One Church?

Edward from the Anglican Church in Ghana raised an interesting point last week in our plenary session on Faith and Order. “To know where we’re going we must know where we’ve been. The church was one and it divided. If we see that decision as a good thing in our history, why are we trying to change it?”

This is my theory and I know there is more to it than this, but I believe this was part of the divisions that occurred and I’d be interested to hear other thoughts on this theory. I believe the division is tied to culture. As the church grew, tradition was integrated into the culture and therefore changed. (This goes along with what our missiology class has been discussing.) For religion to be poignant, it must connect to people and for that to happen people must integrate their cultural understanding, the world they know, into their belief system. We are products of our cultures and cannot fully separate from that understanding; we can to some extent choose to set it aside once we are aware of how out culture impacts our actions, but we cannot fully separate from it.

As we become part of a Global culture we begin to loose part of what divides us but along with that we also lose our diversity, so what is the answer? As the world is, I don’t see one church united under Christ; rather, what I see is one church united under Christ in all it’s diversity and I believe the ecumenical movement is succeeding in that way. We are not to the point where we will accept each other in full communion, which is unfortunate and painful at times, but we are working and dialoging about what that means and how we might continue to work as one body for peace and justice. The human race is vastly diverse and each person has individual spiritual needs and with that, I see that there will always be a need for different traditions to nourish the diverse spiritual needs of the global community and offer various ways in which to worship God.

Ecumenical Encounters

So this is the second post of today, but I thought I should fill everyone in due to the fact that it’s been several weeks since my last post at Halloween.

The past few days have been quite interesting. I’ve found myself involved in interesting ecumenical discussion, sometimes heated debates, without looking to engage in that type of discussion. I guess that comes with the context in which I find myself and if I am to participate in the community I will inevitably enter into a conversation about faith, tradition, and culture. It is quite interesting and I have enjoyed engaging with my colleagues.

I’m on the library committee and I have library duty on Wednesday nights. I was in the library on Wednesday, reading for class instead of surfing the web, and Sung a Presbyterian from South Korea walked by, said hi and sat down at the study desk facing mine. From there we started talking about the program and he opened up and told me that he’s been a bit depressed and disconnected from the community so far and he’s just now making a conscious effort to open up and interact with everyone. I was surprised to hear this because he had always been very warm in his greetings to everyone and seemed to be very open and friendly. He said that much of the problem was that he felt “like a child” because during the intensive English course during the summer, everyone was on an equal level, but when the native English speakers arrived he felt that he could not communicate with us and therefore withdrew from the community as a whole. He is now realizing that we all have something to contribute and that he wants to learn from us and in turn teach us about his culture and context. I think both of us were surprised by his candor in talking to me, but it was a great conversation and something from which we both benefited.

Last night I had another interesting ecumenical encounter. I arrived to dinner about 5 minutes before they closed the kitchen. We were having beginning French at 7:15 so I had about 20 minutes to get my food, eat and make it to French. Most everyone had eaten and had gone back to Petite Bossey, but there was one table where people were gathered so I took the last remaining seat and began eating my dinner and listening to the conversation. Well I soon found myself in participating in a heated debate about women in ministry. At the beginning I sat back and listened because there appeared to be some miscommunication due to the language barrier, so I was trying to figure out what people were saying so as to clarify the situation. Naomi from the Church of Christ in Nigeria was arguing with Andre, an Orthodox from Russia/Ukraine, about the ordination of women in the Orthodox church. They were having one conversation and trying to talk over each other and then Cosmin from the Romanian Orthodox church interjected his two cents and on it went. I sat back at one point and smiled to myself because I saw it as a joke that started with what do 4 Orthodox men, a Liberian Lutheran, a Nigerian Christian, a Filipino Baptist, and a Disciple have in common…not a whole lot that I can see and then I had to laugh because honestly the things that divide us are so few, yet so fundamental to our traditions. Anyway back to the debate…

Now I came in and the conversation had, from what I could tell, been going on for a while. Naomi was arguing with Andre because Andre had said that he didn’t think women would ever be ordained in the Orthodox church and his basis for that was because there was no need for it and there was no scriptural basis for it. I mentioned Peobie and Priscilla and he said that they were not ministers but rather deacons and therefore that was not basis for the ordination of women. Before I was able to refute by saying that neither is there Biblical basis for the use of incense and icons in worship, Andre was drawn back into an argument with Naomi and Cosmin. From what I can gather I think the issue was not so much the ordination of women but rather that the Orthodox church’s doctrine is sent and unchangeable and Naomi had serious issues with that. The ordination of women was just an example of that. At this point I’m having a hard time deciphering what was said and what issue was being debated, and in the end the conversation was cut short by the arrival of the French teacher, but I’m sure it will come up again and I hope the group involved in the discussion will be larger and more diverse.

Today at lunch I sat down to eat with Samuel, a Catholic from India, Rafat a Presbyterian from Egypt, and Sung from South Korea. We mainly talked about our respective Missiology research paper topics, but Sung and I began talking about our churches and it seems that the Presbyterian church in South Korea is much like the Disciples church in structure, and I thought that it would be interesting to bring Aimee from the Presbyterian church in the U.S. into the conversation to see if and how the cultural differences tend to shape the polity of a denomination more so than the denominational affiliation.

The past few days have been engaging and interesting and I’m curious to see if the trend continues over the next couple of days. I’m planning to go to Geneva tomorrow with Aimee and Avril and then attend the Lutheran church in Geneva on Sunday, so who knows what other ecumenical encounters might come my way.

