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10-December-1997 
97465 
 
    National Council of Churches General Assembly 
    Looks to 50th Anniversary, New Millennium 
 
    compiled by Jerry L. Van Marter 
    from reports by Carol Fouke, NCC Office of News Services 
 
WASHINGTON, D.C.--Working its way through an extensive agenda, the annual 
General Assembly of the National Council of Churches (NCC) looked ahead 
during its Nov. 12-14 meeting to a celebration of its 50th anniversary in 
1999 and issues of Christian and interfaith unity as the new millennium 
approaches.  A synopsis of the Assembly follows. 
 
                  New member church admitted 
 
    On Nov. 12, NCC membership grew to 34 communions with the unanimous 
admission of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of India.  The church dates back 
to the visit of St. Thomas to India during the first century.  It has one 
million members worldwide, 30,000 of them in the United States.  The Mar 
Thoma Church is dispersed across 35 states with 26 clergy and 37 
congregations, many of them located in Episcopal churches. 
    The church's head, Bishop Zacharias Mar Theophilus, said, "We are 
liturgical, biblical, missionary and ecumenical.  Some historians call our 
church a `bridge church' in India, and now we are a bridge from India to 
the United States." 
 
          Increased religious pluralism in the U.S. addressed 
 
    The importance of interfaith relations cannot be overestimated among 
the issues facing contemporary Christians, said Diana Eck, professor of 
comparative religion and Indian studies and director of the Pluralism 
Project at Harvard University, in an address to the Assembly Nov. 12. 
    Eck, a United Methodist layperson, reminded delegates that many wars 
and conflicts of past and present have been fanned by religious 
communities.  "We need to work on the narrow and exclusivistic theologies 
that try to circle the wagons around God," she said.  "God is not ours, but 
indeed we are God's." 
 
             Greetings exchanged with Catholic bishops 
 
    Officials of the NCC and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops 
(NCCB) affirmed the importance of their relationship as they brought formal 
greetings on behalf their organizations simultaneously to each other's 
assemblies Nov. 12.  It was the first time the groups have exchanged 
greetings at their seated assemblies. 
    Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza, NCCB vice president, sounded a millennial 
theme in his greeting to the NCC: "The celebration of the Great Jubilee 
Year 2000 is a wonderful and graced opportunity for Christian churches to 
advance together on the path towards the unity Christ desires among those 
who confess to believe in him." 
    NCC president Melvin Talbert, a United Methodist bishop, told the 
Catholic bishops, "It is truly God's grace that we are all here." 
 
           Episcopal bishop installed as new president 
 
    Talbert's successor as NCC president, Episcopal bishop Craig B. 
Anderson, was installed Nov. 12 at a service at Washington National 
Cathedral.  Anderson will serve for two years. 
    Earlier in the day, former Atlanta mayor and U.S. Ambassador to the 
United Nations Andrew Young was elected president-elect of the NCC.  Young, 
a member of the United Church of Christ, will serve as president-elect in 
1998-99 and as NCC president in 2000-2001. The Rev. Elenora Giddings Ivory, 
director of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Washington Office, was elected 
vice president for national ministries.  She will serve through 1999. 
 
               NCC's 50th anniversary celebration set 
 
    NCC immediate past president the Rev. Gordon Sommers announced that the 
50th anniversary celebration of the NCC is planned for Nov. 7-12 in 
Cleveland, the site of the NCC's founding in 1950.  Sommers will chair the 
anniversary celebration committee. 
 
       Task force says relationships are key to ecumenical movement 
 
    The Assembly approved a report that calls the NCC to focus on closer 
relationships, both internally and externally. 
    The Rev. Michael Kinnamon, dean of Lexington (Ky.) Theological Seminary 
and chair of the NCC's Ecclesiology Study Task Force, said, "We could be 
sharing our joys and struggles 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 each 
other, stating, "The essence of a council of churches is not the 
relationship of the churches to the structure of the council, but their 
relationship to one another." 
 
            General secretary emphasizes sharing of gifts 
 
    Sounding a similar theme, NCC general secretary Joan Brown Campbell 
told the Assembly in her Nov. 12 address that for the ecumenical movement 
to be faithful, the different gifts of the member churches must be shared 
to build up the body of Christ. 
    "Each of our churches has gifts as well as challenges. ... These gifts 
of the Spirit given to each church are not to hold as private possessions, 
but gifts given in trust for the good of all," she said.  "These are gifts 
to contribute, not to isolate or to secure special privilege." 
    Campbell posed several questions to the Assembly: "How can each prepare 
best to receive the gifts of others?  How, together, can we be of service 
to the whole?  How can we join our gifts in such a way that we bear witness 
in the public arena to a God who loves us?" 
 
         Accounts of responses to burned churches published 
 
    Campbell presented Talbert with a copy of the book "Out of the Ashes: 
Burned Churches and the Community of Faith," which has just been published. 
    The book's editor, the Rev. Norman A. Hjelm, said the book "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." 
 
                  Service awards presented 
 
    Eight Ecumenical/Interfaith Service awards were presented Nov. 13 to 
persons who "seek the unity of people in creative, compassionate and 
sensitive ministries that build hope." 
    Awards went to Project Rebuild of the Council of Churches of Greater 
Springfield (Mass.); the Rhode Island State Council of Churches' Interfaith 
Coalition for Burned Churches; the "A Call for Racial Justice" program of 
the West Virginia Council of Churches; and the Minnesota council of 
Churches' Initiative Against Racism. 
    Other recipients are the Council of Churches of Bridgeport, Conn., 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; and the "Point Tacoma/Pierce Beautiful," a 
low-income housing rehabilitation program of Associated Ministries, Tacoma, 
Wash. 
 
                Vice President Gore brings greetings 
 
    U.S. vice president Albert Gore greeted the Assembly Nov. 14, hailing 
the NCC particularly for its work for civil rights and environmental 
protection and its stand for unity. 
    "You stand for unity, not instead of, or in spite of, diversity but 
unity inspired by appreciation for and celebration of our diversity and 
absolute mutual respect," he said. 
    "You've been especially effective on civil rights," Gore continued. 
"The churches ignited that little spark of celestial fire called conscience 
and forced America to see the issue of race as a direct and irresistible 
invitation to practice the love of God." 

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