Ecumenism and pluralism, two major religious forces in our time, seem to be in conflict with each other. Christians who live positively with both have to think through how the two relate to each other. Ecumenism is centripetal; pluralism is centrifugal. The response to the ecumenical call pulls people together, with Christ as the magnet. The response to the pluralist call exerts, within the limits of the Republic, the opposite kind of pull. It allows and sometimes impels them to stay apart, for the sake of their interests and the good of argument in the Republic itself.

      The tension is not absolute. The Christian Church is "a family of apostolic churches," within which and between whose bodies varieties, diversities, and arguments of sorts are encouraged. Christian unity does not mean sameness, dullness, or suppression of difference. Meanwhile, the Republic is marked by "E Pluribus Unum," the national model that relates states to a federal government. Analogically it applies to other interests as well: they are "many," always in the process of becoming "one."

      That having been said, the main tendency is for the two to move on parallel or cross-cutting tracks. If the ideal of the Church were perfect pluralism, there would be as many churches as people, or the separated and proliferating churches could rest content with living in ever-progressing distances from each other. If the ideal of the Republic were perfect union, there would have to be a totalitarian whole. Through overt or subtle coercion it would suppress the different interests and demand common thinking and acting. That would mean the end of the Republic.

      Each pull has classic texts. For Christian unity, as Father Paul Wattson never tired of reminding himself and others, the basic vision is from John 17: that they may all be one. Or it comes from Ephesians 4: there is one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God... In First Corinthians 1 and 3 it is made clear that conflict and dissension prove that Christians who manifest them are of the flesh, acting like mere humans apart from the spirit of Christ.

      Meanwhile, from the side of the Republic classic texts come from the founder and Constitution framer James Madison. Behind him stood the spirit of Voltaire: "If there were one religion in England, its despotism would be terrible; if there were only two, they would destroy each other; but there are thirty, and therefore they live in peace and happiness." Madison put it this way: "Security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights; it consists in the one case in a multiplicity of interests and in the other in a multiplicity of sects." Multiplicity was not the only word about a Republic. In George Will's terms, there must be attention to "soulcraft" as well as to "statecraft," and it is important to find consensus and commonality. Yet the word that indicates what should guarantee the future of the Republic is "multiplicity."

      The Christian, then, who responds in faith and hope to the call to be one seems to be working at cross purposes with other Christians and other fellow-citizens, or with other tendencies in her or his own mind since interests would be blunted and multiplicity made meaningless. The Republic-an who responds to the civil call to remain many, seems to be working at cross purposes with Christians who would converge and move toward becoming one.

      There seems to be no danger, on the cosmopolitan scale, of seeing Christian interests, or factions as sects, as Madison would call them, from disappearing. The World Christian Encyclopedia counted 20,780 separate and distinct Christian denominations in 1980 and a projected 22,190 in 1985. The Roman Catholic is the largest of these churches, but it is only one of them. For all the ecumenical achievements, there are 270 new denominations per year. To simplify the picture by noting that there are only 156 "major ecclesiastical traditions" or 7 "major blocs" is not to minimize the situation. Meanwhile, the Republic is not "nothing but" competing interests, factions, and sects. There is also what Peter Berger called a "sacred canopy" of shared meanings and there is a kind of common, civil, or public faith that works with a single pool of symbols, myths, and rites. Still, the ecumenical and pluralist tendencies are of opposing sorts, and when there are changes in alignments, shifts in patterns, members of Church and citizens of Republic must take note.

      One homely personal illustration puts the issue graphically if over simply. One morning at the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council, after my ears for Latin tired, I deserted the aula for a coffee table as fresco two blocks away on the Via Della Conciliazione. My table mate was Joseph Lichten, an American Jewish observer. At noon when many hundreds of empurpled bishops left St. Peter's to board buses, Lichten looked at their panoply and then asked: "Should we hope you folks make it? Would it be good for the Jews if you Christians succeeded ecumenically and all got together?" He was smiling and friendly and Madisonian: Jews and other minorities prosper from differences and conflicts between the not-yet-united Christian communions and communities. I want to address paradoxes and point to trends in the fields of ecumenism and pluralism.

