Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

    I had not heard about this European document, but it does sound to me
    like a significant step forward in the relations between denominations. 
    I am curious about any similar actions that might have taken place
    among the churches in North America.

    It seems to me that there are two basic issues in ecumenism.  One is
    the process of healing splits between denominations with common or
    similar histories and traditions.  For example, I understand that the
    Lutheran and Episcopalian denominations in the United States have taken
    steps towards a closer relationship, possibly even some sort of mutual
    recognition of their respective bishops (I don't know too many details
    about this; clarification from knowledgeable people would be most
    appreciated).

    The other important step that I see is a the development of a mutual
    tolerance and understanding of differences when they are not
    immediately resolvable.  This process of accepting differences, and
    dialogue between denominations, is (to me) itself a useful means of
    improving relations; the overall climate of religious understanding
    can perhaps improve as a result.

    -- Mike

Newsgroups: clari.news.religion,clari.news.features
Subject: New season for interfaith religious programming
Date: 26 Oct 90 05:05:45 GMT
 (Commentary)
 
	Religious programming on television often spans a very narrow range,
from the very useful locally produced church services for shut-ins to
the more visible money-raising, pulpit-thumping fulminations of well-
known fundamentalists.
	In an effort to broaden that range, to show religion alive in
ordinary and extraordinary ways, four groups not often aligned with one
another -- The Jewish Theological Seminary, the National Council of
Churches, the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission, and the
U.S. Catholic Conference -- have joined forces to create the Interfaith
Broadcasting Commission.
	The IBC will inaugurate its third season in late October with the
first of four programs in its ``Vision and Values'' series, to be aired
on ABC-TV.
	In the first of the four programs, ``The Common Good,'' produced by
the National Council of Churches, the series looks at how communities
work through ethical dilemmas when faced with a different perspectives
on what is best for the community, on what is the common good.
	Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Ellen Goodman narrates the program.
	In the program, producers look at two contrasting American
communities -- economically depressed Barbour County, W.Va., and affluent
Westchester County, N.Y.
	In the first, residents are are divided on the issue of a proposed
700-acre landfill site in the county seat of Philippi. Faced with the
perplexity of choosing between two ``goods,'' citizens struggle with the
probability of increased revenue and employment -- certainly an alluring
``good'' in the depressed region -- and the possibility of the landfill
threatening their safety and quality of life.
	Among the affluent of Westchester County, the ethical question is
different. It revolves around the conflict over placing homeless people
in local shelters and transitional housing.
	According to the program, Westchester County is the 13th wealthiest
county in America with the highest per capita rate of homelessness.
	In both cases, the program features interviews with leaders of the
local citizenry and institutions involved in the conflicts and the
interviews reveal the importance to the public decision-making process
of right relationships, value judgments in the assessment of facts and
questions of public trust.
	Ethicists Elizabeth Bounds and Dwight Hopkins and sociologist Robert
Bellah offer commentary and insights.
	``Ethical issues are ways we think about our relationships -- our
relationships to other people and our relationships to our community,''
Bounds comments. ``People sort of start drawing away from that as though
its a specialized field, but in fact we do moral and ethical thinking
all the time. We don't always call it that.''
	The second program in the series ``Winds of Freedom'' is set to air
on Dec. 2 and is being produced by the Southern Baptists. It focuses on
the role of faith groups in the recent political changes in Eastern
Europe and will be hosted by David Hartman, former co-anchor of ``Good
Morning America.''
	The Jewish Theological Seminary's production, ``The Quest for
Community,'' will look at the breadth of Jewish communal models, from
burial societies to philanthropic organizations to look at Jewish
community in American society.
	The Catholic Conference is producing ``On Fire With Faith,''
commemorating the 500th anniversary of the coming of the Gospel to
America, telling the story of Spanish conquistadors and the work of
Catholic missionaries in establishing their faith among the peoples of
North and South America.

