The Word That Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship

8. Ecumenism as the Shared Practice of a Peculiar Identity

Ecumenism as the Shared Practice of a Peculiar Identity Classic ecumenism in the twentieth century has had to do with partnership and cooperation among established denominational traditions. These denominational groupings have tended to reflect centrist, mainline churches that, in their own particular spheres, exercised some theological hegemony. Thus, ecumenism tended to focus upon churches finding each other in the midst of their pronounced socio-politico-economic accommodation to context. Important questions about the locus of such churches in their more-or-less compromised social contexts were not raised. One of the practical effects of such quests for unity and cooperation—without serious self-criticism—was the exclusion from the horizon of churches that did not participate in such centrist hegemony, for example, churches in the left-wing reformation and Pentecostal traditions. The ecumenical work that is now to be done is no longer among hegemonic denominations and church traditions, as though the largest animals were posturing in front of each other in the forest. Our current context requires that we recognize that unity among Christian churches is not very urgent or important unless it is unity found in an odd identity for an odd vocation in a world deeply organized against gospel oddity. The Lima document prepared the way for this embrace of common oddness, taking baptismal identity and vocation as the starting point for common life. But now, given where the churches find themselves, a common life in baptism is not a matter of agreeing on formulae, classical or otherwise, but on common praxis deriving from a shared odd entity. It is not clear in what way an Old Testament teacher can contribute to these conversations, given our propensity to traffic in old church formulae. The present essay seeks to think through Israel’s odd identity in the Old Testament, an identity of course adjusted to different circumstances, but 138 chapter eight Ecumenism as the Shared Practice of a Peculiar Identity d 139 always in deep tension with hegemonic power all around. Increasingly the church in the west is in an analogous situation to that of ancient Israel, no longer hegemonic itself but pressed by powers that are indeed hegemonic.1 The characteristic locus of ancient Israel as a marginalized community in the midst of hegemonic power (either indifferent or hostile to that odd identity) may be a useful place from which to re-read the text and rethink a shared identity in the church. I In the world of ancient Israel in the period of the Old Testament, it is not difficult to identify the ruling groups who we may suppose constructed and maintained dominant values. The list of superpowers that dominated the landscape of that ancient world includes, in sequence, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia.2 From an Israelite perspective one can make some differentiations in their several modes of hegemony, so that it appears that Assyria was the most consistently brutal, and Persia appears to have operated in a more benign or enlightened way; but those differences likely were strategic, or at least the Israelite perception and presentation of them are likely strategic. Without fail, the impinging superpower intended to dominate the political landscape, to control military power, and to preempt the authority to tax. The control of military power, moreover, included the right to draft manpower, which issued in forced labor for state projects. On the whole these concentrations of power tolerated little deviation in matters of importance to them. To ensure compliance, moreover, the political-economic-military power of hegemony is paired, characteristically , with imperial myths and rituals, liturgical activities that legitimated power realities. It is not too much to conclude that the interface of political and liturgical efforts intended to generate a totalizing environment outside of which were permitted no political forays and, where effective, no deviant imagination. Such hegemony maintained both a monopoly of violence and a monopoly of imagination that assured for its own young privilege, certitude, and domination; it invited into its universal horizon those who stood outside the primary benefits of that monopoly, but who had come to terms with its visible and unquestioned privilege, certitude, and domination. From an Israelite perspective, the totalizing capacity of hegemony is perceived, characteristically, as arrogant and threatening.3 Thus, with 140 D The Word That Redescribes the World ancient memories of oppression still palpable, Ezekiel can have pharaoh assert: “My Nile is my own, I made it for myself ” (Ezek...