“Ecumenical” Reclamation
Ecumenical Not Christian churchesNor all religionsNot all world culturesNor seven billion humansBut EarthriseThe risen Earth Ecumenical We are one worldA cosmic communityWith spirit at its heartEcumenicalI’d join something ecumenicalBut I’m a member by birthThe word ecumenical has a long history but its meaning has shrunk over the centuries. Thus, a reclamation project is called for. Let us empower its meaning for those who use the word and for those who never have.
Other reasons I write: to dialogue about the words ecumenical and ecozoic(1) – one established word and one recent word, sister words with similar etymology; to speak to those who have lived and worked in communities that have used the word ecumenical as part of their name; and to remind us all of our vocation to build the Earth. These strands wind through this piece.At the creation of the word ecumenical, about 150 CE, Greek map makers were depicting the shape of the world and used the word oecumene for the so-called “inhabited lands.”(2) More exactly, the progression of the lineage of the word from Greek goes from oikos, house; to oikein, to inhabit; to oikoumene, (the) inhabited (world); to oikoumenikos; to late Latin oecumenicus; to present English ecumenical.
Literally speaking, we are full members, along with all inhabitants of the world habitation – wherever that takes you in your imagination, maybe to the far ends of our Universe. Thus, the first listed definition of ecumenical in the American Heritage Dictionary honors and expands that history:1. of worldwide scope or applicability; universal
Today that early and largest-yet meaning of the word ecumenical has changed to the second and third meanings the American Heritage Dictionary(3) gives:2. of or relating to the worldwide Christian church
3. concerned with establishing or promoting unity among churches or religions
We all have reduced the meaning of ecumenical, even Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture of 1964 – but who at the same time also enlarged the word:We have inherited a big house, a great “world house” in which we have to live together – black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other.
This means that more and more our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. We must now give an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in our individual societies.This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men [sic].(4) While King’s lecture still represents a leap for most humans today, we see in it far less than the original meaning of the word, especially as we consider all that is left out of the “world house.” The “we” of his lecture emphasizes the human family as the inhabitants of that house, with no mention of rivers, snowcapped mountains, oil reserves, ozone layers, fish, bees, bald eagles, polar bears, nor atoms as inhabitants of the house. This deserves a deep conversation, maybe starting with a roll call of the inhabitants we leave out. At best, the community of the word ecumenical is reduced to humankind and our ontic and possible unity, which of course is more inclusive than the unity of mainline Christians as in COCU(5) of decades ago and other religions in interfaith initiatives since. No blame intended. Our awareness of the unfortunate diminishment of the word ecumenical can now help us make the word more inclusive again – humans, all species, and everything else – as we reclaim and even enlarge its original meaning. We have both a problem and an opportunity, a learning moment, if you will. I am not just writing for people of religious faith traditions. I want all humans to reach back, out, wider and deeper, beyond the general definition of the word and let the “whole world house” claim all its inhabitants as full members, not just the human and religious ones. A reclamation project of the word ecumenical is for the universal good. That “good” expresses itself practically when we humans self-consciously relate, for ecumenical signifies inclusion of all our communities: human – family, work, neighborhood, education, recreation, religious, cultural; and non-human – garden, animal, orchard, farm, starry night.Ecumenically we can know, act, and be as we sleep, eat, communicate, work, write, drive, use water and electricity, walk, meditate, play, love, and serve. By nature we are ecumenical, meaning, related to the universal process, or the recent coinage of univearth. All are absolutely connected: cell with individual with group with planet with galaxy with universe. We are part of the 4.5-billion-year Earth event that is part of our 13.7-billion-year Universe event, which is part of all the other universes or the multiverse. Of one piece, ecumenically connected we are – one world, together, separated yet bound together for the evolving future, open and overflowing with undreamed of possibility.The poetry that best describes the depth, breadth, and significance of the word ecumenical comes from the hand of an apostle of our biggest community, Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote these words almost seventy-five years ago: The Spirit of Earth … reveals itself as the force which is destined to get under way and organize the overwhelming mass of human[s]….
The whole question, in this crisis of birth, is the rapid emergence of the soul which … can only be a “conspiracy” of individuals who associate themselves to raise to a new stage the edifice of life…. The age of nations is past. The task before us now, if we would not perish, is to shake off our ancient prejudices, and to build the earth. The more I look at the world … the less I see any other possible … result apart from its active and conscious unity.We must put in the forefront of our concrete preoccupations the systematic arrangement and exploration of our universe, understood as the true country of mankind [sic]. Then material energy will circulate, and (more important still) spiritual energy…. All that is ours, if we understand how to avoid stifling within us the Spirit of Earth.”(6) Tags from above: Spirit of Earth / crisis of birth / emergence of soul / “conspiracy” of individuals / raise … the edifice of life / the task / if we would not perish / shake off … prejudices / build the earth / conscious unity / our true country / spiritual energy / avoid stifling
Teilhard’s “Spirit of Earth” I’ll call “ecumenical spirit” and describe it further in a few related quotes. Thomas Berry echoes Teilhard’s comments, surely, but at the same time reminds us of our human propensities: [Berry’s] faith was that … a “New Story”(7) … would become the basis of a new ecumenical understanding, providing for an overall worldview … which could comprehend all the particular narratives of diverse traditions, and thus become a common ground for humanity’s groping understanding of itself and of the world in the modern period.(8)
Meister Eckhart understood and Matthew Fox understands ecumenical spirit:
