7. An Afterword from My Participation in AMCU IV
Many Christians from my own tradition have an issue with ecumenism at both the levels of inter-faith dialogue and intra-faith dialogue. I am, however, unrepentantly and unapologetically ecumenical in my outlook. I thoroughly believe that it is possible for one to be ecumenical without having to compromise one’s position on the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Ecumenism is not about the disregard of our theological differences to a level of the lowest common denominator. For true unity to be achieved, it has to be attained within an environment where our differences are highlighted, honoured, and talked about.

Some people have an issue with how generous I’ve chosen to become in my embrace of the theological positions of other Christian traditions. I believe I have good reason for this. Firstly, I happen to believe (like a number of other evangelical thinkers) that my tradition has failed to examine itself critically and to reinvent itself. What was once a tradition arising from the Reformation now itself needs an internal reformation. And the last thing we need is another split from Mother Church. If anything, I believe that our own theological and spiritual deficit can find recovery only if we start paying some attention to the articulations of Mother Church before the Reformation occurred. Indeed, some say that this isn’t possible because there are corruptions in the pre-Reformation church (heck, anything pre-Reformation to them is heretic and corrupted); and this leads me to the second point: it’s appalling how we readily and conveniently compare other peoples’ worst with our best and thereafter engage in self-congratulatory affirmations, when all along our worst may have been worse than other peoples’ worst. And so, what I believe to be a healthy ecumenical spirit is to learn from the best of others and allow the worst of others to remind us of how grave our own worst is without first judging those others.

Ecumenism is very much an ecclesiological problem. And this, if I may say so, is the precise spot at which the Protestant Church finds its gravest weakness. Where in other traditions apart from the Protestant tradition do we find people saying “The church next door is more happening than ours, I think I’m going to go join them”, or “The worship and the sermons at the megachurch in town is more inspiring than ours, I think I’ll leave this church for that one”? It shows that we, the Protestant Christians, are rather unaware of what it means to be the church. It’s very telling of the state of our ecclesiology - if there is even one. And I think we would be deceiving ourselves to think that the solution to this can be found within our own tradition. If it’s worth finding a solution, one has to embrace an ecumenical outlook and be self-critical towards one’s own tradition.