Was Ecumenism a Failure From the Start

 During my college years my social hang-out was the Methodist Student Center. I met my future wife there. What we would call today a student outreach staff member, an associate head preacher and main guy. All of these clergy and some student leaders held meetings to discuss "Ecumenism." It was a serious topic of that era. As most know, the word refers to religious tolerance of other religions. I suppose it has some similarity to today's "multi culturalism."

I don't have to tell readers today branches of two different religions are bombing, killing and torturing each other. Wars over religion have gone on since the beginning of recorded history, maybe they went on before. And we know the fighting is not always between separate "religions," but between factions of the same religion. It seems like all those efforts at ecumenism were in vain and remain a useless exercise. 

It seems to me the entire concept of ecumenism is misplaced. An example is, I should use the term "might be" because it is complicated, Iraq and Iran. Both identify as Muslim nations. They spent a few years killing each other.  One is predominately of the Shite branch (Iran) and other Suni (Iraq). Why are they separate branches? A friend from the region explained it this way, "Iranians are not Arabs. But way back the Arabs conquered them and forcefully imposed Islam. Iranians never liked the Arabs and cleverly craved out a different version of Islam for themselves." To rephrase this from the perspective of the social sciences, the two groups came from different cultures. Cultures manufacture gods and religions. 

If we could decide religious groups are from different cultures and those cultures of so different they cannot reconcile, would we abandon the entire concept of ecumenism? Maybe it is good to keep on trying even if failure is the most likely outcome. Certainly, there are plenty of examples in Israel of Palestinians and Jews living together in harmony. The branches of both that cannot present a different situation.

I need to mention there are various separate groups within atheism as well. However, I have not heard of these groups killing each other. Violence attributed to atheism is that of Stalin and Hitler. Both saw Christian groups as political competitors, not wrong-headed believers. Hitler was raised Catholic and the Pope at the time never condemned him.