wfn.org | NCCCUSA General Assembly Nov. 13

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org (CAROL FOUKE)]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the 
U.S.A.
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2252

NCC11/13/97

DAY TWO: NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES GENERAL 
ASSEMBLY

 WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 13 ---- Following is a 
synopsis of news from the second day of business of 
the National Council of Churches’ Nov. 12-14 annual 
General Assembly, meeting in Washington, D.C.  The 
270-member assembly is the highest governing body of 
the NCC and is made up of official delegates from 
the Councils’ 34 member communions (denominations), 
which in turn have 52 million members.

 This is long file.  Here is an index of news 
items in it:

* Assembly Welcomes Nobel Laureate, Asks Landmines 
Ban
* Assembly Urges NCC Members to More Deeply Share 
Struggles, Joys
* Visit to U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
* Fiftieth Anniversary, Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights
* Assembly Celebrates Peace Agreement in Sierra 
Leone
* "Out of the Ashes" – Rebuilding Burned Churches, 
Communities
* Seventieth Anniversary, Faith and Order Movement
* Programs that Build Unity are Honored
* NCC Plans Fiftieth Anniversary Observances for 
1999

Assembly Welcomes Nobel Laureate, Reaffirms Call for 
Ban on Landmines

 Jody Williams thanked the NCC for its work 
against anti-personnel landmines and repeated her 
call on President Clinton to sign the Ottawa Treaty 
next month.  It was her first formal public 
appearance since she was named co-winner of the 1997 
Nobel Peace Prize along with the organization she 
leads.

 The Assembly responded by unanimously renewing 
its call for a complete ban on anti-personnel 
landmines.  And, the NCC's humanitarian response 
ministry, Church World Service, announced an 
additional appeal for $200,000 for CWS mine 
awareness and demining programs.  Noted the CWS 
Executive Director, the Rev. Dr. Rodney Page, "with 
this $200,000, we will have garnered over $2 million 
for these programs."

 Ms. Williams commented, "Too often, the effort 
to ban landmines has been called 'one woman's 
campaign.'  It isn't.  I am honored to work with a 
broad coalition, including the churches' work 
through CWS."  She singled out for appreciation 
Linda Hartke, CWS Director of Operations, who was 
the CWS Country Director in Cambodia for many years.

 "Her contribution, through the demining and 
mine education program and the 'Cambodia Campaign,' 
was pivotal" to the international campaign, Ms. 
Williams said.

-more-

NCC GENERAL ASSEMBLY DAY TWO – Page 2

 In her challenge to President Clinton sign on 
to the International Landmines Ban Treaty in Ottawa 
next month, she commented, "I understand the 
President's need to confer with the Pentagon.  But 
if he hears only the voices of generals and not the 
voices of the poorest of the poor, then he has 
forgotten that as our head statesman, he needs to 
listen to all the people.

 "It is his choice," Ms. Williams said.  "He can 
either stand on the side of humanity and sign on to 
the international ban in Ottawa – which will 
probably be signed by 120 governments – or he can 
stand outside the tide of history."

Assembly Urges NCC Members to More Deeply Share 
Struggles, Joys

 Five years of study culminated in the 
presentation of a redirected understanding of the 
purpose and goals of the nation's preeminent 
ecumenical body, which one delegate called "one of 
the most important internal documents the National 
Council of Churches has considered in years."

 The Assembly accepted the final report from its 
Ecclesiology Study Task Force that, if actively 
pursued, will refocus the Council on closer 
relationships, both internally and externally.

 The task force grew, in part, out of the 
Eastern Orthodox churches' concern that other 
churches did not seem to be sufficiently invested, 
that they did not take seriously enough what 
happened within each other's fellowship," said the 
Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, the task force's chair 
and Dean of the Lexington Theological Seminary.

 "For example, right now the Presbyterian Church 
is wrestling with concerns about human sexuality, 
yet we do not talk about it in our common life 
together," he commented.  "We could be sharing these 
kinds of things and lifting them up in prayer.  Just 
as the joys of one should become the joys of 
another, so should the struggles of one become the 
struggles of another."

 The report calls for a deepened commitment of 
member churches to one another.  Dr. Kinnamon 
introduced the document by quoting from it, "The 
essence of a council of churches is not the 
relationship of the churches to the structure of the 
council, but their relationship to oneanother."

 Among the report's specific proposals: that the 
NCC invite the National Association of Evangelicals, 
the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the 
Pentecostal Conference of North America and others 
to work with NCC representatives in drafting and 
publishing a statement on "Living the Gospel in the 
U.S. in the Third Millennium."
-more-
NCC GENERAL ASSEMBLY DAY TWO – Page 3

Visit to U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

 Rev. Paul Schneider, a Protestant pastor in 
Germany.  Mother Maria, a Russian Orthodox nun.  A 
Japanese Orthodox Christian diplomat.  The NCC 
General Assembly today honored these and other 
Protestant and Orthodox Christians who were among 
those who resisted the Nazi Holocaust and rescued 
those it targetted for extermination.

