, Purgatory, and the filioque clause. More often, the term "separated" or "schismatic" has been applied to the state of the Eastern Orthodox churches.

Orthodoxy[edit]

The consecration of The Rt. Rev Weller as an Anglican bishop at the Cathedral of St. Paul the Apostle in the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac, with the Rt. Rev. Anthony Kozlowski of the Polish National Catholic Church and the Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow (along with his chaplains Fr. John Kochurov, and Fr. Sebastian Dabovich) of the Russian Orthodox Church present

The Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox churches are two distinct bodies of local churches. The churches within each body share full communion, although there is not official communion between the two bodies. Both consider themselves to be the original church, from which the West was divided in the 5th and 11th centuries, respectively (after the 3rd and 7th Ecumenical councils).

Many theologians of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxies engage in theological dialogue with each other and with some of the Western churches, though short of full communion. The Eastern Orthodox have participated in the ecumenical movement, with students active in the World Student Christian Federation since the late 19th century. Most Eastern Orthodox[31] and all Oriental Orthodox churches[32] are members of the World Council of Churches. Kallistos of Diokleia, a bishop of the Eastern Orthodox Church has stated that ecumenism "is important for Orthodoxy: it has helped to force the various Orthodox Churches out of their comparative isolation, making them meet one another and enter into a living contact with non-Orthodox Christians."[33]

Historically, the relationship between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion has been congenial, with the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1922 recognising Anglican orders as valid. He wrote: "That the orthodox theologians who have scientifically examined the question have almost unanimously come to the same conclusions and have declared themselves as accepting the validity of Anglican Orders."[34] Moreover, some Eastern Orthodox bishops have assisted in the ordination of Anglican bishops; for example, in 1870, the Most Reverend Alexander Lycurgus, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Syra and Tinos, was one of the bishops who consecrated Henry MacKenzie as the Suffragan Bishop of Nottingham.[35][self-published source] From 1910–1911, the era before World War I, Raphael of Brooklyn, an Eastern Orthodox bishop, "sanctioned an interchange of ministrations with the Episcopalians in places where members of one or the other communion are without clergy of their own".[36] Bishop Raphael stated that in places "where there is no resident Orthodox Priest", an Anglican (Episcopalian) priest could administer Marriage, Holy Baptism, and the Blessed Sacrament to an Orthodox layperson.[37] In 1912, however, Bishop Raphael ended the intercommunion after becoming uncomfortable with the fact that the Anglican Communion contained different churchmanships within Her, e.g. High Church, Evangelical, etc.[38] However, after World War I, the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius was organized in 1927, which much like the Anglican and Eastern Churches Association worked on ecumenism between the two Churches; both of these organisations continue their task today.[39]

In accordance with the Soviet anti-religious legislation under the state atheism of the Soviet Union, several Russian Orthodox churches and seminaries were closed.[40][41] With ecumenical aid from Methodists in the United States two Russian Orthodox seminaries were reopened, and hierarchs of the Orthodox Church thankfully made the following statement: "The services rendered by the American Methodists and other Christian friends will go down in history of the Orthodox Church as one of its brightest pages in that dark and trying time of the church. Our Church will never forget the Samaritan service which your whole Church unselfishly rendered us. May this be the beginning of closer friendship for our churches and nations."[42]

Anglicanism and Protestantism[edit]


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Anglicanism[edit]
Main article: Anglican Communion and ecumenism

The members of the Anglican Communion have generally embraced the Ecumenical Movement, actively participating in such organizations as the World Council of Churches and the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Most provinces holding membership in the Anglican Communion have special departments devoted to ecumenical relations; however, the influence of Liberal Christianity has in recent years caused tension within the communion, causing some to question the direction ecumenism has taken them.

Each member church of the Anglican Communion makes its own decisions with regard to intercommunion. The 1958 Lambeth Conference recommended "that where between two Churches not of the same denominational or confessional family, there is unrestricted communio in sacris, including mutual recognition and acceptance of ministries, the appropriate term to use is 'full communion', and that where varying degrees of relation other than 'full communion' are established by agreement between two such churches the appropriate term is 'intercommunion'."

Full communion has been established between Provinces of the Anglican Communion and these Churches:
Old Catholic Churches of Europe
Philippine Independent Church
Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Moravian Church in America, Northern and Southern Provinces

Full communion has been established between the Anglican Churches of Europe (England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar in Europe) and the Lutheran Churches of Northern Europe (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Lithuania, Great Britain and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church Abroad) with the Porvoo Communion.

