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Unifying the Ministry: The History of an Idea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Gavin White
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Extract

Church union schemes have for some years past tended to hinge upon a special service of ‘commissioning’ by which the ministries of various existing denominations should be unified. This pattern of unification, commonly associated with North India, has been attacked on the grounds that it gives ‘an impression of evasion and dishonesty’.1 It is held by many that it encourages some to believe that the commissioning is an ordination, and others to believe that it is not. And while this may be true of some present-day advocates of such schemes, it is not true of their origin. There was a quite clear theological interpretation to services for ‘unifying the ministry’, though in the opinion of this writer a false one. As we shall see, it was held that in a divided church there was no longer one ministry, but a number of parallel ministries, all defective until such time as they should be added together. It is the purpose of this survey to record the rise and fall of that idea amongst Anglicans, who have been particularly prone to it, over the past fifty years.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 50 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1967

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References

page 50 note 1 Neill, Stephen, ‘Christian Union Today’, Horizons, Third Quarter 1964, Toronto, p. 6.Google Scholar

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page 51 note 2 The Lambeth Conferences (1867–1930), S.P.C.K., 1948, p. 39.Google Scholar

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page 55 note 2 Dr E. L. Mascall writing in the January 1962 issue of Theology, and in the 6th June 1963 issue of the Methodist Recorder.

page 55 note 3 Including Dr E. L. Mascall himself, writing in The Church Times, 2nd April 1965.