At the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1445) many of those present believed that they had resolved all the differences between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and that union could take place immediately.  When they attempted to put this into practice, however, the leaders discovered that they had left the members of their churches behind and the council was angrily rejected by the people on the streets of Constantinople .  This reminds us that the word “church” does not mean only leaders such as popes, bishops or moderators; it means a gathering, an assembly, a people of God.  Christian unity cannot be agreed between a few leaders or a few experts in theology.  It must involve all members of the churches involved.

This will require that very serious effort be put into keeping people informed of all developments and seeking their agreement to each step that is taken towards unity.  It will include the difficult task of making every effort to express complex and subtle religious truths in the simplest possible language. 

PRINCIPLE NINE: Christian Unity Will Require Serious Study by All Christians.

There is a widespread popular movement that considers progress towards Christian unity to be glacially slow and believes that, if fair-minded people sat down together, they could solve all problems in one session and reach immediate unity.  We should have at least some sympathy for this position, in so far as the prison of the past, the inability to look at matters with fresh eyes, is probably the greatest obstacle to Christian unity.  We must add, however, that a unity that is achieved too easily can just as quickly dissolve again.  Unity must be based on profound truth and the search for truth can be arduous and painful.

Every single Christian person must be asked to go beneath the surface of the questions that arise and to study them as profoundly as is possible in the different circumstances of each individual.  This will, of course, have different meanings for different people, but the questions are serious and they deserve serious answers.  We are talking about nothing less than the direction the Christian church should take in the third millennium and that is not to be determined by casual or superficial answers.

There is a long history behind most religious differences and many people will come to the questions with their own preconceived ideas and will not want to change.  Furthermore, in today’s world there are many factors that militate against a serious study of any question by a whole community. 

-          Opinions are frequently based on feelings rather than on careful thought. 

-          There is an insistence that even the most profound and complex questions be given an instant and simple answer before a television camera. 

-          The democracy with which people are familiar counts only the number of votes cast, not the level of thinking behind each vote, with the consequent desire to move to a vote long before the issues are fully understood. 

-          There is a strong tendency today to launch a personal attack on opponents rather than present the arguments for one’s own case clearly. 

-          It is easier to manipulate public opinion by playing on fears than by presenting rational arguments. 

So strong are these factors that many people will say it is impossible to have a serious community discussion on anything as esoteric as religion.  Despite these many powerful factors, serious study by the whole community is essential.  No matter how many people tell us it is impossible, we must prove them wrong. 

If the eighth principle means that religious leaders must make every effort to express thoughts clearly and simply and to include all members of their churches in the discussions, this ninth principle means that the members of the churches, for their part, must be prepared to go well beyond their present comfort zones and seek to understand the issues involved to the very best of their ability.

PRINCIPLE TEN:   We Must Abandon All Gratuitous Assumptions.

The relationship between faith and reason is never an easy one, but the effort to combine the two must never falter.  To base faith on gratuitous assumptions is to place an absolute barrier in the way of Christian unity, for one cannot seriously demand that others share these assumptions.  It is, for example, a gratuitous assumption that the bible must contain the immediate and simple answer to every religious and moral question we ask.  It is equally a gratuitous assumption to say that all wisdom is to be found in one person such as a pope.

PRINCIPLE ELEVEN:   We Must Go Behind the Language of Division.

There are certain words and phrases (e.g. “transubstantiation”) that, because of the long and bitter history behind them, arouse instant and strong feelings on both sides.  The only possible way forward is to banish entirely the words themselves from all discussions, and to discuss the issue in other words that do not have the same history behind them.

This was the agreement between the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury when the official dialogue between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches was first established forty years ago, and by and large it has worked well.  It should be used in all dialogues between individual churches on all subjects.

PRINCIPLE TWELVE:  In Condemning a Perceived Error, We Must be Careful Not to Condemn a Truth it Contains.

People do not embrace an error because it is an error, but because they see a truth in it.  God alone sees the whole truth, while we see only parts of the truth.  Because of our limitations, our personal history and our feelings, we can be led to see the truth in something that also contains much error.  For example, people did not become communists because they believed it to be an error, but because they saw the truth and beauty of the vision of a classless society in which each would contribute according to ability and receive according to need.

Throughout Christian history there have been examples of misunderstandings when one church condemned what it perceived to be an error of another church, while the other saw only the condemnation of a truth that was important to them.  An example of this is the question of justification at the time of the Reformation, when Protestants thought that Catholics were rejecting the all-important role of God in our salvation, while Catholics thought that Protestants were rejecting the idea that we, too, share in the responsibility for our own salvation.

In seeking Christian unity, we should always do everything in our power to discover and appreciate to the full the truth that other churches see in any statements they make.  We must be very careful to avoid condemning a truth together with an error.   

PRINCIPLE THIRTEEN:  We Must Constantly Seek the Middle Way .  

Whenever there is a bitter dispute between two groups of people, there is a tendency for each group to be driven to the extreme of its own position and to adopt the rhetoric of that extreme.  This happened between the Christian churches at the time of the break between East and West in the eleventh century and at the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth century.   There is also the tendency to react against one extreme by going to the opposite extreme.  We must constantly seek the middle way. 

PRINCIPLE FOURTEEN:  There is No Christian Who Does not Need to Change.  

