Pentecostal theologian and scholar Cheryl Bridges-Johns proposed a radical reinvention of the ecumenical movement in a keynote address delivered on the third day of the Global Christian Forum which takes place 6-9 November in Limuru, near Nairobi, Kenya.
Bridges-Johns, a professor at the Theological Seminary of the Church of God in Cleveland (Tennessee), US, sparked a vivid discussion with her lecture, which elaborated on a statement from the 1961 New Delhi assembly of the World Council of Churches : « the achievement of unity will involve nothing less than a death and rebirth of many forms of church life as we have known them ».
For Bridges-Johns, what is dying is « the old ’mainstream’ ecumenical paradigm, » as « the structures built to create and sustain the visible unity of the church are no longer viable ». As a result, « a new form of ecumenism is needed that is able to embrace the challenges of world-wide Christianity ». The Global Christian Forum « represents such an effort ». It is one instance of « a number of new ecumenical tables » that have arisen over the last decade or so.
Western conservatives look to the South for support, but fail to understand the worldview of Southern Christianity. Thus she spoke. But surely in her own terms it is wrong for her to speak for the southern hemisphere? Is it not a little audacious to claim to voice the mind of Third World churches from a safe niche in northern academia? The irony is rich, just as with liberation theologians writing from Oxford or Cambridge.