Introductory note by CIHA Blog Editorial Assistant, Bangirana Albert Billy: The CIHA Blog yet again brings you this year’s Professor Steve De Gruchy memorial lecture. This year’s lecture was organized by the College of Humanities at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The lecture was delivered under the title, ‘Towards a renewed ecumenism: Dreams from the global South’. The lecture paper below presents the ecumenical passion of the late Professor Steve De Gruchy in the South African context and further draws on parallels from the late archbishop of San Salvador Óscar Romero (1977-1980) to emphasize the importance of ecumenism in contemporary religious praxis. You can also find some of the previous lecture papers here.
TOWARDS A RENEWED ECUMENISM: LESSONS & DREAMS FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH
Steve de Gruchy Memorial Lecture
Edgardo Colón-Emeric, March 2023
Introduction
Paz y bien. I am honored to be asked to offer the Steve de Gruchy Memorial Lecture. De Gruchy was a passionate ecumenist. Writing on the work of Joseph Wing (also known as “Mr. Unity”) in seeking to bring ecumenical cooperation in South Africa, de Gruchy spoke of Wing in terms that may well apply to himself.
It is because the Church finds its meaning in God’s mission that [he] understood denominational division to be a scandal, and the ecumenical movement and the non-racial nature of the Church to be absolutely crucial for the witness of the Gospel in the world…for him ecumenical unity was not a goal in itself but a means to the only real goal that Christians could have, namely, to proclaim and live in obedience to the Lordship of Christ in the midst of the social, political and economic struggles of the time.[1]
I believe de Gruchy’s assessment of the motivations impelling ecumenism are fundamentally right. Ecumenism exists for the sake of mission, and missional credibility depends on ecumenical movement. De Gruchy’s ecumenical passion was all the more exemplary when we consider that most of his active career working for Christian unity occurred after the heydays of the ecumenical movement. Indeed,“as early as 1989, Robert Runcie, then Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke of “the winter of ecumenism.”[2] When the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) met with Pope Benedict in 2010, he gifted the pontiff a thick pair of woolen gloves.[3] The language of ecumenical winter is by now ubiquitous. Of course, winter in the northern hemisphere is summer in the south, and I suggest that ecumenism needs to go south if it is to be renewed in the way Steve de Gruchy worked for during his rich, too-brief ministry.
In this lecture, I will introduce an unlikely ecumenist from the Global South—Óscar Romero. His witness to the preferential option for the poor can inspire the renewal of ecumenism by offering lessons and inspiring dreams from the Global South for the whole church. This renewal is pressing because the ecumenical way faces obstacles.
Roadblocks to unity
Steve de Gruchy was familiar with the barriers to ecumenism in South Africa. He saw his attempts at guiding diverse churches to organic union frustrated by “the desire to root church unity upon a cultural and political foundation rather than a theological confession.” He sought to correct those regarded “church unity as a thing ‘in itself,’ rather than as being rooted in the wider missio Dei.” He argued that the unity of the church is for the sake of “the witness of the church to justice, peace and social inclusion.”[4]
Barriers to ecumenism are not only found in South Africa. I have had the privilege of studying, teaching, and serving at the Divinity School of Duke University. It was founded as Methodist but was intended to be a place where Christians of all denominations would feel welcome. Currently, there are 33 denominations represented at the Divinity School. This is an ecumenical school, and it formed me to be an ecumenist.
Since 2008, I have had the humbling privilege of representing Methodists in bilateral dialogues with Roman Catholics nationally and internationally. In these years, I have been blessed by the exchange of gifts that comes from walking toward Christian unity. There is something truly remarkable about travelling, reading, discussing, eating, and praying together with fellow Christians with whom one has substantive disagreements. There are two things I have learned in these dialogues. First, and perhaps paradoxically, I have found that participating in these dialogues helps me become more not less Methodist. Second, and certainly unsurprisingly, I ran into barriers on the ecumenical journey.
