Ecumenism Under Secularisation

Abstract

This article addresses preconditions and possibilities for ecumenism in secularised societies. In doing so, it draws attention to the complex nature of the secularisation process. On the one hand, this process involves a positive demand for freedom from religious compulsion in social life, which finds its basis in the Gospel’s liberating message. On the other hand, it carries negative consequences such as the elimination of various aspects of religiosity from social life. Some scholars have emphasised that Christian Churches themselves are partly at fault in this regard. As a result of their historical disintegration and lack of unity, the Churches are losing credibility and weakening the efficacy of their evangelising mission. Under conditions of secularisation, ecumenism becomes particularly relevant and should take on a new dynamic in relations between the Churches, which see secularisation’s effects in an exodus of believers and a loss of relevance in social life. From a normative point of view, only a reconciled Christianity can give credibility to the Churches’ evangelising mission and counteract secularisation’s negative effects.

1. Introduction

Ecumenism is a contextual reality, and each time, it happens in specific socio-ecclesial conditions. At the beginning of the ecumenical movement, the driving force behind the emergence of the first ecumenical initiatives were concrete experiences in missionary work and the disappearance of denominational differences in the trenches of the First World War. Migration movements after the Second World War then led to a violation of former denominational structures in many places, especially in central and eastern Europe. Although this generated various social and denominational problems, it also prompted the development of norms of consensual, ecumenical coexistence. That said, belonging to a particular denominational Church as a form of Christian identity did not matter too much in some European countries, specifically those where Churches were persecuted due to state hostility. In many of today’s countries, ecumenism must be realised in secular societies where religion is largely pushed out of public life and plays an increasingly marginal role in the personal sphere. These changes lead to a positive experience of freedom, one that was impossible in earlier times, when social and religious affiliations were closely linked. At the same time, negative consequences are also becoming apparent in the form of religious indifference, which is intensifying processes of ecclesial alienation and depriving Churches of their former social role (cf. Feige 2022, pp. 7–8). Amid the ongoing process of secularisation, ecumenism must sometimes contend with the same indifference that afflicts the Churches. Nonetheless, in a complex religious situation, the ecumenical agenda has the potential to become a means of restoring the Christian message to its original credibility.

Our aim in this article is to show ecumenism’s preconditions and possibilities in an age of secularisation—an age that affects Church functionality. To achieve this goal, we first clarify the sense of the concept of secularisation adopted in this study. We then focus on the close connections between secularisation, the Christian message of freedom, and the interactions between them (both historically and currently). In the last two sections, we focus on the difficulties and the crisis of ecumenism in the context of secularisation’s consequences. We also pay attention to the possibility of a new ecumenical dynamism in the Churches, one that serves as a response to the current secularisation experience.

2. The Secularisation Concept

Understanding the secularisation phenomenon is complex and multifaceted. Some see it as the end of religion; others see it as the beginning of a new role for religion; still, others deny the existence of ongoing secularisation. Indeed, there is a whole range of different interpretative models in the extensive literature on the subject (cf. Shiner 1967a, pp. 209–17; Dobbelaere 2002; Zielińska 2007, pp. 182–84; Kaufmann 2013, pp. 16–21; Kläden 2012, pp. 12–14). As Detlef Pollack notes, secularisation has become an interpretative category distinguished by a multitude of different variants (Pollack 2003, p. 3; cf. Dalferth 2017, pp. 12–23). At the same time, it is subject to different evaluations. On the one hand, it is positively viewed as a liberation of the individual or society from religious paternalism and/or coercion. On the other hand, there is criticism of secularisation’s consequences vis à vis a weakening or even loss of meaning and ethical orientation. Some also associate it with the revival of totalitarian ideologies making absolutist claims (see Track and Schuegraf 2010, p. 15).

