On Conciliarity, War, and the Christian Response. Part II. Manifesto

“WE BELIEVE IN ONE HOLY CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH…”

(a manifesto of a little person)

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they all may be one. As You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me…

John 17:20–21

The little person is so little that he cannot be diminished any further. Any change could only be in the direction of enlargement…

Pyotr Vail

1. The Evangelical Point of View

   
   

Easter reveals to Christians not only the joy of the Resurrection, but also the measure of that unity to which the Church is called. Christ’s High Priestly Prayer that all may be one sounds not as an external wish, but as an indication of the very depth of ecclesial life. Pascha reminds us both of the unity of all those gathered by Christ, and of the significance of that unity for the Church’s witness to the world, and of fidelity to God, without which such unity is impossible.

The unity for which Jesus prays is something greater than outward unity, physical assembly in one place—for instance, in a church building—or institutional belonging to a particular jurisdiction, patriarchate, and the like. Unity is wholeness: that is, the healing of humanity, and a common orientation toward a shared end, toward a form of life gathered around a single center—God and His love. Such unity is an unceasing act of gathering, and it is precisely for this reason that one believes in the Church not as a given fact, but as a living reality continually being gathered into one.

2. Who Speaks

   
   

Let me first explain the subtitle of this text. It is a manifesto addressed to the anti-war wing of Christians throughout the world. But it is also the manifesto of a little person—both as a literary figure and as a human being trying, alone, to make his way within a small space of his own in the vastness of the human world.

As a little person, I do not know much, and therefore I understand little about global processes. I hear some things, I see some things, I observe some things—but often only, as it were, “through a glass, darkly.” Therefore, this text will likely contain the inevitable errors of an idealist and an evangelical romantic, short-sighted appeals and petitions, and an incomplete grasp of the facts. Yet it is precisely this limitation of knowledge that makes the urgency of the question I wish to raise all the more acute for me.

I will be glad if I am mistaken—both in my arguments and in my assessment of what is happening. What this manifesto most certainly does not contain is accusation, reproach, condemnation, denunciation, or any attempt to diminish the value of initiatives, voices, decisions, and actions that already exist. And I ask that no one attribute to this text what I have not placed in it: as though someone were doing too little, or doing badly, or doing the wrong thing.

3. The Central Pain

   
   

Four years of war have revealed with utmost clarity one of the most painful problems of contemporary Christianity: the anti-war wing of Christians remains deeply fragmented. There are honest voices, individual priests, laypeople, initiatives, projects, acts of mercy, and forms of support—but they have not come together into a conciliar force capable of sounding forth as an integral Christian witness to the world.

That which ought to have become central—the defense of human life, of peace, and of evangelical truth—has not truly been placed at the center of the Church’s common effort.

Much of the Christian world has, in effect, set aside Christ’s command to be salt: salt that gives life its savor and preserves it from corruption. Instead of a formed and visible counterweight, there remain only small-scale forms of practical support and pastoral care for the repressed, the dispossessed, and the suffering where they are. This does not mean that such forms are unnecessary; it means that they are not enough.

These small forms ought to have become circles radiating outward from the center, which is God and His Church. When the strength and resources of individual beautiful, kind, initiative-bearing people are exhausted, they ought to be able to feel that they are standing on the shoulders of giants. In this context, the giant ought to be the whole Ecumenical Church—with her patriarchs, her leaders of confessions, her resources, and her capacities.

4. The Danger of Fragmentation

   
   

The danger is that this fragmentation has almost ceased to be perceived as a calamity. It has become customary. People continue doing their work—serving, helping, speaking, praying—and each such action remains honest and authentic. Yet the multitude of living voices is still not enough for one common, integral witness to arise.

5. What Is Lacking

   
   

In response to pro-war consolidation, anti-war Christianity offers truth and peace—but it does not offer a coherent form of shared existence. And so truth easily goes unheard, because four years of war have shown that, for very many people, what feels more urgent and important is to find themselves behind, and under the cover of, an authoritative majority—one that, if necessary, will be able to shield them from censure, arrest, persecution, and the like.

