RECONSTRUCTING THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION & THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH

Inter- ministerial cum Inter-denominational Co-operation and Ecumenical Learning in Theological Education

By David Hewlett, Principal of Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham.

Ecumenical theological education is under threat. The threat is sometimes obvious – as when denominations decide to invest in their 'own' institutions and withdraw from existing ecumenical institutions or set up parallel ones. The threat is sometimes subtle - as when students choose places to study which confirm their denominational perspective (or a particular tradition within a denomination), or when those who sponsor them send them to institutions that reflect their own tradition. This threat is not universal, but it is common and growing. It happens where churches are declining so denominations re-trench and preserve 'their' resources. It happens where churches are growing so denominations strengthen the resources they see as contributing to success and protecting their success in a competitive 'market'. 

Ecumenical learning seeks to hold and embody a larger vision of the unity of the Church, which is constantly threatened by our very human and real concerns about resources (how we protect and increase what is ours), or with power (how we best promote our interests in either a declining or a competitive environment). When the churches organize their education and training resources around such concerns it is not surprising that their ministers and leaders learn to replicate such assumptions and priorities in their own ministries.

The possibility that we will learn what it means to live from each other and not just with or for each other remains distant.

In the UK, which is my context, commitment to ecumenical institutions is weaker now than 10 years ago, and where it exists the preferred model is one of interdenominational cooperation.

Most prominent among such cooperative, federative arrangements is the Cambridge Theological Federation. This Federation “brings together the teaching and learning of seven institutes through which people of different churches, including Anglican, Methodist, Orthodox, Reformed and Roman Catholic”1

Included in this Federation are two colleges of the Church of England which are shaped around evangelical and liberal catholic 'parties'. Each college or institution retains its independence and its primary accountability to its denominational body, but students share some of their learning and worship. 

Ecumenical theological education takes place in a conversation between several sites of learning – the house/college/institution in which a particular tradition is embodied and to which particular commitments are made; and the Federation encountered in classes or worship or meals. A slogan expresses the educational and formational approach: roots down, walls down, bridges out. In other words, being firmly rooted in a denominational (or „party‟) institution allows students to cross ecclesial boundaries to engage with others and then reach out in mission and ministry. The slogan does not assume that this process is sequential (first roots down, then walls down, then bridges out) but it does appear to privilege the „rooting‟, so that being rooted in a denominational (or party) environment is a necessary condition for the formation of Christian identity and the practice of mission and ministry. Inter-denominational cooperation and even federation is a model the churches can accommodate reasonable comfortably.2

In the context of the Cambridge Federation, given the range of churches and institutes present, it is probably the only model of relationships that is possible. Do models of association and federation lead to significant change for students; or does it give an ecumenical veneer to denominations and parties, if the 'norm' and primary place of formation is still in their own denominational or party context? Does the experience of this kind of ecumenical environment nurture the hope and goal of further growth together, or does it inoculate against it?

The Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham offers a different model and experience. In 1970 a union took place of two denominational colleges – the Queen's College (Anglican) and Handsworth College (Methodist). Negotiations for this union were extraordinarily rapid and the proposals caught a positive mood in the two churches which were actively engaging in unity proposals.3

The new Queen's College as a uniting and united college could be welcomed as a sign of new and common future. The birth of this new College was not without its difficulties, perhaps exacerbated because one college (Handsworth) closed and moved to the existing Queen's campus. Questions about how to create ecumenical space are made much more complex when the architecture of the institution are shaped by one denomination. The presence of a sanctuary lamp in the chapel was an early point of controversy and questions have remained ever since about how to create shared space which isn't either bare (so that no tradition is represented) or symbolically overflowing so that every tradition is represented. Queen's was conceived as a laboratory in the context of a uniting church where its ministers in training could learn – joyfully as well as painfully – how to form a new and common space for worship which brought together the riches of two traditions. As we shall see the questions become more complex when this aspiration has to be sustained when there is no shared or common vision for a uniting church. What then is the experiment? What kind of ecumenical space is being formed?

The new ecumenical Queen's College was soon enriched by two new partners: the United Reformed Church began sending ministerial candidates for their training, but never formally became a sponsoring church (which might be considered surprising given its explicit ecumenical commitments); and the West Midlands Ministry Training Course which was formed as a regional provision for part-time learning and formation of Anglican, Methodist and URC ordinands. Over the next twenty years much was learned about living, worshipping, learning ecumenically so that at the turn of the millennium a new institution came into existence - the Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education. The Foundation brought together into a single body all the activities of the College, the Course and a new Research Centre. There is one campus, one faculty, one governing body, and one chapel. Students learn and worship together, and even though many students are part-time and geographically dispersed across the Midlands, the opportunities to come together as a single Foundation body are greatly valued. The Foundation seeks to live out the Covenant to which the Church of England and the Methodist church are committed, but not to limit its ecumenical life to those two churches, but to use the experience of covenanting as a basis for entering relationships with other churches and denominations. As a result, in recent years the Foundation has become more denominationally diverse than their original partner bodies and most recently this ecumenical commitment has proved attractive to Pentecostal black majority churches as a place for their ministers, pastors and lay people to learn and train. The presence of mission students, often experienced ordained ministers from a variety of churches, adds another level of diversity in terms of nationality, language and culture. The Foundation is committed to being a place that is inclusive, welcoming all to learn and worship together; its student body and faculty is diverse in every measure – theological conviction and tradition, denomination and ethos within denominations, nationality, ethnicity, language and culture.

The primary conviction that shapes common life, learning and worship is that the formation of Christian identity happens in and through the dialogue and encounter with those who are different. When we encounter others we not only learn from them, but often even more significantly we learn about who we are. Learning in a diverse context does not smooth out differences or somehow dilute a particular identity (although this is often expressed as a fear); instead learning from as well as about another normally clarifies and strengthens a student‟s own denominational and theological commitments and convictions, not least because these have to become conscious and something that can be articulated, promoted, defended if need be, with those who do not share them, and yet have an equal place in the life of the community.