wfn.org | WCC - In the name of its member churches: WCC faces

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

social and ethical issues  (Special Commission, part 2)

World Council of Churches
Feature, Feat-02-04
For Immediate Use
16 May 2002

In the name of its member churches: the WCC faces social and
ethical issues  
The Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC is
preparing its final report (part 2)

cf. WCC Press Feature, Feat-02-03, of 15 May 2002

"The Commission affirmed the function of the WCC as a necessary
instrument in facing social and ethical issues. Taking seriously
that such issues arise out of the life of the churches, and that,
at the churches' request, the WCC speaks on their behalf rather
than in their place, the Commission affirmed that consensus
methodology in WCC governing bodies would address many of the
concerns raised on social and ethical issues" said the final
press release from the plenary meeting of the Special Commission
on Orthodox Participation in the World Council of Churches (WCC),
held in November 2001 in Berekfurdo, Hungary.  

In this brief paragraph, the Special Commission makes two
points. It affirms the prophetic role of the WCC; at the same
time, it identifies the consensus method as the appropriate
instrument for decision-making on social and ethical issues. This
implies that consensus methodology and prophetic witness go
hand-in-hand.  

Part 1 of this feature series was about the Special Commission's
work on the consensus method. The two contributions below deal
with the prophetic role of the WCC.  

Janice Love of the Methodist Church in the United States
describes her childhood and youth in a family in Alabama working
actively against racial oppression, and isolated in its local
community because of its anti-racist stance. In her article,
entitled "To speak truth to power", Love also tells of the
world-wide embrace of Christian solidarity which her family
experienced through the ecumenical movement: "We felt surrounded
and upheld by the prayers, statements, activism, resources, and
encouragement of those in the wider denomination and in
ecumenical bodies who understood racial justice to be at the
heart of the gospel... Their accompaniment in our little struggle
in our little 
place strengthened our resolve, gave us courage, and helped us
to overcome the loneliness of the isolation immediately
surrounding us." Love's article constitutes a plea for the
prophetic role of the WCC.  

In this plea she is joined by Father Georges Tsetsis of the
Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate who points out the inner
coherence of "right belief" with "right action" and the deep
Orthodox conviction "that faith must be expressed in our daily
life and in all aspects of society as 'orthopraxia', as a 'right
action' that aims at the transformation of our faith and our
Christian hope into practical actions of solidarity with those in
spiritual or material need."  

---------------------

To speak truth to power
The prophetic role of the ecumenical movement
Janice Love

The agenda of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation
in the World Council of Churches (WCC) includes an examination of
the prophetic role of the church and the ecumenical movement. 
For many Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike, the mandate to speak
truth to power, the essence of the prophetic role, lies at the
heart of who we understand ourselves as Christians and our
churches to be.  Moreover, many involved in the ecumenical
movement take this matter very personally, as do I.  

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) burned a cross in front of the parsonage
where my family lived in southern Alabama in 1959.  I was six
years old, and the sight and shock of this incident made quite a
deep impression on me.  My father along with a small group of
pastors had become active in civil rights work.  Most served in
small rural congregations, and they all suffered similar
co-ordinated KKK attacks.  Having acted in faithfulness to the
Gospel as they understood it, these men and their families knew
that their work would be controversial in the context of
entrenched racial oppression in the deep south.  Nonetheless, the
sharp reactions that their fairly small efforts provoked startled
many.  The pastors' activism had been encouraged by one of the
church leaders, yet the church hierarchy in Alabama rejected such
engagement, and punished members of the group for being so bold. 
Consequently, throughout my childhood and into my adult years,
our family and the others who continued their witness for racial
justice frequently moved from parish to parish, often branded as
"difficult" by the hierarchy and as misfits in our local
communities.   