The Episcopal Church is currently engaged in dialogue with the following religious bodies:
Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC)
Eastern Orthodox Church
Roman Catholic Church
Presbyterian Church USA
United Methodist Church
Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province of America

Worldwide, an estimated forty million Anglicans belong to churches that do not participate in the Anglican Communion[citation needed], a particular organization limited to one province per country. In these Anglican churches, there is strong opposition to the ecumenical movement and to membership in such bodies as the World and National Councils of Churches. Most of these churches are associated with the Continuing Anglican movement or the movement for Anglican realignment. While ecumenicalism in general is opposed, certain Anglican church bodies that are not members of the Anglican Communion—the Free Church of England and the Church of England in South Africa, for example—have fostered close and cooperative relations with other evangelical (if non-Anglican) churches, on an individual basis.
Protestantism[edit]

Nicolaus Ludwig, Count von Zinzendorf, (1700–1760) the renewer of the Unitas Fratrum / Moravian Church in the 18th century, was the first person to use the word "ecumenical" in this sense. His pioneering efforts to unite all Christians, regardless of denominational labels, into a "Church of God in the Spirit"—notably among German immigrants in Pennsylvania—were misunderstood by his contemporaries and 200 years before the world was ready for them.

The contemporary ecumenical movement for Protestants is often said to have started with the 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference. However this conference would not have been possible without the pioneering ecumenical work of the Christian youth movements: the Young Men's Christian Association (founded 1844), the Young Women's Christian Association (founded 1855), the World Student Christian Federation (founded 1895), and the Federal Council of Churches (founded 1908), predecessor to today's National Council of Churches USA.

Led by Methodist layman John R. Mott (former YMCA staff and in 1910 the General Secretary of WSCF), the World Mission conference marked the largest Protestant gathering to that time, with the express purposes of working across denominational lines for the sake of world missions. After the First World War further developments were the "Faith and Order" movement led by Charles Henry Brent, and the "Life and Work" movement led by Nathan Soderblom. In the 1930s, the tradition of an annual World Communion Sunday to celebrate ecumenical ties was established in the Presbyterian Church and was subsequently adopted by several other denominations.

Eventually, formal organizations were formed, including the World Council of Churches in 1948, the National Council of Churches in the United States in 1950, and Churches Uniting in Christ in 2002. These groups are moderate to liberal, theologically speaking, as Protestants are generally more liberal and less traditional than Anglicans, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics.

Protestants are now involved in a variety of ecumenical groups, working in some cases toward organic denominational unity and in other cases for cooperative purposes alone. Because of the wide spectrum of Protestant denominations and perspectives, full cooperation has been difficult at times. Edmund Schlink's Ökumenische Dogmatik (1983, 1997) proposes a way through these problems to mutual recognition and renewed church unity.

In 1999, the representatives of Lutheran World Federation and Roman Catholic Church signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, resolving the conflict over the nature of Justification which was at the root of the Protestant Reformation, although some conservative Lutherans did not agree to this resolution. On July 18, 2006, delegates to the World Methodist Conference voted unanimously to adopt the Joint Declaration.[43][44]

Contemporary developments[edit]

Ecumenical worship service at the monastery of Taizé.
Catholic–Orthodox dialogue[edit]

The mutual anathemas (excommunications) of 1054, marking the Great Schism between Western (Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) branches of Christianity, a process spanning several centuries, were revoked in 1965 by Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The Roman Catholic Church does not regard Orthodox Christians as excommunicated, since they personally have no responsibility for the separation of their churches. In fact, Catholic rules admit the Orthodox to communion and the other sacraments in situations where the individuals are in danger of death or no Orthodox churches exist to serve the needs of their faithful. However, Orthodox churches still generally regard Roman Catholics as excluded from the sacraments and some may even not regard Catholic sacraments such as baptism and ordination as valid.

In November 2006, Pope Benedict XVI traveled to Istanbul at the invitation of Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople and participated in the feast day services of St. Andrew the First Apostle, the patron saint of the Church of Constantinople. The Ecumenical Patriarch and Pope Benedict had another historic meeting in Ravenna, Italy in 2007. The Declaration of Ravenna marked a significant rapprochement between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox positions. The declaration recognized the bishop of Rome as the Protos, or first among equals of the Patriarchs. This acceptance and the entire agreement was hotly contested by the Russian Orthodox Church. The signing of the declaration highlighted the pre-existing tensions between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Moscow Patriarchate. Besides their theological concerns, the Russian Orthodox have continuing concerns over the question of the Eastern Catholic Churches that operate in what they regard as Orthodox territory. This question has been exacerbated by disputes over churches and other property that the Communist authorities once assigned to the Orthodox Church but whose restoration these Churches have obtained from the present authorities.

