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Review Throws Basic Principles of WCC Into Question


From PCUSA.NEWS@ecunet.org
Date 08 Nov 1996 12:49:24

17-October-1996 
 
 
96379  Review Throws Basic Principles of WCC Into Question 
 
                         by Stephen Brown 
                  Ecumenical News International 
 
GENEVA--Some of the basic structural principles and even the future 
identity of the World Council of Churches are being questioned as the 
organization reviews its vision and structure in the lead-up to its 50th 
anniversary in 1998. 
 
     The World Council of Churches (WCC), which now has 332 member 
churches, is facing major financial problems, which are giving an added 
urgency to the review process. 
 
     The review will result in a new "common understanding and vision" 
(CUV) for the WCC, which could be adopted at its eighth assembly in Harare 
in 1998. The process is intended to result in a renewed vision for the life 
and work of the WCC into the 21st century. 
 
     One of the most sensitive issues to be raised in CUV discussions is 
the "quota" system, which attempts to ensure a balance in WCC committees 
and structures between clergy and laypeople, women and men, and that youth 
and people from different regions of the world are represented. 
 
     Peter Lodberg of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark told a 
meeting about CUV in Geneva on Sept. 15 that the quotas were "breaking our 
system." He suggested it might be better to "stress the importance of 
competence, and not if people are old or young, bishop or lay." 
 
     Janice Love from the United Methodist Church, U.S.A., told the meeting 
-- held during a 10-day gathering of the WCC's Central Committee -- that 
she disagreed "wholeheartedly" with Lodberg. "In the 1960s, the widening 
participation of Africa and Asia and Latin America and the youth movements 
saved the life of the Council as a renewal movement," she said. "The 
participation of women in the 1980s saved the movement to make it relevant 
for its time." 
 
     Barbara Bazett of the Canadian Society of Friends (Quakers) described 
quotas as "essential." "We have not reached the point where we can do 
without them and still be representative," she said.  "Look at the 
disciples -- they were not all that competent."  
 
     Mac Charles Jones of the National Baptist Convention of America said 
that he did not believe "you have to trade competence and balances."  There 
were "competent people all over the world," he added, warning that cutting 
down structures "usually means that those who are the poorest and most 
marginalized are the ones who get cut out." He called for "processes to 
allow more inclusiveness." 
 
     On the more general question of the future of the WCC, Wesley 
Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, 
told the meeting that the WCC was "hopelessly enmeshed in meetings of 
governing structures " with people "continually coming together to make 
decisions which are neither clear nor well implemented."  
 
     Granberg-Michaelson said he supported the idea of a meeting of church 
leaders, "but not to make decisions."  
 
     "If we come together just to do business, it will kill the vision," he 
said. 
 
     Granberg-Michaelson, who is also a former WCC staff member, pointed 
out that neither the Roman Catholic Church nor many of the fast-growing, 
independent pentecostal and evangelical churches were members of the WCC. 
 
     A primary purpose of the WCC in the future should be to "deepen" the 
fellowship between different Christian traditions, including those that are 
not part of the WCC, he said. 
 
     "Broadening -- and even giving up the identity of the WCC for the sake 
of that unity -- should be the purpose," he said. He also suggested that 
the WCC's headquarters in Geneva (with a current staff of more than 250) 
might in future have a "flexible staff far smaller in number," with 
"perhaps 50 in Geneva."    
 
     Peter Lodberg also called for a "coherent system of cooperation" 
between the WCC and national and regional councils of churches around the 
world, and other Christian world bodies, a plea echoed by Heinz Ruegger of 
the Swiss Protestant Church Federation and by other Central Committee 
members. 
 
     Cristina Bosenberg of the Evangelical Church of the River Plate in 
Argentina questioned the trends in CUV discussion as a whole. Speaking 
after a meeting of Latin American members of the Central Committee, she 
said that the WCC might be "adopting ideologies uncritically" and 
questioned whether the proposed changes to the WCC were coming from 
"powerful churches and their funding agencies." 
 
     The WCC should not react rashly and uncritically, she said. 

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