Article          544
From: clarinews@clarinet.com (DAVID E. ANDERSON, UPI Religion Writer)
Newsgroups: clari.news.religion,clari.news.top
Subject: Church council chooses new executive
Date: 7 Nov 90 20:23:15 GMT
 
 
	WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The Rev. Joan Campbell, a longtime ecumenical
activist, was nominated Wednesday to be the new chief executive officer
of the National Council of Churches, the nation's major inter-church
agency.
	Campbell, 58, currently head of the U.S. office of the World Council
of Churches, would, as the agency's seventh general secretary, take over
the day-to-day operations of the financially beleaguered and sometimes
theologically troubled council as it seeks to complete a major internal
reorganization and reassert itself as a major voice in both church unity
efforts and the nation's secular public policy debates.
	An ordained minister of both the Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ) and the American Baptist Churches (USA), Campbell was chosen by
a 29-member search committee. Her nomination will be taken to the
council's 220-member Governing Board, which meets Nov. 14-16 in
Portland, Ore., and where she is virtually assured of election.
	In a brief statement, Campbell said she was honored by the
nomination.
	``Never during the 20 years that I have worked within the ecumenical
movement have I sensed a time when unity was more important,'' she said.
	``We are a nation on the brink of war, faced with increased racism
and ecnomic insecurity,'' she added. ``We are a people searching for
spiritual answers in the face of an uncertain future.''
	Campbell said her priorities will be to work ``with and through'' the
churches to deepen their ecumenical understanding of the faith, to
identify and support a new generation of ecumenical leaders and to bring
new energy to the struggle for justice, peace and the ``integrity of
creation.''
	As general secretary of the council, made up of 32 Protestant and
Orthodox denominations with a membership of 42 million Americans,
Campbell will succeed James Hamilton, a 32-year veteran of the council
who has served as a kind of interim general secretary since the
resignation of the Rev. Arie Brouwer, whose stormy 4 1/2-year tenure
brought the council to its greatest crisis in its 40-year history.
	Brouwer's term -- from Jan. 1, 1985, to June 30, 1989 -- saw the
council lose its sense of identity, suffer sharply declining financial
support from its member denominations and was marked by intense and
sometimes bitter personnel struggles between Brouwer and other powerful
staff members.
	Hamilton, who will return to direct the agency's Washington, D.C.,
public policy office, stepped in following Brouwer's resignation and
guided the council through a major reorganization effort that has
streamlined its internal structure.
	Campbell, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, has been in the World
Council's U.S. office since 1985. Before that, she served for seven
years as head of the NCC's Commission on Regional and Local Ecumenism,
which maintains relations with the 750 regional and local councils of
churches in the United States.
	During the 1970s, Campbell served as pastor of Euclid Baptist Church
in Cleveland, Ohio and as co-director of the Greater Cleveland
Interchurch Council. She also has worked for the Roman Catholic diocese
of Cleveland.
	Margaret Sonnenday, who chaired the search committee, said Campbell
was chosen from a pool of 19 applicants because of here ``theological
competence, including a passion to seek out and nurture leadership for
the ecumenical movement in the years ahead.''

    The National Council of Churches (NCC) will sponsor Ecumenical Sunday
    on January 20, 1991.  The 1991 them, "Hallelujah!  Praise God All You
    Peoples!" will focus on the aspects of ecumenical and interfaith
    agencies that work in the middle of great racial, ethnic, and religious
    diversity.  Sample packets featuring plans for celebrating Ecumenical
    Sunday, bulletins, and a list of organizations providing resource
    material are available by contacting NCC Communication Unite, Room 850,
    175 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115, telephone (212) 870-2227.

Article          668
From: clarinews@clarinet.com (DAVID E. ANDERSON, UPI Religion Writer)
Newsgroups: clari.news.religion,clari.news.top
Subject: Lutherans, Episcopalians take step toward unity
Date: 18 Jan 91 20:57:09 GMT
 
