wfn.org | WCC Assembly Wrap-Up, Part One

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org (CAROL FOUKE)]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the 
U.S.A.

Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227
For More Information: http://www.wcc-coe.org

133NCC12/18/98     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Part Two of Two: Being Transmitted in Two Files)

"TOGETHER, UNDER THE CROSS IN AFRICA",
WCC'S EIGHTH ASSEMBLY COMES TO A CLOSE

CENTRAL COMMITTEE ELECTS OFFICERS

The newly-elected 150-member Central Committee 
includes 39.4 per cent women, 14.7 per cent youth 
(persons under 30), 24.6 per cent Orthodox and 43.3 per 
cent laypersons.  In its first meeting on Saturday 
(December 12), the Central Committee re-elected the 
Moderator, His Holiness Aram I.

The vice-moderators for the next seven years will 
be Justice Sophia O.A. Adinyira (Church of the Province 
of West Africa) and Dr. Marion S. Best (United Church 
of Canada).

The executive committee has four members from 
Africa, four from Asia, one from the Caribbean, three 
from Europe, one from Latin America, three from North 
America and one from the Pacific. It has four members 
from the Eastern Orthodox churches and two, including 
the Moderator, from the Oriental Orthodox Churches.

The nominations committee moderator, Bishop Melvin 
Talbert, expressed regret that the committee was unable 
to meet its goal to increase the number of women on the 
Central Committee, which governs the WCC between its 
seven-yearly Assemblies. This was partly because some 
churches refused to replace male nominees with female, 
he said.

WORSHIP

The African flavor of the Assembly was underlined 
by the Rev. Eunice Santana of Puerto Rico, a President 
of the WCC, in a sermon:

"How wonderful and significant to hear the words of 
Jesus here, in mother Africa, where they take on a 
unique rhythm and flavor; in mother Africa, so easily 
forgotten and ignored by the powerful when convenient, 
so unknown by so many, so exploited and stepped upon by 
others, but also so beloved by so many of us. Here, in 
this continent, in Africa, where the same Jesus 
received asylum and protection as an infant 2,000 years 
ago."

In an "Africa Day Celebration" (December 5) 
Zimbabwean churches proclaimed their welcome to 
participants with exultant singing, dancing, drumming 
and praises to God. With some dressed in white robes 
and others in dazzling African attire of every color, 
church choirs welcomed their guests in rhythmic African 
style, complete with rattles and ululations.

There was the Voices of Angels choir from 
neighboring Botswana, with its song "There Is No Sorrow 
In Heaven" setting an appropriate mood for the 
occasion. A brass band, the Christian Marching Band, 
captivated all attention, particularly with its 
acrobatics. Then there was the traditional African 
Christian group Jekenisheni, with heavy drumbeats and 
whistling, plus other groups whose presentations 
reverberated through the huge Rufaro stadium at the 
heart of Harare.  Another key feature of the Assembly 
was Sunday visits (December 6 and 13) to churches in 
the city and surrounding towns.

PADARE

More than 600 workshops, dramas, exhibits and 
discussions were offered in the five-day "Padare" (a 
Shona word meaning meeting place). The Padare offerings 
ranged widely on subjects that were not always part of 
the official agenda of the Assembly, including human 
sexuality, Orthodox-Evangelical relationships, youth 
ministries, communications, mission and faith and order 
issues and economic concerns. 

The intent of the Padare, said Dr Raiser, was to 
"serve as an indicator of the growing points, the 
problem points, the open questions, the new horizons 
that people are beginning to explore."

Some Padare offerings, including one that featured 
the president of CNN International and others that 
dealt with sexuality issues, were popular and attracted 
200 people or more. But Padare offerings were strewn 
all over the university campus, and some presenters 
complained that few people found their way to their 
events.

HEARINGS

The seven-year road from the Seventh Assembly in 
Canberra to the Eighth came under scrutiny from 
delegates (December 7). Each chose to participate in 
one of five hearings on what the WCC had achieved in 
its five main areas of work. Later in the week 
(December 10), delegates began to offer their ideas for 
emphases in the next seven years in the following 
areas: Justice and Peace, Unity, Moving Together, 
Learning, Witness and Solidarity.

ECUMENICAL DECADE OF CHURCHES IN SOLIDARITY WITH WOMEN

Violence against women is a sin and must be 
stopped. That was the apparent consensus (December 7) 
as the Assembly marked the close of the Ecumenical 
Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women. But no 
delegate at a plenary session of the Assembly was 
willing to declare the Decade an unqualified success.

 "We have started down the path toward empowering 
women to share the fullness of their gifts and toward 
enabling the Church to be enriched by those gifts," 
said the Rev. Bertrice Y. Wood (United Church of 
Christ, USA). But the realization of full empowerment 
"is still largely before us."

A letter from the Decade Festival (held Nov. 27-30 
in Harare and drawing together more than 1,000 
participants from around the world) called on the 
Assembly "to announce to all the world that violence 
against women is a sin."  One of the panelists at the 
plenary, the Rev. Deenabandhu Manchala of India, asked: 
"Does the Church wish to
remain custodian of a culture of violence or as a 
catalyst to a culture of life? We must stop seeing 
violence against women as a women's problem."

