wfn.org | Edinburgh 2010 concludes with a commitment to witness

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

Meeting in stately Edinburgh, the place of its birth,
the ecumenical movement affirms its common witness

Edinburgh, Scotland, June 7, 2010 -- A century ago, Christians of many  
traditions and nationalities gathered in Scotland's capital under the  theme of 
"evangelizing the world in this generation." 

The historic gathering is widely regarded as the birth of the worldwide  
ecumenical movement, and last week more than 300 delegates and 100 other  
participants gathered in Edinburgh to celebrate this marker on the road  to 
church unity and to imagine the future. The theme of the current  gathering is, 
"Witnessing to Christ Today."  

This November 9-11 in the U.S., the discussions of what it means to be  
ecumenical in the 21st century will continue at an ecumenical gathering  that 
is part of the General Assembly of the National Council of Churches  and Church 
World Service in New Orleans. 

The Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the National Council  of 
Churches USA, and Dr. Antonios Kireopoulos, NCC associate general  secretary, 
Faith & Order and Interfaith Relations, are attending the  Edinburgh gathering 
this week. 
 
Kinnamon chaired the session three plenary, "Toward a Common Call,  Kireopoulos 
addressed the second plenary session on the topic of  "Mission Worldwide."  
At welcoming ceremonies for Edinburgh 2010, Christian songs and hymns  from 
around the globe mingled with the native skirl of bagpipes.  
The Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of  
Churches, welcomed delegates with an affirmation that "mission and  unity 
belong together. To be one in Christ is to witness together to  Christ."  

Discipleship, Tveit said, demands the proclamation of Christ crucified  and 
risen for human salvation: "This means that if there is to be a  witness to 
Christ, there must be a mission movement of the cross. This  means that if 
there is a will to be one in Christ, there must be an  ecumenical movement of 
the cross. Nobody needs triumphalistic  movements."

Acknowledging and celebrating the diversity of his audience, Tveit  continued: 
"It is important to keep a healthy dialectic and creative  tension between the 
many dimensions of our calling. To witness to Christ  is both evangelism and 
the prophetic stand for Christ's will for  justice, peace and care of creation."

The keynote speaker was Professor Dana L. Robert, co-director of the  centre 
for global Christianity and mission at Boston University School  of Theology. 
She spoke on the topic "Mission and Unity in the 'Long  View' from 1910 to the 
21st Century."

"We must not allow difficult theological, socio-cultural and political  issues, 
or disagreements over theologies of religion, to discourage us  from sharing 
God's love and salvation through Jesus Christ with all the  world," Robert said.

Within the lifetime of some members of her audience, she observed,  
"Christianity has undergone one of the biggest changes in its two  thousand 
year history. It is now a multi-cultural faith, with believers  drawn from 
every inhabited continent." It has begun to reflect the  vision of Revelation 
7:9 in which the faithful constitute "a great  multitude" of believers "from 
all tribes and peoples and language."

She continued: "Participants in the World Missionary Conference a  century ago 
attempted to evangelize the world in their own generation.  We who are alive in 
2010 must bear witness to our own generation."
  
In contrast to the diversity of delegates today, participation in the  1910 
event was overwhelmed by the percentage of white, Protestant men  from Europe 
and North America. Among more than 1,200 delegates then,  only one was a black 
African and an estimated nineteen were Asian. Even  so, there was a vision for 
a different future. 
 
In the words of V.S. Azariah of India, a future bishop who was still a  young 
man in 1910, "The exceeding riches of the glory of Christ can be  fully 
realized not by the Englishman, the American and the Continental  alone, nor by 
the Japanese, the Chinese and the Indians by themselves --  but by all working 
together, worshipping together and learning together  the perfect image of our 
Lord and Christ."
  
Edinburgh 1910 raised another issue that has informed the churches'  journey 
over the past 100 years, an issue that Robert calls the  challenge of 
"diversity within unity." A report asked the question, "How  is it possible to 
attain that unity for which our Lord prayed and yet to  leave free play for the 
diversity which alone will give to the unity  comprehension and life?"

Robert described this issue as central to the interplay between unity  and 
mission in 20th-century theology. In 1963, discussion on this point  led to a 
World Council of Churches statement: "We therefore affirm that  this missionary 
movement now involves Christians in all six continents  and in all lands. It 
must be the common witness of the whole church,  bringing the whole gospel to 
the whole world."

For Robert, this "marked the symbolic beginning of a postcolonial  framework 
for mission -- its liberation from captivity to western  Christianity."

Evangelical mission theologians in the Lausanne Movement, too, have  endorsed 
the formulation of "the whole church taking the whole gospel to  the whole 
world."
  
Robert sees the churches today engaging in a global conversation, with  an 
assumption of common witness deeply embedded in Christian  consciousness. It is 
widely understood that proclamation and justice go  hand in hand, that ministry 
to the "whole world" includes a concern for  the preservation of God's 
creation, that economic and technological  globalization poses new 
responsibilities and that rapid change in the  world sets Christians to 
periodically re-conceptualizing the methods of  their participation in the 
mission to which the Triune God calls them. 
 
She concluded: "Even as we ask, 'How long, O Lord, how long?', united in  
praise, we confidently embrace God's mission."                           

Since its founding in 1950, the National Council of the Churches of  Christ in 
the USA has been the leading force for ecumenical cooperation  among Christians 
in the United States. The NCC's member faith groups -  from a wide spectrum of 
Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical,  historic African American and 
Living Peace churches - include 45 million  persons in more than 100,000 local 
congregations in communities across  the nation.
 
NCC News contact:  Philip E. Jenks, 212-870-2228 (office),  646-853-4212 
(cell), pjenks@ncccusa.org