Word: oxnam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...functions of bishops. The Disciples of Christ wanted the nomenclature kept "fluid and descriptive." The Congregationalists complained of ambiguity. Episcopal Bishop Stephen E. Keeler of Minnesota, present only as an observer, deplored the plan's cavalier treatment of the sacraments and its concept of the ministry. Methodist Bishop Oxnam (see below), en route to a World Council of Churches meeting in Paris, wrote that he was "confused and disappointed" by the plan for the new church; he thought it would be a surrender of Protestantism to the "anarchy" of "Congregationalism...
Nobody sees any prospect of uniting Protestantism and Catholicism, but many a Protestant is hopeful that Protestants can and will unite. In a new book out this week, On This Rock (Harper; $1.50), Methodism's Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam writes...
Unity does not mean absolute conformity. There was plenty of diversity, Oxnam points out, in the early Church. "The principle of diversity in unity is essential if we are to allow for 'fresh movements of the Spirit.' " Christians should be able to tolerate different conceptions of the Church itself, thinks Oxnam...
...Spirit. A primary step toward actual union, Bishop Oxnam feels, would be for the churches to send representatives (qualified "above all, by a life of Christian spirit") who would meet "and remain together long enough to know one another, long enough for another Pentecost...Their object would be to discover together, in the spirit of Christ, the basis upon which the churches might become the Church...
...Church of united Protestantism to which Bishop Oxnam looks forward is not simply a cooperative body like the newly formed National Council of Churches, which aims to coordinate the good works of member churches. Neither is it simply a "union of self-governing states...Questions must be faced and answers found"-questions & answers, for instance, about church government, appointment of ministers, standards of ordination, creeds, liturgies, finances, architecture...