A major obstacle to improved relations between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches has been the insertion of the Latin term filioque into the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in the 8th and 11th centuries.[45] This obstacle has now been effectively resolved. The Roman Catholic Church now recognizes that the Creed, as confessed at the First Council of Constantinople, did not add "and the Son", when it spoke of the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father. When quoting the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, as in the 6 August 2000 document Dominus Iesus, it does not include filioque.[46] It views as complementary the Eastern-tradition expression "who proceeds from the Father" (profession of which it sees as affirming that he comes from the Father through the Son) and the Western-tradition expression "who proceeds from the Father and the Son", with the Eastern tradition expressing firstly the Father's character as first origin of the Spirit, and the Western tradition giving expression firstly to the consubstantial communion between Father and Son; and it believes that, provided this legitimate complementarity does not become rigid, it does not affect the identity of faith in the reality of the same mystery confessed.[47]

Continuing dialogues at both international and national level continues between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. A particularly close relationship has grown up between Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. Both church leaders have in particular emphasized their common concern for refugees and persecuted Christians in the Middle East. The 2016 Pan-Orthodox Council that was held in Crete aroused great expectations for advances in Church unity. However, not all Orthodox churches participated and, as a result, the Russian Patriarch refused to recognize the council as a truly ecumenical gathering. A major milestone in the growing rapprochement between the Catholic and Orthodox churches was the 12 February 2016 meeting held in Havana, Cuba between Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis. The two church leaders issued a Joint Declaration of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill at the conclusion of their discussions.

Issues within Protestantism[edit]

Contemporary developments in mainline Protestant churches have dealt a serious blow to ecumenism. The decision by the U.S. Episcopal Church to ordain Gene Robinson, an openly gay, non-celibate priest who advocates same-sex blessings, as bishop led the Russian Orthodox Church to suspend its cooperation with the Episcopal Church. Likewise, when the Church of Sweden decided to bless same-sex marriages, the Russian Patriarchate severed all relations with the Church, noting that "Approving the shameful practice of same-sex marriages is a serious blow to the entire system of European spiritual and moral values influenced by Christianity."[48]

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev commented that the inter-Christian community is "bursting at the seams". He sees the great dividing line—or "abyss"—not so much between old churches and church families as between "traditionalists" and "liberals", the latter now dominating Protestantism, and predicted that other Northern Protestant Churches will follow suit and this means that the "ecumenical ship" will sink, for with the liberalism that is materializing in European Protestant churches, there is no longer anything to talk about.[49]

Organizations such as the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches USA, Churches Uniting in Christ, Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Fellowship and Christian Churches Together continue to encourage ecumenical cooperation among Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and, at times, Roman Catholics. There are universities such as the University of Bonn in Germany that offer degree courses in "Ecumenical Studies" in which theologians of various denominations teach their respective traditions and, at the same time, seek for common ground between these traditions.

The Global Christian Forum (GCF) was founded in 1998 following the proposal of the then General Secretary of the WCC, Rev. Konrad Raiser, that a new, independent space should be created where participants could meet on an equal basis to foster mutual respect and to explore and address together common concerns. The GCF brought in two advantages: historic freshness and postmodern approach.[50]

Influenced by the ecumenical movement, the "scandal of separation" and local developments, a number of United and uniting churches have formed; there are also a range of mutual recognition strategies being practiced where formal union is not feasible. An increasing trend has been the sharing of church buildings by two or more denominations, either holding separate services or a single service with elements of all traditions.

Opposition to ecumenism[edit]
Opposition from some Protestants[edit]

There are some members of the United Methodist Church who oppose ecumenical efforts which are "not grounded in the doctrines of the Church" due to concerns over theological compromise.[51] For example, an article published in Catalyst Online: Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives for United Methodist Seminarians stated that false ecumenism might result in the "blurring of theological and confessional differences in the interests of unity".[52]

The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) bars its clergy from worshiping with other faiths, contending "that church fellowship or merger between church bodies in doctrinal disagreement with one another is not in keeping with what the Bible teaches about church fellowship."[53] In keeping with this position, a Connecticut LCMS pastor was asked to apologize by the president of the denomination, and did so, for participating in an interfaith prayer vigil for the 26 children and adults killed at a Newtown elementary school; and a LCMS pastor in New York was suspended for praying at an interfaith vigil in 2001, twelve days after the September 11 attacks.[54] Another conservative Lutheran body, the American Association of Lutheran Churches, is strongly opposed to ecumenical (more accurately, interfaith) dialogue with non-Christian religions and with denominations it identifies as cults.

