Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC) is an ecumenical organization that brings together mainline American denominations, and was inaugurated on January 20, 2002 in Memphis, Tennessee on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. It is the successor organization to the Consultation on Church Union.
Full communion is a communion or relationship of full agreement among different Christian denominations that share certain essential principles of Christian theology. Views vary among denominations on exactly what constitutes full communion, but typically when two or more denominations are in full communion it enables services and celebrations, such as the Eucharist, to be shared among congregants or clergy of any of them with the full approval of each.
Ecumenism, also spelled oecumenism, is the concept and principle that Christians who belong to different Christian denominations should work together to develop closer relationships among their churches and promote Christian unity. The adjective ecumenical is thus applied to any interdenominational initiative that encourages greater cooperation between Christians and their churches.
The United Reformed Church (URC) is a Protestant Christian church in the United Kingdom. It has approximately 46,500 members in 1,383 congregations with 608 active ministers, including 13 church related community workers.
The Trinitarian formula is the phrase "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit", or words to that form and effect, referring to the three persons of the Christian Trinity. It is often followed by an "amen".
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Christian theology:
In Anglican Christianity, the low church wing of one of the Anglican churches includes those who give relatively little emphasis to ritual, sacraments, and sometimes the authority of clergy. The term is most often used in a liturgical context. "Low church", in a contemporary Anglican context, denotes a Protestant emphasis, and "high church" denotes an emphasis on ritual, often as Anglo-Catholicism.
A united church, also called a uniting church, is a church formed from the merger or other form of church union of two or more different Protestant Christian denominations.
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is an ecumenical Christian observance in the Christian calendar that is celebrated internationally. It is kept annually between Ascension Day and Pentecost in the Southern Hemisphere and between 18 January and 25 January in the Northern Hemisphere. It is an octave, that is, an observance lasting eight days.
Catholic charismatic renewal is a movement within the Roman Catholic Church that is part of the wider charismatic movement across historic Christian Churches. It has been described as a "current of grace". It began in 1967 when Catholics from Duquesne University attended a Protestant worship service and claimed to have been "baptized in the Holy Spirit". It is heavily influenced by American Protestantism, especially Pentecostalism, with an emphasis on having a "personal relationship with Jesus", deep emotional experiences, and expressing the "gifts of the Holy Spirit".
The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, frequently referred to as the Lambeth Quadrilateral or the Lambeth-Chicago Quadrilateral, is a four-point articulation of Anglican identity, often cited as encapsulating the fundamentals of the Anglican Communion's doctrine and as a reference point for ecumenical discussion with other Christian denominations. The four points are:
- The Holy Scriptures, as containing all things necessary to salvation;
- The creeds, as the sufficient statement of Christian faith;
- The dominical sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion;
- The historic episcopate, locally adapted.
The Catholic Church has engaged in the modern ecumenical movement especially since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the issuing of the decree Unitatis redintegratio and the declaration Dignitatis humanae. It was at the Council that the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity was created. Before that time, those outside of the Catholic Church were categorised as heretics or schismatics.
Ecclesiastical polity is the operational and governance structure of a church or of a Christian denomination. It also denotes the ministerial structure of a church and the authority relationships between churches. Polity relates closely to ecclesiology, the study of doctrine and theology relating to church organization.
Selly Oak Colleges was a federation of educational facilities which in the 1970s and 1980s was at the forefront of debates about ecumenism - the coming together of Christian churches and the creation of new united churches such as the Church of South India; the relationships between Christianity and other religions, especially Islam and Judaism; child-centred teacher training; and the theology of Christian mission. It was located on a substantial campus in Selly Oak, a suburb in the south-west of Birmingham, England, about a mile from the University of Birmingham. In 2001 the largest college, Westhill College, whose main work was the training of teachers, passed into the hands of the University of Birmingham, and most of the remaining colleges closed, leaving Woodbrooke College, a study and conference centre for the Society of Friends, and Fircroft College, a small adult education college with residential provision, which continue today.
Anglican interest in ecumenical dialogue can be traced back to the time of the Reformation and dialogues with both Orthodox and Lutheran churches in the sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century, with the rise of the Oxford Movement, there arose greater concern for reunion of the churches of "Catholic confession". This desire to work towards full communion with other denominations led to the development of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, approved by the Third Lambeth Conference of 1888. The four points were stipulated as the basis for church unity, "a basis on which approach may be by God's blessing made towards Home Reunion":
Christianity is the largest religion practiced in Zimbabwe, accounted for more than 84% of the population. The arrival of Christianity dates back to the 16th century by Portuguese missionaries such as Fr. Gonsalo Da Silveira of the Roman Catholic Church. Christianity is embraced by the majority of the population. It is estimated 85 percent of Zimbabweans claim to be Christians, with approximately 62 percent regularly attending church services. Christian faith plays a very important role in the organization of Zimbabwean society.
David John Bird is dean of the historic Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, the oldest church structure in continuous use in San Jose. He is a parish priest who reads and writes poetry and is particularly fond of Alfred Lord Tennyson. As a theologian, he emphasizes a liberal, compassionate, and inclusive approach and is devoted to ecumenism. Bird promotes Christian unity and is published in this field; since 2002, he has served on the national Committee of The Episcopal Church-United Methodist Church Dialogue.
The English Covenant was a proposed merger in England of the Church of England, the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church (URC), and the Moravian Church. First published as an ecumenical initiative in 1980 after extensive discussions in the 1970s, it eventually failed because the Church of England rejected the covenant in 1982.
