Week of Prayer: It is great to hear people talk of unity
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COLUMN: Food for Thought by Rev Canon James Currall
Have you heard the one about the Episcopalian, the Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian? It’s an old formula and the internet is awash with such jokes but I’ve no intention of repeating any of them or adding to their number.
During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, in many places, there were services where Christians from different denominations joined together to celebrate what they have in common, laying aside those things that divide them. Now, I’d be fairly certain that if any of us Christians were to spell out the difference between our denomination and one of the others we’d make a reasonable job of describing the essential character of our own, but a less good job of the other. Such has been the case throughout Christian history. But these considerations don’t just apply to Christians or to religions, they apply whatever ‘groups’ or ‘tribes’ we belong to and the difference they have to other similar ‘groups’ or ‘tribes’.
We lived for 25 years in the West of Scotland, in Ayrshire, where sectarianism is alive and well, and even today the chances of getting some jobs may depend on your denomination or the name of the school you attended. I’m not sure that sectarianism’s actually got anything to do with religion, with denomination or with belief. It’s more about prejudice often arising from ignorance of the ‘others’.
What we seem to miss in our increasingly polarized culture is a shared humanity. That person who you or I are yelling at (literally or metaphorically), with a different political, social or religious opinion – they’re actually human too, and you or I are no better or worse than them.
When we can learn to admit that we’re not perfect, that we make mistakes and that we constantly change and evolve our opinions and beliefs ... then we can begin to have more compassion for ourselves and begin to see ourselves as someone that’s lovable and worthy of grace and compassion and even though we’re not perfect and not living up to our own ideals. At that point we begin to see others with that same grace and compassion, no matter how different they are or how many mistakes they’ve made. Why? Because we realise that they’re a person, just like us, with hopes and fears, doing the best they can with what they believe to be true.
Irene Butter, who as a child survived not one, but two holocaust concentration camps, perfectly summarizes this entire idea in a single sentence: “Enemies are people who’s story you haven’t heard, or who’s face you haven’t seen.”
It great to hear people talking about unity, so long as they don’t mean simply that “we can all be united if you come over to my way of thinking”. That’s akin to my suggesting that the solution to Christian disunity is for them all to become Episcopalians – and you know what, I don’t think that would solve anything. We like most denominations can’t even agree amongst ourselves!
The key to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is the word ‘Prayer’. Unity is something that we should fervently pray for, we might never achieve it, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. By the way Unity isn’t the same as Uniformity!
Rev Canon James Currall is the Episcopal priest in charge of congregations at Dornoch, Tain, Brora, Lairg and Tongue.