When the Manhattan Declaration was released, many prominent Evangelical figures – particularly of the Calvinist Reformed tradition – opposed it, including John F. MacArthur, D. James Kennedy, Alistair Begg, R. C. Sproul, and Arminian Protestant teacher and televangelist John Ankerberg.

Opposition from some Orthodox Christians[edit]
See also: Sobornost

Practically, "the whole of Eastern Orthodoxy holds membership in the World Council of Churches."[55] Ecumenical Patriarch Germanus V of Constantinople's 1920 letter "'To all the Churches of Christ, wherever they may be', urging closer co-operation among separated Christians, and suggesting a 'League of Churches', parallel to the newly founded League of Nations" was an inspiration for the founding of the World Council of Churches; as such "Constantinople, along with several of the other Orthodox Churches, was represented at the Faith and Order Conferences at Lausanne in 1927 and at Edinburgh in 1937. The Ecumenical Patriarchate also participated in the first Assembly of the WCC at Amsterdam in 1948, and has been a consistent supporter of the work of the WCC ever since."[56]

However, many Orthodox Christians are vehemently opposed to ecumenism with other Christian denominations. They view ecumenism, as well as interfaith dialog, as being potentially pernicious to Orthodox Church Tradition; a "weakening" of Orthodoxy itself.[57] In the Eastern Orthodox world, the monastic community of Mount Athos, arguably the most important center of Orthodox spirituality, has voiced its concerns regarding the ecumenist movement and opposition to the participation of the Orthodox Church.[58] They regard modern ecumenism as compromising essential doctrinal stands in order to accommodate other Christians, and object to the emphasis on dialogue leading to intercommunion rather than conversion on the part of participants in ecumenical initiatives. Greek Old Calendarists also claim that the teachings of the Seven Ecumenical Councils forbid changing the church calendar through abandonment of the Julian calendar.[citation needed] The Inter-Orthodox Theological Conference entitled "Ecumenism: Origins, Expectations, Disenchantment",[59] organized in September 2004 by the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki has drawn negative conclusions on ecumenism.

Ecumenical organizations[edit]


Councils of churches[edit]
Action of Churches Together in Scotland
Canadian Council of Churches
Caribbean Conference of Churches
Christian Churches Together in the USA
Christian Conference of Asia
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland
Churches Together in England
Communion of Churches in Indonesia
Conference of European Churches
Conference of Secretaries of World Christian Communions
Council of Churches of Malaysia
Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa
Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in West Africa
Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches of Central Africa
Fellowship of Christian Councils in Southern Africa
Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches
Hong Kong Christian Council
Latin American Council of Churches
Middle East Council of Churches
Myanmar Council of Churches
National Christian Council in Japan
National Council of Churches in Bangladesh
National Council of Churches in Korea
National Council of Churches in the Philippines
National Council of Churches of Nepal
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Pacific Conference of Churches
World Council of Churches


Ecumenical institutes and offices[edit]
Anglican and Eastern Churches Association
Centro Pro Unione, Rome
Canadian Centre for Ecumenism, Montreal (Canada)
Churches Uniting in Christ, USA
Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue, Sri Lanka
Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius
Groupe des Dombes
International Ecumenical Fellowship
Irish School of Ecumenics, Dublin
Joint Working Group between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches
North American Academy of Ecumenists
North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation
Porvoo Communion
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity
Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry
Tantur Ecumenical Institute, Jerusalem
Washington Theological Consortium


Ecumenical monastic communities and orders[edit]
Benedictine Women of Madison
Bose Monastic Community
Focolare Movement
Iona Community
L'Arche
New Monasticism related Communities
Order of Ecumenical Franciscans
Order of Saint Lazarus
Order of Saint Luke
Priory of St. Wigbert
Society of Ordained Scientists
Taizé Community
Interdenominational ministries[edit]
American Bible Society
Church World Service
Cru, formerly "Campus Crusade for Christ"
Girls' Brigade
Green Churches Network Canada
Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Fellowship
People of Praise
Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center
Student Christian Movement (Britain)
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
World Communion Sunday
World Student Christian Federation
Boys' Brigade



