A most awkward acronym

Acronyms are wonderful--whole committees can spend time designing them, others are delightfully accidental. Whether the SOB Alliance (State of Ohio Blogger) of which I'm a part was intentional, I don't know. I've written entire blog entries about acronyms. In my early days (mid-1980s) as Head of the Veterinary Medicine Library, which made me part of Heads of Undergraduate and Departmental Librarians at The Ohio State University Libraries (head of VET, member of HUDL, at OSUL) I had a computer, but it was stand alone, not connected to any other libraries and the internet in its present form and World Wide Web (WWW) were still a fantasy. But there were encyclopedias of acronyms and reverse acronyms, and I could sneak away from my duties to browse, just as today librarians all over the world find reasons to poke around the web, read their e-mail, listservs, and blogs and experiment with social networking (all in the name of better service to the library user).

All this as introduction to one of the best in describing what it was finally worth before someone renamed it after 40 years. COCU. That stands for Consultation on Church Union, but bears a striking resemblance to cuckoo, or cuckholded, indeed, cocu is French for cuckhold. Both words come from the French and mean unfaithful, whether laying eggs in another's nest or adultery, link.

No word better describes the irrelevance of the modern church's ecumenical movement and it's proclamation of authority as it fled both the authority of Scripture and the authority of the Roman Church than COCU. For a while it fueled the rise of the evangelicals who stood in the gap created by liberal protestants and catholics, but even they have been marginalized and warrenized, attempting to "emerge" but from what and to what they aren't sure and don't agree.

Usually, I don't cite Wikipedia as an authority because--well, it isn't--but in this case, COCU is so insignificant and so funny, I'll send you there. Wikis can be edited by no one in particular, and this entry is begging for editors. So if you're an expert on failures in Protestantism, have a go.