Larry Shiner distinguishes five meanings (or types) of secularisation. In his view, these are identifiable in salient socio-cultural developments: (1) the disappearance of religion, (2) the adaptation of religion to the world, (3) the desacralisation of the world, (4) the liberation of society from religion (viz. the privatisation of religion), and (5) a ‘transposition’ of forms of belief and resulting attitudes from the religious to the secular sphere (Shiner 1967b, pp. 51–62). This classification of meanings seems to adequately delimit the area that the term “secularisation” denotes in this article. Specifically, what we have in mind is a process of secularisation that expresses itself in an ongoing loss of meaning for the Christian or, more broadly, a religious interpretation of life and the world in general. Thus, by “secularisation”, we mean phenomena like the gradual departure and distancing of the faithful from the Churches, progressive de-Christianisation, a weakening or disappearance of religion’s influence on the state and society, the privatisation of religion and faith, a decline in individual religiosity, and even the end of religion. In other words, we consider the secularisation concept to be a culture-wide process, one in which religion or the Churches gradually lose their influence in both individual lives and various areas of political, cultural, economic, and scientific activity. At the same time, we are aware that secularisation can also mean a transformation of Christian life’s external manifestations in such a way that its content persists beyond the strictly religious dimension. This means that we are dealing with a multi-layered process that is a key concept for understanding modernity, especially in the West. In the rest of this article, we will understand secularisation in the sense outlined above.

3. The Reformation’s Secularising Impulse

The Reformation was a religious movement for the renewal of Christianity in Europe. Together with the ideological currents of the Renaissance and humanism, the Reformation contributed significantly to shaping secular modernity. That said, the Reformation’s exact contribution to this process and how it should be assessed remains a matter of dispute. Among other things, it raises the question of the Reformers’ possible responsibility for destroying both the unity of Church and state and the unity of society and culture, which opened the way for European Christianity’s marginalisation. One also wonders whether we should assume that impulses came from within the Reformation movement, without which a secular, pluralistic society would not have developed (Dalferth 2017, p. 4; Gregory 2012; 2017, pp. 25, 37; Pollack 2017, pp. 144–45).

The members of the Ecumenical Study Committee (Ökumenischer Studienausschuss [ÖSTA])1 and the German National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation (DNK/LWF) seem to give a positive answer to this second question. They have produced a document on secularisation as an ecumenical challenge for the Churches (Säkularisierung—Eine ökumenische Herausforderung für die Kirchen). This document was edited by Joachim Track (the committee chairman) and Oliver Schuegraf (responsible for ecumenical relations at the Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands [VELKD]). The committee also undertook a study between 2006 and 2010, assessing the challenges of secularisation, especially the Protestant Churches’ standpoints on the matter. Discussions held in other Churches—the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Free Churches—were, however, also included. After submission to the VELKD’s leadership, who gave their approval, the ÖSTA published its study. The hope was that this would further contribute to the ecumenical and social discourse around understanding secularisation.2

Drawing on the Reformation’s historical experience and liberatory message, the document takes the view that the process of secularisation is a multifaceted phenomenon, one that is subject to varying assessments. The Reformation is taken to be a necessary premise for secularisation because it contributed to changing socio-ecclesial dependencies at the time. It is also no coincidence that in Germany, the Enlightenment (with its secularisation demands) came out of Protestant circles and fed on the motives of secularisation. The modern critique of dogma and the subjectivisation of religiosity were, to some extent, a consequence of applying Reformation principles to understanding religion and culture. This can, in turn, be tied to a decoupling of individual certainty about faith from Church teachings, a relativisation of the meaning of Church teachings, and/or criticism of tradition (Track and Schuegraf 2010, p. 96).

Although today’s secularisation process has gone much further than the reformers intended, the authors of the above-mentioned document state that this should not lead us to question the secularisation demands made at the time. This applies to, for instance, the question of religiosity’s contemporary subjectivisation. This phenomenon is the result of secularisation processes initiated at the time of the Reformation. These processes have, however, accelerated considerably in the dynamics of current social and cultural pluralisation. The authors of the document also state that this subjectivisation cannot be countered by a return to authoritarian central institutions, whose legitimacy under Protestant conditions has always been questionable. They also do not imply a complete abandonment of supra-individual forms of authority, which represent a constitutive dimension of the community of faith and confession in the Protestant understanding of the Church. The authors conclude that we must accept a subjectivised and individualised religion as a contemporary expression of Christian freedom, which is vitally important for Protestantism. At the same time, they stipulate that Protestantism takes a position of arbitrariness about the content of the faith and renounces the will to seek a community-forming consensus (Track and Schuegraf 2010, pp. 99–100).