 
	WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The heads of the Episcopal Church and the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America endorsed proposals Friday aimed
at establishing full communion between the two denominations.
	If accepted, the proposals would bring the two churches as close
together as possible without an actual merger.
	As a practical matter, under the proposals, ordained clergy of the
two bodies would be able to serve congregations in the other
denomination and church members would be able to receive Holy Communion
in churches of either body.
	``To be in full communion means that churches become interdependent
while remaining autonomous,'' said a ``Proposed Concordat of Agreement''
released by Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning of the Epicopal Church and
the Rev. Herbert Chilstrom, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America.
	The ELCA has approximately 5.3 million members and there are about 3
million Episcopalians in the United States.
	Formal theological conversations between Lutherans and Episcopalians
have been going on since 1969 and in 1982 agreed to an ``interim sharing
of the eucharist'' under which in certain limited instances there could
be a sharing of Holy Communion.
	The proposals will be brought to the next General Convention of the
Episcopal Church, scheduled for 1994, and to the 1995 ELCA Churchwide
Assembly for final action.
	It is expected that the proposals will be overwhelmingly approved.
	But there is some Lutheran dissent over one of the agreement's
proposals that according to the dissenters would require future ELCA
bishops to be consecrated by Episcopalian or Anglican bishops as well as
by Lutherans.
	Episcopalians -- like Roman Catholicism -- lay claim to the ``historic
episcopate,'' under which it is believed that there is an unbroken line
of succession back to the Apostles of Christ and the early Christian
church. Not all Lutherans make such a claim.
	Two Lutheran members of the official dialogue team that drafted the
proposed concordat -- Robert Goeser of Pacific Lutheran Theological
Seminary and Paul Berge of Luther Northwestern Theological Semininary --
said the insistence on the joint ordination of all future bishops adds
an unecessary criterion to church unity efforts.
	Under the terms of the proposal, they said, the process of full
communion will not be realized until there is ``joint ordination of all
active bishops ... into the historic episcopacy through the Anglican
succession.''
	``We believe such provisions for the ministry of the church belong to
the realm of the 'adiaphora,' things often important but never essential
to the unity of the church,'' they said.
	But the majority of the Lutheran scholars said the dissenters were
misinterpreting the proposal and that the Episcopal Church was taking an
extra step in allowing the interchange of ministries and the joint
consecration of future bishops.
	``We regret the fact that our colleagues could not endorse the
mandate of our churches in which we were directed to move beyond the
present level of fellowship toward full communion,'' they said.

Article          686
From: clarinews@clarinet.com (DAVID E. ANDERSON, UPI Religion Writer)
Newsgroups: clari.news.religion,clari.news.features
Subject: Promoting Christian-Muslim relations
Date: 25 Jan 91 00:02:31 GMT
 
	In the early years of the next century, according to demographers,
the Muslim population of United States will be larger than that of the
Jewish population, currently the largest non-Christian faith group in
the nation.
	What then? asks Charles Kimball, associate professor of religion at
Furman University. What will that mean for the interreligious mix in the
nation? For church-state relations? Will there be drives to give some
form of recognition to Islamic holidays, as we now observe Christmas,
Passover and Hanukkah?
	The war in the Persian Gulf dramatically underlines these questions,
not only in the United States but abroad as well.
	``Islam is a real force in the world, one that is not going to go
away,'' Kimball said in an interview. ``That's going to be increasingly
true here, too.''
	Kimball, an ordained Southern Baptist pastor who previously served as
Middle East Director for the National Council of Churches, thinks that
Christians need a much deeper understanding of Islam and their Muslim
brothers and sisters if interreligious peace is going to be obtained and
an interdependent world is to learn to live with religious and cultural
pluralism.
	``Christians and Muslims together compose half the world's popultion,
'' he said. ``Together, they are going to shape the future of the
planet.
	``But there are some real serious issues that confront us,'' he said.
	How, however, do ordinary people begin to confront those issues?
	``The first thing to say is that we cannot react to one another out
of ignorance. That is unacceptable and we do so at our peril.''
	Among early steps to overcoming that ignorance, Kimball said, is ``a
first step backward to unlearn what we have come to 'know' of Islam.''
That means overcoming stereotypical perceptions and learning ``to see
our neighbors as human beings ... as real people who are trying to raise
their families just as we are, not just demonstrating at an embassy.''
	``Second, for Christians, there are religious reasons to wrestle with
questions of pluralism and particularism,'' because of the nature of the
Christian claim that salvation comes through Jesus Christ.
	Kimball argues, however, that serious interreligious dialogue -- by
ordinary people as well as by theologians -- does not mean abandoning
one's own faith position or entering into agreement with the other
person.
	Learning how to enter into religious dialogue -- even for different
denominations sharing the same faith group, such as Protestants and
Roman Catholics -- is not always easy.
	Should, for example, one engage in evangelization in dialogue?
	``No, and yes,'' Kimball responds.
	True dialogue, he said, ``is to understand and encounter and to share
out of your deepest beliefs. If your're sharing out your deepest
concerns, saying this is what makes the world look the way it does''
there will be an element of evangelization.
	``At the same time, if you're truly opening up, you, too, do change.
You see an angle of the way God works in the world you haven't seen
before.''
	To help ordinary people move into the Christian-Muslim dialogue,
Kimball has written an excellent little book, ``Striving Together''
(Orbis, 132 pp.) that provides a handy introduction to the issues, a
brief but good history of Islam as well as the checkered history of
Christiam-Muslim relations.
	Kimball also address the questions of religious pluralism, how the
interreligious dialogue movement has worked and some practical steps
toward a new relationship between the two faiths.
	It is an important contribution to an increasingly important issue.

