Eucharist and Unity: A Theological Memoir (Keith Watkins) -- A Review
EUCHARIST AND UNITY: A Theological Memoir. By Keith Watkins. St. Louis, MO: CBP/Disciples of Christ Historical Society, 2023. Vii + 182 pages.
The Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ) is a Mainline Protestant tradition born in the USA soon after the turn
of the nineteenth century on what was then the frontier (Western Pennsylvania
and Kentucky). The denomination is marked by its commitment to Christian Unity
as well as weekly (if not more frequent) celebration of the Lord's Supper
(Eucharist). In many ways, the Disciples are like the Roman Catholic Church in
that the Disciples have centered their theology and practice in the Eucharist. With
the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper) standing at the center of its identity the
movement that produced the Disciples as a denomination has sought to pursue the
unity of the visible church of Jesus Christ by gathering at the Table. One of
the key figures in recent ecumenical and liturgical conversations among
Disciples is Keith Watkins. Keith is an ordained Disciples minister and
emeritus professor of worship and practical theology at Christian Theological
Seminary. He has offered his most recent book Eucharist and Unity to the
larger church in the form of A Theological Memoir.
What I offer here is not a truly
objective review, since Keith is a friend and a mentor. I read an earlier
version of this book, which Keith completed in 2002, but did not pursue
publication at that time. I have that original manuscript, that is covered with
many notes, comments, and questions that I intended to share with Keith. While
I didn’t hand off my copy to him, I did share my thoughts with him, but that
was a very long time ago. Although the bulk of the book was written in 2002, he
has brought it up to date, such that chapter five in the published book is
quite different from what was originally written.
Diana Butler Bass wrote in the introduction
to Freeing Jesus her definition of a theological memoir that I think
fits what Keith has done here in Eucharist and Unity. Diana writes in
her book that it “is an exercise in memory—remembering then, with all
the nostalgia, sorrow, and joy memory summons. It is also an exercise in now,
taking the lessons once learned and applying them to the present. And it is
an exercise in what can be, having a certain confidence to keep on the
way amid even radical challenges” [Freeing Jesus, Harper One, p. xxvi]. With
that definition of a theological memoir in mind, we turn to Eucharist and Unity. Since it takes the form of a theological memoir, Keith looks back at
his life, detailing the journey he took from his youth in Portland, Oregon, through
his college and seminary years, followed by several years serving a pastorate
in Central California, followed by graduate studies in church history. This
ministry and education served as the foundation for a call by Christian
Theological Seminary in Indianapolis (the same seminary where he had earlier studied),
where he took up a position teaching worship and practical theology. Soon after
he began his teaching career Keith became involved with the ecumenical ventures
of the Disciples. Most specifically he participated in the work of the
Consultation on Church Union, which was launched about the time he began his
teaching career. Being part of the Disciples delegation to COCU, he participated
in the liturgical discussions undertaken by the COCU participants. Keith would
later write a history of COCU under the title: The American Church that Might Have Been: A History of the Consultation on Church Union, (Pickwick
Publications, 2014).
Memoirs usually attempt to place
one’s life story in a larger context, that is true here. Keith notes that the
year he was ordained, 1953, “the world was creating its post-war identity.”
Then a decade later the return to normality of the 1950s gave way to a “state
of fibrillation,” with the war in Vietnam and the eruption of the Civil Rights
Movement. The year that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were
assassinated, he and his family were living in Seattle, where he was taking a
sabbatical while serving at leading Disciples church, a year that gave birth to
his book Liturgies In a Time When Cities Burn. In other words, the years of his
ministry in church and academia took place during difficult times. In these years
the Mainline Churches struggled with identity and found themselves in decline.
We see much of this reality present in Keith’s reflections.
Keith tells us that his
religious/theological roots are to be found in the more conservative part of
the Stone-Campbell Movement, what is today known as the Christian
Churches/Churches of Christ. As a youth, he became involved with a congregation
in Portland, Oregon that was conservative in its theology and practice. He then
attended Northwest Christian College (what is now Bushnell University) in the
early 1950s. It is the same college that I would graduate from in 1980.
Interestingly, we had at least one professor in common (Lawrence Bixler). His
time at NCC essentially reinforced his conservative theological positions,
except that during a student ministry, he was faced with the question of the
relationship of baptism by immersion to congregational membership. The question
of whether one must be immersed before being admitted to membership would
continue to unsettle him as he headed to seminary at what was then Butler
School of Religion (later Christian Theological Seminary). If his time at NCC
reinforced his theological commitments, his seminary years would raise theological
questions that pushed him ever leftward, even though he remained anchored in
his Disciples roots.
