For Better Partnership of SCM and Churches

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By Christine Ledger

I joined the Australian SCM when a young university student and attended my first national conference in 1974. It was a time when the SCM in Australia was at low ebb after the turbulence of the 1960s, turbulence that I had vague childhood memories of but no deep understanding at the time. When I joined SCM, I was one of the few new student members in a movement largely kept alive and afloat by senior friends. There was much pain, even trauma in a movement in transition accompanied by nostalgia for the past. The spirit of the SCM remained strong, however, providing a forum for open-minded exploration of the Bible, political action and community support.

The workshops at my first national conference ranged from consideration of political issues of the time (e.g. uranium mining, overseas aid), liberation theology, women's issues and an intriguing one called SCM and the Churches. I remember, in my naiveté, thinking how tame and out of place this last topic, SCM and the Churches, seemed compared to all the other workshops. I went along out of curiosity.

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SCM Cannot be Neutral About the Church

I was in for a surprise. The depth of feelings displayed in that workshop and the spirit of the debate demonstrated to me that the relationship between SCM and the churches is deeply important to SCM and SCMers. There were students in that workshop who, in tears, spoke of the pain of feeling marginalized, shut out of the church community because of their political views or their questioning attitude of long-standing church traditions and practices. There were chaplains and some senior friends who advised the students to be more patient and tolerant of the slow moving mechanisms of the institution of the church. There were students who had given up on the church and embraced the SCM as their faith community, and others who were enrolled in theological college, committed to a life of ordained service. There were women who felt called to ordination, but could not be ordained. Students spoke of the pain of the divided church, of not being able to share communion with those of a different tradition. One thing was clear, it is impossible to be a member of SCM and be neutral about the church. Even when the relationship is strained, for the SCM the churches are important, never irrelevant. This is something distinctive to SCM and is to be celebrated.

Another incident stands out in my memory as an insight to SCM-church relationships. Five years after that first ASCM conference, I was well and truly involved in the movement and had joined the staff. With an enthusiastic gleam in my eye, I went knocking on the doors of church offices in a bid to strengthen relationships and seek deeper moral and financial support for the struggling SCM. I came out of those offices with some bruises. I had expected to be welcomed with open arms as the representative of hard-working and committed Christian students on campus. Instead, I was received with either nostalgia for the past or disinterest, even hostility, for a movement that had lost its way

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and was perceived as irrelevant. There was little moral support and even less financial assistance despite what I thought was genuine interest and goodwill towards the churches by that current generation of SCMers.

These experiences are typical of my generation of SCMers, certainly in Australia, and in many other countries around the world. While it is not possible to generalize to all SCMs, my time on the staff of the WSCF has convinced me that many movements have been through similar experiences at one time or another.

Senior friends older than I speak of the 1960s as a watershed period for SCMs, including their relationship with the churches. Fely Carino, in his address to the WSCF-CCA consultation in 1985 charts this in some detail, pointing to the involvement of SCMs in liberation struggles beyond the boundaries of academic university life and subsequent alienation from the churches. For the students of the 1970s, '80s and '90s, the echoes of this disruption are still heard. One related outcome has been the growth of fundamentalist groups and the increasing difficulty of SCMs to be even visible to enquiring students.

In the 1990s, it seems it is even harder for SCMs in many countries to receive serious consideration by mainline churches. In terms of membership, SCM has declined in membership in many countries as non-denominational groups of a more conservative evangelical persuasion have grown. Fewer and fewer church leaders have been nurtured by SCM and so have no first hand experience of the ecumenical formation it provides. In discussions of church support of student ministry, it is common for churches to seek an even-handed approach, according recognition and support to a wide range of student Christian groups on campus.

SCM as Presence of the Churches

The history of WSCF and its member movements is firmly embedded in the life of the churches and the journey of unity of churches. After all, it was largely through the vision and efforts of the WSCF that the World Council of Churches (WCC) came into being and that dialogue and relationships between Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic churches has been strengthened and deepened.