Another panelist, Metropolitan Ambrosius of Oulu 
(Orthodox Church of Finland) said the Decade had been 
"very important" for the churches.  "In many places 
women have remained invisible and ignored, in spite of 
the fact that . . . the Church should always be the 
community of women and men," he said.

In discussion during the Decade Plenary, delegate 
Anne Glynn-Mackoul of Princeton, N.J., Greek Orthodox 
Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, stood to 
affirm her overwhelming enthusiasm and support for the 
Ecumenical Decade and Festival, marred only by her 
surprise at finding a phrase about "reproductive 
rights" in the final draft of the Festival's letter to 
the Assembly.

"Drafting that continued after the Festival does 
not reflect consensus," she said.  "We are troubled 
with language added after the draft was discussed."

(Rev. Wood, in a news conference following the 
Decade Plenary, said Decade Festival participants 
entrusted the drafting committee to finish the letter 
on the basis of several hours of "open mike" during 
which the committee received additions and amendments 
orally and in writing.  " `Reproductive rights' 
includes abortion for some, less so for others," she 
said.  "That's not support for abortion, but the right 
to choose; for others, `reproductive rights' means the 
right to contraception, the right of women to engage or 
not engage in sexual relations.")

"It killed me to make that statement," Glynn-
Mackoul said afterwards.  "On all other points, we were 
unanimous.  The Decade was important for all women and 
respected the position of Orthodox women.  The Decade 
Festival itself, despite a strong presence of persons 
wanting to broaden the agenda, was wonderful and very 
universal in most of its issues."

WCC MEMBERSHIP NOW AT 339

Membership of the WCC rose to a record 339 
churches as the Assembly welcomed eight more. There are 
now 306 churches in full membership and 33 in associate 
membership. Appropriately for the Assembly's venue, six 
of the new churches are African: the United Church of 
Christ in Zimbabwe, the Harrist Church in Ivory Coast, 
the Council of African Instituted Churches, which is in 
South Africa, the Reformed Church of Christ in Nigeria, 
and the Congo's Anglican Church and Evangelical 
Lutheran Church.  The two others are Indonesian: the 
Christian Protestant Angkola Church and the Christian 
Church of Sumba.

A request for membership by the Celestial Church 
of Christ in Nigeria was delayed after delegates 
expressed concern that the church still has polygamous 
clergy. A later vote ran into a legal problem and the 
application will now be considered by the new Central 
Committee.

ELECTION OF WCC PRESIDENTS

A proposal that the college of WCC Presidents 
should be elected by the Central Committee instead of 
the Assembly was rejected. The policy reference 
committee had argued that election by the Assembly had 
proved to be "politicized and painful" in the past, and 
that giving the task to the smaller Central Committee 
after an Assembly had
dispersed would allow "a more extensive and sensitive 
consultation process."  The Assembly rejected the 
change on the grounds that not all churches are 
represented on the committee, as they are in the 
Assembly, and that any pain in the process was a price 
worth paying for openness.

The following were elected to the praesidium for 
the next seven years: Dr. Agnes Abuom, Kenya (Anglican 
Church of Kenya), the Rev. Kathryn Bannister, USA 
(United Methodist Church), Bishop Jabez Bryce, Tonga 
(Anglican Church in Aotearoa/New Zealand and 
Polynesia), His Eminence Metropolitan Chrysostomos, 
Ephesus, Turkey (Ecumenical Patriarchate of 
Constantinople), His Holiness Ignatius Zakka Iwas, 
Syria, Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the 
East, Mr Moon Kyu Kang, Korea (Presbyterian Church in 
the Republic of Korea), Bishop Federico J. Pagura, 
Argentina (Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina), 
and Bishop Eberhardt Renz, Germany (Evangelical Church 
in Germany).

PUBLIC ISSUES STATEMENTS

With the Council's 50th anniversary and the 
Biblical mandate of a jubilee forgiveness of debts in 
mind, delegates called upon member churches to work for 
"debt cancellation for severely indebted, impoverished 
countries to enable them to enter the new millennium 
with a fresh start."

Other public issue statements adopted by the 
delegates included: 

  "Globalization," which "should become a central 
emphasis in the work of the WCC" and must be 
"challenged by an alternative way of life of 
community in diversity."
  "Human Rights," which includes a call for the 
violators of rights to be brought to international 
justice and welcomes the agreement to set up the 
International Criminal Court. "No religious 
community should plead for its own religious liberty 
without active respect and reverence for the faith 
and basic human rights of others," the statement 
declared.
  "A Statement on the Status of Jerusalem," declaring 
that settling the city's status must be done by an 
international tribunal and that access to holy 
places must be secured for all faiths and 
Palestinians assured of their rights to free access, 
property, building and residency.
  A statement condemning the use of children in 
warfare. More than 300,000 children are engaged in 
armed conflicts, delegates were told.  Many have 
been lawfully recruited, others kidnapped or 
coerced.  The statement calls for an immediate 
moratorium on their recruitment, the demobilization 
of those now serving and a United Nations protocol 
raising recruitment age from 15 to 18.  It 
especially calls on African churches to press their 
governments for early ratification of the African 
Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, 
which prohibits recruits under 18.

ABOUT THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of 
churches, now 339, 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.

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