IT IS HARD to overestimate the contribution made by Martin Reardon to the
ecumenical movement of the second half of the ecumenical century. He stood in
the line of distinguished ecumenists: Bell and Temple, Tomkins and Newbigin,
the Abbé Couturier. He shared their vision, and never saw the need to abandon
it. Tributes to Martin from around the world recognise in him a major player in
the ecumenical movement locally, nationally and internationally, whose wisdom,
quiet determination, and refusal to be despondent at setbacks were so evident.
Martin Alan Reardon was born in 1932, educated at St Edward's School,
Oxford, and Selwyn, Cambridge, and returned to Oxford and Cuddesdon to train
for the ministry. He spent time at the Universities of Geneva and Louvain,
where he met and later married Dr Ruth Slade, a Roman Catholic, who, like
Martin, was a passionate ecumenist. In a recent lecture, he reflected on the
difficulties at that time of the marriage of a Roman Catholic and an Anglican,
which he and Ruth discussed at a lunch with Cardinal Heenan. Both Martin and
Ruth were undaunted by the cautions and excited by the promise of renewal
heralded by the Second Vatican Council.
They knew in their life together, like any inter-Church family, the joys of
living ahead of the rest of the Church, as well as the pain of the restriction
on communion. This led them, with Fr John Coventry, to be founding members of
the Association of Interchurch Families, and leaders of what has become a
worldwide movement.
Martin served curacies in Rugby and in Sheffield, where he later became one
of the pioneering secretaries of a Council of Churches. At Lincoln Theological
College, he continued Oliver Tomkins's ministry in forming priests with
ecumenical commitment.
In 1976, he was appointed the General Secretary of the Board for Mission and
Unity. Many advances were achieved under Martin's wise and careful guidance,
sometimes brought to birth out of bitter disappointment and apparent, but not
real, failure.
He was bitterly disappointed when the General Synod failed to give assent
to the Covenant for Unity (with the Methodist, United Reformed and Moravian
Churches) in 1982, and shocked by the dramatic and tragic death of his
Chairman, Bishop David Brown, just as the Synod was to debate the future after
the Covenant.
But Martin, determined that all should not be lost, guided the formulation
of the ecumenical canons, making it possible for Christians to live more
closely together and witness together locally. There was no one else who could
have persuaded a cautious Archbishop Runcie or the different parties in the
General Synod to take that particular step forward. Martin could do it because
he had earned the trust of many, and because he combined knowledge of where
theological convergence had reached - he was an able theologian - with a care
for the necessary legal detail.
Martin, like Archbishop Runcie, was committed to all-round and all-level
ecumenism. He had a particular concern for the Roman Catholic Church, but he
could be found championing the cause of a small African independent Church at
an Assembly of the World Council of Churches. He encouraged Christians locally,
and was never too busy to refuse an invitation to share his vision with the
smallest local group. He served on numerous committees of the British Council
of Churches, where, bureaucrat though he was, he was never bureaucratic. He
helped the Anglican Communion to be consistent and coherent in its bilateral
conversations, serving the ecumenical sections of the 1977 and 1988 Lambeth
Conferences.
It was Martin's readiness to respond positively to the overtures of the
Evangelical Church in Germany which led to the signing of the Meissen
Agreement, and thence to the Porvoo Agreement with Nordic and Baltic Lutheran
Churches, the Reuilly Agreement with the French Lutheran and Reformed Churches,
and, in this country, agreements with the Moravians and Methodists.
These new relations of closer fellowship owed much to Martin's conviction
that we should never lose an opportunity to take small steps and reach new
stages of committed fellowship on the way to visible unity. He saw that the
goal was consistent, and the theological convergence was sound. He never minded
that others got the accolades. It was enough for him that the bits of the
ecumenical jigsaw were being put in place.
His friends rejoiced when on retirement he was awarded the OBE, and when he
and Ruth were honoured by the Archbishop of Canterbury with the St Augustine's
Cross, and by Pope John Paul II with the
Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice.
As if all of this were not enough, after less than two years as Rector of
Plumpton with East Chiltington, Martin was appointed as the first General
Secretary of Churches Together in England. He had already contributed much to
the inter-Church process that led to the formation of the new ecumenical
instruments in Britain and Ireland through his writing of the Lent 1976 course,
What on Earth is the Church for?, the beginning of an exploration to
draw out the commitment of members of the Churches to the visible unity of the
Church. He did much to open a new way for a fellowship of Churches working
together with lighter structures, clearer about where authority lies.
It is easy to imagine the confidence Martin's presence in the new venture
gave the Roman Catholic Church and the Black Majority Churches, when they took
a decision to join the fellowship.
Martin Reardon worked tirelessly in the cause of Christian unity, guided by
the belief that unity is first and foremost about personal relationships of
those drawn into the life and love of God. He never tired of saying that "it is
interpersonal relations, the modern jargon for love, that are at the heart of
what we mean by unity." Not for him an arid, structural vision of unity. John
17 informed his thinking. He refused to separate unity from mission, and was
never convinced by the Synod's decision to divide the Board for Mission and
Unity.
Martin's passion for unity was confirmed in the experience of his own life
and relationships and, above all, in his life of prayer. He knew that it is as
in Christ we pray to the Father through the power of the Spirit that we
experience the gift of unity. Prayer was the first expression of his ecumenical
commitment.
In their tributes to him his friends, Anglican and ecumenical, speak of him
as unfailingly gentle, caring, thoughtful, utterly trustworthy, wise, and eager
to draw out goodness in others. His colleagues talk of him as "unboss-like",
always encouraging, always ready to forgive faults, and incredibly
hard-working. There was a delightful simplicity about him: the battered panama
hat with its ribbon from Guatemala reminding him of a less privileged part of
the world, and the red shirt.
Martin Reardon will be greatly missed, but his contribution to the cause of
Christian unity is already woven into the life of the Church. He is survived by
his wife Ruth, their children Sarah and John, and by a new grandchild, Rosa.