Yet, today there is little recognition or even knowledge of the specific historical role of SCMs as the presence of the churches and the ecumenical movement on campus. This was the tacit understanding when the World Council of Churches was formed in 1948, an understanding under strain since the 1960s. SCM / WSCF were to retain its autonomy as a lay movement independent of institutional church governance while being recognized as the official ecumenical student movement.

The ongoing supportive relationship between the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) and the WSCF Asia-Pacific is testimony to the fact that this agreement is not completely forgotten, especially at the international level. The recent Ecumenical Global Gathering of Youth and Students, involving WCC Youth, WSCF. IMCS, IYCS, YMCA, YWCA is another indication. However, the lines of relationship are no longer simple and clear-cut. In the planning of the EGGYS process, the traditional partners among the youth and student movements themselves had great difficulty in deciding how far to cast the net in seeking partners in the organizing process. Should the dominant Christian groups on campus be part of the circle even though their self-identity is not primarily ecumenical in the traditional sense?

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The definition of mainstream churches and mainstream movements is shifting in contemporary understanding. The churches themselves are losing membership to Christian groups and churches, which are not active in national councils of churches and other expressions of mainstream ecumenism.

As the churches' support for SCMs has become more clouded, the financial support has also waned. This in turn has led to many SCMs being caught in a spiral whereby they have found it even more difficult to organize and run their programs effectively due to lack of resources. This in turn leads to more criticism of the SCM as ineffective and marginalized. At the international level, church funding agencies, especially those guided by a strong emphasis on development, do not accord high priority to the support of student movements on the simplistic grounds that students are the elite of society. There is a strange irony in this as it was the SCMs themselves, which challenged the churches to take an option for the poor. At the local level, a shift to a denominational student ministry in some countries has squeezed out support for ecumenical approaches and organizations.

For a Better Partnership of SCMs and Churches

What then are the ways forward for SCMs and WSCF in relationship to the churches?

It strikes me that despite the relative smallness of SCMs today; they still provide an extraordinary number of young leaders to the churches and councils of churches. Despite the difficulties, there remains a spirit in the SCM, which resonates with the theology, witness, mission and striving to unity of churches engaged in ecumenism. It is imperative that SCM claim and nurture its basic ecumenical vocation, a vocation that makes it distinctive from other Christian groups whose identity is Para church or non-denominational and so peripheral to the ecumenical life of the churches.

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Second, there is an ongoing need for the SCMs to be open and intently listening to the questions and concerns of young people today. The context of SCM's work is very different from previous decades. It follows that the styles of organization and program must also change. I believe that there is a deep spiritual yearning in young people that is not being addressed in an increasingly materialistic dollar driven world. SCM, through its open-minded reading of the Bible, may provide a place where students may find the grounding in values to guide them in pursuing justice, peace and love in such a world.

Third, and I say this as a student of the 1970s, it is time for SCM and the churches to leave behind the trauma in their relationship, which marked the 1960s. Today's student generation was not born then. While it is helpful and important for them to understand the origins of their movement and its stormy relationship with the churches, it is imperative for them to address the rapidly changing world in which they live today, to understand the stresses and strains on a world in pain, and to find a community of prayer and loving action. For the churches, we need to learn to trust young people again and to provide them with the resources to undertake their own ministry in their own way with the freedom to make their own mistakes.

Finally, I would strongly support the suggestion of CCA and WSCF Asia-Pacific that churches be encouraged to host national consultations to address the needs of student ministry today. It is time for a serious analysis and study of student ministry. SCMs may seem like small players today, but the depth of experience, faithfulness and ecumenical commitment is a well to draw upon in these consultations. It is a well that refuses to run dry, despite the difficulties, and which may be renewed, refreshed, and yes, even spill over with grace of God and the vision and the joining hands of churches with students.