Ch 1.
\nThe four traditions of the UCC represent all the branches of the Reformation (1).
\n:Congregational, Christian, Evangelical, and German Reformed.
\n-After union, encountered divisions of class and culture.
\nThese class and cultural challenges demanded immediate attention, and not a focus on the ecumenical nature of the UCC's four traditions. They needed a united voice, so to speak, to respond to them, rather than the additional burden of a confederation of churches within the UCC to respond within the characteristics (and limitations) of its own denominational traditions. (6)
\nBy 1980s, UCC was a church with an identity, but the identity was not clearly connected to the activism demanded by world concerns, despite activism's resonance with its pietist roots. (6) It lacked a common sense of identity. (6)
\nOver time, there emerged a common style based in both the Reformation traditions undergirding the church as well as the shared recent history of disharmony. (6-7)
\nUCC in World Christianity:
\nOnly 1.2% of US Christians.
\nWhile Reformed, it does not fit easily into categories of churches which require statements of faith: appealing to the \"liberty of conscience\" as stated by the Evangelical Synod's Confessional Statement.
\nThe 'United Church' movement globally expresses a consciousness of unity as a demand of the gospel, a sense that every one of the denomination's partners in union has had to die in order to achieve a fuller life, understanding identity as an ongoing process shaped by the work of the HS and expressed in mission, and not as a confessional stance that clarifies essential beliefs of the faith. (8-9 vbt).
\nGospel imperative of eating together precedes mission. Radically open churches are the early ecclesia, a uniting feature of United and Uniting churches. (9) Burton Mack notes 'koinonia' arising from United and Uniting movements: just being in mixed social company for the early church 'might have been all the challenge one could stand'. (9-10)
\nJesus has operated from the fringes, not the centre: we are used to being at the centre as a mainline denomination (10)
\nOur critique of the modern, which we have in the past embraced, is that we are returning to an older form of Christianity: rediscovering early Christianity: back to our roots. (10) Our embrace of those displaced fromn the centre affirms our embrace of the fringe. (10)
\nFounders came from the Life and Work Movement of the early twentieth c., who saw the path to Christian unity as a struggle for a just society (11)
\nWalker contends that an ecclesiology that functioned to hold our disparate traditions together ecumenically is not supple enough to handle the wider, and more secular, concerns of class, race, culture, race, gender, political differences, war, technology, the environment, and the disintegration of old empires and the rise of new ones. (12)
\n\"The typical Christian today is a young Latin American, Roman Catholic, woman, poor or working class. The typical UCC member is is North American, woman, over forty, middle class, with a greater than high school education (13)
\nCongregational and Reformed traditions in America have moved from the centre to the periphery in one century. This is difficult. (14)
\nThe Midwest, and not the Northeast, provided the impetus for UCC union.
\nThe UCC has come to no consensus about the theology of the nature of the church which underlies our polity. (22)
\n\n
Three terms come up in polity: 1)\"Beloved Community\": 'The reality of ekklesia is given through God's calling, through Jesus Christ and in the power of the Spirit, of the human race into 'beloved community'\" (from Lewis Mudge). (22)
\n2) covenant: we are a people of covenant, renewed by the HS as the church for people of all ages, tongues and races.' (22)
\n3)Missio Dei. mission of God as fundamental principle.
\nBut the ecclesiology of the church Walker finds as a paradox rooted in the Gospels. Radical openness is an understanding of Jesus' continual violation of social boundaries. This will bring conflict, and not all who are invited will join. (22-3) People refuse the invitation due to discomfort with an unbounded table. (23)
\nPaul exhibits same paradox: \"God shows no partiality\" (Romans), but also notes there will be anguish for those who do evil. >What is the paradox?<
\nPaul's letter hint at invitation or election to the Church - not merely a place where JC is remembered. This realisation that God crossed social barriers to invite people to the table is a radical inclusive act with, apparently strict requirements for membership (23). >To not do evil? I don't get this<
\nParadox continues throughout the history of Christianity. Sometimes the boundary is obscure, and approach a welcoming table to feast only to feast - therefore 'love does not reign'. >How? Why not? Because the table is not establishing requirements?< (23) The church is not an invitation to party, but a costly invitation to discipleship.
\nIn other times the church has forgotten that the invite has no bounds as God's love has no bounds. Mistake custom for morality. (23)
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