119

US Churches and the Emerging SCM

By Clyde Robinson Jr.

I have been asked to present the perspective of Western churches within the topic. Churches' Response to Student Ministry and specifically to share with you our policies with regards to denominational and/or ecumenical student groups and how these affect the building of ecumenical student movements in the US. I believe that means sharing with you the ecclesiastical context and culture into which the Council for Ecumenical Student Christian Ministry (CESCM), now petitioning the World Student Christian Federation for affiliation, has been born.

The Beginnings of the CESCM

In the mid to late eighties when CESCM began, the majority of campus ministries sponsored by what we call mainline denominations were ecumenical in nature, that is, a typical campus ministry represented and was funded by several denominations, and had been for twenty years or more. The campus ministers who served as staff to these ministries were outspoken leaders in the ecumenical movement in the United States. It was, therefore, particularly disturbing for many of them to discover what they believed to be abundant evidence that we were entering a time of ecumenical retrenchment.

120

For example, the ecumenical state commissions through which these campus ministries had been governed and funded were disintegrating all across the country and many local ecumenical ministries were in the same dire straits. As you might expect, there was lots of blaming with many arguing that these ministries simply were not doing what the parent denominational bodies thought they ought to do. Others responded that the problem had to do with demographics, funding patterns, and the general institutional diminishment of these mainline denominations. Those caught in the disintegration often accused the denominations of reneging on their commitments, selling their souls in the cause of oversimplified understandings of ministry and mission, and preferring narrow tribalism to a witness to the unity of the church. Whatever the causes, regional and local ecumenical ministries in higher education seemed more often than not to be starving to death financially.

Even as the ecumenical structures for ministry in higher education were weakening, denominationally sponsored national student gatherings were multiplying — to the consternation of some and the delight of others. Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and United Methodists were all involved in a recurring pattern of gathering from all across the country under denominational flags. For some of the denominations, the phenomenon clearly was responsive to the success experienced by the non-denominational groups, like Inter-Varsity, in doing the same thing; for some disappointment with the failure of the National Ecumenical Student Christian Council to call out a legitimate U.S. student Christian movement was also a motivation. For many, as mainline denominations grew older and grayer, the student gatherings represented an effort to raise up committed, socially concerned, globally aware leadership from and for the next generation. Many campus ministers, however, were convinced that the denominational student gatherings represented the

121

nostalgia of older adults and were being imposed on the present generation rather than emerging from their own vision and commitment.

Even though all of the denominations sponsoring the national student gatherings were very careful to host open events to which students from other denominations were invited and in which students from ecumenically sponsored ministries in higher education were not likely to experience a betrayal of their vision of unity, many students and campus ministers saw these events as working at cross purposes with their ministry and as a loss of the ecumenical vision.

By the late eighties, then, when the Council for Ecumenical Student Christian Ministry appeared in the United States, our ecumenical structures, especially those supporting ministries in higher education, were in serious trouble; at the same time our ecumenical pathfinders, the campus ministers, were deeply concerned about the resurgent denominationalism they saw in the student conferences that were springing up on the religious landscape.

The Council for Ecumenical Student Christian Ministry came into being out of conversations begun among national church agency staff people who discovered common concerns as they sat as observers in the 1986 General Assembly of the World Student Christian Federation in Mexico. Those concerns gained focus as the National Ecumenical Student Christian Council, the most recent effort to revive the Student Christian Movement in the US, effectively self-destructed in the middle of that event, and those who had tried to support it financially were forced to ask. What do we do now? The group who pursued that question was soon expanded to include representatives of the National Student YWCA, leaders from the campus ministry community, and others

122

who over the years have had heavy investment in the student movement and, in particular, the WSCF.

CESCM, in simple fact, came into being because many in the US believed so strongly in the vision carried by the World Student Christian Federation and because it seemed that for nearly twenty years, we had not been able to produce an adequate ecumenical structure to support that vision. Most of us believed that the University Christian Movement of the sixties and the National Ecumenical Student Christian Council of the eighties, the two most recent efforts to establish a Student Christian Movement in this country, could not and did not effectively carry that vision in the context of US church and university life. Neither took the denominational structures in which the church in the US is organized seriously; neither claimed as allies the extensive network of ministers in higher education whose support was crucial for any SCM that we could imagine.

