The rocky road to unity: the worship quarrel at Fedsem in the 1980s

Abstract

This paper describes the painstaking, controversy-ridden and only partly successful attempts made to harmonise worship life at the Federal Theological Seminary of Southern Africa in the 1980s. Established at Alice in 1963, this ecumenical seminary relocated to Imbali, Pietermaritzburg, in the late 1970s after being expropriated by the apartheid state. In 1974 the constituent churches (Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregationalist) declared their intention to seek unity. As time went on, the denomination-based colleges gradually moved towards a more unified structure and started to worship together. This proved rather difficult. To celebrate the sacraments in the same chapel despite century-old liturgical, theological and ecclesiological differences was no easy matter. The road to unity ended up being much rockier than the protagonists of the ecumenical movement had anticipated.