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Churches 
7-December-1998 
 
    WCC Assembly to Consider Creation of Forum for All Christian Churches 
 
    by Jerry Van Marter 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
Harare, Zimbabwe--Dr Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council 
of Churches (WCC) yesterday, 4 December, has challenged the organisation's 
eighth assembly to consider the establishment of a "Forum of Christian 
Churches and Ecumenical Organisations". 
 
    The proposed forum could potentially include a large number of churches 
and organisations that are not members of  the WCC, including the Roman 
Catholic Church and Pentecostal churches. 
 
    In his formal report to the assembly, Dr Raiser said the proposal for 
the forum recognised "the particular responsibility of the WCC to 
strengthen the one ecumenical movement". 
 
    Dr Raiser, a German Protestant theologian and expert on ecumenism,  has 
floated the forum proposal several times over the past two years, but now 
the idea is taking official form. The assembly, which is held every seven 
years and is the WCC's highest decision-making body, will be asked first to 
approve a proposed constitutional amendment expanding the WCC's purposes 
and functions to ecumenical relationships beyond council member churches 
and then to consider the proposal for creation of the forum. 
 
    The establishment of the forum would be the most recent in a series of 
steps the WCC has taken in recent years to respond to rapid changes in 
inter-church and inter-faith relations. 
 
    These changes in the ecumenical world, Dr Raiser said, "oblige us to 
return to the question whether membership as an institutional arrangement 
 ... is in fact the only - or even the most appropriate - form of expressing 
participation in the ecumenical movement". 
 
    Insisting that the WCC would be just one partner among equals in such a 
forum, Dr Raiser said: "Its purpose would be to create the space where a 
genuine exchange about the challenges facing the ecumenical movement can 
take place, and where forms of cooperation can be worked out." 
 
    He referred repeatedly in his address to "opening up ecumenical space." 
Citing "Living in Spaces with Open Doors" - a report from a 1995 
consultation, he said the WCC must explore models "which enable people to 
live in open spaces, accept diversity, broaden horizons and keep hope 
alive". 
 
    Quoting US Presbyterian theologian Lewis Mudge, Dr Raiser said: "The 
churches exist to hold open a social space in which society's existing 
structures can be seen for what they are, and in which human community can 
be articulated in a new way..." 
 
    Such opportunities were crucial today, Dr Raiser said, as 
"globalisation" - which he described as "the dramatically increased 
interdependence of all parts of the world, particularly in the fields of 
economy, finance and communication" - created greater opportunities, but 
also greater disparities of wealth throughout the world. 
 
    A primary example of such pressures was the host country of Zimbabwe 
where, Dr Raiser said, the average annual income was just over US$600 a 
year, but annual national debt payments to overseas creditors totaled more 
than US$600 million.  Unemployment was 50 per cent, and more than 700 
people died in Zimbabwe each week as a result of Aids. 
 
    The challenge for churches and the ecumenical movement to respond to 
such human tragedy, placed them at "a crossroads", Dr Raiser said.  "We 
cannot", he concluded, "after celebrating this jubilee and affirming again 
that we intend to stay together, simply return home and continue with 
ecumenical business as usual." 

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