The same is true when it comes to the question of ethics or morality. Secularisation processes over the last few decades have led to the pluralisation of socially accepted or tolerated forms of life. Church moral norms seem to have lost their relevance, not only on the ‘outside’ but also among Church members. This is especially true of norms related to marital and sexual life, which the Church has traditionally been highly sensitive about. It has been noted that this state of affairs is subject to varying assessments by different Churches. Some believers see it as a picture of decadence and declining values, while others see it as merely a processual ‘change in values’ (Wertewandel). Indeed, it is noted that strong moral accents are now placed on the discourse around environmental protection and economic globalisation instead. Yet, this shift in emphasis need not be viewed in a negative light. Protestant Churches accept the autonomy of individual moral judgments: The Churches’ positions in this regard are not authoritative rulings but a memorandum, one that is based on theological principles and gives argumentative support when developing one’s own convictions. This is an important ‘secularisation’ achievement for Protestantism, which the Churches of this faith family do not want to give up. Indeed, contemporary Protestantism’s strength is the integration of different forms of piety and lifestyles and the reduction in binding and exclusive norms to the necessary minimum. Nonetheless, note that an element of Protestant identity is also the commitment to the unity of the Church, understood as a community of believers bound together by commonly shared moral and ethical views and orientations (Track and Schuegraf 2010, p. 101–5).

Without overlooking secularisation’s dangers and negative effects, the Reformation’s heritage remains an important prism for Protestants to look through. This is especially the case when emphasising individual believers’ responsibility for their life of faith and the formation of a faith community. The document’s authors acknowledge that, in this respect, we must acknowledge a positive aspect to the secularisation process. Here, they refer specifically to the principle of the common priesthood of believers. This principle is prominent in Protestant theology and its role takes on particular significance in an age marked by the secularisation process. This is because Christians must dispel modern ‘myths’ about God, man, history, and ultimate destiny based on the power of biblical witness. For believers and faith communities, secularisation also means being freed from false alliances, especially when it comes to the relationship between the state and Church and claims of power and dominion. There is also an emphasis on the autonomy and ‘secularity’ of the world and a resulting diversity of ways to describe, understand, and interpret history and the world’s current reality (Track and Schuegraf 2010, p. 117).

Going beyond the intra-Protestant discussion, the authors of the document make the following clear: the Churches must take sides on the issue of secularisation’s essence—the promise of a world without religious coercion. Understood this way, secularisation “stems” from a proclamation of the Christian message of a Creator God and the rejection of pantheism. Reflecting on Protestantism’s role in the field of ecumenism, the authors of the document state that its task should be to oppose any authoritarian aspirations the Churches hold and any pernicious effects that might consequently emerge. Protestantism grows out of an experience of the message of justification’s liberating power. As such, it should promote religious freedom and respect for the secularity of the world as God’s creation. In other words, Protestantism’s task entails an ecumenical perspective. This is to “resist all claims to authority by the Churches, fundamentalist simplifications, to stand up for religious freedom, to accept the temporal character of the world, to respect it and to understand it as God’s creation” (Dietrich 2011). Thus, in the sense outlined above, the Protestant Churches support the process of secularisation. This is a process whose ‘promoter’ was the sixteenth-century Reformation, with its demand for individual freedom vis à vis the institution of the Church.

4. Divided Christianity as a ‘Catalyst’ for Secularisation

In addition to the positive aspects of secularisation outlined above, there are also negative aspects. These include weakening religiosity and a change in the context of the Churches’ life and witness. The essence of the challenges secularisation poses are indifference to the Christian message, abandonment of the practice of faith within Church structures, and partial or total questioning of the Churches’ significance, specifically their social and even religious role. In an ecumenical context, Jørgen Skov Sørensen—General Secretary of the Conference of European Churches—pointed this out at the meeting for the European members of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The meeting took place from 9 to 15 February 2022, and the subject was the secularisation of European society and the impact of a secularised society on the life and witness of the Churches.3 Sørensen noted that one of the negative manifestations of the secularisation process is a questioning of all authority, including the authority of the Churches, whose voice until some time ago still held sway. In a situation where authority is questioned, an important challenge is to answer the question of how one can be a single and loud voice among other voices in the public space. Thus, how can the Churches maintain a constructive voice in the construction of European societies?4

Contemporary secularisation is revealing its destructive power in the life of all the Churches, and each of them is confronting its effects. In searching for the provenance of today’s state of affairs, one can recall the historical background mentioned in the previous section. Christians and Christian Churches must recognise that the ongoing process of secularisation in European societies and the fact that the Christian faith has largely lost its influence in shaping social life is also a tragic consequence of the Church’s division during the sixteenth century. Disputes and contradictions between the divided Churches and resulting bloody religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—especially the Thirty Years’ War—contributed to modern culture’s emancipation from religious reality.

