Receptive Ecumenism and Assent

precis:This essay engages Cheryl Bridges Johns's call at the 2007 Global Christian Forum gathering for a death of the "old mainstream ecumenical paradigm" and the current strategies employed within the modern ecumenical movement. Taking up this call, it begins by exploring new "ways of knowing," for which Johns called, and suggests the epistemological work of nineteenth-century theologian John Henry Newman as being a seedbed for alternatives that will enliven the ecumenical movement. Particularly, it offers a Newmanian reading of Receptive Ecumenism in order to suggest that this new paradigm must include ecclesial and personal transformation through the practice of assent between churches. Receptive Ecumenism calls for a posture of learning and transformation by attending to the needs or "wounds" of one's own church and to seek new ways forward through the reception of expressions of the church of Christ, or the reign of God, found within one's ecumenical other. This essay argues that, beyond simply notional learning, Receptive Ecumenism, read through the lens of Newman, offers a path forward for transformation through its emphasis on real apprehension of the ecumenical other and the practice or application of that which is received with "dynamic integrity."