My social media feeds don’t usually offer me anything related to sport. They’ve worked out that I’m unlikely to engage. During the Men’s Football World Cup it was different and there was a regular stream of pictures. The ones which intrigued me were of groups of players, sometimes from the same team and sometimes between teams, standing in a circle praying. The comments underneath these posts invariably contained enquiries asking what they were doing. The page Ballers in God was sometimes mentioned as a group which encouraged fellowship and witness between elite football players.
I think these pictures resonated with me as a form of ‘in the moment’ ecumenism of the sort I have experienced in secular workplaces. No time for dialogue between our denominational identities, but an opportunity to be grasped to show unity. Working in the governance function of a secular housing association, I found myself in the groups that made the decisions about ethos and values of the organisation and then enacted them in the difficult trade offs between people and property that such organisations need to make. Having colleagues who could articulate their position and relate it to values was hugely beneficial. It made it easier to have the brave conversations.
There were similarities and differences in my experience of managing a team in my own tradition, the Salvation Army. Bringing together a group of people from different Christian traditions, faith communities and non-belief world views to achieve common goals was for me a work of practical theology. I valued the opportunity to listen deeply to how the work we were trying to do resonated with the beliefs and motivations team members brought. Quaker Social Justice, Catholic Social Teaching, Jewish ideas of the repair of the world and socialist solidarity were some of the bases for our ‘in the moment’ ecumenism. Looking back, I think I could have done more to relate these traditions to the espoused values the Salvation Army offers its employees.
Now as an academic researcher my focus is on using theological action research to help people identify the theology both in what they do and what they say about their practice, and how that resonates with the theology of their tradition as well as academic theology.
Like others using this approach to theological research, I find that working across denominational traditions helps surface the questions that most need addressing. Your ignorance of my tradition is a gift that opens up in me questions I have not thought to ask or avoided asking. ‘In the moment’ and through conversation, we find we are able to discern ways forward and take part in God’s mission.
To give an example, Project Violet was a three-year exploration of women’s experience of ministry in the Baptist Union which intentionally included an ecumenical group asked to compare the joys and sorrows of ministry from their different vantage points. One issue that emerged was that of ministerial formation which revealed assumptions about the ideal minister and the deformation women could experience where that was not an ideal they could attain. We were challenged to think about whether ‘being available’ related to the quantity of time or the quality of attention that the minister brings.
Of course, this ‘in the moment’ ecumenism has been made possible by the lowering of walls and deepening of mutual respect which is the ongoing achievement of formal ecumenical structures. I’m grateful for that work and what it makes possible.
Dr Helen Cameron is Director of Research, Regent’s Park College, Oxford and a Research Fellow at Wesley House, Cambridge. A member of The Salvation Army, Helen has worked in secular and faith-based organisations and as a theological educator and researcher in Methodist, Anglican and Baptist colleges.