Historically, Christianity has survived in the form of divided and diverse denominational Churches. In the past, these Churches fought each other to the point of shedding blood. They were an arena of conflict, yet they also served as a kind of social glue. This is not the case anymore. Achieving peaceful coexistence among people under these conditions was paid at a high price. This price was an abstraction of Christianity in searching for a basis for social peace. Protestant theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg has attempted to diagnose this situation. He states that secularisation—which took the form of a distancing from Christianity—was not some fatality that fell on the Churches from outside. It was, instead, the result of their sins against unity. It was the result of sixteenth-century divisions and subsequent religious wars, which left people who lived in confessionally differentiated territories and desired peaceful coexistence with no choice but to seek a different foothold. This foothold could then help them build a consensual living space in a new reality beyond the plane of confessional disputes and contradictions (Pannenberg 1977, p. 201; cf. Koch 2022, pp. 177–78).

Pannenberg’s diagnosis leads to the conclusion that the way to restore Christianity’s social impact is through overcoming divisions and rebuilding Christian unity. Indeed, Christianity’s divisions have contributed to the development of a secularisation process and a kind of “privatisation of Christianity” (see Metz 1977, p. 31), i.e., the loss of its hitherto public mission. In Pannenberg’s view, Christianity can, then, only grant religious truth credibility in contemporary society’s secular context by overcoming internal divisions (Pannenberg 2000, p. 234).

Pannenberg’s argument seems convincing. Accepting his view also leads to the belief that the ecumenical movement plays an important role in defining the relationship between contemporary secular culture and the question of religion, especially Christianity. Referring to Pannenberg’s views, Cardinal Koch—President of the Vatican Dicastery for the Promotion of Unity—has expressed a similar conviction. He maintains that the reasons why secular culture has historically turned away from Christianity and Churches could not be invoked against Christianity if it had overcome its divisions (Koch 2022, p. 178). Christians must, therefore, courageously assume their ecumenical responsibility toward contemporary Europe’s secularised societies and, at the same time, ask about their own readiness to reconcile the divided Churches.

The Churches will be able to work effectively and credibly for the maintenance, support, and renewal of social peace when they manage to reconcile and undergo the necessary process of historical purification. Only a united Christianity can be an effective example of people socially coexisting in peace, justice, and tolerance. And only a Christianity that forms an ecumenical unity in one visible Church can fulfil the mission commissioned to it by the Second Vatican Council. In a world full of schisms, hostility, and conflicting interests, the Church should be a ‘sacrament’—a sign and instrument of the union of people with God and each other. In the process of ecumenically pursuing unity, contemporary Christianity can, therefore, make a salient contribution to the future of humanity as a whole, especially secularised European societies (Koch 2022, pp. 179–80).

5. Ecumenism’s Secularising Crisis

The ecumenical imperative to strive for unity can be seen as an important means for overcoming secularisation’s effects and reversing secularising trends. Regarding Pannenberg’s and Koch’s remarks, the problem is that this imperative is itself showing signs of crisis. The subjects of ecumenism are, after all, the Churches struggling with secularisation. Their crisis situation affects the very understanding of ecumenism and its practical realisation. With the loss of the Churches’ significance, ecumenism (understood as endeavours to achieve the Churches’ visible unity) is also losing significance. Ongoing secularisation generates a serious challenge to ecumenism for at least two reasons. One is ‘external’ and the other ‘internal’. The first relates to the already-mentioned growing indifference to religious matters, including ecumenism.

The second relates to a greater tendency among the Churches to react in an ‘inbred’ manner, which involves focusing on strategies for their own survival and strengthening their ecclesial identity rather than seeking ecumenical consensus.