First, lack of a common goal.[5] Jesus prayed that his disciples may be one as he and the Father are one. Unity does not mean uniformity. There is legitimate diversity within Christian life. Nevertheless, beyond this broad level of agreement, differences emerge because Jesus did not offer a clear blueprint or model for unity. Prior to the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic model for unity was simple—return to Rome. The earliest Protestant expressions of the ecumenical movement aimed for organic union as the goal, the merging of diverse churches under one common structural arrangement. Methodists speak of full communion in faith, mission, and sacramental life. The World Council of Churches speaks of reconciled diversity have also been advanced. For some, the goal is visible unity. For others, it is spiritual unity. For still others, it is increased interdenominational collaboration. Multiple models, multiple goals, much confusion.
Second, ecumenical skepticism. In Latin America, many Protestant churches experience deep misgivings about the work for Christian unity. Interdenominational cooperation is one thing, but a movement that embraces Roman Catholics as sisters and brothers is something else. The language itself is telling. In Latin American communities, it is still common to hear people distinguishing Christians from Catholics. The word ecumenism bears the misfortune of sounding similar to communism and evokes the suspicion of encroaching hegemonic forces. After all, Latin American history bears the marks of centuries of Roman Catholic ecclesial monopoly, which has only been broken in recent decades. The idea of sitting down with Roman Catholics for fraternal dialogues strikes some as a betrayal of the gospel and of the witness of hard fought battles for social recognition.
Third, nostalgia for a golden age. It is common to hear that the most exciting days for ecumenism are past. The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed stellar signs of hope for Christian unity: the formation of the World Council of Churches, the invitation of Protestant observers to the Second Vatican Council, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, and many more. The abundance of signs of unity moved John Paul II to look to the twenty-first century as a millennium of renewed Christian unity that would heal the wounds of division from the second millennium. So far, these hopes have been disappointed. Ecumenists have often pointed to the problem of reception. The agreements achieved through official dialogues have a hard time changing the situation on the ground. For instance, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification may have bridged gaps opened by the Reformation, but the churches have yet to cross these bridges.
Fourth, apathy about division. Simply put, we do not miss each other enough. In the International Methodist Catholic dialogue in which I participate, the parable of the prodigal son illumined the condition of our unrecognized estrangement. Both sons abandoned the father’s house. The younger one lost himself in licentious living in a far country. The older one lost himself in work close to home. When Methodists and Catholics read this together, we saw ourselves. Both of us were the younger son. Both of us were the older son. Both of us long to return to the father’s house. In scripture, the parable ends without resolution. The older son refuses to celebrate with the father. One detail that interests me is the two brothers’ relationship—or the lack thereof. In his journey to and from the far country, the younger son spares no thought for his older brother. The older son only bears contempt for the younger one. Neither refers to the other as brother; neither longs for the other.
Romero: Prophet of a New Ecumenism
The challenges I have identified could be multiplied. The ecumenical movement has hit many impasses. I propose that if it is to advance the credibility of the church’s witness, the ecumenical movement must go south. There are theologians whose pastoral vision has been forged in the crucible of announcing God’s justice in an unjust world. I want to introduce you to one of these Global South ecumenists—Óscar Romero, prophet of a new ecumenism.
Óscar Romero served as archbishop of San Salvador from 1977-1980. It was a turbulent time for the smallest Central American republic. Vast income inequality, failed attempts at land reform, and rumors of a Cuban-style revolution sowed popular unrest. In this conflicted climate, some expected the Church to serve as a bastion of national stability while others dreamed of a Christian guerilla movement. The election of Romero as archbishop of the country’s premier church post was seen by some as the safe choice. He would not rock the boat. Some were relieved. Some were dismayed. Both reactions misread the man and the moment. Days after his installation as archbishop, on March 12, 1977, his friend Father Rutilio Grande was murdered while driving to El Paisnal. Romero saw that he was the pastor of a persecuted church and he needed to defend his flock with every preached word, sighed prayer, and written statement. In brief, he sided with the poor and met the fate of the poor in his country—an early death. On March 24, 1980 he was murdered while preaching from John 12:24, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Romero fell. He bore much fruit. One of these is a new ecumenical praxis.
The preferential option for the poor[6]
In 1979, the Catholic bishops of Latin America met for their third official conference—this time, in Puebla, Mexico. On the eve of his trip, during a Sunday homily within the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Romero preached, “With the help of our Protestant sisters and brothers, we will continue striving for a gospel that truly serves our sorely afflicted people.”[7] Romero returned from Puebla with fresh language with which to express this ecumenical and liberating gospel—the preferential option for the poor.
