Ruptured Bodies
A Theology of the Church Divided
By Eugene R. Schlesinger
Fortress Press, xxx + 205 pages, $39
The ecumenical movement has been one of the most significant developments of Christianity since the 19th century. From the 1940s its goal has been the full communion of churches, the creation of a concrete unity among people of faith, and the sharing of the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion, as well as the full interchange of ordained ministers and priests across denominational boundaries.
Certainly within the Episcopal Church, the shape of ecumenism has constantly shape-shifted in response to the secular context of society. In many respects, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, approved by the House of Bishops in 1886, placed ecumenism in a context of responding to the disunity and devastation of the U.S. Civil War. But it also reacted to political change, industrialism, and urbanization, which all undercut community and worship.
The voice of a new generation of ecumenical theologians in the United States, Eugene Schlesinger provides a groundbreaking response to the past two generations of ecumenists with a vision of where the ecumenical movement should be headed.
He extends his earlier study of “ruptured bodies” to the early Church, and provides a theological vision for the Church in its present state of decline. He embraces racial and sexual minorities who have previously been marginalized in the ecumenical story, and integrates his spiritual journey into the text.
Schlesinger criticizes all the mainline denominations for failing to take ecumenism seriously. Unusually for a systematic theologian, he often adopts a confessional mode. He says that, as a believer, he found himself “existentially implicated in and troubled by the Church’s divisions.” He knows no other way to engage in the problem than through the lens of his personal journey.
The key charge of the book is this: If churches continue to exist without full visible unity, that existence is merely a performative contradiction, one that threatens the entire basis of the Christian faith. Churches are divided, but they blindly continue business as usual.
He sums up his disgust in one sentence: “This disunity is a sign that the Churches are sick unto death.”
What does unity today mean to a church that is also ruptured? The ideal of ecclesial unity is found so often on the “Pauline pen,” according to Schlesinger, but today’s state of affairs diverges from the Pauline idea. And in fact it is not possible now to retreat into a bygone era of pristine unity, to try to reconstruct it, or to lament its loss.
He ends the book with his final definition of unity. For our time, unity will not be comfortable because it will be so countercultural. For Schlessinger, “the path to unity will involve something of the cross in the Church’s lives. Yet in the cross is our light and our salvation. Unity is not comfortable. The cross is not comfortable.”
Despite the Church’s seeming exhaustion with ecumenical projects and the dehumanizing tone of secular political discourse, Schlesinger argues that this is no time to rest or pull back from the call to Eucharistic fellowship, stating:
We ought to be celebrating and receiving the Eucharist together, but our common celebrations should be the expression and enactment of a common life. If they are not, the celebration risks devolving into a mockery, despite all the best intentions that lead to it. It is striking that no one seems to take to heart Jesus’s warning in the Sermon on the Mount, to leave our gifts at the altar and first be reconciled with our siblings before offering our sacrifice, despite the frequent application of those words to eucharistic contexts.”
A key position of the book is that no church is required to adopt any custom or practice or belief beyond the Nicene Creed. Nor would churches impose anything upon their partners. For the future of the Church, we must not wait for all divisive issues to be resolved, but should recognize one another as Christian and commit to finding a future together.
Church polity remains the primary practical barrier to unity, Schlesinger says, and we need to stop being afraid of other polities. Episcopally governed churches may well be enriched by presbyterial conciliarity of the Reformed tradition, even as others grasp the vitality of the historical episcopate. We must embrace one another even, or especially, when we don’t agree.
This book is intended as a theology of the divided Church, in which unity is calling us to a greater diversity, a unity in difference, a realization that division is a choice rather than a necessity. Diversity is not the problem. The problem is churches sojourning in isolation.
The Church needs a full identity that can encompass difference within unity, that can hold space for competing ideas without resorting to conflict. It is not a question of avoiding volatile topics, as many of us do now at the Thanksgiving dinner table with relatives who think and vote differently from the way we do. We must embrace our “ruptured church” and above all remember what brought us together in the first place: to share a meal with all Christians around the Lord’s Table.
The Rt. Rev. R. William Franklin is Assisting Bishop of Long Island. He was Bishop of Western New York from 2011 to April 2019; and previously served at St. Mark’s Church, Philadelphia; at St. Paul’s Within the Walls in Rome for five years; as associate director of the American Academy in Rome; and associate priest of the Anglican Centre in Rome. Previously, he served as Dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, as a professor at the General Theological Seminary in New York, and at St. John’s University in Minnesota.