Indifference toward ecumenism is undoubtedly linked to a progressive process of people distancing themselves from matters of faith, the Church, and its teaching. If the Churches are less and less central to people’s existential situation, then the problem of the lack of visible Church unity and the multiplicity of confessions also become irrelevant and of little interest to them. One can call this process “negative ecumenism” (Ebertz 2006, p. 7). Many people thus come to consider unity irrelevant, not because divisions have already been overcome, but because of a lack of interest in matters of religious and ecclesiastical life. The perception of ecumenical expectations, tasks, and goals suffers a significant weakening under such circumstances.

The weakening of religiosity is, at the same time, accompanied by declining religious awareness among Church members. To counteract this phenomenon, Churches and Christian communities sometimes develop strategies to strengthen a sense of confessional identity. They are reviving new questions about their own identity: Who are we? How can we maintain our confessional and cultural identity in a globalising and secularising world? From this perspective, ecumenism can appear to entail losing one’s identity. Hence, adopting an ecumenical stance is sometimes seen as indifferentism, relativism, or even betrayal. This rhetoric occurs in different ecclesial environments. When it comes to ecumenical activities, the rhetoric is expressed in different terms depending on the denomination: Roman Catholic Churches will refer to the “Protestantisation of the Church”, post-Reformation Churches will refer to “Catholicisation”, and the Orthodox Churches will refer to “Occidentalisation”.

Under the conditions of the Churches’ weakening social significance, ecumenism can be seen “from within” as a harmful “hobby” of either Protestantising Catholics or Catholicising Protestants. This blurs confessional identities. From a strategic point of view, the weakening of Christianity’s social role should instead lead to a concentration of resources, which can give the Christian message greater strength and relevance. In the face of a crisis threatening to marginalise Christianity, traditional intra-Christian disputes and conflicts should become secondary or even irrelevant. However, the reaction to secularisation’s aforementioned consequences has not involved a rise in ecumenism. There has, instead, been a strengthening and hardening of confessional positions. On both the Catholic and Protestant sides, there have been increased calls for a “profiled” ecumenism (Ökumene der Profile) (see Huber 2007; Oberdorfer 2009, pp. 39–51). This refers to a specific way in which a given Church might practice ecumenism. Notably, it takes the prominence of its own confessional profile—including characteristics distinguishing it from other Churches and Christian communities—as its starting point.

Former bishop of the Protestant Church of Germany (EKD), Wolfgang Huber, explained in a lecture that “profiled ecumenism” is not about exposing differences. It is, instead, “truth-oriented, wanting to name what was inalienable to the fathers and mothers of our faith. Old differences that have already been overcome should not be artificially revived in order to stand out. However, the central truths and insights that are inalienable to a given faith should be honestly and clearly named” (Huber 2006). On this understanding, the ecumenical task is to seek a balanced way of dealing with existing differences between the Churches, live according to one’s confessional profile, accept the differences that exist, and even display them as strengths of the respective confessions.5 In other words, we should accept that the boundaries between confessions should be clearly defined for the sake of truth (see Beinert 2010, pp. 4–5). However, in practice, this often means hardening confessional positions to such an extent that they grow into insurmountable obstacles. Such an approach will certainly strengthen individual Churches’ confessional identities, but this will come at the cost of their quest for a common Christian (!) identity. As a result, the gospel message proclaimed by divided, and sometimes rival, Churches will continue to have little credibility.

6. Toward a New Ecumenical Dynamism in the Churches

Despite the challenges secularisation poses, it also opens up new opportunities. The authors of the ecumenical document on secularisation cited above call for a balanced view of the situation. They try to see it as a slow process, one in which other interpretations of life and the world become equivalent to religious, and especially ecclesiastical, interpretations. Secularisation is a challenge, but also an opportunity. The temptation of unambiguous and simplistic descriptions of secularisation must be resisted. According to the authors, we should not view secularisation processes solely in terms of their negative effects. We can also see the phenomenon as an opportunity for a new Church dynamism and an intensification of ecumenical activities. Modernity and secularisation are not hostile counterparts to religion and Christianity. They can, instead, be understood as complementary realities (Track and Schuegraf 2010, p. 118).

Karin van den Broeke from the Protestant Church in the Netherlands was also at the aforementioned February 2022 meeting of the WCC’s European branch. She stated that it is important to find the ‘spirit of God’ in secularisation, “not to see it only as a problem, but also as an opportunity and a chance to rethink how ecumenism, diakonia, mission and being Church are interconnected” (see Note 4). President of the European branch of the WCC, Archbishop Emeritus Anders Wejrd, expressed similar sentiments at the same meeting. Following other participants, he reiterated that Europe is undergoing major changes—changes that alter the Churches’ role. But he also expressed a conviction that secularisation is ambivalent and has both a destructive and a positive side, which can open up new opportunities for the Churches (see Note 4).