Article          805
From: clarinews@clarinet.com (DAVID E. ANDERSON, UPI Religion Writer)
Newsgroups: clari.news.religion,clari.news.top
Subject: Lutheran bishops stall unity move with Episcopalians
Date: 20 Mar 91 20:43:54 GMT
 
 
	WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America, expressing concern church doctrine may be
compromised, Wednesday called for a halt in steps toward full communion
with the Episcopal Church.
	By a vote of 45 to 12, the bishops voted to recommend to the church
council of the 5.2 million-member denomination that ``no action be taken
by the ELCA (toward communion) until there is agreement that the
doctrine and practice of this church are not compromised.''
	The action brings to a halt two decades of bilateral theological
dialogue that climaxed in January when the presiding bishops of the two
churches signed a ``concordat'' proposing ``full communion'' between the
two churches.
	Under terms of the agreement clergy from the two bodies would be able
to serve congregations in the other denomination and members would be
able to receive Holy Communion in churches of either body.
	At the time, the agreement was hailed as a historic breakthrough in
ecumenical relations and would have brought the two churches, with a
combined membership of more than eight million congregants, as close
together as possible without actual merger.
	But the Lutheran bishops apparently decided ecumenical relations
should be put on the back burner for the time being and others expressed
fear that the agreement would compromise historic Lutheran
understandings of the ministry, especially the role and office of the
bishop, or episcopate, as it is known.
	Bishop William Lazareth of New York, one of those leading the
opposition to taking action on the agreement, said that under terms of
the concordat, ``Episcopalians need not subscribe officially to Lutheran
faith while Lutherans must adhere officially to Episcopalian structure.''
	Lazareth apparently was referring to a provision of the agreement
that would require future bishops of the ELCA to be consecrated by
Episcopalian or Anglican bishops as well as Lutherans. The Episcopal
church -- like Roman Catholicism -- lays claim to the ``historic
episcopate,'' under which it is believed that there is an unbroken line
of succession of among the church's hiearchy that stretches back to the
Apostles of Christ. Not all Lutherans make such a claim.
	Episcopal leaders were stunned by Lutheran bishops' action.
	Episcopal Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning called the action 
``unexpected'' and sought to put the best face on it, saying, ``It is a
measure of their positive commitment to ecumenical steps forward that
they wish to find an appropriate time to give undivided attention to
these important matters.''
	But ELCA Bishop Harold Jansen of the Metropolitan Washington (D.C)
Synod said the hierarchy's vote was ``not simply a plea for time.'' He
noted the two churches come from ``diverse histories'' and ``we cannot
just treat this as something thrown into a blender.''
	The two churches were expected to vote on the agreement at their
conventions this summer. The ELCA church council, which meets in mid-
April, must decide whether to accept their bishops' recommendations that
the process not go forward.
	Lutheran Presiding Bishop Herbert Chilstrom said he has the
impression the young ELCA -- a 1988 merger of three Lutheran groups -- 
``is becoming overburdened with demands in too many areas.''
	``Some of these demands cannot be put off,'' he said. ``We need to
come to clarity as soon as possible on such basic issues as abortion,
the ministry and ecumenism. In other areas -- such as study and action on
dialogue reports (like the Lutheran-Episcopal proposal) -- I believe we
owe it to ourselves and to our sister churches to give those issues our
undivided attention at a more appropriate time,'' he said.

