Abstract
For those well versed in the ecumenical movement as well as for those new to the issues surrounding it, Kinnamon’s recent book is an impassioned plea seeking to move its readers beyond the impasse of the ‘ecumenical winter’ through offering veteran perspective to fifteen select questions regarding ‘the future of ecumenism’. With over thirty years of experience in the ecumenical movement, Kinnamon is the right person to be writing on this subject. His highly accessible style demystifies the ecumenical process while providing descriptive assessment of the movement’s current state as well as constructive ways forward. Chapter 2, for example, illustrates this well. In seeking to answer the question, ‘What would it mean to take the “next step” in ecumenical and interfaith relations?’, Kinnamon employs the ‘5C’ framework of progression from ‘competition’ to ‘co-existence’ to ‘cooperation’ to ‘commitment’ to ‘communion’ for sake of demystifying the process, describing ecumenism’s current state of ‘cooperation’, and prescribing ways forward towards ‘commitment’ and ‘true communion’ (pp. 8–16).
Not one to shy away from controversy, Kinnamon addresses the environment in chapter 5, the long-standing ‘tension between unity and justice’ in chapter 6, and the question of whether the movement has ‘become too “political”’ in chapter 7. In these chapters, there is a conscious move away from (false) bifurcations towards integration, whether it be the integration of environmental justice and social justice as ‘two sides of the same coin’ (ch. 5), the integration of the Eucharistic unity of the churches and justice as being constitutive of each other in a costly way (ch. 6), or the integration of political advocacy and Christian mission in a hopefully realist manner (ch. 7). While Kinnamon’s integrative proposals in these chapters are compelling, they also come across as feeling somewhat superficial and idealistic. The very real divide, for example, between the competing ecumenical emphases of unity and justice is much more realistically depicted in chapter 14: ‘but today tension has reached the point where it is difficult to speak of one ecumenical movement’ (see pp. 150–1).
Interfaith relations have also clouded the picture, as Christian unity seems to have taken a backseat to the concerns of religious pluralism (p. 148, ch. 10). Ultimately, time will tell whether the twentieth-century ecumenical movement will continue with renewed vitality into the twenty-first century and beyond. In the meantime, Kinnamon’s book succeeds in helpfully pinpointing the tensions that need to be navigated for such to occur.