Matthias Sellmann and Tobias Kläden have developed this idea of an opportunity opened up by the consequences of secularisation processes. As they note in their publications, the differentiation of contemporary society means that religion is no longer accorded an overarching place, but is, instead, categorised as one among many social subsystems. As before, Sellmann and Kläden think that this can have a positive effect; it contributes to the “purification” of religion itself. Christianity’s social “reduction” and diminished impact can, in turn, relieve it of tasks and functions that do not correspond to its real mission. This mission is proclaiming the Gospel and creating space for the experience of faith in contemporary society. In this sense, the secularisation process might also be interpreted as a process of liberating Christianity from everything that distracts it from fulfilling its proper purpose (Sellmann 2013, p. 82; Kläden 2014, pp. 54–55; 2017, pp. 45–46; 2019, pp. 250–53).

Sellmann and Kläden also argue that the Churches should treat the situation created by the secularisation process as an opportunity to change their relationship with the world. This would involve moving from a discriminatory or isolationist position to a position of openness to, and learning from, the world. They suggest that it would mean avoiding the danger of falling into a double trap: the “ecclesialisation trap” and the “profiling trap”. It would also mean entering into an “affirmative hermeneutics of culture” and an attitude of “learning from the world” (Sellmann 2013, p. 80; Kläden 2014, p. 55; 2019, p. 256). Let us take a closer look at these four key notions and their implications, specifically in the context of the secularisation process’s effect on, and incorporation into, the Churches.

Regarding the “ecclesialisation trap”,6 the danger of reversing the roles of tool and target comes to the fore. In the context we are interested in, this danger can occur when introductions to being a Christian are exclusively made on the basis of an ecclesiastical measure. In other words, they are only made within the Church, which always takes a socially defined form (e.g., a denomination) and, in this sense, performs a “narrowing” or “filtering” function. Being Christian then means being in a kind of opposition to secular society. Christian identity takes the form of an immanent and inbred reality. However, the Church’s aim is to develop Christianity in all its richness. In other words, Christianity is the goal, and the Church is the instrument for that goal. In a secularised age, the Churches should, therefore, abandon a focus on their own social form. They should, instead, focus more on realising the instrumental role of proclaiming the Gospel and awakening the faith (cf. Sellmann 2013, p. 81).

The “profiling trap” involves copying strategies from the field of governance, that is, sharpening one’s profile by highlighting differentiating characteristics, i.e., the characteristics that distinguish them from others. This trap becomes particularly relevant when Churches are weakened by an exodus of believers. In attempting to counteract this process, Churches begin to expose and strengthen their confessional profile. This leads to a greater focus on things that create divisions. The right strategy at a time when the Churches’ social power is weakening will, instead, involve emphasising that which unites. This entails a strategy of inclusion instead of exclusion. Inclusive action can also strengthen Christian witness, making it more convincing.

Regarding an “affirmative hermeneutics of culture”, attention is drawn to secular culture’s autonomous character. From a Christian perspective, this character can also be seen as locus theologicus, i.e., taking on the characteristics of a reality that reveals theological truth (cf. Hünermann 2006, pp. 109–14). This notion is based on the conviction that even if it has a universal character, the Gospel’s message must repeatedly be expressed and discovered in the conditions of new times and situations. Indeed, new conditions harbour a ‘revelatory’ potential (i.e., they can be a vehicle for theological truth) even if they are always challenging.

The idea of the Churches “learning from the world” is based on a conviction formulated in Christian missiology: God always precedes the missionary’s action and is already present in the culture the missionary brings the Gospel to. The missionary’s task is, therefore, to create conditions where God’s self-giving to man is as effective as possible. Accordingly, evangelisation and pastoral activities must not consist in imposing ready-made solutions and the logic of filling in others’ supposed deficiencies (whether individuals or societies). Instead, such activities should involve being open to the prophetic messages contained in secular culture and asking how the Gospel message can be revealed anew and brought up to date in encounters with the other (Kläden 2014, pp. 55–56; Sellmann 2012, pp. 137–44).