    So the guardians of the faith once again turn into guards.  Of course,
    they play out on a trans-personal scale the dynamic that occurs within
    us all.
    
    DR
    

Article 9354 of soc.religion.christian:
Path: nntpd.lkg.dec.com!news.crl.dec.com!deccrl!caen!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!dumas.rutgers.edu!christian
From: unify!dbrus.Unify.Com.ceb@uunet.uu.net (Caroline E. Bryan)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: RCC & Methodists agree on something!
Message-ID: <Oct.15.00.48.09.1991.6029@dumas.rutgers.edu>
Date: 15 Oct 91 04:48:10 GMT
Sender: hedrick@dumas.rutgers.edu
Organization: Unify Corporation, Sacramento, CA, USA
Lines: 72
Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

This is extracted from an article in the Arlington (VA) Catholic Herald
for Sept. 19, 1991. (The CH is a weekly newspaper.)  Thought some of
you might be interested.

Catholic-Methodist Agreement on Ministry, by Jerry Filteau (CNS)

   ... the 25-year-old world Catholic-Methodist dialogue has expressed
basic agreement on the relation between Scripture and tradition and on 
the role of ordained ministry in the church.... the dialogue group sees 
"no ultimate doctrinal obstacle" in the fact that the Latin rite of the 
Catholic Church requires celibate priests, while Methodists ordain both 
married and unmarried persons.
   But it said "further thought" and dialogue are needed to resolve
Catholic-Methodist disagreements over women's ordination....
   "Catholics and Methodists are at one in seeing in a divinely empow-
ered ministry the guidance of the Holy Spirit and are moving in the 
direction of greater shared understanding of the nature of ordination 
and of the structure of the ministry," it said.
   "The Apostolic Tradition" was completed in Paris in April and ap-
proved by the World Methodist Council at its assembly in Singapore this 
summer.
   The dialogue participants focused primarily on apostolic tradition
"understood as the teaching, transmission and reception of the aposto-
lic faith" -- a departure from more traditional dialogue approaches 
that have emphasized the implications of apostolic tradition for the 
administrative structures and sacramental life of the church....
   The new statement marked the conclusion of the fifth Joint Commis-
sion Between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Methodist Council.
Each commission has been appointed for five years, beginning in 
1966....
   At its Singapore meeting the council voted to continue the dialogue
with a sixth series of discussions.  The Vatican's Pontifical Council
for Promoting Christian Unity, official co-sponsor on the Catholic 
side, was also expected to continue the dialogue.
   The Catholic-Methodist dialogue is of particular significance in the
United States, where some 55 million Catholics and 15 million Method-
ists form the nation's two largest ecumenically minded religious denomi-
nations.
   The Rev. Joe Hale, general secretary of the World Methodist Council
and secretary for the dialogue on the Methodist side, said ... the task
of the sixth commission will be to bring together all the elements of
the first five statements and present "a major recapitulation of where
we are at this moment."
   Among key agreements he highlighted in the latest statement were:
-- "the agreement that `we both face the urgent task of evangelizing
a world deeply affected by superstition and secularism, by indifference
and injustice.'"
-- "The emphasis on the Trinity that we share."
-- "The relationship between Scripture and tradition."
-- The balanced relationship between word and sacrament, reflecting
renewed Catholic emphasis on preaching and Scripture and renewed Meth-
odist emphasis on the Eucharist in recent decades.
-- Shared understanding of the relationship between baptism and holi-
ness of life.  Both Catholics and Methodists practice infant baptism.
   The dialogue participants agreed that the New Testament does not in
itself set a "single pattern" of ordained ministry and church leader-
ship, but they added:
   "As time passed the church was led by the Spirit to recognize the
threefold ministry of bishop, presbyter and deacon as normative; some
other patterns of ministry that may be discerned in the New Testament
became assimilated to the threefold one."...
   By focusing on tradition as "the living transmission of the Gospel
of Christ, by manifold means, for the constant renewal of every gene-
ration," the dialogue group overcame traditional stereotypes of Catho-
lics and Protestants pitting Scripture and tradition against one an-
other.


