A Postscript on ‘Teaching Jesus and the Unity of the Church’

By Leander S. Harding and Christopher Wells

We are gratified by the seriousness with which our colleagues in the Episcopal Church have taken our proposal in “Teaching Jesus and the Unity of the Church” [TLC, Dec. 26, 2010]. We understand the questions and anxieties that such a proposal is bound to evoke in the present adversarial climate in the church. We take this opportunity to reaffirm that our proposal is a simple request arising from a broken heart and genuine perplexity and confusion about the ability of our church to confess one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

We do not mean to diminish the role of the laity in our church, and we affirm that all in the church take at times the role of learner and at times the role of teacher. But we do wish to ask the designated and ordained pastors and teachers of the church, charged with passing on to us the doctrine and teaching of the Apostles, to set at the center of their own study and their own teaching ministry, for the next three years at least, the ecumenical creeds of the church and the great questions of the identity of the Savior and the nature of the work he has come to accomplish.

Our plea is that our pastors and teachers would talk to us plainly and simply with as common a voice as possible about who Jesus is, what he has come to do, what it means to say he has died for our sins, and what it means to say that he has risen from the dead. We hope that this ministry of teaching the very basic things of the faith might come from common study of the Scriptures and the great teaching tradition of the Church, and take place in the House of Bishops as well as among diocesan bishops and their clergy.

We recognize that a focus on doctrine is to a degree counter-cultural to the Episcopal Church. We recognize with mixed feelings the extraordinary place the baptismal covenant has assumed in the working theology of our church. Yet at the heart of this liturgy is the confession of the Apostles’ Creed in question and answer form and the challenge to turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as Lord and Savior. Surely to study together, and then teach together, the identity and work of the Lord is a contribution to taking this covenant with due seriousness.

We do think that some new initiative is needed to move beyond mutual suspicion and acrimony. Reassurances that we have more in common than what divides us without specifying that which is in common are unlikely to be adequate. Calls to engage in common mission as though the meaning of mission and its relation to the person of the Lord goes without saying is inadequate to the crisis of unity facing our church. We continue to believe that the ultimate hope for peace both in our church and in the world is the Church’s one foundation, Jesus Christ the Lord. We believe that our proposal is a concrete and practical means for seeking him who is God’s peace and for sharing that peace with each other.

Our proposal does not require any official endorsements, though it would be vastly helped by endorsement in the House of Bishops and among diocesan bishops and their clergy. We hope that here and there bishops, clergy, and laity will covenant together to study and teach Jesus for the sake of the unity of the Church.

The Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding teaches pastoral theology at Trinity School for Ministry, Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Dr. Christopher Wells is executive director of The Living Church Foundation.