Marc Reuver, Faith and Law : Juridical Perspectives for the Ecumenical Movement. Geneva, Switzerland: WCC Publications, 2000.

Cooperating Ventures know about church regulations that are out of step with ecumenical realities. They are not alone. Faith and Law arose out of frustration at an entrenched legacy of embarrassing anathemas and a lack of positive constitutional provision for inter-church relationships.

The fact that this was in the Faith and Order Commission’s too hard basket for quarter of a century reflects the complexity of the political and historical issues involved. Professional expertise is needed to draft and test constitutional changes, but lawyers are not always seen as agents of justice and liberation. “Law” is often regarded as the antithesis of “Gospel” and consensus about change is difficult. The passage of time has meant that clusters of regulations have become symbolic expressions of identity, quite apart from their relevance for decision-making, leadership and theology today. Often church laws are not only rooted in culture, but also in state legislation.

Reuver provides a solid analysis of the uneasy relationship between law and the Church from the dominance of canon law in medieval times and the Reformers’ determination to break the idea of church law as divine law. Constitutional documents from that era enshrine the bitterness as well as the boundaries of a divided Church. He notes how the Barmen Declaration of 1934 placed confession and mission over constitution in priority. Although the focus is on Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and Reformed traditions the issues are also relevant to more recent denominations, including those which owe little to the European religious experience.

It is still a challenge to even think of church law as a welcome gift of clear processes and accepted principles. The best of church regulations have difficulty making appropriate provision for minorities. In bicultural and multicultural environments oral traditions and alternative values struggle for recognition. One would like to think that it is not impossible to do justice to context as well as to history, to maintain transparency and provide stability, so that people know how things work and what is going on and are not disempowered by either change and its advocates or tradition and its experts.

Perhaps Reuver’s real call is that churches value more than we do those who help formulate our laws and regulations. We need good church lawyers, and this is a good book to place in their hands.

John Roxborogh

Lay Training, School of Ministry, Knox College, Dunedin.