I personally hope for an internal and external strengthening of the CPCE. Internal strengthening affects the awareness of being a committed member of a fellowship of churches and the will to give Protestant witness together. This would mean, for example, that we look for understanding wherever the basic insights of the Reformation are at stake. ‘CPCE compatibility’ should be a criterion in important theological or ecclesiological decisions of the member churches.
An institutional and legal strengthening of the CPCE is also necessarily bound up with the common witness and common service of the Protestant churches in Europe. We should give ourselves the possibility of bringing together the diversity of Protestant voices. I therefore hope that the General Assembly will resolve to work out a statute. In it the task and goal of the CPCE, organs, responsibilities and processes of reception must be described, along with the cultivation of relationships with other ecumenical alliances.
The significance of the General Assembly should be strengthened and the Executive Committee should be able to represent this alliance of churches to the outside world. A regular conference of church leaders would also be important for understanding between member churches.
What in your view are the future tasks of the CPCE?
Thomas Wipf: Theological work is a characteristic – perhaps the characteristic – of the Leuenberg Church Fellowship. This theological work must certainly be carried on. It remains indispensable for me. To take one example: the 1994 Leuenberg union document about the understanding of the church, ‘The Church of Jesus Christ’, makes a central statement: the one church of Jesus Christ, the object of faith, takes shape in concrete, historical churches. We emphasize the distinction between the foundation and the shape of the church. There is a danger that we will stop at the ‘distinction’. So perhaps in connection with Leuenberg we often speak only of ‘reconciled difference’. But the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe is not a fellowship of peaceful co-existence or even of an absence of claims on either side. The foundation and shape of the church may not be distinguished; they must also correspond. If we believe in ‘the one church in Jesus Christ’, then we should also reflect seriously on how we give this unity concrete shape.
The ecumenical model of Leuenberg is not ‘reconciled difference’ but ‘unity in reconciled difference’. We must seek forms of fellowship which give visible expression not only to our diversity but also to our unity.
For me a second, ecumenical task follows from this first future task. Our ecumenical partners, above all from the Roman Catholic side, often misunderstand the ‘Leuenberg Agreement’ as a legitimation of the status quo or as a minimal consensus, or even as an expression of ‘a post-modern mentality of an individualistic and pluralistic randomness’. So there is still much need for ecumenical explanation. The declaration of fellowship between churches of different confessions is not the goal of the ecumenical conversation but the beginning. The ecumenical dialogue between churches of different confessions can only begin to be binding where we recognize and acknowledge one another as churches. Therefore from a Protestant perspective Leuenberg is and remains an ecumenical milestone.
The third future task concerns the CPCE member churches. If the Leuenberg model of church unity is a really Protestant model, then it must be supported from ‘below’. Therefore the Leuenberg churches should examine possibilities of how the church fellowship which has been declared can also be given concrete shape at regional, national and even local levels.
The CPCE has intensified dialogue with Anglicans, Orthodox and Baptists in recent years. What is the aim of these conversations?
Thomas Wipf: The Leuenberg Church Fellowship of 'unity in reconciled difference’ presents a model of church unity which is also significant for a more comprehensive ecumene. It is therefore natural to seek theological conversation with other confessional families beyond the Lutheran-Reformed-United-Methodist sphere. The aim is to serve the whole ecumenical movement and to find a deeper fellowship and co-operation with other churches. The dialogue with the Anglican Communion taken up about ten years ago additionally also serves to consolidate internal fellowship, in so far as individual signatory churches are already in contact with the Anglicans thorough the Porvoo fellowship. The example of dialogue with the Baptists shows that this dialogue can lead to very welcome results. The document ‘The Beginning of Christian Life and the Nature of the Church’ takes an important step towards a common understanding of baptism and thus a deeper fellowship. How its results can be brought together and made fruitful in the further development of the Leuenberg Church Fellowship remains an important question for future dialogue.