Meanwhile, in the 1950s, the National Council of Churches in the
USA began its own important and controversial work to promote
civil rights in the country, particularly in the south.  The
larger Methodist Church in the US, having entrenched racial
subjugation within its own structures in earlier decades, began
to work in the 1960s toward eliminating its segregated
administrative apparatus, the goal of which was only finally
formally accomplished in 1972.  Then as a teenager in 1970, I
learned of a yet another organization of Christian churches that
boldly proclaimed racial injustice to be against the will of God,
backing up its proclamations with deliberately provocative grants
of aid to groups of the racially oppressed.  This, of course, was
the World Council of Churches and its Programme to Combat Racism.
 All of these efforts took place in the context of the wider
struggles undertaken by movements for social change in the United
States and abroad, and affected our family deeply.  

The gospel: a powerful, liberating news to those who suffer
violence and oppression

Therefore, in my most formative years, I knew that, out of the
depths of our faith, my family stood for a wonderful and joyful
truth about the fullness of life in Christ that those most
immediately around us rejected.  Our isolation within some parts
of Methodism and in the communities where we lived, however,
stood in sharp contrast to the warm but distant embrace of those
whom we knew to be our Christian companions in this struggle.  We
felt surrounded and upheld by the prayers, statements, activism,
resources, and encouragement of those in the wider denomination
and in ecumenical bodies who understood racial justice to be at
the heart of the gospel.  For me, being one of their number
constituted a high honour.  Their accompaniment in our little
struggle in our little place strengthened our resolve, gave us
courage, and helped us to overcome the loneliness of the
isolation immediately surrounding us.   

Although characterized by a particular context, my experience
represents one of tens of thousands of similar stories where
Christians face a deeply compromised and divided church and
hostile social circumstances.  They need the solidarity of other
faithful people who understand the gospel to be powerful,
liberating news to those who suffer poverty, oppression, violence
or hatred.  Furthermore, those on the outside need, as a matter
of their own integrity, to hold themselves accountable to a basic
standard articulated in the New Testament: when one suffers, we
all suffer.  

The social and ethical issues that face churches and the
ecumenical movement now seem at times to be much more complex
than those of the civil rights movement and other social justice
causes of years past.  I believe, however, that this perspective
dangerously romanticizes and distorts the tough realities of the
history many of us experienced.  Furthermore, we sometimes
conveniently forget how deep the divisions among Christians were
at the time.  For those who made the choice then to play a
prophetic role, the answers were not always obvious, the way
forward was not always clear, and the burdens were not always
bearable.  Nonetheless, as best they knew how, Christians waded
into the controversies praying that they might "find a way out of
no way," as many African Americans put it.    

We face the same fundamental challenge today of the need to do
our best in speaking truth to power and in witnessing
prophetically in situations permeated by death and destruction. 
Even when offered in the most loving and joyful way possible,
obedience has always been and will always be costly.  Christ
promised nothing less.  

Placing the matter of the prophetic role of the church and the
ecumenical movement on the agenda of the Special Commission
offers an opportunity for examining the different approaches, if
any, that Orthodox, Anglicans, Old Catholics, Protestants,
Quakers and other Christian traditions take in speaking truth to
power.   

In addition, the Commission can add it insights into how
ecumenical mechanisms can be strengthened for supporting
Christians and churches that want to proclaim the gospel's good
news of justice, peace and love in situations of death,
destruction and despair.   

What we do together is much more powerful than what we do alone,
a lesson I learned as a child in Alabama.  
____________________
The author, Dr Janice Love, teaches religion and international
studies at the University of South Carolina in the USA.  She is a
member of the Special Commission and the moderator of the Decade
to Overcome Violence reference group.  Janice Love  is a member
of the United Methodist Church in the USA and served on the WCC
Central Committee 1975-1998.  
-----------------------

The prophetic voice of the World Council of Churches -
an Orthodox perspective
Georges Tsetsis

The prophetic role and voice of the WCC was one of the major
issues debated at the third plenary session of the Special
Commission on Orthodox Participation in the World Council of
Churches (WCC), in Berekfurdo, Hungary, 15-20 November 2001. In
response to a question as to whether the WCC is entrusted with
such a role or not, the Commission stated clearly that whenever
the WCC, inspired by the word of God, truthfully describes and
reacts to situations affecting the world, it indeed speaks and
acts in a "prophetic" way.  

