More than 4,000 Christians put denominational differences aside and united as one for a special event to praise God and the city of Oxford today.
Christians from dozens of different nationalities cancelled their usual Sunday worship to join together for a mass prayer in South Park in which they were told Christianity is more relevant than ever in today’s world.
Congregations from an estimated 40 Oxford churches including Anglican, Baptist, Pentecostal, Russian Orthodox, and the Chinese fellowship were blessed with fine weather as they sang hymns under one marquee roof.
This raises an interesting question, what is the place of doctrine in this act of ecumenism? I know that when I was in the Russian Orthodox Church that ecumenism was shunned as the Mother of all pan-heresies; but has something changed. I will have to check with my friends in the Moscow patriarchate. Bear in mind that some of the Russian Orthodox in England are under the Ecumenical patriarchate and not under Moscow, so they may have a different stance vis-a-vis ecumenism. Many supporters of the ecumenical movement and the World Council of Churches prefer staging such events to gloss-over “petty differences” like doctrine. Perhaps I am just getting old, but I still think doctrine matters.
Surely, the Russian Orthodox didn’t “cancel their usual Sunday worship”?
I don’t think such massive public worship events are meant to downplay the importance of doctrinal differences. For example, I doubt that conservative St. Aldate’s (Anglican) would go along with that.
IMHO, there is something exciting about such large gatherings that bring together Christians from across a lot of denominations. They can be inspiring and help dispel the common misconception by non-believers that Christians are always perpetually squabbling with each other. For example, I really enjoyed a Promise Keeper’s event for men that I went to a few years ago. About 50,000 guys were gathered in a large football stadium, singing heartily our praise of Jesus Christ. It seemed like a little foretaste of heaven to me.
David Handy+
Phil,
That’s why I rather doubt these were Moscow Patriarchate people.
David,
I, too, attended a PK event at Rich Stadium in Buffalo back in 1998 and it was quite an experience, but generally I am suspicious of ecumenical gatherings. I’ve never been to a Billy Graham Crusade, but he used to refer new people to local churches and not necessarily draw them to himself and his own ministry, although that may be different these days. How many of you are familiar with Canon Bryan Green of Birmingham (UK)? He was pretty much the Anglican Billy Graham and he led huge gatherings across Britain, Canada, the U.S. and Australia for many years.