wfn.org | WCC 8th Assembly Feature No. 1

[Sheila MESA <smm@wcc-coe.org>]

World Council of Churches
18 December 1997

WCC 50th Anniversary and Eighth Assembly
Feature Service No. 1 
(for publication by media in January 1998)
18 December 1997

Enclosed is the first in a series of monthly articles we shall provide in
1998 to mark the World Council of Churches' 50th anniversary, and to
prepare for the WCC Eighth Assembly to be held in Harare, Zimbabwe,
3-14 December 1998.

Each month an article will focus on one aspect of the life of the WCC and
the year's celebrations and assembly.

The first article, "Happy Birthday WCC", is by Marlin VanElderen, one of
the world's authorities on the history of the modern ecumenical
movement.  Marlin VanElderen is available for further comment and
interview.  Radio journalists please note that for interview purposes we
have an ISDN line installed in our radio studio using a CCS Codec M66I
64K.

This month's article is accompanied by a Sidebar giving details of past
WCC assemblies.

A special WCC 50th anniversary logo and/or the WCC River chart giving
this century's ecumenical highlights at a glance are available upon
request.

Use of the article must credit Marlin VanElderen as author.  Editors are
free to shorten the article if they wish but this should be acknowledged.

Photographs to accompany Marlin VanElderen's article are also available
upon request.
(Use of the photographs is free when used with the article.  Other use
will attract the usual WCC fees.)

Please send a copy of anything you publish for our records.  Thank you.

^From 1 December, E-mail recipients can download the logo and
photographs from files at
http://www.wcc-coe.org/assembly/features.html, or contact us is you
wish us to air-mail them.  The river chart is not available by E-mail. 
Please contact us if you want a copy.

Contact: John Newbury +41.22.791.6152; E-mail jwn@wcc-coe.org
or Miriam Reidy +41.22.791.6167; E-mail mr@wcc-coe.org
Fax for both: +41.22.798.1346

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Happy Birthday WCC
by Marlin VanElderen

Founded in Amsterdam on 23 August 1948 by representatives from 147
churches, the World Council of Churches turns 50 this year.

As delegates from its member churches prepare to mark this jubilee in
December at the WCC s eighth assembly in Harare, Zimbabwe, what
events and developments during the Council s first five decades have
shaped its life?

Why was the WCC formed?

The WCC s constitution describes it as "a fellowship of churches".

Over the centuries, the separate existence of these divided churches
has led to mutual suspicion, tension and sometimes even violent conflict.
Most of the time they have gone their own way, isolated from and
ignorant of each other.

The conviction grew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that this
disunity contradicts the historic Christian confession that the church is
one and diminishes the credibility of Christian witness in a divided world.

The World Council of Churches was formed to call the churches to make
visible in the world the unity of his followers for which Jesus prayed
(John 17:21).

No super-church

The WCC is not a "super-church". It has no authority over its member
churches. Rather, it provides them a space to take counsel together, to
support each other in difficult times, to join forces on common concerns
and so grow together towards unity.

The broad lines of the WCC s agenda are set by assemblies of delegates
from all member churches, which meet every seven years.

While each assembly has seen more churches represented than the
previous one   there are now 330   the more significant growth has
come in the diversity of member churches. In 1948, two-thirds of them
were headquartered in Europe and North America; today, two-thirds
come from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, the Middle East
and the Pacific.

Diversity

The Council s third assembly in New Delhi in 1961 offered two important
symbols of this increasing diversity:

  It received into membership four Orthodox churches from Eastern and
Central Europe, including the Russian Orthodox (now the largest member
church). Several Orthodox churches already belonged to the WCC;
indeed, the first official church proposal to form a body like the WCC had
come from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1920. But the
decision of these other Orthodox churches to join the WCC confirmed its
intention to be more than a Protestant fellowship and to overcome the
political divisions of the Cold War.

  New Delhi also attested to the broadening of the fellowship by
welcoming a large number of churches from the South. The increasing
presence of churches from parts of the world where Christianity is
growing most rapidly has inevitably affected the WCC s agenda.

While the largest church in the world, the Roman Catholic Church, kept its
distance from the WCC in the early years, the Second Vatican Council
(1962-65) made a clear commitment to seek unity with "separated
brothers and sisters".

In the years after the Uppsala assembly (1968), many people even
hoped the Catholic Church might become a WCC member. After long
discussions, this did not happen. But the WCC and the Catholic Church
do work closely together in many areas, especially through official
Catholic membership of the WCC s Faith and Order commission.

Most of the Council s founding churches came from the major historic
traditions of the Protestant Reformation   Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist,
Reformed and the like. But some churches from newer Christian
traditions have also joined. Among those to become members in New
Delhi were two Pentecostal churches in Chile. The first to join of several
independent churches in Africa (churches not originating in Western
missions) was the five-million-member Kimbanguist Church (Democratic
Republic of Congo), in 1969.

Keeping the vision alive

The Council has brought together the vision of three earlier movements
for church unity, which focused on (1) overcoming divisions in the
churches  missionary work, (2) examining  their doctrinal differences
(Faith and Order) and (3) working together for a just and peaceful
society (Life and Work).

Much of the early dynamism came from conferences, organizations and
informal gatherings of youth and students, whose enthusiasm for
breaking down ancient barriers was often a spur to more cautious
church leaders.

Major global meetings in these three areas have been milestones of the
WCC s first 50 years. They have been accompanied by numerous
studies drawing on the experience and wisdom of churches worldwide.

Mission

Mission conferences in Mexico City (1963), Bangkok (1973), Melbourne
(1980), San Antonio (1989) and Salvador de Bahia (1996) called
churches to overcome the idea of mission as a one-way movement from
"Christian" to "non-Christian" countries, to take up the challenges of living
in community with people of other faiths, to link their verbal proclamation
of the gospel with engagement in the struggles of communities against
oppression, poverty and hunger, to recognize and affirm the differences
in how Christians express and live out the gospel in different cultures.