What is the preferential option for the poor? Gustavo Gutiérrez calls it “a theocentric and prophetic option that sinks its roots in the gratuity of God’s love.”[8] The option is an evangelical one, in the sense of good news, it motivated by grace not by works. God does not opt for the poor “on account of their moral and spiritual dispositions but on account of their human fragility and the disdain which they experience.”[9] The preferential option is a way, indeed the only way of being authentically Christian in societies propped up by systems of structural inequality. As Gutiérrez explains, following Christ entails “profound, permanent solidarity and daily insertion into the world of the poor.”[10] In other words, the preferential option is not optional. It is not even optional for the poor. They, too, are called to make an option for the poor. Indeed, when the poor opt for God’s love in the midst of contexts of persistent violence that refute the mere possibility of love, they become the best evangelists of God’s love revealed in Christ.
How is the preferential option an ecumenical praxis? For Romero, as for many Latin American theologians, “the reality of things is understood better from below and the periphery than from above and center.”[11] The epistemic privilege of the periphery has a christological basis. In the words of Jon Sobrino, “Jesus dedicated himself to the humanization of human beings, to making real what Christians would later affirm that the glory of God is the human being who lives. His starting point was the vivens pauper, that the poor can live, and from this starting point he offered life to all.”[12] Vivens pauper, that the poor might live, this is the praxis that orients Romero’s vision of mission and thus of the ecumenical movement.
The preferential option for the poor is the church’s response to the ‘brutal structures’ that sustain unjust Latin American realities. Faced with widespread and systemic social want, the fidelity of the church is measured by its solidarity with the marginalized. This solidarity is a sign of contradiction and elicits opposition. Romero extols the murdered priests of the archdiocese, as “the glory of the preferential option for the poor.”[13] Against those who reject the preferential option as partisan or sectarian, Romero underscores the universality of the message. As Romero proclaims,
How great would be the day, then, in which we understand this beautiful evangelical doctrine of poverty! Persons who, like Christ, trust only in the Father; persons who, like the Virgin, know how to be the poor of Yahweh, with the holy liberty of denouncing sin wherever it may be found. The poverty of the Church! The church will be more authentic and effective when it truly does not depend or seek the support of the powerful, the shelter of the powers, when evangelization does not consist in getting power but in being evangelical and holy, when it leans on the poor, who with their poverty enrich.[14]
Romero’s encomium foregrounds a number of leitmotifs in his understanding of the preferential option for the poor: Mariology, ecclesiology, and Christology, to name a few. This last one is fundamental. The preferential option for the poor is Christocentric. It opts for the poor because it opts for Christ, the poor one. The Christocentrism of the preferential option is the basis for its universality. As Romero states, “God wants to save the wealthy as well, but precisely because he wants to save them, he tells them that they cannot be saved until they are converted to the Christ who lives in particular among the poor.”[15]
The preferential option for the poor is official Catholic Social Teaching. In the case of Romero, this teaching was supported by a spirituality. The love which animated Romero’s walk with the poor is summed up by the motto he adopted at his episcopal consecration: sentir con la iglesia.[16]
Romero’s motto has its origins in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. Sentir means to think, sense, and feel with the church. Sentir denotes a posture of reflection and solidarity with the church in its graced and troubled path through history. Sentir con la iglesia is how Romero leans into God’s Spirit as the church is buffeted by all manner of ill winds and waves. Sentir con la iglesia means reading the signs of the times in order to keep the archdiocese on the right heading despite the persistent threats of ecclesial mutinies and social upheavals in El Salvador. A true sentir con la iglesiais an act of social analysis, spiritual discernment, and personal commitment. It embraces tradition and innovation, the universal and the local. It is action and contemplation with, in, and from the church. Sentir con la iglesia means being one with the church in its sufferings and in its struggles, in its cries of lament and dreams of liberation.
