The Background for the Project

Beginning Steps Toward Unity

some of you might be asking, what the heck is all this about? well, a few months ago (about the time i got back from Turkey), somethin' really began to bother me. i had been to a few different churches, but seeing the churches in Turkey and some of the challenges they faced showed me the importance of unity in Christ and how these churches, while each had different focusii and tactics had to rely on each other and their fellowship to survive.

this got me thinking about the American church and how we have over 1,000 denominations in this country, many of whom compete for members amongst themselves (instead of going out to the unreached), or claim that their way of doing things is the only way. Others even go so far as to say that their church is the one, true Church (some Southern Baptist congregations, Mormons, Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and even the Assyrian Church), and that salvation can only be found within those churches.

so i began to think to myself, over and over again Paul talks about Christ as being the head of the Church, and we are the arms, legs, fingers, toes and all in all, we make up the Body. He directs and leads and pulls us together, while He also uses us to do His work. Paul also says that a foot has no right to say to a hand "i don't need you" and the same goes for the other way around.

even Jesus himself prays toward the end of John's Gospel, right before He goes to His death, that all his disciples would remain one as He and the Father are one. He also told his disciples to love one another, and by that sign others would know that they were Jesus' disciples. i began to think about the seriousness of this and what should be done about it. i'm just a small guy in the big scheme of things, and don't necessarily have a lot of authority in the Church. but i still felt that the command Christ gave was given to all of us, and shouldn't just be entrusted to the hands of a few. after all, real unity is among all the members, not just some.

The Calling

so then i began to wonder, "what should the first step be?" and i realized that when Christ gave his command of unity to his disciples, it was at His last supper. And when Paul repeatedly instructs the Corinthian church on unity in the Body, he also repeatedly brings up the practice of celebrating communion (or the Eucharist). so i thought this would be a good place to start.

after a lot of prayer and the advice of pastors and other followers of Christ, i decided that a good first step would be to share in Communion those who are truly in Christ's Body, as a sign of my personal commitment to unity. now, i don't want this to be confused as being seen as a tool toward unity, because really it isn't. Communion is a sign of existing unity, and so i had to look at my heart and see whether i really was in unity with my brothers and sisters.

ever since i went to Africa & Honduras and worked with the homeless in Colorado, God began to work a change in me. he showed me that what i was to give was not condescending pity or to see myself as doing any good work for God, but instead to see myself as one of them. to see myself as homeless and poor, and so i became a person who was struggling to get through the same muck in life as they were, and that we were pushing on together. so i asked God to help me apply this to the rest of the Church.

i realized that when we seperate ourselves from others, we dehumanize them in our own eyes. in the extreme, this can be seen whenever somebody kills another person. in order to kill, you have to make them your enemy, someone who has traded their humanity for whatever cause or action you don't believe in, and since they have traded that humanity, you feel justified to kill. the same can be said of the heart. when we hate, Jesus says that we kill the person in our own hearts and so are guilty of murder. to do that we dehumanize them. to divide ourselves from other Christians, we must first feel they've traded their salvation and even their humanity that binds them to us, and so we are justified in separating ourselves.

A Legacy of Separation

so the first step for me was to look at where the Church went wrong. i read the writings of ancient Church fathers (i'm still working on this. i'm trying to read the available writings of the Apostles who were the first bishops in the Pentarchy and then read the writings of their first three successors), i had visited some of the Holy sites of Christendom (in Turkey and Germany), and i read the creeds and histories of different denominations. soon i was able to group denominations into specific families and found that 15 major denominations existed in the US. then, i found that the proto-orthodox Church had remained mostly unified until sometime after the 2nd Ecumenical Council. Before this time, divisions found in the Church could be decided based on scripture written in the Old Testament, or by the Apostles (and Paul), or could be judged by those who were still living and knew the Apostles personally. A direct and consistent line of thought could therefore be traced in the first 200 years of the early Church.

But around 300 AD, after years of persecution and the continuing growth of Christianity, Christians for the first time found themselves in political favor. Rome, under Constantine, quickly adopted Christianity, and while other religions were tolerated for a time, Christianity spread even more rapidly, but with an emphasis on numbers of "converts" and not on raising up disciples. not only this, the system of "conversion" was not set up based on the principle of faith in Christ, but on the principle that a good Roman calls himself a Christian, and one who doesn't is a traitor to Rome (and in their minds, to Christ as they were both seen as the same thing). soon more and more divisions began to appear and we have better records of the Church as a whole trying to combat these "heresies" (whether they were or weren't, that is to be addressed in a different post). Ecumenical councils were formed, in which all the established Bishops were expected to attend and decide the overall doctrine of the Church. The first two were held as a unified body of about 150 bishops and struck down the heresy of Arianism, adopted the Nicene creed, and prohibited any further changes to the creed (325 AD). After looking into scripture in regards to this creed, and based on what the Apostolic Fathers wrote, i decided that this creed and the Council's decisions were valid and soundly based.

