Hopes for an ‘ecumenical spring’
For years, advocates for greater unity among Christian churches have wrung their hands and talked of an "ecumenical winter." But now, ten years after leaders took the first steps toward forming the broad-based group Christian Churches Together in the USA, some have hopes that U.S. churches may be entering a new season of closer relations.
At this year's CCT meeting in Memphis, Tennessee, 85 Christians—Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, white and nonwhite—made pilgrimages to historic sites of the civil rights movement. They also made plans to use next year's 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" to pursue antipoverty projects with houses of worship unlike their own.
"I would like to think of it as an ecumenical spring and that we do not yet know what will break forth," said Stephen J. Sidorak Jr., ecumenical staff officer of the United Methodist Church. "I think that there's potential for the ecumenical movement to be more alive than it's ever been because it will be more inclusive."