      "Alignments," a word in our title, imply "lines." We shall refer to the "ecclesial" and the "political" lines to refer to ecumenical Church and pluralist Republic. The ecclesial line, despite the addition of 270 denominations per year would wide, certainly makes many kinds of progress during the 20th century. After some flagging of interest and stasis, there is again motion. This is not the place to detail all the moves, but only to remind that much is going on to promote unity. One cites motion between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism. Lutherans and Episcopalians in America "interimly" share eucharist. Presbyterians and Lutherans move toward unions that help set their houses in order. COCU, the Consultation on Church Union or the Church of Christ Uniting has a fresh basis. Statements on Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry draw surprising positive responses. Reformed, Baptist, Methodist Christians are in conversation with each other. The World Council of Churches, despite organized opposition, seems to be regaining its voice, its focus. In tens of thousands of communities the Octave of Christian Unity brings together Christians of numerous communions. Intercessory prayer, works of love, theological discussion, joint worship -- these and many other forms of action bring Christians to overcome interests, facts, and sometimes "sects" themselves.

      On the political side, countertrends seem even stronger, and there are more factions than sects -- I use Madison's term for convenience -- since sects tend to be split down the middle or several ways in the tensions of the Republic. Here we need again only remind readers of these tendencies. Roman Catholic bishops, active in the political line in vivid, attention-getting ways, separate from some other kin Christians over their abortion stand and a close to those kin in their pastoral letters on peace and the economy. Conversely, another set of Christians unites with them on an abortion stand but is vehement in denouncing their peace and economic outlooks as expressed in pastoral letters. The mainline Protestant churches take stands in support of sanctuary for Central American political refugees, stands that alienate the New Christian Right. The New Christian Right draws notice for "going public" at all, and then for doing so in aggressive, divisive ways. Its enemies, according to Rightist leadership, as often as not are leaders who disagree with their political stands. The Evangelical Left, biblically conservative and socially radical, is distanced from the larger Evangelical Right. Denominations are torn down the middle over political programs and there are tensions between ecumenical leadership and denominational followership in respect to the issues of the Republic, the polis. Tempting as it is to chronicle trends of recent years, we here have to be content to cite them and move on to the implications.

      In is important to make distinctions between the two lines and to show that one can in good faith, and with integrity or wholeness in personality and position, live with both. The ecclesial line has confessional, liturgical, denominational interests in mind. The modern ecumenical movement for obvious reasons that still have to be examined, chose to structure itself as an address to ecclesial differences. Unite the churches and you will unite the Christians, was its theme. On that front it has made considerable federative, conciliar, dialogical, and sometimes "organic" progress.

      Union between churches would not, however, mean lessening of Republic-an factions, since these do not follow church lines. What is more, they provoke far more passion and call for far more visible loyalty than do the churches. It is hard to pick out the Catholic from the Lutheran from the Baptist on the anti-abortion picket line. It is also hard to hear them giving anywhere near as much devotion to discussion of, say, Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry among their churches. When Councils that include Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Lutherans issue common statements on the economy and peace, the "laissez faire hawks" in their communions express religious rages that seem to cancel out anything of a confessional, liturgical, or denominational aspect.

      Meanwhile, the political "line" also has an inner dynamism and plays an important part in the ecumenical scene. For example, ecumenism by itself could be or could become introverted and introspective. The happy few, a billion people and more, in those 22,190 bodies, could by some stretches of imagination, seal themselves off from their Republics or political orders, as some among them now do. The political bid within pluralism prevents some of this living in halls of mirrors, this figurative lead-encasement of the Christian bodies.

      There is in the political line, for instance, some opening to the secular. America was founded in part on alliances between "secular" Enlightenment Republic-ans and highly distinct and vocal denominations. Today the catholic and mainline Protestant churches are quite clear about their need for making alliances with "people of good will" who are not of their faith or any faith. On the New Christian Right, for all the stormy dismissal of "secular humanism" and all the charges of conspiracy from its purported fronts, groups like the Moral Majority make clear that, in theory at least, Protestant, Catholic, Jew and non-believer can and all should be members so long as they support its moral program. Admission of this pluralist intention was made clear when the leader of the Moral Majority, while working for a "School Prayer Amendment," admitted that the Moral Majority meetings could never open with prayer. There is too much pluralism; there are too many openings to secular alliance to agree on any prayer or object of prayer.