Political parties[edit]
Part of a series on
Christian democracy


Organizations[show]

Ideas[show]

Documents[show]

People[show]

Politics portal


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Christian democracy is a centrist political ideology inspired by Catholic social teaching and Neo-Calvinist theology.[60] Christian democratic political parties came to prominence after World War II after Roman Catholics and Protestants worked together to help rebuild war-torn Europe.[61] From its inception, Christian Democracy fosters an "ecumenical unity achieved on the religious level against the atheism of the government in the Communist countries".[62]
Ecumenical symbols[edit]
Ecumenical symbol[edit]

The ecumenical symbol pre-dates the World Council of Churches (WCC), formed in 1948, but is incorporated into the official logo of the WCC and many other ecumenical organizations.


The church is portrayed as a boat afloat on the sea of the world with the mast in the form of a cross. These early Christian symbols of the church embody faith and unity and carry the message of the ecumenical movement.... The symbol of the boat has its origins in the gospel story of the calling of the disciples by Jesus and the stilling of the storm on Lake Galilee.[63]

Christian flag[edit]

Main article: Christian Flag

The Christian flag

Though originating in the Wesleyan tradition, and most popular among mainline and evangelical Protestant churches, the "Christian Flag" stands for no creed or denomination, but for Christianity. With regard to the Christian symbolism of the flag:


The ground is white, representing peace, purity and innocence. In the upper corner is a blue square, the color of the unclouded sky, emblematic of heaven, the home of the Christian; also a symbol of faith and trust. in the center of the blue is the cross, the ensign and chosen symbol of Christianity: the cross is red, typical of Christ's blood.[64]

An ecumenical Christian organization, the Federal Council of Churches (now succeeded by the National Council of Churches and Christian Churches Together), adopted the flag on 23 January 1942.[65]
See also[edit]

Christianity portal
Inclusivism
Invisible church
One true church
One true faith
Religious pluralism
References[edit]

