wfn.org | Russian Official Tells WCC it Must Reform to Retain Members

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8-December-1998 
 
 
    Russian Official Tells WCC it Must Reform to 
    Retain Its Orthodox Members 
 
    by Stephen Brown 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
Harare, Zimbabwe- The World Council of Churches (WCC) assembly - which is 
meeting in Harare - has been warned by a representative of the Russian 
Orthodox Church that unless there are radical reforms of the WCC, more 
Orthodox churches will quit the organisation. 
 
    Dr. Hilarion Alfeyev, leader of the Russian Orthodox delegation to the 
WCC assembly, told delegates during a debate yesterday 6 December about the 
future direction of the WCC, that "two Orthodox churches have already left 
the WCC [and] some other Orthodox churches have decided to send reduced 
delegations to Harare". 
 
    "If the structure of the WCC is not radically changed, other Orthodox 
churches will also leave the WCC," Dr Alfeyev said. He denied that his 
remarks were "a threat or blackmail", but rather "an outcry of pain" and 
stressed that the Russian Orthodox Church - which is the WCC's biggest 
member church - did not want to leave the WCC but preferred to "continue 
our journey together". 
 
    "We want the WCC to be radically reformed so it becomes a true home for 
Orthodox in the 21st century," Dr Alfayev said, during a debate on a 
document entitled "Towards a Common 
Understanding and Vision of the WCC (CUV)". 
 
    The CUV document is intended to focus and give direction to the work of 
the WCC in the years ahead. It has also provided the basis for a major 
restructuring at the WCC's headquarters in Geneva. However, many Orthodox 
church representatives have said they would like to see more thoroughgoing 
reforms, to transform the WCC so that it becomes representative of the main 
church "families" rather than of individual churches as it is at present. 
 
    Last year the Georgian Orthodox Church announced its withdrawal from 
the WCC, blaming  the WCC's "failure to take interests of Orthodox churches 
fully into account" Since then the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has also 
announced that it will leave the WCC, although the WCC has yet to receive 
official notification. There has also been strong pressure within a number 
of other Orthodox churches, including the Serbian and the Russian churches, 
to quit the WCC, most of whose 339 member churches come from Anglican and 
Protestant traditions. 
 
    The issue of Orthodox participation in the WCC has emerged as a major 
issue in the WCC's assembly, which opened in Zimbabwe's capital on 3 
December. In a written message sent to the assembly, Bartholomeos I, the 
Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, who holds the position of "first 
among equals" among Orthodox leaders, warned that since the WCC's last 
assembly, held in 1991 in Canberra, "a series of liberal, theological and 
moral positions [had been] adopted and brought into the life of the council 
by a variety of member churches, mainly of the Northern hemisphere". 
 
    In his speech, Dr Alfeyev, who is an official of the Department for 
External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian 
Orthodox Church, warned that Orthodox churches and churches of Protestant 
tradition were "developing in the opposite direction". 
 
     Orthodox churches were maintaining "traditional Christian values", he 
said, whereas many Protestant churches were "adopting Western liberal 
values and throwing out traditional Christian values, one after the other". 
 
    Dr Alafeyev's speech to the eighth assembly was the first by a 
representative of the Russian Orthodox Church. Discontent with WCC policies 
has been growing in the Russian church in recent years, particularly in 
past months. The Russian church drastically cut the size of its assembly 
delegation which, unusually, includes no senior church leaders. 
 
    "The Orthodox cannot affect the agenda of the WCC because they are a 
minority," Dr Alfeyev said. "What about the veneration of the Virgin Mary, 
the veneration of icons and the veneration of the saints? These [Orthodox 
practices] cannot be discussed because they are divisive. But what about 
inclusive language and the ordination of women?" he said, referring to 
subjects that are frequently mentioned by liberal Protestants. "Are these 
not divisive?" 
 
    Among other Orthodox speakers during the debate,  Leonid Kishkovsky, of 
the Orthodox Church in America (which is linked to the Russian  Orthodox 
Church), said that the WCC had been formed primarily to deal with questions 
linked to the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. 
 
    "The churches of the East were not and are not part of this story. The 
Reformation is not our story," Kishkovsky said. "Its theological debates 
and presuppositions are not our theological debates and presuppositions." 
 
    But the assembly gathering was also electrified by a staunch defence of 
ecumenism by Rose Hudson-Wilkin, a priest of the Church of England, who 
said that the debate was "really about power" being "wrapped up in 
theological and ecclesiological language". 
 
    Referring to Kishkovsky's remarks, she said that at the Decade Festival 
of the Ecumenical Decade of  Churches in Solidarity with Women, which 
preceded the assembly, "we said just the opposite: Your story is my story. 
 
    "If we're going to listen to each other, we cannot do it from a 
distance. That means walking side by side with me, even if you are 
uncomfortable." 

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