After this, though, the Church began to investigate more and more into sticky theological issues that aren't necessarily written in clear terms in Scripture or the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, and so the divisions began to increase while justified opposition could often be found on both sides. As Church became more entwined with Politics, power, land, and gold caught the eye of Church leaders more and more. Eventually, as tribes began to split the Roman Empire in two, the leaders of the Church were also seen as leaders of the State and so what was good for the State was seen as good for the Church. So East and West began to politically and spiritually separate. the East had already experienced break-ups in the establishment of the Coptic Pope in Egypt and the Oriental Orthodox Church and with the Assyrian Church after the 3rd ecumenical council.

in 1054 the Roman Catholic Pope decided to declare complete primacy (altering the original role of the pope as a tie breaker in ecumenical decisions) and broke the agreement reached in the 2nd ecumenical council by adding to the Nicene creed that the Spirit flowed from the Father and the Son (instead of just the father). While an unclear theological issue anyway, this was only amplified by the political and cultural estrangement and Pope Leo IX and Patriarch Michael I excommunicated each other. This was called the First Great Schism or the East - West Schism. After this, everything went downhill. This only encouraged future division, when after 75 years of the Pope being seated in Avignon, France, Pope Gregory XI moved the Papacy back to Rome in 1378 and soon died. This caused rebellious cardinals to set up a series of Antipopes back in Avignon, and there have even been times in Catholic history where three or four Popes reigned simultaneously (and this isn't including Coptic or Assyrian Popes that were operating in the East). This period was called the Second Great Schism or the Western Schism.

In the West, King Henry VIII declared himself head of the Church in England 500 years after the First Great Schism, and about this time Luther and Calvin each started reformations which led to further break-ups in the Church. When the British colonies declared independence from England, this encouraged splinter groups to move to America, which prized their individuality and taught it as almost essential to their doctrine. The Methodists broke from the Church of England (The Anglican Church) when they could no longer declare loyalty to the king and over differences with the Episcopal Church, and more groups broke from the individualistic Anabaptist movements (Baptists, Mennonites, Quakers), which had also separated from other Calvinist movements (Reformed-Presbyterian). Finally, the Lutherans founded a strong movement in the Midwest, and soon had a split of their own resulting in the Missouri-Synod and the ELCA.

Current Action Toward Unity

that brings us to today. we now have over 1,000 denominations, many of whom refuse to see themselves as arms or legs, instead saying they are the whole body. since the Church was greatly influenced by politics and questionable doctrine after the first 2 ecumenical councils, i decided that the Nicene Creed (of 381) and Scripture (as detailed by the long accepted 27 books of the New Testament, together with the Old Testament) agreed apon by the Orthodox Church was still a good measure for essential doctrine, and as a basis to begin an investigation of Unity.

after deciding this, i looked to each of the major families of denominations (there are about 15), and chose representatives of each. from these, i looked at their creeds, doctrine, and practice and if it didn't mesh with the Nicene Creed or scripture, i decided that i cannot consider myself in unity with them, but if they did, then i would consider them as part of the Church. now, as a warning, i can't use this same basis to judge the individual character of adherents or believers. God is the only one who decides that. while i can scrutinize over written doctrine, i can't do the same for hearts, and so i acknowledged that when it came to Communion, any who claimed to be disciples, and who weren't rebelliously (and in full self-knowledge) disobeying Jesus' commands or refusing to admit to shortcomings, would be considered as a brother or sister in Christ. whether they truly were or weren't can only be judged in their own hearts and by God. this is why, when it comes to individuals approaching Communion, God states through Paul that those who approach with impure motives or with an unclean heart only eat and drink judgement onto themselves (judgement which is to be dealt out by God and not the Church).

anyway, once i came up with a list of churches who hold to these basic principles (Nicene Creed & Scripture) i decided to share in the Eucharist in each, to show my spiritual bond to each as a member in the body of Christ, and in the hope of raising awareness of the importance of unity and our personal responsibility to that. To gain weight to this, and because Jesus says where one or two are gathered in His name there He also is, and because whenever He sent people out, He sent them at least by twos, i prayed about this with another brother in Christ who agreed to do this with me.

So this post will be a record of our actions in the hope that the Eucharist will be the embodiment of the solidarity and existing unity (because there is either One body of Christ, or no body; there can't be many) between the members, and that our dialogue with pastors and members of churches along the way will help to bring about stronger unity within the Church. Eventually, we have the hope of taking this further and visiting the important collective holy sites of Christendom (some controlled by both Eastern and Western churches), including the major cities of the Pentarchy, the burial places of the Apostles, the Lutheran reformation sites (already visited), the New and Old Testament sites in Israel, and the New Testament sites in Turkey (already visited).