After seminary, Keith answered a
call to serve as pastor of a Disciples congregation in Central California, an
experience that would give way to graduate study in Church History at Pacific
School of Religion. While he was studying at PSR, he was called to a teaching
position at Christian Theological Seminary. With that call, Keith began a long
and fruitful career that included teaching and writing (mostly on matters
related to liturgy and the Lord’s Supper). His time at CTS also allowed him to
serve the larger Disciples community and the larger ecumenical church. Thus, it
was in these different places that Keith engaged with both the Eucharist and
Christian Unity. As we discover in reading Keith’s memoir, Eucharist and Unity
are deeply intertwined in Keith's life story. Regarding the Eucharist and
liturgy, Keith wrote several books that deal with those subjects, books that
have helped Disciples think more deeply about what happens at the Table. Perhaps
most importantly, he set these discussions within the larger ecumenical
conversations.
Reviewing a book like this is
difficult because it is deeply personal, and the personal nature of the
reflections needs to be read appreciatively to fully understand the message. As
we read Keith’s reflections, we discover the presence of both joy and lament. One
of his later books, which I noted earlier, is discussed in Chapter 5. It tells
the story of the Consultation on Church Union. The story of the movement is
lovingly told in that book and here in the memoir, but it also includes wistful
reflections. That is not only because Keith placed great hope that a unified
church might emerge, but also because of the work undertaken during the several
decades of the consultation’s existence. Part of the reason for that
wistfulness is that Keith devoted considerable time and energy to that work,
which has left little impact on the churches. Not only did the churches
involved not fully embrace each other's ministries and sacraments, but the work
undertaken has not influenced either the ecclesiology of the churches or their
liturgies.
While there is much in this memoir
that speaks of the search for Christian unity, Keith also shares his thoughts
about how the church has functioned, liturgically and practically. Besides the
years spent in teaching, after retiring from CTS, he spent time in the parish
as a church-planting pastor in Arizona and as an interim pastor in several
churches. These experiences allowed him to think through what the church might
look like considering the culture. He envisioned what he calls "Churches
of the Third Type” (chapter 4). In that chapter, he ponders directions that
might have been taken and can be taken due to the realities facing the churches
that have seen decline and diminishment since the heyday of the Mainline in the
1950s. His vision is one where both word and table stand at the center of
church life.
As his memoir draws to a close,
Keith shares his thoughts about the dimensions of his life in the years since
he first began writing this memoir in the early 2000s. He tells of life in
retirement, including his beloved cycling, along with his return to being the
historian he began preparing for in graduate school, together with his
continued service to the church that has been the center of his life from his
youth. That includes his continued involvement in the work of Christian unity.
In the course of reflecting on his
life and work during his later years, he tells of attending a service in
Arizona that celebrated the "Formula of Agreement" linking the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the Presbyterian Church USA, the Reformed
Church in America, and the United Churches of Christ, a formula that
regularized the ministries and sacraments of these four communions. He writes
that as he experienced that service, he lamented that the Disciples were absent
from that agreement. Serving as I do as a board member of the Disciples
ecumenical ministry and co-chair of a bilateral dialog with the ELCA, I share
Keith's lament at our absence from that agreement. I have thought hard about
our absence and his lament confirms my own thinking. Like Keith, I’ve asked why
we were not there since we have been in full communion with the United Church
of Christ. This agreement took place not long before COCU began moving toward
becoming a different entity, which would no longer pursue the creation of a
united church. When Churches Uniting in Christ was born, one element from the
earlier conversation that was dropped was the regularization of ministerial orders.
While the participating churches in this new entity would recognize each other
as authentic expressions of the one Church of Jesus Christ, they would not
continue pursuing mutual recognition of their ordained ministries.
I’ve noted here the lament that is
present in the book, but this sense of lament is a natural expression in a memoir
such as this, for in my estimation, for someone who devoted so much energy to the
pursuit of unity at the Table, but to this point that unity has yet to make
itself fully visible. Nevertheless, while lament is present here, Keith also
includes words of thanksgiving and gratitude for his life and ministry in the
Disciples and the larger church of Jesus Christ. Eucharist and Unity,
which I know was lovingly written, is truly a gift to the larger church from
one who has been committed to its unity. While it expresses a clear ecumenical
vision of the larger church, Eucharist and Unity is Disciple through and
through. It is, therefore, a book that is worth reading closely, whether one is
a Disciple or not. Readers might not recognize all the names and figures
mentioned in the book, but the story told here is pertinent. Ron Allen, in his
foreword to Eucharist and Unity, captures the essence of what we find in
this book, noting that since this is an age of memoir, “in the best memoirs the
authors do not simply report autobiographical details but reflect on the
meaning of their lives in the larger contexts in which they lived,” that is
what we find here. It’s not just nostalgia for what has been but connects one
person’s life with the larger world in which it was lived (p. v.) Since Keith
is still living and active, his story and his contributions to the life of the church
continue, for that, we can continue giving thanks.
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