      This opening, I am arguing, is good for Church and Republic, for ecclesial and political lines. It is possible to show how it stands in a biblical tradition and how it reaffirms the Augustinian concepts of justitia civilis, a civil righteousness. It is also possible to show that such intersecting, realigning, and fluid shifting, is good for the Republic because we are not reduced to having to be content with permanent religious voting and interest blocs that are solipsistic and soliloquistic in every way.

      Similarly, pluralism in the Republic serves ecumenism by jostling Christian patterns. One set of Christians relates to Jews one way, on theological issues and domestic programs, but is not satisfying to many Jews because of its policies toward Israel. Another set of Christians relates to Jews another way, on premillennial grounds and in its Zionism, making friends with Jews even if they do not therewith regard Judaism as a religion of integrity on its own terms and may set out to convert Jews. In both cases, the complex of alliances forces Christians to appraise their stands, also in respect to each other, at the points where they are in conflict or in concord with elements and fronts of Jewish life and thought.

      How do these connect? I would like to suggest that this complex of connections and discontinuities is possible because of what I shall call a "multiplex consciousness" that is being refined in respect to what Robert Bellah and Benjamin Mariante have called a "multiplex universe." Thus Mariante shows that the focus of the individual's consciousness changes as he lives, responds, and acts in different "worlds." The responses to religious institutions will occur "in the pluralistic framework," as if these institutions were separate, autonomous institutions.

      mariante amplifies: "What has occurred is pluralization not secularization: people are religious when religion is at the center of conscious life; as on a questionnaire, 'Do you believe in God?' They are economic when the economy is at the center, as on a questionnaire, 'What is the most important problem facing America today?'" This is the multiplex consciousness in action. It is not a product or agent of simple compartmentalization, for the separate foci unite in a single person of integrity. Yet it permits different addresses to different needs without causing the agent to feel simple contradiction.

      No complex psychological theories are necessary to see or relate to such a consciousness. An illustrations from the common sense world will suffice. A minister may say "Dearly Beloved" on a valentine to her or his spouse; in an address at the beginning of a homily to a congregation; in some translation or other to the family's children; in another translations to a friend. This person had better have different "foci of individual consciousness" and clarified intentions and languages in mind. The first of the four professions of love may have a sexual implication that had better not be present in the other three. The second has theological roots but is not intimate. The third is familial but if it keeps to the language and intention of the second, there will not long be a family, since the address would be too impersonal. The friend presents another range of possibilities. Yet the person who makes the four professions, all of them honest and profound, is a single person of integrity and wholeness who feels no strain and is not dismissed as a schizophrenic, a fraud, or an unthinking and unclear person.

      So with life between ecumenism and pluralism. We see the individual operating on four dimensions within the ecclesial line. First, as an "independent" person. However complicating the notion may be within the single Body of Christ that antecedes personhood and individual consciousness, in practice in a free society the Church is also experienced as a voluntary association that makes a bid for loyalty and attention. I, the consumer, am in control. I am in the market for what ministers to my needs and allows for expression of my ministry. I turn my "multiplex consciousness" as an individual to now this ecumenical, now that pluralist cause and tendency.

      Second, there is what sociologist William Stephenson called "convergent selectivity," after the model of an audience being born of common dial-twisting of television or radio sets. The result is not profound communion for there is little social control. Womb, nursery, family, circle of friends, school, parishes and peer groups provide the most profound elements in ego construction. Instead, "convergent selectivity" allows for focus and development of fashions, fads, opinions, attitudes, and notions. There may be very passionate attention to these, but they touch only part of th life and they intersect church lines.

      Third, there are "parachurch" alternatives. These are movements, causes, caucuses, interest groups that exist alongside and inside the churches but intersect them. The charismatic and therapeutic groups are typical here. On some issues, Catholic charismatics and Protestant pentecostalists are in company yet they part company on other issues on which, in turn, Catholic charismatics link up with fellow-Catholics over against Protestant pentecostalism, and vice versa. Political causes are often in this parachurch line.

