Christian Unity (the book) - The Maranatha Community

the 20 th Century renewal movement was an attempt to revive the morespontaneous worship that it was believed the apostolic church enjoyed, andthat with spontaneity went a widening of circles of contact among Christians.This, too, was the legacy of the BrethrenError! Bookmark not defined..Although their original desire was to break down denominational barriers bymeeting other Christians in their own territories and by accepting all believersat Brethren worship meetings, it was not long before contacts with otherbelievers were shunned by many of the Brethren Assemblies. Yet the conceptof the simple gathering together of all believers on the basis of faith in Christonly did not entirely die in Brethrenism, and several leaders of the late 20 thCentury renewal movements came from its ranks and advocated openfellowship of believers.The unity the Oxford Movement strove for was a visible unity of the Church.The concept of ‘spiritual ecumenism‘ would have held little appeal to theTractarians. Dissent was as deplorable as breaking the unity of the visibleChurch.Those leaders of the Oxford Movement who did not join the Roman Churchstill held to their belief that the Church of England was the Via Media betweenProtestantism and Roman Catholicism, both of which were departures fromthe undivided Church of the Early Fathers. Given that belief it was logical tosee other Churches in England as destroyers of the unity of a divinelyappointed Church, a Church which could be seen everywhere in its parishministry, its priests and its bishops.Something must be written about the ‘Broad Church‘ visions of Christian Unityin the 19 th Century, because several of its remarkable thinkers and scholarsaddressed the problem.First, we must define what we mean by ‘Broad Church‘. Broad Church thinkersfelt they were in tune with the liberal thinking of their day and therefore withthe spirit of the age. They disliked dogmatism, whether Catholic or Evangelical,and put a considerable stress on reason applied to theology and to the latestBiblical researches. But this does not mean that their theology was necessarilyweakened. They were often men of intense religious feeling and weredistressed by the divisions of denominationalism in the Church. As B G WorrallPage 139