wfn.org | World's Reformed churches celebrate 125-year alliance

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Note #6133 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

27-July-2000
00270

World's Reformed churches celebrate 125-year alliance

by Anto Akkara
Ecumenical News International

BANGALORE, India -- The world's leading Reformed church organization -- the
World Alliance of Reformed Churches -- celebrated its 125th anniversary on
July 21 at St Mark's
Cathedral in Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
	Five delegates -- representing Africa, America, Asia, Australia and Europe
-- lit a ceremonial lamp at the start of the service at the Church of South
India (CSI) cathedral.
	Among those present were 70 delegates, staff and visitors from the World
Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), which represents more than 200
Presbyterian, Reformed, United and Congregational churches around the world.
	"This is a proud moment for the Church of South India to celebrate this
great moment in the history of Reformed churches," said Bishop Vasanthkumar
Suputhrappa, of the CSI, which is hosting the 125th anniversary celebrations
and the annual meeting of WARC's executive committee.
	Bishop Vasanthkumar said that the three-million-member CSI shared the
"multicultural and ethnic base" of WARC (of which it is a member) as the CSI
itself was formed in 1947 by a union of southern India's Methodist,
Anglican, Presbyterian and Congregational churches.
	The service was intended to stress the diversity of both WARC and the CSI.
The Indian church uses six languages, which were in evidence in the liturgy
of the thanksgiving service.
	 The Rev. Setri Nyomi, WARC's general secretary, reminded the congregation
of the alliance's growth "from its humble beginnings" to its present stature
with 215 member churches and 75 million people in 108 countries.
	WARC traces its origins to July 21, 1875, when churches from many countries
holding the Presbyterian system of church rule formed an alliance in London
with the following goal: "The time seems to have come when churches may more
fully manifest their essential oneness and have closer communion with one
another, and promote great causes by joint action."
	Other churches in the Reformed tradition later joined the alliance, and in
1970, in Nairobi, Kenya, WARC was established in its present form.
	Presbyterians from 21 Western nations had been present at the 1875 meeting,
Dr Nyomi said. But 125 years later more than two-thirds of WARC's member
churches were in countries "of the South," he said pointing to the
"diversity and reach" of the alliance of churches in the Reformed and
Congregational traditions.
	In WARC's recent history, the most notable feature, according to past
president Jane Dempsey Douglass of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), was
"the shift of focus" to the South in the 1980s.
	Douglass told ENI that a milestone in this shift of focus was the strong
stand WARC took against apartheid during its general council in Ottawa in
1982. That general council, she said, had declared theological support for
apartheid a "heresy," and had elected Allan Boesak, a South African
clergyman and leader of the struggle against apartheid, as president of
WARC. (Boesak is now serving a prison term in South Africa for theft and
fraud.)
	Two white churches in South Africa had been expelled from WARC for
supporting apartheid as a result of "this awakening" by the general council,
Douglass added.
	Choan-Seng Song, WARC's president, told the congregation that the fact that
WARC's inaugural meeting "took place in Africa, and not in Europe or
America" was a sign of the organization's willingness to break "geographical
barriers" and identify with the Third World.
	One proof of this was the condemnation, by WARC's 1997 general council, of
world-wide economic injustice and ecological destruction.

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