      Fourth, there are sub- and supradenominational elements that color ecumenical and plurlaist life. Someone has pointed out that something as subtle as membership in small churches versus large churches, "successful" churches versus "failing" churches, safe churches or risking churches, provides intersecting ecumenical contexts and contracts, as well as barriers.

      The individual Christian, positioned in these four ways, is very modern in that he or she exercises what Peter Berger called "the heretical imperative." That is, they pick and choose, now this ecumenical-reinforcing but pluralism-complicating move; now this ecumenical-complicating but pluralism-reinforcing impulse. Meanwhile, theologically, the focus of this "multiplex consciousness" is on different aspects of the classic texts of Christian doctrine and spiritual resource.

      We can illustrate this by reference to a number of theological complexes that are in no way in contradiction to each other but which are drawn on in distinctive ways.

      In the ecclesial line one draws chiefly on the notion of revelation and disclosure: God intervenes or is accessible to the believer through spoken word, experience, written text, or sacrament. The unbeliever may not recognize this revelation at all. Meanwhile, in the political line, one draws on "critical reason" and the natural. Christian groups gain motivation from that which is revealed: "the love of Christ controls us." They find staying power from the story of a provident God and resurrected Christ. They find clarification and intensification of moral mandates and impulses. They do not impose by law notions born only of revelation. Instead they try to show that the good has an ontological base, is located in natural law, is accessible to reason. The "multiplex consciousness" is directed to both, with not much sense of contradiction.

      A second parallel is between incarnation and creation. In the ecclesial line the incarnation is regarded in a special way because in Christ God takes on the conditions of created order. The pluralist realm at no point constitutionally or legally is open to incarnation. Yet some implicit response to creation, whether by theos or deus or whatever, is often called forth in respect to stewardship of the earth by believer and unbeliever. Finally, creation invokes Creator, and that is not an accessible experience for the non-believer "of good will." Yet he or she may respectfully find contact with believers in mutual high regard for universe, world, nature, created order.

      Third, in the ecclesial line the atonement is a judgment on, a rescue from, and a pointing beyond human-caused injustice, misery, evil (though, of course, it also is more than than). The believer may be moved to acts of love and justice because "Christ died for her," or him. The analogue in political order is not atonement but prophecy, which is equally disruptive. The sources of prophecy need not be only in scripture, in an agreed upon transcendent origin of a Word. They can come from philosophy, conscience, reflection on historical experience. The believer may draw on these without letting them exhaust the notions of prophecy needed in the believing community.

      We could draw similar parallels between ecclesial witness to the resurrection of Christ and the political experience of inaugurations. New beginnings are connected with the New Creation in Christ for the believing community. Yet theses need not always be at cross purposes with humanistic senses of new starts. A fifth example contrasts the not mutually contradictory notions of ends, eschaton, apocalypse, as revealed to the believing community and the notion of stewardship which all believers are to hold but which can be commended to non-believers as well. The earth may end, but while we are here, we are to plant trees, build houses, give children in marriage and enjoy their children -- not bring our world to an end.

      It can be seen here that in this multiplex universe ecclesia and polis have different attractions for the focused consciousness and intentions of agents. In old-fashioned language, the ecclesia is for, among other things, also the "saving of souls," the doing away of sin, the experience of grace, the situation in a new liturgical and moral community, the impartation of transcendent hope. It is not designed to make the compromises necessary for the republic. The political order, on the other hand, does not save souls or make sad hearts glad. It does minimize the violence that is native to history and assure some measure of justice and political good for the citizens and their interests.

      There are dangers in seeing the multiplex consciousness of individuals and groups directed to now this, now that. Unless care is taken to keep connections alive, the believer may come to dualistic, Manichaean, Marcionitic -- name your heresy -- understandings of two Gods, two ontological principles in contradiction, two wholly isolated spheres. These are not present or permitted in biblical and classical doctrinal traditions of Christianity. Where present they detract from the power of the resources.

      If there are separate ecclesial and political lines, does it make any difference at all to the Christian who lives with both? Yes. It says much about how conflict is to be waged in both, how concord is to be sought in both. In Thomas Gilby's and John Courtney Murray's terms, people in a republic are "locked in civil argument." They are locked: they have nowhere else to go. They must argue: thus they find disagreements beyond present confusions and agreements beyond present disagreements. In biblical contexts, they are also "locked" in the Church as the Body of Christ, members one of another. Sometimes they have something to learn from the political order about how to conduct their argument and live with their conflicts, just as they can teach themselves and others in the political order something about passion and commitment or fidelity.

