wfn.org | Homosexuality on Churches' Agenda "Whether We Like it or Not"

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4-October-1996 
 
 
 
96382           Homosexuality on Churches' Agenda  
                   "Whether We Like it or Not"  
 
                         by Stephen Brown 
                  Ecumenical News International 
 
GENEVA--The question of homosexuality is on the agenda of the world church 
"whether we like it or not" and "probably the worst way of responding would 
be to try to keep the issue out," Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the 
World Council of Churches, said recently. 
 
     The issue has become particularly sensitive within the WCC because of 
a campaign against homosexuals by Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, 
where the WCC's next assembly will be held in 1998. The sensitivity is 
increased by the fact that the WCC's 330 member churches have widely 
differing views on homosexuality.  Some of the churches freely welcome 
homosexuals into their congregations and in some cases their clergy. Others 
condemn all homosexual acts as sinful. 
 
     Raiser, speaking Sept. 19 to the WCC's central committee, which met in 
Geneva Sept. 12-20, was reporting on a discussion within a subcommittee 
after a controversial debate earlier in the meeting about homosexuality and 
the planned assembly in Harare. 
 
     The subcommittee meeting had, said Raiser, "the first open, sincere 
and very serious discussion about the issue" within the organization. It 
had been acknowledged in the discussion that homosexuality was "potentially 
a very divisive concern, and already at this stage is weighing heavily on 
the internal unity of a fair number of member churches." 
 
     Delegates from some WCC member churches, he said, spoke of "the danger 
that if we were to push the debate about the question of human sexuality, 
sexual orientation, then it might force their churches to reconsider their 
relationship with the World Council of Churches." 
 
     Although there had been no formal decision, Raiser said, "there was an 
emerging understanding that we have to find a way where the central 
committee can be helped at its next meeting [in 1997] to acknowledge and 
understand the issue we are debating [and] what we share as a common 
basis." 

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