 They were described and celebrated in a special 
program and tour at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial 
Museum.  

Speakers led the Assembly in taking an honest 
and sobering look at the fact that, among 
Christians, there were some who actively 
collaborated, and many were complicit in their 
silence with the large-scale abandonment of Jews and 
others to persecution and extermination.  

But there also were some who had the courage to 
rescue and resist, and, speakers said, we must 
remember them.  Said the program's moderator, John 
Roth, a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial 
Council, "Without them, it would be too much to face 
our history and ourselves.  They tear to shreds the 
excuses, the neutrality, the indifference that the 
perpetrators of destruction – in the Holocaust then, 
in other places even now – always need and count 
upon….

 "So let us remember them this afternoon and 
allow ourselves through recollection to be 
challenged in ways that can mend the world," Mr. 
Roth said.

 The General Assembly heard about:

  The Rev. Paul Schneider, a German Christian 
whose outspokenness against Nazism provoked 
the wrath of both church and state.  Arrested 
repeatedly (12 times in 1935-6 alone) and 
finally taken to Buchenwald in 1937, he 
continued to shout his protests even from his 
solitary cell, giving hope and strength to 
the other prisoners until he was murdered in 
1939.  The Rev. Schneider's son, Paul Jr., 
came to Washington, D.C., to be present for 
the program and testified to the Assembly of 
both his parents' witness against evil.  His 
mother, 93, who lives in Germany, wanted to 
come but was advised by her doctor not to 
travel.
  Mother Maria, a Russian Orthodox nun who 
refused to be cloistered.  Her house in Paris 
was a house of refuge for Jews. The house's 
director, Father Dimitri, provided baptismal 
certificates to many Jews, a document that 
meant life rather than death for many.  In 
1945, Mother Maria died at Ravensbrook, 
Father Dimitri in Buchenwald.

-more-
NCC GENERAL ASSEMBLY DAY TWO – Page 4

  A Japanese diplomat – who was an Orthodox 
Christian – who provided many visas for Jews 
out of Lithuania, and many others who stood 
in the way of the death trains, refused to 
identify Jewish neighbors to the authorities 
and otherwise resisted Nazism to the point 
that many of them also were killed.

50th Anniversary, Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights

 The NCC General Assembly today voted 
unanimously to sponsor observances of the 50th 
anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights, and called on the U.S. government to 
reaffirm its commitment to universal human rights.  

 The Assembly called on the Council’s units and 
member communions to celebrate 1998 as Universal 
Human Rights Year.  It urged the U.S. government to 
work toward ratification and implementation of 
several other human rights documents including those 
dealing with the rights of women and children.  

The action also called for strengthening the 
international judicial system to include an 
international criminal court with jurisdiction over 
crimes against humanity.  Member communions and 
individuals are urged to attend to contemporary 
threats to national, ethnic, racial and religious 
groups -- through the revival of ancient hatreds and 
the fostering of fear – with a potential for 
genocidal consequences.

Assembly Celebrates Peace Agreement in Sierra Leone

 Mr. Alimamy Koroma, General Secretary of the 
Council of Churches in Sierra Leone, and the NCC’s 
General Assembly today joined in celebrating the 
peace agreement signed Nov. 5 that promises 
restoration of his nation’s democratically elected 
government within six months.

 That government, democratically elected in 
1996, was forced into exile by a coup in May 1997.  
“The coup was condemned by the churches and other 
groups,” Mr. Koroma reported, but the coup leaders 
initially ignored this and the objections of various 
international bodies.  

Although the situation in the nation’s capital 
became so bad that government and aid agency 
personnel were withdrawn, church leaders remained to 
work for peace, he said.  In the end, the various 
pressures helped bring about a peace agreement.  

-more-

NCC GENERAL ASSEMBLY DAY TWO – Page 5

The NCC’s Church World Service and Witness Unit 
had planned to place before the General Assembly a 
resolution addressing the crisis, but withdrew it in 
light of the agreement, which also includes 
cessation of hostilities, disarmament of combatants 
and reinstatement of humanitarian assistance.  (A 
General Assembly member’s motion to reconsider the 
withdrawal of the resolution was defeated.)

 Mr. Koroma called on churches in the United 
States and around the world for support through 
advocacy and financial assistance for his country.

“Out of the Ashes” -- Rebuilding Burned Churches, 
Communities

NCC General Secretary Joan B. Campbell today 
presented the Council’s President, Bishop Melvin 
Talbert, with a just-off-the-press copy of the book 
“Out of the Ashes: Burned Churches and the Community 
of Faith.”