Sellmann contrasts his thesis of secularisation as an ecclesiological opportunity with common interpretations of the secularisation process, which views the process in terms of a zero-sum game. He notes that from the ecclesiastical side, this interpretive scheme is usually understood negatively: Religion loses what the forces of modernity take away from it. Sellmann notably distances himself from any kind of zero-sum game. Nevertheless, he suggests that a positive view is also possible. He identifies this in Benedict XVI’s famous 2011 speech in Freiburg, Breisgau (Sellmann 2013, pp. 67–68). At the time, the Pope said the following: “One could almost say that history comes to the aid of the Church here through the various periods of secularisation, which have contributed significantly to her purification and inner reform. Secularising trends [...] have always meant a profound liberation of the Church from forms of worldliness, for in the process she as it were, sets aside her worldly wealth and once again completely embraces her worldly poverty. [...] History has shown that when the Church becomes less worldly, her missionary witness shines more brightly. Once liberated from material and political burdens and privileges, the Church can reach out more effectively and in a truly Christian way to the whole world, she can be truly open to the world. She can live more freely her vocation to the ministry of divine worship and service of neighbour” (Benedict XVI 2011).

Benedict XVI seemingly remained stuck in the pattern of a zero-sum game but views it positively. This is because he sees the loss of certain Church privileges and entanglements due to secularisation as a “gain”—something that ultimately pays off for the Church and works out in her favour. Seen from this point of view, we can say that secularisation represents an opportunity for the Churches. It restores their proper external function of serving as a missionary witness to the Gospel.

Sellmann sees an opportunity for the Churches from yet another perspective, namely, a theology of revelation. From this perspective, secularisation models the world as an open space of freedom for the presence of God, who remains absent in his self-communication. So, on the one hand, the Church has the chance to come out of its peculiar closure, gain a new public meaning, and become a more flexible and dynamic organisation. On the other hand, the Church has the opportunity to learn and shape its sacramental identity on the basis of current ‘signs of the times’. It can, says Sellmann, do so in a way that moves away from focusing on its social form as societas perfecta. It should, instead, focus on the task of being the people of God in the horizon of God’s kingdom and on bringing its coming sooner. Sellmann is right that secularisation offers an opportunity to shape a more Christian Church in place of an overly “ecclesialised” Christianity (Sellmann 2013, pp. 79–80), where the latter is dominated by confessional conditioning and dependencies that prevent Christianity from developing its full evangelical potential. Thus, the ecumenical task still entails unleashing Christianity’s proper potential, which does not reveal its evangelical dynamism and newness in confessional fragmentation. This does not mean changing the ecumenical commitment—the aim of which is the Church’s visible unity. Instead, it means strengthening this commitment in a real way, and this involves placing the “Christian”, rather than the “confessional” and “ecclesial”, in the foreground.

7. Conclusions

Secularisation is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. The term itself is ambiguous and depends on the concept of religion we use. That said, from a Christian perspective, we should not see the secularisation process as a phenomenon that is ‘external’ and threatening to religion. If we understand secularisation as ushering in a clear separation between the Church and many areas and institutions in social life, then Christianity (especially its Reformation strand) has played a ‘catalytic’ role in this process. The same applies to a clear separation between a message of freedom and religious coercion. Understood this way, secularisation seems to be a genetically Christian postulate.

Secularisation can also have a negative dimension, and its manifestation represents a marked relativisation or alienation of various aspects of religiosity from social life and a progressive secularisation. Its effect is the Churches’ loss of their previous role and significance in social life. This process is hitting the Churches hard, and it is partly the fault of the Churches and individual Christians. Divisions within Christianity—the multiplicity of competing and sometimes conflicting denominations—lead to a weakening of the evangelising mission’s credibility and efficacy. In the resulting conditions of secularisation, the ecumenical task becomes particularly relevant and should take on a new dynamic. Only a reconciled Christianity can resist these negative processes and give credibility to the proclaimed Gospel message. In sum, all Churches and Christian communities face the same challenge of making ecumenism an inalienable paradigm of inter-church relations. The experience of secularisation and its negative effects should lead to the awakening of a new dynamism in the Churches. It should also lead to a strengthening of the ecumenical agenda, whose goal remains visible Christian unity as a condition for the credibility and efficacy of the Church’s evangelising mission.