A Contribution from the Latin American Evangelical Churches | Lausanne World Pulse Archives

“You are part of the same Church,if you follow the Calvary path,if your heart is like mine,

give me your hand and my brother you are.”

For decades the lyrics of this song have been sung by millions of Evangelicals all over Latin America. It has been something like a motto hymn in gatherings and activities where brothers and sisters from different denominations participated. Its ecumenical theology is simple: if you follow the Calvary path, you belong to the same Church that I do; if your heart beats together with mine, you are my brother.

The simplicity of this statement reduces centuries of ecumenical discussions to the minimum. But it has also hidden the reality of our divisions.

Diversity and plurality, those values we rescue from our Protestant inheritance, derived in fragmentation and polarizations. These have been the characteristics of Evangelical churches and, for Pentecostals, almost a sign of spirituality.

Nevertheless, the present is different. In later years, Evangelical churches and especially Pentecostal churches have been the ones who have worked the most in search of the visible unity of the Church. The strengthening of alliances, or of national federations of churches, the formation of pastoral councils in thousands of cities or the shared mission and evangelization projects are merely some examples of this fact. We know that not all contexts are the same and there is still a lot to be done. But not recognizing this truth would not be fair.

For Evangelical churches, unity takes place in faithfulness to the word of God and in mission. This is expressed in The Lausanne Covenant: “We affirm the Church’s visible unity in truth is God’s purpose. Evangelism also summons us to unity, because our oneness strengthens our witness, just as our disunity undermines our gospel of reconciliation.”

For Evangelical churches, unity is not based on the recognition of a hierarchical authority, on dogmas, on theological agreements or in institutional covenants. We have to recognize that this ecumenism path has reached its limit. We know each other more than ever before, we have told each other everything we had to say and we fully understand the roots of our divisions.

What is the next step? The ecumenical agenda will need to stop being tied to the past and has to be open to the ecumenism of the future. In a living and dynamic Church, like that of Latin America, there is an ecumenism of the people of God which says, like the song at the beginning, “If you and I follow the cross, we belong to the same Church. Then, give me your hand; let’s walk together; you are my brother.” I am aware that this ecumenical simplicity may be disturbing, but it has no purpose other than breaking the inertia of a stagnant ecumenism.

Why do we not open up to the reality of millions of Christians who do not understand our divisions? In fact, in the last decades we have witnessed the weakening of confessional structures. There has been a globalization of the religious experience. The lines of authority, faithfulness and spirituality go across the different confessions. We do not ignore the dangers of this new situation, but we also wonder: Is it not, maybe, a blow of the Spirit? Is it not that God is creating something new and we have not been aware?

People ask us: How can you be related to churches like those integrating the World Council of Churches? Thus stated, the question is impossible to answer due to the diversity of Evangelical churches and to the diversity of the churches within the Council.

However, we can go forward along some lines, which will make this relation possible.

1. We need honest attitudes of mutual respect and consideration.
In the past, Evangelical churches in Latin America have “evangelized” by exposing the weaknesses of the Roman Catholic Church. This is no longer so. Neither could we understand, in its time, the struggle of our brothers and sisters who, in the 1970s, put their lives at risk for being witnesses of Jesus Christ, of his justice and truth. Since then, more than once, we have repented in private and in public. However, unity becomes difficult when our brothers and sisters treat us like sects, see Pentecostals as a danger and interpret the growth of Evangelical churches as the advance of the bellicose right. It is not with caricatures and prejudice that unity is built up.

2. It is necessary to understand that the religious map of the world has changed and that the map of Christianity has changed.
The potential of the Church has passed from North to South. Christians of this part of the world have the opportunity of making our unity in Christ visible in our daily commitment with the mission, and we cannot postpone it. Our impoverished peoples, our looted lands and our societies bound by sin are challenging us. An ecumenism of the mission is possible as long as Jesus Christ is proclaimed as Savior and Lord, and the gospel is presented with an integral perspective. We believe that the centrality of Jesus Christ marks the difference between the mission of the Church and religious compassion. Let us be clear: Latin America needs Jesus Christ and the liberating power of his gospel. We should be fulfilling the mission of announcing that truth.

3. We have to accept our diversity as an expression of the manifold grace of God.
There are different ways of being the Church and, lately, such diversity has multiplied. A good ecumenical exercise will be to know the limit of diversity we are ready to accept. But it should be an acceptance without traps, without first and second-class churches. We should accept without ecclesiological plays on words (communities of faith, ecclesial communities, churches, etc.) which aim at hiding our capacity to recognize others as part of the Church.

Let me conclude with a question: How about trying with the Spirit? We have consumed seas of ink and tons of paper writing about unity. We have not wasted time, neither strength nor resources. But we have come up to here. Would it not be the time for a new Pentecost? Only a Church filled with the Spirit will see racial, sexual, economic and ecclesiastical barriers fall down. Only lives filled with the Spirit will stop calling “impure” and “filthy” that which God has sanctified, and will no longer consider “holy” that which is filthy. The unity of the Church will be the work of the Spirit or it will never happen.

(This edited article was originally an address given by Dr. J. Norberto Saracco in Spanish to the World Council of Churches Ninth Assembly, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil 20 February, 2006. The speech was translated into English by Norma Calafate de Deiros. See below for the original Spanish text.)

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Original Spanish text for the above article

“De la misma iglesia tú eres,si detrás del calvario tú estás, si tu corazón es como el mío,

dame la mano y mi hermano eres ya”