“Divinity is an Underground river that no one can stop and no one can dam up.” Fox comments: “There is one underground river – but there are many wells into that river…. That is Deep Ecumenism.”(9)
H. Richard Niebuhr wrote about the ecumenical spirit this way,
[Faith in God’s] requirement: that all beings, not only our friends, but also our enemies, not only men [sic] but also animals and the inanimate, be met with reverence, for all are friends in the friendship of the one to whom we are reconciled…. So faith in God involves us in a permanent revolution of the mind and of the heart, a continuous life which opens out infinitely into ever new possibilities.(10)
Joseph W. Mathews said,
You emerged from the universe, creation, humanity – not family, race, nation – and therefore you belong to the all.(11)
Ken Wilber writes,
Integral, in a sense, would be the ultimate ecumenical movement…. [T]here are spiritual patterns in the universe…. [T]he human organism itself seems to be hardwired for these deep spiritual patterns…. [W]e are getting very close to what might in fact be an integral spirituality, a spirituality for the modern and postmodern world that includes the best of the premodern traditions as well.(12)
My metaphor for Teilhard’s “If we keep from stifling within us the Spirit of Earth” goes like this: ecumenical spirit is revealing to us that we are stuck – evolutionarily speaking – in our human-centeredness, which is devolving the Earth community, or at least holding it back. Ecumenical spirit is about getting us unstuck via our yes to spirit’s urging toward ever-expanding unity. Our great work is to help sound the vocational call to the present and future generations to join the “emergent evolutionary”(13) movement to continue “to build the Earth.”*****
My wife and I heard sounds of this call in the late 1960s. We joined the Ecumenical Institute: Chicago, known as “EI,” and were a part of the Order: Ecumenical, the core family group of the Ecumenical Institute. That’s where we first read Teilhard and H. Richard Niebuhr and Wilber and were mentored by Joseph Mathews. With other EI colleagues at a recent conference in Washington, DC, we talked about the past and future of the Ecumenical Institute. I promised then that I would write a paper on what I now understand ecumenical to mean – this paper – because I see new ways for the Ecumenical Institute to create new programs for the mission implied in its profound and good name.
With an expanded rather than a shrunken context for the word in its name, every time we of the Ecumenical Institute discuss our purpose we can give a short spin on what we mean by ecumenical that can help listeners and us rehearse a kind of mission and vocation statement. Besides doing research, creating ecumenical seminars, facilitating organization and community groups with EI’s world-class methods, we might even pull out and dust off its “ecumenical parish” model, re-conceive it in meaning and application, and offer it globally as one among many inclusive community models in use today. Such a revised model would go far beyond the one used in the 1970s of catalyzing four inter-denominational churches in a given community to work together to just care for the human community. You might be thinking the word ecumenical is too set to change. When I did a blog last year on ecumenical, a person commented by suggesting the word “interfaith” would be a far better word, that “ecumenical” was understood as a Christian concept and can turn non-Christians off. I understand, but we can shift from a human- and interreligious-centered understanding of ecumenical to a more evolutionary, cosmic-centered understanding. I am experiencing that shift, along with hundreds of my colleagues, both in the Ecumenical Institute(15) and the Center for Ecozoic Studies. Ecumenical is bigger than religion, bigger than social, bigger than international or global, bigger than cultural, and bigger than human. Ecumenical is a word that both honors and transcends these smaller concepts. It is an Earth community word, a Universe community word, and, by speaking to the heart of these two biggest communities, it is a spirit word, a word that reminds us we are all chosen parts of the “whole world” with the mission to unite in profound care. We are one worldWith spirit at its heart Ecumenical
*****
Footnotes:
(1) Earlier forms of this paper are published in the The Ecozoic, the 2011 magazine of the Center for Ecozoic Studies, and in Transforming the Legacy, vol. II, by Resurgence Publishing Corp. in 2010 (the recorded outcome of a conference lifting up the work of Joseph W. Mathews and his brother Bishop James K. Mathews and the work of the Ecumenical Institute: Chicago and the Institute of Cultural Affairs.
(2) Samuel John Klein http://designorati.com/articles/t1/cartography/462/cartography-word-of-the-day-oecumene.php
(3) http://www.wordnik.com/words/ecumenical (using American Heritage Dictionary for all three definitions)
(4) Martin Luther King, Jr, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, Dec. 11, 1964 http://edgar-oikos.blogspot.com/
(5) The Consultation on Church Union (COCU)
(6) Building the Earth (1937), p. 67-8
(7) One of Berry’s most important books (written with Brian Swimme) is The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era – A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos. Berry’s coined word ecozoic reclaims and, to say the least, expands the meaning of ecumenical.
(8) Steven Chapman, “A Tribute to Thomas Berrry 1914-2009: Prophet of the Ecozoic Era,” 6/29/09 http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/2009/06/29/a-tribute-to-thomas-berry-1914-2009-prophet-of-the-ecozoic-era/ [quote underline added]
(9) One River, Many Wells, pp. 4-5; Fox mentions the “aboriginal well” and the “goddess well,” and would include the “ecumenical spirit well.”
(10) Radical Monotheism and Western Culture, p. 126
(11) “The Happening of Transparency,” 1973 talk (Joseph W. Mathews was Dean of the Ecumenical Institute: Chicago from 1962 till his death in 1977.)
(12) “An Integral Spirituality” http://onemindvillage.com/Integral/KenWilber.html [quote underline added]
(13) Phrase Teilhard used, especially in The Phenomenon of Man, later retitled The Human Phenomenon
(14) I am familiar with Transition Network http://transitiontowns.org/, now in hundreds of communities around the world, that some members of the EI community are involved in and helping to lead. I especially like its second of three emphases: heart and soul aspects of a vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable community. I trust this paper’s context could be helpful at that point.
(15) The Ecumenical Institute: Chicago became a sister organization with the organization she created in 1972, the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA), cf. ICA-USA www.ICA-USA.com, one of a band of national ICAs globally, cf. ICA International (ICAI) http://ica-international.org/magazine/icai-magazine-oct-11-sml.pdf.
