Photo: Courtesy of World Council of Churches.
The call out of Egypt: Rachel Muers reports from the World Council of Churches Conference on Faith and Order
‘What would it mean, and what would it take, for Christians to live their unity?’
In October I attended the World Council of Churches’ Sixth World Conference on Faith and Order, in Wadi el Natrun, Egypt. I went in my capacity as a member of the Faith and Order Commission, to which I was nominated by Friends World Committee for Consultation. The conference, which was timed to coincide with the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, took the theme ‘Where Now for Visible Unity?’ It brought together about 400 Christians from all over the world. I was one of three Quaker participants.
A wide range of documents from the conference, and recordings of plenary sessions, are already available via the World Council of Churches website. I warmly encourage everyone to make use of them. But here I want to provide a way in to those materials, by giving Friends some sense of the experience of the World Conference, and of some themes and questions arising that are likely to be of particular interest to Friends.
Context and place
For everyone who wasn’t already familiar with the deep continuity of Christian history in the Middle East (and Egypt in particular), the conference was enlightening. We visited monasteries which have had more than 1,600 years of life; the people showing us round, and the founders depicted in the icons, seem to be part of the same living community.
Right from the start, guests were welcomed from across the known world. We heard liturgies sung in (what’s claimed to be) the oldest language in continual use, Coptic, which preserves something of the language of the pharaohs. And we heard Arabic as an ordinary language of Christian life. We heard clear and passionate presentations from Christians from across the Middle East, reflecting long-held anxieties and the almost intolerable pressure of living constantly ‘on the boat in the storm’, as one speaker from Lebanon put it. We belong in these countries, they said. We keep faith even when we feel abandoned. But: do not abandon us.
The question of ‘Visible Unity’
Some people might say that just bringing together members of many Christian traditions from across the world, and enabling them to eat, pray, talk and travel together, is itself a way of making Christian unity visible. But the question before the conference was: what would it mean, and what would it take, for Christians to live their unity? In the background, there were a whole range of other questions: if unity doesn’t mean uniformity (and everyone was very keen to affirm that it doesn’t), how do we get beyond everyone doing their own thing? If unity is a gift of God that we find or receive, rather than something we make, what does this mean for how we relate to each other? Where do we start with addressing the differences between our church institutions, and how much do they matter?
The ecumenical affirmation agreed at the end of the conference captures the many dimensions of unity:
‘[U]nity is not something we can achieve only by our own efforts, but is rather God’s gift to be revealed in the way Christians love, serve and pray together, even while we continue to work to overcome our differences. The goal should be to maintain unity where it already exists, reveal unity where it has been obscured, and recover unity where it has been lost. This needs to happen both on an institutional and on a personal level.’
‘What’s the relationship between the unity of Christians and the unity of humanity?’
One of the questions that has stayed with me was: what’s the relationship between the unity of Christians and the unity of humanity? We reflected on how the churches, finding unity in the aftermath of division, could be a sign of God’s reconciliation, not a special ‘charmed circle’ but a place where the gift of unity and community/communion is made available to everyone. And we reflected on the very deep changes that might need to happen for that to be possible.
‘I think some Christians don’t even recognise other Christians as human beings,’ said one participant, reflecting on her experience of racism. I asked, a few times: isn’t the greatest threat to Christian unity not that Christians have different theological opinions about war and violence, but that Christians are violent towards each other?
In one of the plenary sessions, the Bahamian Anglican theologian Carlton Turner asked: how can the churches do the internal work to acknowledge the long and complex global histories of power and its abuse, the histories that have meant so much wealth and power has flowed to the global north? With the centre of gravity of Christianity in the global south, can we talk about ‘visible unity’ without also talking about decolonising, about power and privilege? Even, or especially, the power and privilege at work in the Council of Nicaea, convened by the emperor Constantine – empire then and empire now?
In another session, a colleague from another historic peace church spoke very clearly about how important it is – from his tradition, as also from mine – to acknowledge that creeds, like the Nicene creed, are instruments of power, that alliances with state power are dangerous temptations for the churches. Jesus dies as a victim of imperial power.
But, on the other hand, once you have the whole world in the room, things are complicated. Not every church feels safe washing dirty linen in public; most of us haven’t been in persecuted churches, where sometimes you count the cost of adverse publicity in physical attacks.
