A (very!) brief account of the Ecumenical Movement

For many decades, the Churches in England have been experimenting with ways of coming closer together. The modern Ecumenical Movement started with a series of conferences in the late 1800s, culminating in the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910. The Churches began from then onward to seek cooperation rather than competition, looking forward to the "full, visible unity" of the Churches. Later, two movements - the Faith and Order Movement and the Life and Work Movement - merged, and in 1948 formed the foundation of the World Council of Churches. Since then, other movements have become incorporated into the World Council. The British Council of Churches was actually founded before the WCC, dating from 1942. By the end of the 1960s, ecumenical activity had increased with the establishing of Areas of Ecumenical Experiment, in which some of the rules governing inter-Church relationships were eased and permission to experiment more easily granted. This was the era of New Towns, in which new opportunities were appearing for imaginative collaboration in setting up new churches, often multi-purpose buildings with two or more denominations working closely together. One organisation closely involved was the New Town Ministers' Association, which had a brief but formative ten-year life during which some valuable theological foundations for establishing ecumenical churches in "green-field sites" were laid. As time passed, such was the excitement that experimentation gave way to a more structured and defined programme, and the term Local Ecumenical Projects was coined. The denominations set up their individual divisions to monitor and develop LEPs (as they were soon called), and the number of LEPs steadily increased. The term Local Covenant was introduced at the end of the 1970s to describe LEPs that might include the Roman Catholic Church. With the re-inventing of the British Council of Churches into Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) in 1990, the Roman Catholic Church, together with several Black Majority churches, became full members of CTBI. Locally, Councils of Churches became Churches Together groups, sometimes referred to as LCTGs (Local Churches Together Groups). The oft-stated aim of Ecumenism has been the "full visible unity of the Churches", and indeed there have been a number of Agreements between denominations to express various aspects of mutual recognition. Two of the best known are the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), holding regular but infrequent meetings since the 1980s, and the International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM). However, issues such as the ordination of women and the consecration of openly gay bishops have caused serious tensions between these two Churches. In 1982 the proposed Covenant between the Church of England, the Methodist Church, the Moravian Church and the United Reformed Church failed in the Anglican General Synod. This event was a wake-up call to the (then) British Council of Churches, when it was realised that the BCC was not representing the mood of the Churches. In recent years the emphasis on structural cooperation has given way to a more mission-shaped approach, and at the Consultation on the future of LEPs in March 1994 the word "Project" gave way to "Partnership". The establishing of new LEPs seems to have slowed, in favour of a looser approach to the structures but a more focused approach to working in partnership. In 1987 the BCC held a conference at Swanwick in Derbyshire, and the Swanwick Declaration, signed by members of the consultation, marked a turning point in the journey with its title "Not Strangers but Pilgrims". You can read the full text here. In Kent there is a large number of formal Local Ecumenical Partnerships, some dating back several decades. You can find out more about LEPs here, and to see the list, go here.

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