Religion: The Russians Join the World Council

It was as if the U.N. unanimously took in Communist China and all the new African and Asian nations in a single morning session. For the World Council of Churches is roughly an ecclesiastical equivalent of the United Nations, and last week at New Delhi, in the early hours of its third Assembly, the World Council accepted in full membership the Russian Orthodox Church and three other Iron Curtain Orthodox churches—plus the onetime missions of Africa and Asia.

The 18-day New Delhi meeting, which began last week, is the most portentous and significant of the World Council's three gatherings—more so than the...

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