ECUMENICAL MISTAKE & THE STUDENT MOVEMENT [Sat, 8-24-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—ECUMENICAL MISTAKE & THE STUDENT MOVEMENT [Sat, 8-24-24]

 

I have tried for some time to find a name for my generation in the church. In sociology, we were “the silent generation,” in politics “The Eisenhower generation.” Both of those designations suggest that we were not very important, did not make much of a difference. But that is not true in the church. In the church, we were the student movement generation. For Methodists, we were the Methodist Student Movement [MSM] generation. The student movement made a difference.

It’s time for college classes to start again. I’m thinking about campus days, both as a student and as a campus minister, part of the MSM.

The MSM grew out of and included the Wesley Foundations [WF]. The first WF was started by James Baker at the U of IL in 1913. Wesley Foundations were the start of Methodist campus ministry at the burgeoning public [state] universities.

Today, the name Wesley Foundation doesn’t carry the meaning Bishop Baker meant for it. “Wesley” was not just because John Wesley created Methodism and began its spread throughout the world. [1] Methodism started as a student movement, with John & Charles Wesley and their friends at Oxford. “Foundation” now usually means some money-raising, capital investment arm of an institution. To Baker, it meant “open,” available to all students, regardless of denomination.

WFs were the Methodist presence at public universities. Methodist colleges had chaplains and were automatically part of an unofficial Methodist student movement. Along with the WFs, in 1938, they officially became The MSM. 

The MSM was created in 1938, in anticipation of the 1939 merger of The Methodist Protestant Church, The Methodist Episcopal Church, and The Methodist Episcopal Church South. Because of The Great Depression and the lead-up to another world war, especially the appeal of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a new kind of college student was emerging. Needed was a new kind of witness to students, and new possibility of witness by students.

My college and early WF ministry days [1955-1974] were during the apex of the MSM. We had the acclaimed “motive” magazine. [Yes, it was lower case.] We had state and regional organizations. We had quadrennial conferences that brought thousands of students together from all over the world, to hear Christian leaders like D.T. Niles and Martin Luther King, Jr., and to plan together how we could change the world for the better.

But then came the well-intentioned but unrealistic “ecumenical movement.”

In 1969, the MSM disbanded in favor of ecumenicity, giving way to the NSCF, National Student Christian Foundation, a part of The World Student Council Foundation [WSCF]. The NSCF existed only from 1959 to 1967, because ecumenism was a non-starter. Everybody gave it theological lip service, but nobody wanted it, and nobody could say they didn’t want it.

We all had the mistaken notion that ecumenicity meant organizational union.

Ecumenicity was the watchword of the time. Eugene Carson Blake, who was General Secretary of The World Council of Churches, made a serious effort, starting in 1960, actually to reunite Protestant Christianity. His efforts resulted in The Consultation on Church Union, which tried for 40 years to effect the merger of ten mainline denominations, the Methodists and Presbyterians being the largest. Not a chance.

Ecumenism was a wonderful theological idea. It was a stupid sociological idea. People who have power don’t let it go, and any kind of merger—school, business, government, organization, family--means that some folks who have power will have to give it up. We merge only if forced, or if we see the chance for more power for ourselves.

I hope that wasn’t why I refused to let my WF join the Ecumenical Campus Ministry at IL State U, but it probably had something to do with it.

 The campus ministers of other denominations at ILSU had small, struggling student groups. They thought merging those groups, along with The WF--which was a large, very active group--would result in a big, vibrant campus ministry.

I knew enough group psychology to understand that the merger of a bunch of small, struggling groups results in one small, struggling group. There is a psychological limit to group size. So I refused the invitation to join, which resulted in quite a bit of calumny. I was called the worst name you could possibly have in those days, “anti-ecumenical.”

The other groups merged. Five small, struggling groups became one small struggling group. They don’t exist at all anymore. The WF, on the other hand, which goes now by the name of Merge--because that speaks more to current students, with WF in the small print on their publicity—is still going strong. [2]

Christian “unity” is not a matter of organizational union. It is simply accepting one another as Christians, even though we have different polities and traditions. Yes, even if we have different theologies. There is no reason—except human sinfulness—that we can’t share communion and accept the baptism of one another.

There is one true ecumenism: “They’ll know we are Christians by our love…”

John Robert McFarland

1] Wesley’s famous statement, “The world is my parish.”

2] They do, though, need some new electronic equipment, [the current lingua franca of students] so if you’d like to make a contribution, send it to Merge, 211 N. School St, Normal, IL 61761.

            While I’m at it, if you were a part of The WF at Indiana U and would like to make a contribution to Jubilee, which is the only Methodist campus ministry at IU now, you can make out a check to First UMC, 219 E. 4^th St, Bloomington, IN 47408 and mark it for Jubilee.