1. ^ "Logo". World Council of Churches. Retrieved 6 August 2016.
2. ^ "ecumenical". Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House.
3. ^ "Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population" (PDF). Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. December 2011. Retrieved February 21, 2019 – via International Center for Law and Religion Studies.
4. ^ "Christianity 2015: Religious Diversity and Personal Contact" (PDF). International Bulletin of Missionary Research. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. 39 (1): 28–29. January 2015. doi:10.1177/239693931503900108.
5. ^ Barett, David B. (2001). World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
6. ^ "WCC Member Churches". World Council of Churches.
7. ^ "World Mission Day: Catholic Church Statistics 2015". Official Vatican News Network.
8. ^ "The Facts and Stats on '33,000. Denominations'". Evangelical Catholic Apologetics.
9. ^ "Organizational Plan". Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A.
10. ^ Chapman, J. (1911). "Monophysites and Monophysitism". in The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved June 4, 2009
11. ^ "Bruderhof – Fellowship for Intentional Community". Fellowship for Intentional Community. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
12. ^ Balmer 2004, pp. vii–viii.
13. ^ Noll 2004, p. 45.
14. ^ "A Quickness of the Spirit". Catholic Charismatic Renewal.
15. ^ Jump up to:a b c Howard C. Kee et al., Christianity: a Social and Cultural History, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ.: Prentice Hall, 1998), 379–81.
16. ^ Latourette, Kenneth Scott. "Ecumenical Bearings of the Missionary Movement and the International Missionary Council." In "A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517–1948", edited by Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill, 353–73, 401–02. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1954.
17. ^ Grdzelidze, Tamara. "Ecumenism, Orthodoxy and" In "The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity", edited by John Anthony McGuckin, 208–15. Wiley Blackwell, 2011.
18. ^ "Nathan Söderblom, Nobel Prize Winner". /www.nobelprize.org. Retrieved 1 February2015.
19. ^ "nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1930/soderblom-facts". www.nobelprize.org. Retrieved 1 February 2015.
20. ^ "The WCC and the ecumenical movement". oikoumene.org. Retrieved 2014-02-11.
21. ^ Edmund Schlink, Ökumenische Dogmatik (1983), pp. 694–701; also his "Report," Dialog1963, 2:4, 328.
22. ^ Edmund Schlink, Ökumenische Dogmatik (1983), pp. 707–08; also Skibbe, A Quiet Reformer 1999, 122–24; Schlink, The Vision of the Pope 2001.
23. ^ “A Church in Dialogue: Towards the Restoration of Unity Among Christians” (The Episcopal Commission for Christian Unity, Religious Relations with the Jews, and Interfaith Dialogue of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2014), 9, 11. Online at http://www.cccb.ca/site/images/stories/pdf/A_Church_in_Dialogue_long_version_EN.PDF.
24. ^ Directory For The Application Of Principles And Norms On Ecumenism
25. ^ Encyclical Ad Petri cathedram
26. ^ Unitatis Redintegratio 6–7
27. ^ Encyclical Ut unum sint, 2[1]
28. ^ Unitatis Redintegratio, 11[2]
29. ^ Encyclical Ut unum sint, 18–19[3]
30. ^ Unitatis Redintegratio, 4[4]
31. ^ "Orthodox churches (Eastern)". oikoumene.org. Retrieved 2014-02-11.
32. ^ "Orthodox churches (Oriental)". oikoumene.org. Retrieved 2014-02-11.
33. ^ Ware, Kallistos (28 April 1993). The Orthodox Church. Penguin Adult. p. 322. ISBN 978-0-14-014656-1.
34. ^ The Ecumenical Patriarch on Anglican Orders Archived January 25, 2002, at the Wayback Machine
35. ^ Redmile, Robert David (1 September 2006). The Apostolic Succession and the Catholic Episcopate in the Christian Episcopal Church of Canada. p. 239. ISBN 978-1-60034-517-3. In 1870, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Syra and Tinos, the Most Reverend Alexander Lycurgus, paid a visit to the British Isles. During his time in England, Archbishop Lycurgus was invited by the Lord Bishop of London, John Jackson, to join with him in consecrating Henry MacKenzie as the Suffragan Bishop of Nottingham. Archbishop Lycurgus agreed to assist, and on 2 February 1870, he joined in the laying on of hands with the Bishop of London at the consecration of Bishop MacKenzie. Thus the Apostolic Succession in the Greek Orthodox Church was passed on to the Bishops of the Anglican Communion, and through them to the Christian Episcopal Churches in the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada.
36. ^ Herbermann, Charles (1912). The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church. Robert Appleton. p. 149. This A.E.O.C.U. is particularly active in the United States, where the existence side by side of Westerns and Easterns offers special facilities for mutual intercourse. It is due mainly to its instances that the orthodox Bishop Raphael of Brooklyn recently sanctioned an interchange of ministrations with the Episcopalians in places where members of one or the other communion are without clergy of their own-a practice which, as coming from the Orthodox side, seemed strange, but was presumably justified by the "principle of economy" which some Orthodox theologians unaccountably advocate (see Reunion Magazine, Sept., 1910).