      I have been implicitly arguing that, much as I would like to see my political causes prevail and draw all people into unity behind them, the nature of life in a Republic calls forth argument. If the interest groups that make up a majority simply united, we could find little solace from history or the study of human nature to protect us from seeing suppression of minorities, coercion of privileged views. This will therefore color the political dimensions of the ecumenical ecclesia: it must allow for and even encourage divergent options, opinions, and strategies. It is good, in this sense, to see Democratic and Republican Baptists, Catholic Democrats and Republicans, and every other kind of crazy-quilt patterning. When ecclesial and political alignments simply match, there are ominous temptations for the assertion of brute power coupled with claims that confuse the ultimates of ecclesial life with the proximates of political opinion and strategy. Christians who are "locked" by common origin and destiny in the Body of Christ cannot let go of each other over political differences. They can challenge other interests, factions, or "sects" within their own communions and beyond them to bring forth theological warrants for their competing positions in the polis.

      On such grounds, Christians should work for union in the ecclesial body without suppressing political differences within its ever-uniting forces. Similarly, they would work strenuously to keep the Republic and its modes of argument and strategies diverse. Perhaps it will be most healthy if the lines between interests are permanently within, not between church bodies, and that coalitions in politics not follow ecclesiastical lines but be drawn from elements within the various bodies. This cannot mean a serene life when politics is the focus of consciousness within the church just as it cannot assure concord when religion is the focus of consciousness within the body politic. Ecclesia and polis are much to teach themselves and each other about the terms of internal and external dialogue and conflict. Energies placed on such efforts to teach and learn will not be misplaced in the years ahead when the Republic will meet so many tests and while the Church still stands between its 22, 190 separate and internally divided bodies in search of some sort of promised unity.

      More than a post script remains to be written. We live in a political world where politics dominates most features of life. War as an expression of politics-broken=down only magnifies our understanding that this sphere of human life draws quasi-religious passions and suprareligious fanaticisms to its causes. It is precisely here that national and international ecumenical movements have an enduring role to play. They should serve to remind believers in all nations that the guerrilla in one's gunsights, the enemy behind the artillery, the owner of the finer on the nuclear button, may very well be a fellow-member of the ecclesia. Not all enemies in Christian history have been Muslims or atheistic Communists! While almost no progress has been made to date on employing ecumenical insights to soften the lines of international confrontation and while the ecclesia is only one force among many in the pluralism of international affairs there are resources here. Pope John Paul II and Bishop Desmond Tutu draw upon these as did Martin Luther King and european catholics and protestants in the World War II years. These ecclesial reachings out are not to be done at the expense of equal regard for the non-believer or other-believer on the world scene. Yet the repertory of Christian options ought to have resources that should play in the political realm for concord as well as for conflict.

      A corollary of this notion points to the transcendent aspects of the ecclesia. These suggest that in a political world, politics is not everything and all. Got's purposes are not exhausted by the human Republic or polis, even if it claims to exist "under God" and for divine missions. Political hope is not coextensive with all Christian hope. Political revolution is not the only mode of turning. Political conservation is does not save or assure only and all that which is worth saving. In this sense the ecclesial, small, divided, frustrated, half-faithful, remains both a sign of judgment and a sign of hope in the political order. Efforts to unite ecclesial forces "that they may all be one" would further empower those who live under this sign, which first of all signals judgment and hope among those who respond to the call of the Spirit to unity in Christ.

      Martin E. Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Modern Christianity at the University of Chicago and associate editor of The Christian Century. Long active in ecumenical and political spheres, he has been president of The American Society of Church History and The American Catholic Historical Association. His most recent book is Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of American Religion. His ties to the Friars of the Atonement are strong and of long standing. In 1`969 he became one of eight holders of the Christian Unity Award that honors Father Paul Wattson, founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. This article is based upon the Sixth Annual Paul Wattson Lecture co-sponsored by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement and the University of San Francisco.