WORKING ON AN ARTICLE for The Atlanta Journal Constitution, religion writer Moira Bucciarelli sought a local expert to bring clarity to the complex subject of religious sacraments. Perhaps expecting a dry academic interview, Bucciarelli seemed surprised by what she found in Martha Moore-Keish, Columbia’s assistant professor of theology. Her article, “Unity Through Sacraments,” began: “Take one look at Martha Moore-Keish—the black leather jacket, the blue Converse sneakers, the wide-mouthed laugh—and the first thing that comes to mind is not liturgical theologian. Yet that is Moore-Keish’s vocation.”

 

Martha’s commitment to liturgical theology is not limited to the classroom on our campus. On the national level, she is an active participant in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Reformed-Catholic dialogue. Internationally Martha is the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s theologian on the Commission of Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva. As Bucciarelli noted, Martha is “one of only a few women at either table.” Following is an excerpt from their interview about Martha’s work with the WCC:

 

The goal is to move to mutual recognition of baptism, and to help all churches see in other denominations a faithful expression of what it means to be a Christian.

 

What does that mean in practice? What power will your document have? The document will be commended to member churches as a study and teaching document, not a policy document. The WCC has no power to make policy in the churches, it’s there to facilitate conversation and cooperation between the denominations.

 

Can you tell us why sacramental unity matters?

It’s important because unity in the sacraments helps the world to see the church as a more credible witness. Too often people see isolated church communities that are more interested in fighting each other than working together. When the church makes the news, it’s about scandal, one church denouncing another, or a church splitting. So the movement toward sacramental unity is an attempt to say: All of that is tragic and true, but it’s not all there is.

 

There was one in 2001, when we discussed that we all—Baptists, Orthodox, Catholic, Reformed and others—thought about baptism not as an isolated moment where water is on the body, but as a larger process of formation through a lifetime; that sense of growth and nurture is shared by all Christians, even though they may differ on how they place the event of baptism itself.

 

The understanding of Christian unity is no longer uniformity, but unity in diversity. So the goal is not to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator, but to say: We share a common goal, which in this case is mutual recognition of baptism; but we acknowledge that people do baptism differently. In my WCC work, there are Baptist communions who say they regard infant baptism as irregular, but that if we reach mutual recognition, some will agree to recognize the baptism and not rebaptize. And that is really happening. There are churches around the world that are taking that step. Because in that case, the move is to look at the larger pattern of baptism I mentioned earlier. That understanding makes it easier for adherents to adult baptism and infant baptism to see common ground.