To speak with a prophetic voice on ethical, moral or
socio-political issues that jeopardize the dignity and even the
very life of human beings, created in the image and likeness of
God, is a Christian duty stemming from the Holy Scripture. As St
Paul says, "Those who prophesy speak to other people for their
up-building and encouragement and consolation" (1 Corinthians
14:3). It was on the basis of this biblical affirmation that the
Special Commission pointed out that prophecy is not merely a
matter of rebuking, but also of building up, of encouraging and
of comforting.  

Since its foundation in 1948, the WCC, while trying to promote
Christian unity through theological research and dialogue, has
also been concerned with the destiny of humankind. It raised its
prophetic voice whenever dehumanizing attitudes and policies
threatened the human community. Issues related to poverty, human
rights, racism, development, peace and justice that, in the
1960's and 70's, became (sometimes controversial) programmatic
highlights were already on the agenda of the WCC's inaugural
assembly in Amsterdam. And churches engaged in the WCC and in the
ecumenical movement in general frequently committed themselves to
combat whatever oppresses, enslaves and distorts the "image of
God" - the men and women who inhabit the oikoumene.  

To talk about the prophetic voice or action of the WCC, as the
Special Commission did last November, is nothing new for the
Orthodox. Already in a 1973 declaration issued on the occasion of
the WCC's 25th anniversary, the Ecumenical Patriarchate
explicitly highlighted the prophetic role played by the WCC in
meeting the manifold needs of humankind. The declaration further
encouraged this "privileged instrument" of the churches - engaged
not only in theological dialogue but also in mutual solidarity
with one another - to persist in its efforts towards a broader
encounter with suffering human beings so that, "by visible and
invisible means, through words and deeds, through decisions and
actions, wherever and whenever fitting, it may proclaim Christ". 

Right belief - right action

Such encouragement from the First See of world Orthodoxy was not
a surprise. After all, the very term "Orthodoxia", namely "right
belief", is intimately linked with the notion of "orthopraxia",
that is to say "right action". The exhortation was quite natural
since the notion that faith must be expressed in daily life and
in all aspects of society as "orthopraxia" - as a "right action"
that aims at the transformation of our faith and our Christian
hope into practical actions of solidarity with those in spiritual
or material need - is a firm Orthodox belief.  

It goes without saying that, when we refer to "prophetic voices
and actions" in the context of our cooperation within the WCC, we
mean primarily the multitude of challenging initiatives that try
to sensitize us on moral, ethical, social, economic and other
related issues that closely affect people's lives and eventually
find their way onto the WCC agenda for reflection and appropriate
action.  

One thing, however, needs to be clarified in order to avoid
misunderstandings, to be both in conformity with the churches'
new understanding and vision of the WCC, and in line with the
WCC's reformulated Constitution. Namely, that this "prophetic
voice" by no means belongs to the "institution" itself but to the
fellowship which constitutes the institution. That is to say, to
the churches, committed to seek within the WCC a "koinonia" in
faith and life, witness and service, in order to fulfil their
common calling and advance towards their unity.  
____________________
The author, Rev. Father Georges Tsetsis, served on the Special
Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC until the end of
2001. Father Tsetsis was the permanent representative of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate to the WCC from 1985-99. He had
previously served as the Middle East secretary in the WCC
Commission on Inter-Church Aid and Refugee Service (CICARWS), and
later as its deputy director.  

Photos to accompany the Feature are to be found on the WCC web
site:
http://www.photooikoumene.org/bio/misc/index.html 

For further information, please contact Karin Achtelstetter,
Media Relations Officer
Tel:  (+41.22) 791.61.53, Mobile:  (+41) 79.284.52.12

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now 342, 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, The Netherlands. Its staff is headed by general
secretary Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church in Germany.

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