The book’s editor, the Rev. Norman A. Hjelm, 
said this collection of essays is “an attempt to 
tell the story of the NCC’s response to the burning 
of African American churches, and then to reflect on 
the story of what all this means in terms of our 
quest for the unity of the church.”

“Out of the Ashes” comes out of the NCC’s Faith 
and Order Commission.  Issues like racism also are 
issues of the unity of the church, said Mr. Hjelm, a 
former Commission director.  “Churches are divided 
by theology and by racism.”

“Out of the Ashes” is published by Thomas 
Nelson Publishers and includes contributions by the 
NCC’s President and General Secretary, African 
Methodist Episcopal Bishop McKinley Young, two 
African American journalists, the NCC’s Faith and 
Order Commission director and others who were 
involved in responding to the church burnings.

Dr. Campbell told the NCC General Assembly that 
the work to rebuild burned churches and to restore 
broken communities is not finished.  Since June 
1996, the NCC has raised more than $10 million to 
rebuild more than 120 burned churches; of those, 30 
have been completed and dedicated.

“There are still churches needing to be 
rebuilt,” she declared.  The effort to replace 
churches that had been burned has been a very 
important ministry of the Council, but more 
important is what it has meant to the communities, 
she said.

-more-

NCC GENERAL ASSEMBLY DAY TWO – Page 6

 Dr. Diane Porter of the Episcopal Church, who 
chaired the NCC’s Burned Churches Program Committee, 
said that in this work, she has seen the NCC at its 
very best.  She reported that the Council brought 
the pastors of burned churches together in 
Washington, D.C., in June on the first anniversary 
of their visit with the President and recently held 
a training event for young white pastors. 

Churches are still burning Dr. Porter reported, 
citing one the last week of October and another the 
first week of November.

70th Anniversary, Faith and Order Movement

 The 70th anniversary of the Faith and Order 
Movement brings with it much to celebrate, Dr. Mary 
Tanner told the NCC General Assembly today: 70 years 
of “Spirit-led conversation,” bilateral and 
multilateral agreements between and among 
communions, and new partnerships among churches.

 Christians in the United States have brought 
their particular contributions, said Dr. Tanner, 
Moderator of the World Council of Churches’ Faith 
and Order Commission.  For example, American women 
“have opened up what was a male-dominated movement.”

 But many challenges remain.  “New divisions are 
threatening the life of many churches,” she warned.  
Yet to be realized is a renewed determination to be 
“ever more inclusive” and a facing up to the 
“seemingly intractable differences” that separate 
the churches.

Also needed: the persistence to forge 
theological insights into agreements.  “Convergence 
in faith must be received in convergence in life,” 
Dr. Tanner said.

The first World Conference on Faith and Order 
was held in 1927 in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Programs that Build Unity are Honored

 Eight Ecumenical/Interfaith Service awards were 
presented today to persons who “seek the unity of 
people in creative, compassionate and sensitive 
ministries that build hope.”

 Said Barbara George, Director of the NCC’s 
Ecumenical Networks Commission, said, “We recognize 
these efforts with the certain knowing that others 
will be inspired to adapt the models in communities 
across this nation.”

-more-

NCC GENERAL ASSEMBLY DAY TWO – Page 7

 This year, four awards were given in honor of 
the Rev. Dr. Mac Charles Jones, NCC Deputy General 
Secretary for Racial Justice who died in March of 
this year.

 Those awards went to: Project Rebuild of the 
Council of Churches of Greater Springfield (Mass); 
The Rhode Island State Council of Churches’ 
Interfaith Coalition/Burned Churches; A Call for 
Racial Justice by the West Virginia Council of 
Churches, and the Minnesota Council of Churches’ 
Minnesota Churches Initiative Against Racism.

 This year’s other recipients are: The Council 
of Churches of Greater Bridgeport (Ct.) for its 
Project on Aging; All Congregations Together, a 
partnership of 18 San Diego, Calif., churches with 
local social services; The Greater Lawrence (Mass.) 
Vacation Bible School; Point Tacoma/Pierce 
Beautiful, a low-income housing rehab program of 
Associated Ministries, Tacoma, Wash.

NCC Plans 50th Anniversary Observances for 1999

 "The 50th anniversary of the NCC marks a 
significant ecumenical moment in the life of the 
institution, the member communions and indeed the 
entire Christian community in this nation," said the 
Rev. Dr. Gordon Sommers, immediate past president of 
the NCC, who will chair the Anniversary Celebration 
Committee now in formation.

 The celebration is planned for Nov. 7-12, 1999, 
in Cleveland, Ohio, the site of the NCC's founding 
in 1950.

 Dr. Sommers initiated discussions with heads of 
NCC-member communions at a breakfast meeting Nov. 
12, during this year's General Assembly.  Those 
present requested anniversary preparation resources 
for use at national meetings of member communions in 
1998 and 1999.

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