Understandings and Commitments

As I look back over the last eight or nine years, I realize that, we have moved slowly but deliberately. We have been guided by a set of understandings and commitments that reflect both our theological convictions and our perception of the US context. Let me share those understandings and commitments:

· It was clear to many of us from the beginning that there was little chance any broad based SCM would emerge in the United States without the cooperation and support of the hundreds of campus ministers working with students in behalf of the US churches. In 1988, CESCM invited some fifty-campus ministers to a consultation in which we sought their guidance for our future directions. It is largely out of their insistence that the time had come for a national ecumenical student Christian conference that Celebrate I! held in

123

December 1990, took place. They overcame the reluctance of some national staff that feared negative response from their denominational constituencies and set us on the road to a growing number of annual regional ecumenical gatherings. The planning committees for both the national quadrennials and the annual regional events have heavily involved student participation and leadership. They represent our first and continuing break with the early pattern of staff control.

· In the beginning and for some years, we obviously were not a student movement, but rather a group of national agency staff (and assorted other colleagues) who were trying to lay the groundwork, raise the scaffolding, build the substructure, offer the framework that would support the student Christian movement we thought we saw in the offing. We, of course, always knew that it takes students to comprise a real SCM, but it was not until eighteen months ago that we took the major step of adding two students from each participating denomination to our CESCM partnership; students are now in the majority as we build our movement. We probably have moved too slowly, but we were trying hard to let form follow function as we grew into what we needed to be. And do not forget we had experienced the disappointment of the birth and death of both the UCM and the NESCC within the previous twenty years. We wanted to build carefully!

From the beginning, we affirmed the commitment of predecessor bodies to struggle against racism, sexism, and militarism, but we believed that our foundations must be expressed in the theological perspectives of the Christian faith and that our outreach must be to the rank and file of students who come out of our churches and populate our academic institutions. The movement needed to be theologically rooted and as broadly based as we, with the integrity of our faith,

124

could make it. Sadly, our theological commitments and language have cost us the participation of one of our founding members, the Student YWCA and more recently, our efforts to be theologically inclusive have made us the target of certain groups from the religious right.

· We have been determined to build and maintain strong ties to the WSCF, not only to guarantee the Federation the support of the US churches and religious constituencies, but also to enable the development of a global perspective in the emerging SCM, as well as in denominational and university life, in this country. We have urgently needed the witness of students from movements around the world to broaden our perspectives and to offer all of us the challenge of entering solidarity with students and senior friends who bear costly witness to their faith everyday.

The presence of students from SCMs around the world has enriched our two national ecumenical student events, the Celebrated, conferences, and we have taken full advantage of | the opportunity to include US students in Federation sponsored leadership development programs, work projects and regional student conferences. We are building a cadre of student leaders with international experience and a global perspective. It is exciting to share with them leadership responsibility as the SCM emerges.

· We have continued to work on the premise that, since church life in the US is organized denominationally, our only chance of helping a broad based SCM emerge required taking denominational life seriously. Our goal has been and is to use denominational realities for ecumenical purposes. For us that meant from the beginning not investing heavily in organizational superstructure, but rather infusing denominational events and organizations with the presence of other traditions, with a global perspective, and with a passion for peace and justice.

125

CESCM, as this is being written, is in the process of perfecting an application for full affiliate membership in the World Student Christian Federation. That means that we must display a plan of organization and a program of work that are in full harmony with those borne by the WSCF Constitution. It is now time for us to organize our life together and tell our friends around the world who we understand ourselves to be, what we intend to do, and how we intend to do it. The watchwords of that organization and style of operation, I believe, are likely to be partnership of denominational bodies, partnership of students and senior friends, building the ecumenical student movement at the grass roots, decision making by consensus, and, as from the beginning, using denominational realities in the service of the ecumenical vision.

· Over the years, it has become important for us to say what we mean when we affirm the ecumenical vision. For CESCM, ecumenism is not simply the urge to merge, but rather points us to a concern for justice, righteousness and peace in the whole of God's created order, and, as a symbol of that Shalom, to a passion for the unity of the church. We hope we are continuing to work at both dimensions of the ecumenical imperative in moving now to structure an organizational pattern and style of operation to sustain and support our emerging Student Christian Movement. Our dream is for it to be linked to movements from all over the globe, deeply concerned for the well-being of the world and all people, and motivated by a vision of the church that reaches around the world and across the ages and even over the barriers of race, class and - God save the mark! - Denominational tradition.

126

Ecumenism is sometimes conceived as either a stew in which ingredients lose their identity or a salad in which they, though tossed and seasoning one another, retain their identity. The salad image is more appealing for us because we believe the church is more nearly visible when the rich varieties of the Christian tradition are present and making their contribution. As we move now to seek affiliation, we must give our best thought to how we can make our ecumenical circle broader and more inclusive, how we can bring the strengths of our traditions to the service of our common mission, how we can achieve the measure of understanding and trusting God's people are promised to sustain their life together, and how we can structure our life to affirm our unity without denying our diversity.