Carrie		ceb@dbrus.unify.com	x6244		----------------------+
| "If someone is unwilling to help in an effective procedure for finding er-  |
| rors, there's something wrong with that person ... "  - Freedman & Weinberg |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

News Article 8154
From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Full communion proposed for PCUSA, ELCA, RCA, UCC
Date: 2 May 92 06:41:53 GMT
Lines: 21

A joint study group of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America, Reformed Church in America, and United
Church of Christ has proposed that the four groups establish full
communion.  This involves recognizing "each other as churches in which
the Gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly
administered according to the Word of God."  It also involves
recognizing each other's members and ministers.  The article I read
(written jointly by staff of the PCUSA and ELCA news services) doesn't
say exactly what that means.  Presumably there are some issues having
to do with the role of elders, who I believe have no equivalent in the
ELCA.  I'll be interested to see the details of the proposals.

The next step will be to present the proposals for review by the four
churches.  Unfortunately the article doesn't say exactly what
procedures have to be followed.  The PCUSA constitution gives
procedures for a church union, but I don't think much is involved in
recognizing other churches at the level called for by this proposal.
The PCUSA has open communion, and already has procedures for
transferring members and ministers to and from other denominations,
and having union congregations jointly with other denominations.
Maybe some of the other groups involved have more impediments.

    re .11
    
    Mike,
    
    I know of the movement you've mentioned but my recollection is that the
    fourth denomination you listed as UCC is something else, like United
    Methodists or Episcopalian.  It seems to me if I had read UCC, it would
    have woken me up to look more closely.  But then again, sometimes it
    seems to take lightning bolts to wake me up.
    
    	Regards,
    
    	Ron
    
    ps: I'm for the merger just as I have been for the B.E.M. (Baptism,
    Eucharist, Ministry) document which has a first attempt to seek what
    the commonality is among RC and many Protestant denominations.  And
    then there is the "Response to B.E.M. Volumes 1 & 2" which address many
    of the denomiantions responses to the B.E.M. document itself.
    
    Another such work is that of "C.O.C.U." which is the document from the
    WCC (World Council of Churches) for the "Consent (Consensus ?) of
    Christian Unity" - another group similar to B.E.M. but without the RC
    participation, I believe.
    
    An interesting topic - "what are the common threads among Christian
    denominations and the RC Church?"
    

    Ron,
    
    Just a quick comment--I don't know if it was clear or not, but the note
    I posted came from Usenet; I didn't write it.
    
    I was wondering about the reference to the UCC; thanks for pointing 
    that out.  Are you saying that your denomination is *not* one of the
    four that are referred to in that article?
    
    -- Mike

    Mike,
    
    I'm only saying that my memory is saying UCC wasn't one of the four. 
    And, believe, I'm convinced that I make an occasional error - or two -
    or three ...
    
    Ron
    

From a C.S. Lewis interview:

Question:  Many people are quite unable to understand the theological
differences which have caused divisions in the Christian Church.  Do
you consider that these differences are fundamental, and is the time
now ripe for re-union?

Lewis:  The time is always ripe for re-union.  Divisions between Christians
are a sin and a scandal, and Christians ought at all times to be making
contributions towards re-union, if it is only by their prayers.  I am only
a layman and a recent Christian, and I do not know much about these things,
but in all the things which I have written and thought I have always stuck
to traditional, dogmatic positions.  The result is that letters of agreement
reach me from what are ordinarily regarded as the most different kinds of
Christians; for instance, I get letters from Jesuits, monks, nuns, and also
from Quakers and Welsh Dissenters, and so on.  So it seems to me that the
`extremist' elements in every Church are nearest one another and the liberal
and `broad-minded' people in each Body could never be united at all.  The
world of dogmatic Christianity is a place in which thousands of people of
quite different types keep on saying the same thing, and the world of
`broad-mindedness' and watered-down `religion' is a world where a small
number of people (all of the same type) say totally different things and
change their mind ever few minutes.  We shall never get re-union from them.

1192.46

>    I have seen it to happen most in Ecumenical churches and Pentacostal
>    churches.  This has been my experience.

I suspect you mean non-denominational, rather than ecumenical.