Romero’s sentir is capacious. Its openness to the vastness and variety of suffering in the world appears in a song titled “Cristo mesoamericano.”[17] Composed in honor of Romero, the song presents an expansive mosaic of faces of the suffering Christ. The Mesoamerican Christ is encountered in the Paschal mystery celebrated in the Eucharist. Christ is also found in the land, plants, animals, and peoples of Central America. In the song, the preferential option becomes merciful action for the vulnerable, a missional centering in the social peripheries. Romero’s sentir con la iglesia hears the cry of the poor, the cry of the earth, and the cry from the cross. It sustains a Christ centered ecumenical praxis that invites Protestants to make a preferential option for the poor and the land as the poorest of the poor.
Early in his ministry, Romero’s attitudes to Protestants reflected those of most Latin American Roman Catholics then (and sometimes still today). Protestants were apostates who weakened the witness of the church. But as the Catholic Church joined the ecumenical movement during the Second Vatican Council, and as Protestants within and beyond El Salvador’s borders identified themselves with the sufferings of the Archdiocese, Romero’s sentir with the ecumenical church evolved. In contrast to his previous belligerent posture, he speaks rapturously of the celebrations of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 1978
They were eight unforgettable nights. The sanctuary in which we gathered each night, whether Catholic or Protestant, acquired the human warmth of a true home where all felt that they were in their own house. There, while remaining faithful to the various personal convictions which still prevent a full communion, we felt that there was a common denominator which glued us together: being Christians.[18]
Events like the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity served as commissioning occasions for “Protestants and Catholics to embody their Christian faith in work that testifies to the social dimensions of the Gospel.”[19] This testimony was desperately needed in El Salvador, and it was seriously impeded by divisions within the country and within the Catholic Church itself. Being Christian in contexts of poverty and disunity calls for a sentir con la iglesia that reaches beyond and across social and ecclesial markers. On various occasions, even at moments of profound tragedy like the funeral mass following the murder of Padre Octavio Ortiz, Romero ceded the microphone to Jorge Lara Braud, a Mexican Presbyterian pastor and representative from the US National Council of Churches. His “ecumenical voice” was, in Romero’s words, “a source of great encouragement.”[20] Mutual learning and effective witness come from ecumenical collaboration on common concerns. This is why Romero calls on Protestants to join Catholics in “the work for human dignity, the promotion of peace with justice, the application of the social teaching of the gospel.”[21]
Romero’s Christ-centered sentir integrates the preferential option and the ecumenical imperative. The cry from the peripheries set the agenda for the call to unity. The way in which Romero embodied the preferential option for the poor earned the admiration of Salvadoran Protestants like the Lutheran Bishop Medardo Gómez. Long before the beatification and canonization of Romero, Bishop Gómez referred to his Catholic brother as Saint Romero of “our America.”[22]
In sum, during Romero’s time as archbishop of San Salvador, the preferential option for the poor became an olive branch for Protestants and a lifeline for the archdiocese. Indeed, for Romero, the preferential option for the poor became the compass helped the people of God, Catholic and Protestant, stay true to Christ in, for, and from the margins.
Dreams from the Global South
From the life and lessons of Óscar Romero, an ecumenical praxis emerges that can remove obstacles to unity and renew ecumenism. By celebrating the gifts of unity and visiting the wounds of division from the periphery, new possibilities for social transformation can be imagined and implemented. However, an ecumenical praxis alone will not suffice. It needs the support of a new sentir, a new sense of we.
In one of his homilies on the transfiguration, an important theme in Romero’s theology, he tells a story from the life of Father Damien among lepers on the island of Molokai. And how Father Damian’s desire to remain in this community was so strong that he prayed for the “grace of leprosy.” One day, as he raised the Eucharistic host during mass, he noticed on his hand the first signs of leprosy. From that day, he always spoke to and of his community as “we lepers.”[23] This first-person-plural pronoun is not the “royal we.” It is a new “we;” it is sentir con la iglesia, a new sense of solidarity; it is being one with the church by being one with its wounds.
At the Center for Reconciliation of Duke Divinity School, we have begun a new project called The Americas Initiative for Transformation and Reconciliation. One of the things that we have learned in this work is that there is restlessness for and resistance to a new sense of we. Rolando Pérez, a sociologist at the Pontifical University in Lima, Peru, says it well. “In Latin America, we are still a society that strongly resists looking at those whom we consider to be the other. . . We are profoundly disconnected from our memory, and it is impossible to talk about reconciliation without being connected to our collective memory.” A new we is not possible without reckoning with the histories of exclusion and violence in which the American Global South was conceived. The groans for a new we clamor for remembering suppressed memories and dreaming ecumenical dreams.