37. ^ Journal of the Proceedings of the One Hundred and Ninth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Rumford Press. 1910. p. 411. Retrieved 15 April 2014. Inasmuch as there is a variance between your and our Churches in these matters, I suggest that, before any marriage Service is performed for Syrians desiring the services of the Protestant Episcopal Clergy, where there is no Orthodox Priest, that the Syrians shall first procure a license from me, their Bishop, giving them permission, and that, where there is a resident Orthodox Priest, that, the Episcopal Clergy may advise them to have such Service performed by him. Again, in the case of Holy Baptism, that, where there is no resident Orthodox Priest, that the Orthodox law in reference to the administration of the Sacrament be observed, namely immersion three times, with the advice to the parents and witnesses that, as soon as possible, the child shall be taken to an Orthodox Priest to receive Chrismation, which is absolutely binding according to the Law of the Orthodox Church. Furthermore, when an Orthodox Layman is dying, if he confesses his sins, and professes that he is dying in the full communion of the Orthodox Faith, as expressed in the Orthodox version of the Nicene Creed, and the other requirements of the said Church, and desires the Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, at the hands of an Episcopal Clergyman, permission is hereby given to administer to him this Blessed Sacrament, and to be buried according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Episcopal Church. But, it is recommended that, if an Orthodox Service Book can be procured, that the Sacraments and Rites be performed as set forth in that Book. And now I pray God that He may hasten the time when the Spiritual Heads of the National Churches, of both yours and ours, may take our places in cementing the Union between the Anglican and Orthodox Churches, which we have so humbly begun; then there will be no need of suggestions, such as I have made, as to how, or by whom, Services shall be performed; and, instead of praying that we "all may be one" we shall known that we are one in Christ's Love and Faith. Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn.
38. ^ Herbermann, Charles (1912). The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church. Robert Appleton. p. 149. This A.E.O.C.U. is particularly active in the United States, where the existence side by side of Westerns and Easterns offers special facilities for mutual intercourse. It is due mainly to its instances that the orthodox Bishop Raphael of Brooklyn recently sanctioned an interchange of ministrations with the Episcopalians in places where members of one or the other communion are without clergy of their own-a practice which, as coming from the Orthodox side, seemed strange, but was presumably justified by the "principle of economy" which some Orthodox theologians unaccountably advocate (see Reunion Magazine, Sept., 1910), The concordat did not, however last very long' Bishop Raphael seems not to have understood, at first, the motley character of the Episcopalian communion, but having come to realize it, quickly revoked his concession (Russian Orthodox American Messenger, 28 Feb., 1912).
39. ^ Church Quarterly Review. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. January–March 1964. In 1927, the "Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius" was founded, becoming, like the "Anglican and Eastern Church Association", one of the chief focal points of these contacts.
40. ^ Greeley, Andrew M. Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millennium: A Sociological Profile. Transaction Publishers. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-4128-3298-4. Seminaries were closed, churches turned into museums or centers for atheist propaganda, the clergy rigidly controlled, the bishops appointed by the state.
41. ^ Gerhard Simon (1974). Church, State, and Opposition in the U.S.S.R. University of California Press. On the other hand the Communist Party has never made any secret of the fact, either before or after 1917, that it regards 'militant atheism' as an integral part of its ideology and will regard 'religion as by no means a private matter'. It therefore uses 'the means of ideological influence to educate people in the spirit of scientific materialism and to overcome religious prejudices..' Thus it is the goal of the C.P.S.U. and thereby also of the Soviet state, for which it is after all the 'guiding cell', gradually to liquidate the religious communities.
42. ^ Rev. Thomas Hoffmann; William Alex Pridemore. "Esau's Birthright and Jacob's Pottage: A Brief Look at Orthodox-Methodist Ecumenism in Twentieth-Century Russia" (PDF). Demokratizatsiya. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 September 2011. Retrieved 19 October 2009. The Methodists continued their ecumenical commitments, now with the OC. This involved a continuance of financial assistance from European and American resources, enough to reopen two OC seminaries in Russia (where all had been previously closed). OC leaders wrote in two unsolicited statements: The services rendered... by the American Methodists and other Christian friends will go down in history of the Orthodox Church as one of its brightest pages in that dark and trying time of the church.... Our Church will never forget the Samaritan service which... your whole Church unselfishly rendered us. May this be the beginning of closer friendship for our churches and nations. (as quoted in Malone 1995, 50–51)
43. ^ "News Archives". UMC.org. July 20, 2006. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
44. ^ "CNS Story: Methodists adopt Catholic-Lutheran declaration on justification". Catholicnews.com. July 24, 2006. Archived from the original on July 25, 2006. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
45. ^ "Cathecism of the Catholic Church, 247". Vatican.va. Retrieved 2013-04-25.
46. ^ "Dominus Iesus". Vatican.va. Archived from the original on 2013-04-11. Retrieved 2013-04-25.
47. ^ "Article 1 of the Treaty of Brest". Ewtn.com. Retrieved 2013-04-25.
48. ^ Russian Orthodox Church condemns Lutheran gay weddings Archived 2011-06-06 at the Wayback Machine Pravda, 30 December 2005. Accessed 24 March 2009.
49. ^ Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: Will the Ecumenical Ship Sink? The Official Website of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Accessed 24 March 2009.
50. ^ Domenic Marbaniang, "Unity in the Body", Journal of Contemporary Christian, Vol. 3, No. 1 ISSN 2231-5233 (Bangalore: CFCC, August 2011), p. 36
51. ^ William J. Abraham (2012). "United Methodist Evangelicals and Ecumenism" (PDF). Southern Methodist University. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
