In the 18th Century Chateau de Bossey, which overlooks Lake Geneva, the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches met last week to take stock of the world organization which was launched at Amsterdam last August. The committee also found time to denounce "the threats to man's rights and freedom which openly or covertly seem to be developing in every part of the world."
The press of the world had been interested in Amsterdam, reported The Netherlands' Dr. W. A. Visser 't Hooft, general secretary to the World Council, but not all of the press comment had been favorable. Some papers, said Dr. Visser 't Hooft, had criticized Amsterdam severely for being "a bunch of left-wing socialists talking like regular revolutionaries." Others had sneered at "those bourgeois who will never learn that the world is moving on." The Soviet press had attacked the council as "a new powerful center of a political church." Commented Visser 't Hooft: "They don't take our spiritual efforts very seriously. We are the disinterested voice of humanity."
Declaring that "the future of the Christian cause depends on the mobilization of laymen," the committee decided on a secretariat to stir up the laity. Germany's Pastor Martin Niemöller would travel to Australia in the fall; Dr. Marc Boegner, president of the French Protestant Federation, would bring the gospel to South America; Norway's Bishop Berggrav would go to East Asia.
The Geneva meeting closed with an angry, 1,000-word manifesto which said, in part: "Governments which claim to guarantee freedom of conscience and religion are in fact denying it ... Officers and members of churches have been arrested and imprisoned on an ever-increasing scale . . . We see ... a deliberate attempt to undermine the strength of churches by forcing them either to withdraw completely from public life or to become tools of secular policy . . . We reaffirm . . . that every person has the right to express his religious beliefs."