To a significant degree, anti-war Christianity has remained at the level of exposure and reaction to pro-war rhetoric, but has not yet moved on to the creation of another, firmer foundation for peace. It points to falsehood, but does not sufficiently form a space of truth in which one could actually live. It criticizes alliance with death, but does not yet form a community of life.

And then even a just word begins merely to repeat itself and loses its living force: it ceases to sound like witness and begins to sound like a familiar reaction.

True unity does not mean the leveling of differences. It means agreeing that common witness is more important than personal leadership, private success, individual authority, and all the other interests that hinder the common task. It means the willingness to limit one’s own presence in order to strengthen the common voice, in imitation of Christ, whose self-emptying—kenosis—became the measure of love and service.

As a result, anti-war Christianity finds itself in a position where it is capable of consoling and accompanying, but less capable of forming a common space for shared action. It remains a space of help, but has not yet become, in full measure, a space of transformation. Therefore, the key task today is to move from the condition of “we are near one another” to the condition of “we are together.” One may walk side by side, yet still remain apart, without ever truly meeting. Shared movement, however, means entering upon the Way (“I am the Way”), when, as Saint-Exupéry so memorably wrote, two or three are looking in the same direction. And the resolution of this task requires movement “from above,” joined to courageous resolve “from below.”

6. A Call

   
   

I call upon the leaders of all Christian confessions, at a time when humanity once again lives under the threat of nuclear catastrophe, to set aside for a time sharp theological, dogmatic, and ritual disputes, struggles for primacy, and the like. The Christian world—called by Christ to be witnesses to the Gospel and to love, to be “salt” for this world, giving life its savor and preserving it from corruption—must gather itself together.

Christians, who make up roughly one-third of the world’s population, are obliged to bear witness to this world—a world created through the Word, who became flesh and dwelt among us—that one of the most essential marks of the divine image in the human person is the capacity to speak, to hear one another, and to enter into dialogue. Christians must be the first to show an example of such dialogue within the Church, and to teach it to those who still stubbornly choose the language of violence, bloodshed, bullets and bombs, xenophobia, Nazism, chauvinism, racism, and intolerance in all its forms.

And if one listens carefully to Christ’s words, “go and teach,” they remind us today with particular force not of the struggle for primacy, but of the duty to teach the language of love—the language of the Gospel and of the Sermon on the Mount—the only language in which it is truly possible to speak and to come to understanding.

The time has come to move from reaction to deliberate action.

7. Final Word

   
   

This is not the first time the Church has found herself facing a historical challenge, but not every challenge touches upon her very essence. Today, the question is whether the Church remains a space in which the human person is gathered, built up, and preserved—or whether she becomes a place where that person may be sacrificed with justification.

The war has exposed not only the fractures of the world, but also the fractures within ecclesial reality itself. It has shown that without conciliarity, the Church loses her voice; and without her voice, she loses the capacity to be the conscience of the world and the bearer of God’s truth. Fragmented witnesses, however courageous and honest they may be, cannot replace common witness. And where that witness is absent, the void is inevitably filled by others—loud, primitive, and destructive.

The unity of the Church is not a strategy, but her nature, her ontological foundation. And if it does not become manifest at the decisive moment, then it is not at work. The Church is called not merely to react to war by condemning those who began it and justify it. She is called to recover the power to act and to transform.

This manifesto of a little person is not written in order to criticize or diminish the value of the small groups, individual voices, initiatives, and deeds that already exist. On the contrary: each one of them is an honest, living, and necessary witness; every small circle, every priest, every Christian, every project, every word spoken in support of the repressed, the dissenting, and the suffering is a true feat of faith and love.

This text is directed not against small forms, but toward their gathering into a conciliar force, so that private witness may not remain lonely, but may acquire common form, fidelity, and efficacy. Its purpose is to call all of us, little people, to a new level of pan-ecclesial unity.

Today it is precisely the small groups and private individuals—those who for four years have faithfully stood their ground—who must take the decisive step: to appeal to the highest levels of the Church, to demand to be heard, and to insist upon the necessity of a common witness.

May what now runs in scattered streams become one full-flowing river, pouring into the ocean of divine love. Not yet another bureaucratic superstructure, not a new institution of ecclesial power, not another “department for peacemaking,” but the voice of pure evangelical witness—love for the world and for the human person.

The Peace to All project / Friede Allen e.V.