wfn.org | Kinnamon: celebrate the WCC's 60th bi

["Philip Jenks" <pjenks@ncccusa.org>]

>The World Council of Churches at 60

New York, August 19, 2008 -- Sixty years is a short time in the church  calendar, but the six decades since the founding Assembly of the World  Council of Churches (WCC) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in August 1948,  have marked incalculable changes, the General Secretary of the National  Council of Churches said today.

U.S. churches played an important role in the founding of the WCC and  continue to share its history, said the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon. "This  is an important anniversary for all of us."

Kinnamon called on member communions of the National  Council of  Churches to offer prayers of celebration for the WCC during worship  services on Sunday, August 24.

The WCC was officially voted into existence on August 23, 1948, with  delegates declaring, "We intend to stay together."

Kinnamon noted that the 20th century saw many ecumenical developments,  including the founding of the Federal Council of Churches in America in  1908. The Federal Council became the U.S. National Council of Churches  in 1950.

The ecumenical movement formed when imperial monarchs ruled much of  Europe and Asia and the peoples of the southern hemisphere were  dominated by foreign colonial powers, Kinnamon said. The movement saw  the rise and fall of Communism, and its leaders played a decisive role  in the Civil Rights movement when America was rescued from the murderous  clutches of Jim Crow.

The WCC and NCC formed an important partnership during the liberation  struggles of the 20th century, Kinnamon said,

The WCC's second general secretary was a U.S. Presbyterian, the Rev.  Eugene Carson Blake. Blake was an activist in the American Civil  Rights movement and he was instrumental in creating the WCC's Program to  Combat Racism (PCR) following the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin  Luther King, Jr., in 1968. The Rev. Dr. M. William Howard, an American  Baptist and later president of the National  Council of Churches,  chaired the PCR.

Years later, in 1998, South Africa President Nelson Mandela came to the  8th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Harare, Zimbabwe, to  declare the worldwide ecumenical movement had been instrumental in  removing the scourge of apartheid from southern Africa.

Years before the WCC was officially formed, American churches helped  keep the spirit of the WCC alive, Kinnamon said.

"The founders of the World Council of Churches thought the WCC would be  launched 10 years earlier than it was," said  Kinnamon, an ecumenical  scholar and former member of the WCC's Faith and Order staff. "In  September 1939 the churches of Europe ran for cover when their countries  went to war against one another. It took years for the dust to settle."

During the Second World War, most of the records of the "World Council  of Churches in Formation" were held in the United States for  safe-keeping, by what later became the U.S. Conference for the WCC.

"The U.S. churches have the unusual distinction of being a component  part that predates its parent body," Kinnamon said. "From the very  beginning, the U.S. churches made it clear they believed we were all  together as members of Christ's universal Church."

When delegates to the first assembly of the WCC gathered in Amsterdam in  1948, church leaders from Germany, Italy and Japan sat together with  church leaders from former belligerents England, France, Canada and the  U.S.

"It couldn't have been easy," Kinnamon said, "but they managed to put  animosities aside in the name of Christ and church unity."

Present in Amsterdam was German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoeller, who  had been imprisoned in a concentration camp as a "personal guest" of  Adolf Hitler. A founder of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church in Germany,  Niemoeller eased tensions at the opening assembly by persuading German  delegates to confess their sins of silence or complicity during the  former regime.

Influential American church leaders who reached across the aisle to  former enemies included Methodist layman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate  John R. Mott and Presbyterian layman and future U.S. Secretary of State  John Foster Dulles.

"From that time on, the U.S. churches -- most of them member communions  of the NCC -- followed the same historical paths as our international  counterparts," Kinnamon said. "Many of our Orthodox members relate to  churches with headquarters in other nations -- for example, the Armenian  Church of America relates to the Armenian Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin  in Armenia, which is a WCC member."

The president of the National Council of Churches, Archbishop Vicken  Aykazian, is diocesan legate and ecumenical officer of the Armenian  Church in America and a member of the World Council of Churches Central  Committee, Kinnamon noted.

The Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, whose sees include the Greek  Orthodox Archdiocese of America, is one of the world leaders paying  tribute to the WCC on the occasion of its 60th birthday.

"Structurally, the National Council of Churches USA and the World  Council of Churches are not related," Kinnamon said. "Spiritually, we  are inseparable in our history and our goals for the future. God has  blessed us with 60 productive years in the World Council of Churches,  and we celebrate with gratitude and hope for the future."

NCC News contact: Philip E. Jenks, 212-870-2228, NCCNews@ncccusa.org