52. ^ Randall Balmer (1998). "The Future of American Protestantism". Catalyst Online: Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives for United Methodist Seminarians. Archived from the original on April 15, 2012. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
53. ^ "A Brief Statement of the Doctrinal Position of the Missouri Synod" (PDF). Concordia Publishing House. 2009. Retrieved 7 February 2013.
54. ^ "Pastor apologizes for role in prayer vigil after Connecticut massacre". Reuters. 2013. Archived from the original on February 8, 2013. Retrieved 7 February 2013.
55. ^ Fey, Harold C. (1 December 2009). A History of the Ecumenical Movement, Volume 2: 1948–1968. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 304. ISBN 978-1-60608-910-1. With the exception of the Orthodox Church of Albania the whole of Eastern Orthodoxy holds membership in the World Council of Churches.
56. ^ Ware, Kallistos (29 April 1993). The Orthodox Church. Penguin Adult. p. 322. ISBN 978-0-14-014656-1. From the beginning of the twentieth century the Ecumenical Patriarchate has shown a special concern for Christian reconciliation. At his accession in 1902, Patriarch Joachim III sent an encyclical letter to all the autocephalous Orthodox Churches, asking in particular for their opinion on relations with other Christian bodies. In January 1920 the Ecumenical Patriarchate followed this up with a bold and prophetic letter addressed 'To all the Churches of Christ, wherever they may be', urging closer co-operation among separated Christians, and suggesting a 'League of Churches', parallel to the newly founded League of Nations. Many of the ideas in this letter anticipate subsequent developments in the WCC. Constantinople, along with several of the other Orthodox Churches, was represented at the Faith and Order Conferences at Lausanne in 1927 and at Edinburgh in 1937. The Ecumenical Patriarchate also participated in the first Assembly of the WCC at Amsterdam in 1948, and has been a consistent supporter of the work of the WCC ever since.
57. ^ Patrick Barnes. "Ecumenism Awareness Introduction". Orthodox Christian Information Center. Retrieved 2008-12-30.
58. ^ The Theological Committee of the Sacred Community of Mount Athos (2007-02-18). "Memorandum on the Participation of the Orthodox Church in the World Council of Churches". orthodoxinfo.com. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
59. ^ "Conclusions of the Inter-Orthodox Theological Conference "Ecumenism: Origins Expectations Disenchantment"". orthodox.info. Retrieved 2008-11-03.
60. ^ Monsma, Stephen V. (2012). Pluralism and Freedom: Faith-based Organizations in a Democractic Society. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 13. ISBN 9781442214309. This is the Christian Democratic tradition and the structural pluralist concepts that underlie it. The Roman Catholic social teaching of subsidiarity and its related concepts, as well as the parallel neo-Calvinist concept of sphere sovereignty, play major roles in structural pluralist thought.
61. ^ Witte, John (1993). Christianity and Democracy in Global Context. Westview Press. p. 9. ISBN 9780813318431. Concurrent with this missionary movement in Africa, both Protestant and Catholic political activists helped to restore democracy to war-torn Europe and extend it overseas. Protestant political activism emerged principally in England, the Lowlands, and Scandinavia under the inspiration of both social gospel movements and neo-Calvinism. Catholic political activism emerged principally in Italy, France, and Spain under the inspiration of both Rerum Novarum and its early progeny and of neo-Thomism. Both formed political parties, which now fall under the general aegis of the Christian Democratic Party movement. Both Protestant and Catholic parties inveighed against the reductionist extremes and social failures of liberal democracies and social democracies. Liberal democracies, they believed, had sacrificed the community for the individual; social democracies had sacrificed the individual for the community. Both parties returned to a traditional Christian teaching of "social pluralism" or "subsidiarity," which stressed the dependence and participation of the individual in family, church, school, business, and other associations. Both parties stressed the responsibility of the state to respect and protect the "individual in community."
62. ^ Dussel, Enrique (1981). A History of the Church in Latin America. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 217. ISBN 978-0-8028-2131-7. European Christian Democracy after the Second World War really represented a common political front against the People's Democracies, that is, Christian Democracy was a kind of ecumenical unity achieved on the religious level against the atheism of the government in the Communist countries.
63. ^ "The Ecumenical Symbol". World Council of Churches.
64. ^ "Christian Flag". The Christian Advocate. New York: T. Carlton & J. Porter. 84. 7 January 1909. Within recent years (1897) a flag has been designed which shall stand as an emblem around which all Christian nations and various denominations may rally in allegiance and devotion. This banner is called the Christian flag. It was originated by Charles C. Overton of Brooklyn, N.Y., whose first thought of it came to him while addressing a Sunday school at a rally day service. The flag is most symbolic. The ground is white, representing peace, purity and innocence. In the upper corner is a blue square, the color of the unclouded sky, emblematic of heave, the home of the Christian; also a symbol of faith and trust. in the center of the blue is the cross, the ensign and chosen symbol of Christianity: the cross is red, typical of Christ's blood. The use of the national flag in Christian churches has become almost universal throughout the world.
65. ^ "Resolution". Federal Council Bulletin. Religious Publicity Service of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. 25-27. 1942.

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