As a side note, I want to thank those of you that have left comments and have sent emails. I also want to apologize if I have not responded. Know that I appreciate your comments and your thoughts and prayers, even if I find it hard to respond to each comment individually. Thank you and many blessings!

Also the picture below is from the Scottish festival that Aimee, Anna, Avril, and I went to last weekend. (and just to add a random bit of information…out of the 10 women in the program, 5 have names that start with the letter A; Aimee, Anett, Anna, Avril, and Angelina…interesting no?)

Bible Study

Every week on Tuesday morning we have a student led Bible study. Last week Nora (the vicar from Germany) and I led a Bible study on John 21:15-18 where Jesus asks Peter “do you love me?” three times and then says “feed my sheep.” It went well and I am glad that Nora and I were able to led that for the group.

This week Samuel (Quaker from Kenya) and Gerald (Evangelical from Burkina Faso) led the Bible study and chose to look at 1 Timothy 2:11-15 where Paul, or someone writing in the name of Paul, is is writing to the church in Ephesus about women being silent in the church. Well, I’m sure you can imagine how apprehensive we were when we read the text, all of us wondering, “okay where are they going to take this.” And so the Bible study began…

Gerald started by taking a deeper look at some of the key words in the text. He explained that the word teachhas four meanings. It could mean giving instruction, or evangelizing, or formulating the doctrine of the church, or speaking with authority. He followed that explanation with the question of whether or not Paul meant that statement in an absolute or relative way, meaning are we to take that statement literally or are we to take it in the context of the letter and within the entire New Testament context? He went on to say that if we believe it is a categorical order then we put Paul in contradiction with himself and gave Titus 2:3 and 1 Corinthians 14:37 as examples of using teach and to prophesi as interchangeable concepts. (I was a little unclear on this point, but it could have been the language barrier. His first language is french.) He continued by telling us that the word used in the Timothy text was not the Greek word exousia that is often the word that is translated into English as authority, but rather another word was used which means to dominate and to behave like a boss. From this it was my understanding that what Gerald was trying to say is that Paul meant that women should not dominate over men and behave like a boss, which given the context of when the letter was written and what we know of the cultural hierarchy of men over women, that is a better interpretation of this text.

His next point was the use of the word woman in this text; is it referring to married women with children or single women? He pointed out that the words women and men could also mean wife and husband, therefore saying that a wife should not order her husband. Again looking at the text this would fit the understandings of the time. Gerald said that it could be that Paul is against women leading as pastors in the church, but that God can make exceptions for some women. After he finished his presentation on the text the floor was opened up for discussion.

Samuel posed the question, “how do you understand Paul?” Kim who is a Presbyterian from Korea said that verses 11-15 in the context of chapter 2 is talking about the institution of worship, meaning how worship was to be conducted.

Simon who is from the Pentecostal church in Nigeria surprised my by his comment.  I was expecting a more fundamental approach to this scripture do to the fact that women in his church are not allowed to wear pants due to the scripture that states women are not to wear the clothes of men (this is a completely different issue and I could go on and on about that, but I’m currently just trying to finish this post.)  Simon mentioned 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 where “women should be silent in the churches…” and said that Paul was referring to the contexts of the churches, i.e. the church in Corinth and Ephesus.  He went on to say that he believed that whatever a man can do for God a woman can do for God, which I appreciated and was pleasantly surprised to hear.

Next Anna from the Church of England in the UK piped up reminding everyone that in Timothy, Paul says there are problems in teachings and we don’t know what Timothy wrote; we only have half of the story. (Good point, well done Anna.)

Johanes who is an Orthodox monk from Greece said that the man is the head and the woman is the body and the head must love the body and collaborate with the body.  Men and women are equal in the church and all function in the body of Christ.  Now I’m not at all on board with the way he presented this, but taking his context into consideration I can appreciate what I think he was trying to say, i.e. we are all the body of Christ and none should be excluded from that body.

Linda from the Chruch of England in the UK was the next to speak and she said that the context is Christains moving away from Judaism and referenced the verse that mentions that women should not go to worship with their hair braided or wear pearls, etc. but we now go to church in our “Sunday” best, meaning that we must look at this text in its context.  I don’t agree with the idea that the churches saw themselves as Christians and were moving away from Judaism; I believe they still considered themselves to be part of the Jewish tradition and through Christ all could be part of the covenant God formed with Israel.  I do agree with her point about looking at the text in its context and then trying to understand what issue Paul was addressing.

Although our Bible studies are student led, the Biblical Hermeneutics professor, Father Gervarsis, who is a Catholic from India, participates and will help students prepare if they ask.  He was the final person to speak and he said that when Samuel and Gerard came to him with their scripture selection he couldn’t sleep because he thought there would be fighting among the students.  He affirmed that we needed to look at the Bible as a whole and not take sections out of context.  Rather when we are exegeting a text, we must look at it in the context of the entire Biblical narrative.  He went on to say that Paul was a human and aware of the problems in the churches and was writing to deal with that context.  He was a product of his Roman society where women were meek and submissive and that was the morality of the time.  This text was enforcing that Christian worship must be conducted in the proper way.  He also pointed out that Paul’s reference to the creation story in Genesis where “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor (v.14)” is incorrect; the statement that the woman deceived is not exactly true.  What it says is the man took from the woman and ate without protesting.  The man is blamed for the sin in Genesis 3:17.  Father Gervarsis’ point was that Paul was trying to defend a cultural conservatism with the Hebrew Text.  Paul wanted to conserve the cultural practice of women being silent and modest.  He closed the session by saying there is always a need for renewal and repentance; that is a very Biblical concept.

All in all it was a very interesting and engaging Bible study and I’m glad that Samuel and Gerald chose that text.