In the early church, difficult experiences with the edicts (dogmas) of Caesar and the universal pretensions of Rome led our mothers and fathers to distinguish the oikoumene of the empire from the oikoumene of the church and what the Letter to the Hebrews calls “the coming oikoumene,” (Heb 2:5) the oikomene of the kingdom of God. These distinctions are just as important today. The coming oikoumene will come from a new sense of we that is very different from the menu of options commonly available to us. It is not neo-colonial, or neo-capitalist, or neo-nationalist but new creation. The hope of this coming oikoumene empowers the praxis of the preferential option for the poor and inspires dreams of Christian unity. I would like to share a few of these with you.[24]
I dream dreams of an ecumenical movement that goes out to the world. Ecumenism and mission cannot be separated. The call to unity came from the mission field, where the denominational differences among Christians were a scandal for the Christian witness. Christian unity matters, but it does not exist for its own sake. Unity is the goal of the ecumenical movement, not the goal of the church; the church seeks unity for the sake of its credibility in its mission to the world. In a world of structural suffering, the ecumenical journey cannot be limited to flying from Rome to Geneva to Canterbury. The journey must go by the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, the road of mercy. To cite, Steve de Gruchy, “To share the love of Jesus Christ with a world in need means always to bring a loving presence to those who live on the margins of society.”[25]
I dream dreams of an ecumenical movement that goes down to the margins. The church has gone south, in the sense that the majority of its members are now found in what is often called the Global South. As the church has changed, so too must the movement toward Christian unity. The ecumenical questions emerging from the Global South are not identical to those of the Global North. Doctrine matters, but the pressures on the churches are not simply those coming from the secular age—there also the wounded legacies of the colonial age. With masterful understatement, de Gruchy observes “the European cultural captivity of the Gospel is unhelpful for everyone.”[26] It is indeed. Moving to the margins, we will rediscover the power of Jesus’s high priestly prayer by joining his journey of descent. After all, Jesus voiced his prayer not from a temple or throne but from the place of rejection and suffering.
I dream dreams of an ecumenical movement that draws in the youth. Before the Edinburg Missionary Conference, the movement toward Christian unity was a youth movement. The contributions of interdenominational groups such as the YMCA, the YWCA, and the World Student Christian Federation are underappreciated today. Youth and student groups committed themselves to Christian unity and “the evangelization of the world in this generation.”[27]Along with the preferential option for the poor, Romero made a preferential option for the youth. The slogan “another world is possible” resonates with many, especially with the youth. We need youth who can help us imagine that a new more inclusive we, a new bigger ecumenism that listens to the cry of the poor, the cry of the earth, and the cry of Christ. A new world is possible, if a new church is possible.
I dream of an ecumenical movement that lifts up the old. In a conversation convened by the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School, I met a number of indigenous people from Latin America. One of them was an Aymaran woman, Juana Luisa Condori Quispe. When asked where she found hope, she turned to her elders living and dead. “As wounded as the land may be by centuries of oppression, consolation and wise counsel always spring from their wisdom, in a way that agrees with the written word. Despite how dry and arid the Bolivian altiplano (highlands) may feel or look, nourishment and life always spring from it. It is most certain that the Spirit blows where he wills.”[28] The Spirit still blows in the Andean altiplano, the Amazonian jungle, and the Brazilian favela in the dreams of the old and the visions of the young for a new future.
I dream dreams of an ecumenical movement that goes through the theological academy. In its list of “instruments of unity,” the Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies does not mention theological schools[29]; yet these have long served as signs of and instruments for Christian unity. In Christian seminaries, theology faculties, and divinity schools, future leaders deepen their understanding of the faith by studying, worshipping, and serving next to Christians of different traditions. God’s promised future for the church is ecumenical, and a school that forms people for strictly denominational (or even non/post-denominational) leadership will fall out of step with the richness of Christ’s prayer. In this ecumenical setting, they learn that the old saying is true: “in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” From the perspective of the poor, it becomes clearer which teachings and practices fall into each category and what charity in all things looks like.
