When I was a kid in Memphis, Catholics made up about 8% of the city’s population, a percentage that had been declining for many decades. The massive European migration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries barely touched Memphis. Because of repeated yellow fever epidemics in the city, word got back to the old country “Don’t come here.”  So most of our population growth was from people moving to the city from the country.  Memphis in the late fifties was very much a Baptist town, for both Black and White citizens. In my lower middle-class neighborhood, the neighbors were either Baptist or Methodist. Presbyterians tended to be wealthier. There was an historic Jewish population in Memphis and a small Greek Orthodox community.

Mostly we lived in our own silos. I did not realize at the time how unusual it was that our pastor would refer to the chief rabbi as his “friend” or that he would participate in events where other Christian ministers were present. If you were Catholic and wanted to marry someone who was not Catholic, you often ended up at our church. Elsewhere you might be told to “Just wait until you meet a good Catholic husband.” Then in the mid 1960’s the Catholic Church began to change. Pope John XXII said we needed “to open the windows and let in some fresh air.” We got beyond condemning error and started looking for common ground. Our liturgy, which had seemed so weird and incomprehensible to most other Christians, suddenly became more like what was happening in other Christian churches. And this led to a common Lectionary (or cycle of readings) that was shared by a number of Christian religions. All of this ushered in an era of good feeling. Ecumenical (among Christians) and Inter-faith Services became common. There was a belief (maybe naïve) that all the fractured pieces of the Body of Christ could be put back together. This era lingered into the 1980’s and 1990’s. In my first two assignments, in New Jersey and St. Louis, I was part of a Ministerial Association that sponsored a joint service several times a year. The side benefit of ministers meeting regularly is that we got to know each other quite well, and if there were issues involving members from our churches, we could work them out.

Over the last thirty years the doctrinal dialogues and occasions of common worship have lost a lot of steam.  Many of us have retreated into our silos. We have become more concerned with internal issues—dealing with declining membership and responding to cultural change. Politics has created divisions not only between churches but within churches. Churches do, however, continue to work together for the betterment of society. Care for creation, for example, has been an inter-faith effort almost from the beginning, and the Parliament of World Religions helps remind us how God has blessed all of us with gifts we can share.

What is the relevance of this right now? Well, on Thursday of this week, we begin the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, from January 18 to 25, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. The impetus for the Week of Prayer goes back to 1908 when an Episcopalian priest and an Episcopalian Sister began praying for a reunion of the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church. A few years later the Founders became Catholic and the movement received the blessing of the Catholic Church. It was later adopted by the World Council of Churches. Through yeas of obscurity and years of plenty, the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement (descended from the founders of this movement) have continued to sponsor and promote Christian Unity.

Every year there is a special theme or Scripture on which we are asked to mediate. This year’s theme is “You shall love the Lord your God . . . and your neighbor as yourself.” The theme comes from Luke 10:25-37 in which Jesus responds to a lawyer asking what one must do to inherit everlasting life. After running through the basic commandments (love of God and love of neighbor), the lawyer asks who his neighbor is. This leads Jesus to tell the Story of the Good Samaritan, a powerful story aimed at combatting hundreds of years of ethnic and religious prejudice. I find this year’s theme interesting for two reasons. One, it asks us to focus on love of God. One of the ways that people of different faiths have always found common ground is in their experience of prayer. When we get past words, we often find the unity that otherwise eludes us. And, second, it asks us to look at our own biases and prejudices, which are always obstacles to unity. While the lofty ideals of the 1960’s regarding Christian Unity may be beyond us, any effort to show the face of love, in spite of our differences, is surely a great gift to the divided world in which we now life.

                                                                                               Fr. Joe