Gabriel Fackre - Doctrine and Ecumenism

Doctrine and Ecumenism

Fackre was raised a Baptist by his mother, Mary Comstock Fackre, whose husband, Toufick Fackre, was Syrian Orthodox. Later, he and his Episcopalian spouse, Dorothy, sought an ecumenical denomination in which to carry out their anticipated ministry. They moved to the Evangelical and Reformed Church in 1950, the denomination of Reinhold Niebuhr, whose thought much influenced them in a journey out of an earlier pacifism to a post-war period of “neo-orthodoxy.” In 1957, that Church merged with the Congregational Christian Churches to form the United Church of Christ, in which they both now hold their clergy standing.

Ecumenism has been a leading commitment for both Fackres, given expression in their first book, Under the Steeple, relating the “life together” themes of the two early World Council of Churches assemblies they attended—Amsterdam, Holland in 1948 and Evanston, IL, USA in 1954—to parish life and mission. Professor Fackre was one of the representatives of the United Church of Christ in the nine-denomination Consultation on Church Union (predecessor to the current Churches of Christ Uniting) and the Lutheran-Reformed Conversation, the latter eventuating in the full communion agreement of 1997 of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church, USA, the Reformed Church of America and the United Church of Christ. He also has been engaged as an “evangelical catholic” in outreach, on one hand, to Churches in the Great Tradition as a co-founder of the Mercersburg Society and board member of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, and on the other, to contemporary evangelicalism in a variety of conferences and book projects of the same. Kindred to the latter, he has written extensively on evangelism, seeking to wed social concern to that outreach.

The conjunction of concern about Christian doctrine and commitment to the ecumenical project has led Fackre to invest himself deeply in efforts at theological renewal in his own denomination. Prominent among them have been the founding in 1984 of the annual Craigville Theological Colloquies on Cape Cod and in 1993 the Confessing Christ movement in the United Church of Christ. Also since 1962, he has encouraged teacher-pastor dialogue on current theological topics by launching “Theological Tabletalk” groups in both seminaries and in retirement on Cape Cod.

A Festschrift for Gabriel Fackre, with recognition as well of his close partnership in life and mission with Dorothy, appeared in 2002, edited by their daughter Skye Fackre Gibson.