Snapshot
It was a difficult business session trying to find consensus on the conference message. I don’t envy the drafting committee. Having done Yearly Meeting epistle drafting, I have some sense of how they feel. They’ll have a late night tonight.
A ‘Faith and Order’ colleague catches me outside. He’s very worried. The current draft of the message is the result of long background meetings and negotiations. Now he thinks the conference is moving in a different direction, which will upset the agreement.
‘We always give up something. And people don’t see what we give up.’
It’s a real shared moment of understanding, because I’ve been sitting there deciding whether there’s anything I really shouldn’t ‘give up’ in that section on baptism. People don’t see what we give up.
I get it, I tell him. All you can do is trust the drafters, trust the process. And for myself I write a little note saying, if it’s not too much trouble, could we change that paragraph towards the end so that it doesn’t sound as if everyone baptises people with water? There’ll be a longer discussion to have later, but, just for now, let’s find a form of words to keep us all together, to get us to consensus.
‘The art of the compromise’ as they sing in the Hamilton musical. ‘No one really knows how the parties get to “yes”, the pieces that are sacrificed in every game of chess.’ I use that song (‘The Room Where It Happens’) when I talk about the Council of Nicaea itself, but maybe it goes for all collective agreement of documents. Maybe even sometimes Yearly Meeting epistles.
The next day the ecumenical affirmation and the message are agreed. They’re on the World Council of Churches website and the drafters have done an amazing job; see what you think.
Future of ‘Faith and Order’ work: Creeds, faith, baptism, and the Spirit
I finish with some reflections on key themes and directions for ‘Faith and Order’ work emerging from the conference, and some thoughts about what a Quaker theologian might be able to contribute in future.
First, the conference focus was on the Nicene Creed. But there was significant representation from church traditions that do not use this, or any other creed, in worship, notably of Pentecostal Christians from many contexts. The conference was not mainly about a shared expression of faith, it was about a shared faith expressed. A shared faith that is also living faith – a living relationship to God, a living trust in the God of Jesus Christ – gives room for re-expression, reformulation and rediscovery, and there was plenty of space for this at the conference.
In fact, from a Quaker perspective the focus on the creed is surprisingly helpful. It places the focus on who God is, and not on what the church is, or who is allowed to be in the church. Truthful conversations about how we know and experience God have an energy and life to them – and an openness to learning and dialogue across difference – that is absent from conversations about who gets to be in our club. The conference message opens up the call to ‘listen together to the Holy Spirit’ and to ‘walk together as pilgrims, as children of the Father learning together to live out our faith, hope and love’.
The double function of a ‘thing held in common’ – connecting and building up a community, on the one hand, and excluding those who do not share it, on the other – was mentioned at the conference in relation to the creed. It is also very much on my mind in relation to one of the big emerging themes in ‘Faith and Order’ work for future years: a focus on the unity of Christians in baptism. This has enormous amount potential, theologically. It opens up an understanding of the church where each person’s ministry, gifts and calling are vitally important; where we think about unity in terms of the whole people of God rather than in terms of agreements between members of the hierarchy; and where diversity and mutual acceptance are central to what the church is.
‘Truthful conversations have an energy and life to them.’
So, again perhaps surprisingly, work on baptismal ecclesiology could end up with a very Quaker-friendly approach, to which Quakers can bring a great deal from our experience and practice. I was particularly glad to hear the Roman Catholic ecumenist Susan Woods relating baptismal ecclesiology to the call for the whole people of God to take part in discerning, together, what the Holy Spirit is saying to the church.
By being in this conversation, I hope that a Quaker theologian can both bring relevant experience and insights from our tradition, and raise the questions that will prevent ‘baptismal ecclesiology’ from becoming an exclusionary move. From the edge of the conversation about baptism, we can ask: what does baptism mean for the non-baptised? What is the relationship between the people of God thus gathered and the whole community of creation? And how do we always make this about God and not about us? How do we avoid putting our own conditions or limits on the free gift of God? I look forward to exploring these questions in ‘Faith and Order’ conversations.
See http://www.oikoumene.org/events/sixth-world-conference-on-faith-and-order for conference papers.
Comments
Thank you for a very interesting and helpful article. Making this all “about God” and not about us, is a great reminder of what’s really important. Andrew West (Newark Meeting)
By Chris.wedge@outlook.com on 11th December 2025 - 11:44
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