By small steps” “

6,100 churches in Great Britain, 330,000 churchgoers every Sunday, 2400 pastors at work in 33 different districts: these are the figures of the Protestant evangelical movement founded by John Wesley during the Industrial Revolution to bring the Christian message to the impoverished inhabitants of the country’s new and expanding urban centres. Wesley, touring the country on horseback, succeeded in bringing back the poor to the Gospel that, under the Church of England, had become a monopoly of the upper classes. In more recent years Methodism, the most important of the Protestant movements in the UK, has suffered, like other Christian denominations, from declining numbers of faithful and diminished resources. The Christian panorama of the UK is wide-ranging, with the Church of England as the state church and Methodists, Baptists, United Reformed Church and Salvation Army as the most important “free” Christian movements, without any links with the State. Alongside these are other minor non-conformist churches such as the Quakers and the Pentecostals. Although relations between the various Christian churches at the local level are excellent, various obstacles to unity remain, such as the lack of any sharing of the Eucharist, the question of authority and the recognition of religious orders. “sharing”, model for ecumenical relations. The sharing of a church in a village in Northern England in grave crisis due to the closing of the local cotton industry: this, according to Will Morrey, chairman of the Methodist Church, is the model of ecumenical relations between Catholics and followers of John Wesley for the future. At Loughborough, a little town of some 5,000 inhabitants in the Midlands, the movement founded by John Wesley in 1739 to bring the message of the Church of England to the poor, has reviewed its own history. The Methodist Conference, at which over 300 delegates from all over the world participated, meets once a year to decide in what direction this denomination should move. This year’s Conference ended on 1st July. The most important decisions taken include the recommendation that the Christian churches should share a single building for religious services in villages suffering from serious problems of depopulation, and the appeal made to the Anglican Church to loosen its ties with the State. If “disestablishment”, the separation between Church and State, were to become a reality – said the Methodists at their Conference – the process towards unity with the Anglicans, which took an important step forward last year with the signing of a “covenant”, a pact of cooperation, would be further reinforced. MUCH IN COMMON. “Catholics and Methodists have much in common. Both arrived in the British Isles in the nineteenth century, both with roots in the working class”, explains Anthony Milner, secretary of the “Committee for Christian Unity” of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and Catholic delegate at the Methodist Conference. “Tired of having to come to terms everyday with constantly declining numbers, Christians – Milner continues – often perceive ecumenism only as another task to perform. I think it’s not so important to do ecumenical things. What’s more important is to do things in an ecumenical way, sharing common resources at the parish level such as the minibus for the elderly or the use of the parish hall or the church itself”. In the view of the Anglican bishop of Peterborough Ian Cundy, ecumenical representative to the Methodist Conference, although relations between the various Christian churches are excellent, “a series of questions exist that need to be resolved, especially that of authority. For Anglicans, authority is a personalized authority, embodied in the person of the Bishop and the Synod. For Catholics it is represented by the figure of the Pope”. BUT PAINFUL DIVISIONS REMAIN. “Our relations with Catholics are excellent”, explains Andrew Barr, first lay chairman of the liturgical committee of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Scottish arm of the Anglican Church. “Sometimes the same church is used by several denominations, including Catholics. In view of the excellent state of dialogue – Barr continues – painful divisions on the sharing of the Eucharist or the ordination of women pastors are felt all the more strongly”. According to Paul Eavis, general secretary of the Council for Christian Unity, “we have good dialogue because the relations between the various Christian leaders are excellent and the churches work well together at the local level. At the present time the Anglican Church is disappointed that no progress has been made on the sharing of the Eucharist”. In the view of the Rev. Elizabeth Nash, delegate of the United Reformed Church, the third Christian denomination in importance after the Methodists and Baptists, “if the ecumenical process is to make progress, we need to overcome our history and that’s not easy when there are martyrs on both sides. Progress can only be made if each renounces something that is precious for each of us”.