I dream dreams of an ecumenical movement that walks with our father and mothers throughout history and our sisters and brothers around the world. The upcoming 1700th anniversary of the first ecumenical council offers us an opportunity to commemorate Nicene Christianity. The creed known as the Nicene Creed arose through a complex interaction of scriptural reflection, liturgical practices, cross-cultural encounters, ecclesial aspirations, and imperial anxieties. The first version of the Nicene Creed included anathemas. The final version of the Nicene Creed omitted these for an expanded confession of faith in the Holy Spirit. The liturgical version of the Nicene Creed switched the “We believe” for an “I believe.” And the Western version of the Nicene Creed added the filioque and reduced its ecumenical appeal. I would like to see a commemoration of Nicene faith that walks the methodological path of the Pilgrimages of Peace and Justice of the World Council of Churches that celebrates the gifts of the creed, visits the wounds of its composition, and transforms the injustices of its transmission. More affirmations and fewer anathemas. More We and less I, a renewed We that includes the 318 Greek-speaking council fathers and “a great multitude that no one could count” of synodal mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”[30] In sum, more Holy Spirit, more Pentecost.
Postlude
This past January, I travelled with fellow professors of the Divinity School to the US-Mexico border. We spent several days at la Casa del Migrante, a shelter run by a Catholic religious order. There we met with asylum seekers from Latin America and the Caribbean. We shared lunch with a couple from Venezuela traumatized by their traverse of the notorious Darien Gap where they had seen fellow migrants eaten by crocodiles. We washed dishes next to a man from Haiti eagerly awaiting an interview to make his case before immigration officials, a case that he was all but certain to lose. The director of the Casa del Migrante took us to visit other shelters, food pantries, and soup kitchens. Two things struck me. First, how ecumenical these were. Second, they were led largely by lay people.
On Sunday, we visited Friendship Park. It is a space set up by the US and Mexican government where people from both nations could meet. Friendship Park is cut in half by an 18 feet tall wall that extends about 200 feet into the Pacific Ocean. It is not a solid wall but a fine mesh steel fence pocked by holes big enough that you can touch someone on the other side of the border with the tip of your pinky finger. The fence is being threatened by human and non-human actors. On the Mexico side, people have turned the fence into an expansive mural with colorful messages of love and calls for justice. On both sides, the salt air and seawater is corroding the wall. Not to worry, the US government has promised to tear down the fence and build a new one twice at high.
Every Sunday at that fence, a small group of pastors, activists, friends, and bystanders gather for worship. When the US Border Patrol allow, they gather on both sides of the fence. Songs are sung, scriptures are read, the word is proclaimed in English and Spanish, the pinky peace is passed, the Lord’s Supper is celebrated. All this happened in the presence of a small band of around seven persons who had somehow gotten around the fence and were waiting to be picked up by Border Patrol so they could petition for asylum. It was a bitter, blustery afternoon, the agents who saw these would be refugees were in no hurry to pick them up and process them. Better let them wait, sitting on the cold ground, exposed to the ocean wind.
As we worshiped, I was overwhelmed by the fact that this was the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. This is the time when Christians give God thanks for what unites us and lament and repent of the dividing walls of hostility that we have built to keep others out. The theme for this year came from Isaiah 1:17, “do good, seek justice.” It was a theme chosen by the Minnesota Council of Churches in 2020 right before the murder of George Floyd. Praying at the wall, I thought again of the remarkable proximity of this annual week of prayer with the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.. The search for social justice and the ecumenical movement share a common destination and a common traveling companion—mercy.
This is the testimony of biblical and ecumenical prophets. Mercy runs shelters, heals wounds, and humanizes outcasts and extras. As Steve de Gruchy says, “To share the love of Jesus Christ with a world in need means always to bring a loving presence to those who live on the margins of society.”[31] This is the preferential option for the poor as a renewed ecumenical praxis.
[1] Steve de Gruchy, “Joseph Wing and the Failures of Church Unity in South Africa (1962-1992),” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 124 (March 2006): 82-98, 98.