Faith and Order

The best-known work of Faith and Order is its 1982 text on Baptism,
Eucharist and Ministry. The fruit of many years of discussion, it records
growing common understanding of these three central but often divisive
aspects of the Christian faith.

Life and Work

A key event in the Life and Work tradition was the Council s 1966 World
Conference on Church and Society in Geneva.

Much of its agenda was taken up by the WCC s fourth assembly in
Uppsala (1968), which responded to the revolutionary climate of the
1960s through commitments to an active   sometimes controversial  
engagement in social, economic and political issues which marked the
Council over the succeeding decades.

Of all those engagements   in development, education and health care, in
human rights, in the struggles of women, in work for disarmament and
peace   it was no doubt the Programme to Combat Racism which had the
highest profile.

Controversy

PCR s focus on legally-entrenched racism in Southern Africa proved
most controversial when it made symbolic grants to liberation movements
  including the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe, SWAPO in Namibia and the
African National Congress in South Africa   that were engaged in armed
struggle against white-minority regimes.

The controversy often overshadowed the credibility this involvement
earned the Council and its member churches among oppressed people in
many places.

Women

While the struggle against racism focused on issues of justice and
human rights, it was also part of a growing recognition of the need for
churches to be inclusive communities.

An expression of this concern has been the WCC s consistent emphasis
on the role of women in church and society (though the question of the
ordination of women continues to divide member churches).

Even before the 1948 Amsterdam assembly, the WCC commissioned an
international survey of the status of women in churches. In the 1970s
and 1980s, a further study on the Community of Women and Men in the
Church drew unprecedented local participation. And 

the Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women, which
began at Easter 1988, will climax with an international festival, also in
Harare,  just before this year's WCC assembly.

The churches in the world

Neither social action nor controversy was unknown to the Council when
the storms over PCR broke out in the 1970s and 1980s.

^From the beginning the Council has insisted on holding together the
search for the unity of the church with the quest for the renewal of
humankind. And, as a worldwide organization, it has a significant role in
international affairs.

Even before its official founding, the WCC s Geneva office was a central
point. Through it, churches divided by the war maintained contact and
aided people fleeing Nazi persecution. Just after the war, the WCC
coordinated international church involvement in European resettlement
and reconstruction. Subsequently the Council played a major role in
interchurch aid, and each year channelled millions of dollars to respond
to disasters and to support development programmes in every part of the
world.

Cold War

Much of the controversy around the Council over its first four decades
related to the Cold War. The Amsterdam assembly s critique of capitalism
and communism alike elicited negative coverage from both The Wall
Street Journal and Pravda.

A 1950 WCC statement supporting UN intervention in Korea led Chinese
member churches to withdraw from involvement in the Council until 1991.
And superpower rivalry often lay behind criticisms of the WCC s
outspoken support of the hopes and plans of the newly independent
countries from which a growing number of its member churches came.

Meanwhile, increasing participation in the WCC of church leaders from
Eastern and Central European socialist countries led to charges that the
Council was unconcerned about the persecution of "underground"
Christians in the Soviet Union. Indeed, critics accused the WCC of
supporting communism.

Many disputed the WCC s policy of relating officially to those churches in
communist countries whose leaders were allowed some freedom for
contacts and travel abroad, with the consequence that the Council s
public stance often looked unbalanced   sharply critical of the West,
silent or at best muted in criticizing the East.

Others would argue that, for all its limits, this policy gave oppressed
churches an opening to the outside that eventually helped to bring about
the collapse of totalitarian governments.

Future

The 1990s have not brought the peaceful and prosperous world many
dreamed of in the first flush of euphoria over the demolition of the Berlin
Wall. A growing number of voices now suggest the major issue for the
Council as it begins its second 50 years is the promise and peril of
globalization.

In short, what does the vision of fellowship which has been at the heart
of the WCC s search for unity over the past 50 years have to say to the
stark realities of the version of one world community fostered by today s
global economic, financial and media powers? That will be one of the
main questions on the agenda of the WCC's eighth assembly in Harare
later this year. How the world's churches answer will, to a large extent,
determine the degree to which the Council continues to provide a cutting
edge at the point where faith and life intersect.
(1,676 words)
-------------

Marlin VanElderen is Executive Editor, WCC Publications. He is author of
"Introducing the World Council of Churches", and technical editor of "The
Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement" (WCC Publications 1991), a
revised edition of which will be published in March 1998.

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Sidebar

Past WCC Assemblies

First: 1948 Amsterdam, Netherlands   "Man's Disorder and God's Design"

Second: 1954  Evanston, USA   "Christ - the Hope of the World"

Third: 1961  New Delhi, India   "Jesus Christ - the Light of the World"

Fourth: 1968  Uppsala, Sweden   "Behold, I Make All Things New"

Fifth: 1975  Nairobi, Kenya   "Jesus Christ Frees and Unites"

Sixth: 1983  Vancouver, Canada   "Jesus Christ - the Life of the World"

Seventh: 1991  Canberra, Australia   "Come, Holy Spirit - Renew the
Whole Creation"

Next WCC Assembly

Eighth: 1998  Harare, Zimbabwe   "Turn to God - Rejoice in Hope"

**********
The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches, now 330, in
more than 100 countries in all continents from virtually all Christian
traditions.  The Roman Catholic Church is not a member church but
works cooperatively with the WCC.  The highest governing body is the
Assembly, which meets approximately every seven years.  The WCC
was formally inaugurated in 1948 in Amsterdam, Netherlands.  Its staff is
headed by general secretary Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church
in Germany.

World Council of Churches
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