A statement that can be made with total certainty is that, if Christian unity is to be achieved, every single present church will have to change and every single individual within every single church will have to change.  The Pope of Rome, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Canterbury will all have to change in many ways. 

Every Christian must say, “The Christian faith is far greater than my understanding.  I do not have all the answers, I do not possess the whole truth, I am not fully united to Jesus Christ.  The work of Christian unity must take me beyond myself into something higher than I have ever experienced before.  I must be open to change in my thinking, my feeling and my way of relating to God and to other people.” 

Within the Christian churches recent decades have been a time of change and so of turmoil.  Most Christians have perceived that their own church has been changing and, being human, each has wanted it to change in the direction he or she favours.  I believe that this explains why there have been such strong factions within the churches in recent years, with such strong feelings on all sides.  Perhaps many have forgotten that, just as a god created by human minds will never satisfy us, so a church created by human minds will never satisfy us.  We must not want our church to change in the direction we desire; we must want it to change in the direction God desires.

PRINCIPLE FIFTEEN:  We Should Always Seek the Collective Wisdom of the Whole Community.  

On many occasions we can go to a meeting with a definite, even fixed, position on a particular topic, only to find that the different perspective of another person causes us to see the matter in a new light and to change our opinion.  Within the present churches there is an immense store of collective wisdom on almost every topic.  Should we not in all circumstances use this collective wisdom?  Should not one of our most urgent tasks be the putting in place of structures and procedures to use this immense collective wisdom as best we can?

PRINCIPLE SIXTEEN:  We Must Learn to Forgive.  

There is much history behind the present situation of the different churches, and there is much hurt in that history.  And yet the past cannot be changed.   

There are two levels of forgiveness, that of “leaving behind or letting be” (aphiemi) and that of “giving for” (per-donar).   Both of these levels of forgiveness must be asked of the present churches. 

The churches must be invited to accept that the past cannot be changed and to leave it behind, to let it be.  They must then be invited to see whether, for the sake of the unity for which Jesus Christ prayed, they can find within themselves something of the greatness of mind and heart of Jesus on the cross, when, instead of seeking to condemn and punish those who had offended him, he gave himself for them.   

PRINCIPLE SEVENTEEN: We Must Seek Divine Truth by Using to the Full the Wisdom of the Past (Tradition) and the Wisdom of the Present (Discernment) in order to Learn from the Two Sources of our Knowledge of God: the Bible and the World around and within Us.  

PRINCIPLE EIGHTEEN:  Christian Unity is More Important than Anything Not Dictated by God.  

Within every present church there are beliefs that are held to have been personally dictated or ordered by God, and no member of a church would dream of sacrificing one of these beliefs for the sake of Christian unity.  There are two things, however, that can be asked of every church. 

There are no laws or customs, no matter how ancient, that are more important than Christian unity.  There are no forms of liturgy or prayer or music that are more important than Christian unity.  All members of all churches must, therefore, be prepared to sacrifice some or many of these things if such a sacrifice would prove greatly helpful to Christian unity. 

Even within the field of belief all churches can be asked to look again to see if every single part of every single belief has been dictated by God and is truly “essential to the identity of the Christian church”.  

PRINCIPLE NINETEEN:  The Divine Origin of any Element in the Church Cannot be Assumed and Requires Proof.   

PRINCIPLE TWENTY:  There Is Room for Great Diversity Within the Christian Church.

This principle is the corollary of principle eighteen.  While Christians must be prepared to sacrifice things not directly dictated by God if this would be helpful to Christian unity, there is no need for total uniformity on all matters.  Does it matter if people follow different customs and different forms of liturgy, if they like different kinds of music or prayer?  A big church should have room for much diversity. 

PRINCIPLE TWENTY-ONE:  In Essential Matters Unity, in Non-essential Matters Freedom, in All Matters Love.

PRINCIPLE TWENTY-TWO: All Christian Churches Must be Set Free from the Prison of their Past.

It is important that each church look carefully at any ways in which, and any subject on which, it is in fact a prisoner of its past.

PRINCIPLE TWENTY-THREE:  Every Church Has Its Strengths.

Every church has its strengths, certain insights into truth that it has grasped better than other churches.  As a principle of Christian unity, we should systematically look at each present church and ask, not where it is wrong, but where it is right, what its strengths are, where it has had a deeper insight into God’s truth than other churches.  We have had centuries of picking faults with other churches.  It is time we looked at their strengths.

PRINCIPLE TWENTY-FOUR:  Christian Unity Demands a Relationship with All Religions.

It will not be possible to achieve unity between the Christian churches unless at the same time there is a reaching out to non-Christian religions.  The work of striving for Christian unity of its very nature involves a reaching out to all people.

In the past each of the major religions has often heard only the worst about the other religions.  At times false and quite scandalous stories have been widely believed.

Here, too, I believe that the first step should be a presentation of the strengths and insights into truth of each religion.  This study should aim to show why many millions of good, intelligent and insightful people have willingly joined and remained in each of these religions.  This could be of great help in understanding all religious belief, including our own.

Among the other religions that must be studied, we must include today’s “secular religion” and such phenomena as the New Age movement.

In this paper I have spoken largely about attitudes, and everyone knows that it is all too easy to give intellectual assent to attitudes while in practice paying no more than lip service to them.  For example, it is easy to accept the need for humility, but it is far harder to actually be humble.  The principles we accept are meaningless unless we put them into practice.