[2] According to Jelle Creemers, Theological Dialogue with Classical Pentecostals: Challenges and Opportunities (New York: T&T Clark, 2015), 1 fn.1.
[3] See the discussion in Edgardo Colón-Emeric, The People Called Metodista: Renewing Doctrine, Worship, and Mission from the Margins (Abingdon, 2022), 69-70 and in Colón-Emeric, “Medellín through Methodist Eyes,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 54.3, 2019.
[4] De Gruchy, “Joseph Wing and the Failures of Church Unity in South Africa (1962-1992),” 82.
[5] A previous version of this section on obstacles appears in my essay, “Christian Ecumenism and Extravagant Mercy,” Duke Divinity Medium blog, March 2023.
[6] This section relies on my work in “Romero and the Preferential Option for the Poor: An Ecumenical Praxis,” in Óscar Romero and Catholic Social Teaching [title TBD], edited by Todd Walatka, University of Notre Dame Press, forthcoming 2023; and also my “Romero and the Preferential Option for the Poor: An Ecumenical Praxis,” Dunning Lecture at St. Mary’s Seminary & University, Nov 2022.
[7] Óscar Romero, sermon (21 Jan 1979). I refer to Romero’s sermons in their original Spanish, available in Óscar Romero, Homilías: Monseñor Óscar A. Romero, ed. Miguel Cavada Diez, 7 vols. (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 2005–9), https://coleccion.uca.edu.sv/s/oscar-a-romero/item-set/12057. All translations from Spanish sources here are my own.
[8] Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Pobres y opción fundamental,” in Mysterium Liberationis I, ed. Ignacio Ellacuría and Jon Sobrino (Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 1990), 310.
[9] Gutiérrez, “Pobres y opción fundamental,” 312.
[10] Gutiérrez, “Pobres y opción fundamental,” 309.
[11] Jon Sobrino, Liberación con espíritu: apuntes para una nueva espiritualidad (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1987), 27.
[12] Sobrino, Liberación con espíritu, 30.
[13] Romero, sermon (1 July 1979). In Homilías 5:70.
[14] Romero, sermon (1 July 1979). In Homilías 5:71.
[15] Romero, Mensaje a los Pueblos de América Latina, 3.
[16] Óscar Romero, Cuadernos espirituales: Mons. Óscar Arnulfo Romero, 1966-1980, unpublished transcriptions, Biblioteca de Teologia Juan Ramon Moreno, (8 June 1970).
[17] Composed by Miguel Cavada Díez and Guillermo Cuéllar.
[18] Óscar Romero, “Ecumenismo: recuerdo y esperanza,” in “La palabra del Arzobispo,” Orientación (29 January 1978), 2. In Homilías 7:336.
[19] Romero, “Ecumenismo: recuerdo y esperanza” (29 January 1978). In Homilías 7:336.
[20] Romero, sermon (21 January 1979).
[21] Romero, sermon (15 January 1978), citing Unitatis Redintegratio, 12.
[22] Medardo Gómez, Teología de la vida (Managua: Ediciones Nicarao, 1992), 107.
[23] Romero, sermon (19 August 1979). In Homilías 5:229.
[24] A previous version of the following section first appeared in Colón-Emeric, “Christian Ecumenism and Extravagant Mercy.”
[25] Steve de Gruchy, “‘Growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold…’: change and continuity in the Council for World Mission 1977 to 2007,” Missionalia 36 nos 2-3 (Aug-Nov 2008): 208-225, 223.
[26] Ibid.
[27] As seen in John Mott, “The Evangelization of the World in this Generation,” (US: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1905).
[28] From A Vision towards Peace, Justice, and Reconciliation in the Americas: A Collection of Readings and Discussion Guides from the First Americas Institute for Transformation and Reconciliation (2020–2021), ed. Vilma “Nina” Balmaceda (produced by the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School and The Americas Initiative for Transformation and Reconciliation, 2021), 45.
[29] See section IV, “Instruments,” in Geoffrey Waintwright and Paul McPartlan (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies, Oxford Handbooks (2021; online edn, Oxford Academic, 6 Mar. 2017).
[30] Rev. 7:9.
[31] De Gruchy, “‘Growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold,’” 223.
