An Ecumenical Perspective on Neoevangelical Politics

Extract

If Mr. Buzzard had offered his paper “The Evangelical Rediscovery of Law and Politics” as a sermon instead of a lecture, and had ended it with the traditional evangelical “altar call” which invites converts and those who want to reaffirm their faith to come forward, I would have arisen from my seat and gone halfway down the aisle. There is much in what he says which any Christian can, indeed, must affirm. The paper convinces me, or rather confirms my suspicion, that the neo-evangelical and the ecumenical believer have much in common and that they share more than both often think.

But note, I would only have gone halfway down the aisle. Ecumenical thinking would force me to pause and to invite the evangelical to enter into further discussion before full assent is given. And note also, that it is from an ecumenical perspective that I, at least, would want to join the discussion. That is, I would want to raise questions from the standpoint of the long tradition of transnational, catholic, reformed and orthodox thinking which has given rise to both Vatican II ecumenicity in Roman Catholicism and to the new conciliationism of the World Council of Churches.