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The Men of Evanston. Much of the Evanston debate went on in Northwestern University's McGaw Hall, where delegates sat under high, bare steel arches. Yet there was a special kind of excitement at Evanston that could not have been created by organ music and pageantry: it was provided by the delegates themselves. Anyone who wanted to sense the distant scenes of Christianity's mission, the hymn of its work and the constant drama of its struggle for souls had only to meet the delegates.
The newly elected presidents of the World Council told part of the story. They included Henry Knox Sherrill, 63, Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, a go-getting, kindly churchman who is used to fashionable Boston parishes but is also a pioneer fighter for Christian unity; tough old (74) Bishop Otto Dibelius of Germany's Evangelical Church, part of whose diocese is in the East zone and who has time and again defied the Communists; Archbishop Michael 62, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America, whose flock numbers some 6,500,000 communicants; Theologian John Baillie, 68, onetime Moderator of the Church of Scotland, a Highlander who is an authority on moral philosophy; Metropolitan Juhanon Mar Thoma of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar, India, one of the oldest churches in Christendom. There were other delegates, some hitherto obscure, who made their mark at Evanston. Among the outstanding leaders:
BISHOP SANTE UBERTO BARBIERI, 52. Methodist of Buenos Aires also elected to the Council presidency. An Italian silk-weaver's son who started to read for the law while he rode about Brazil on a bony horse selling jewelry, Bishop Barbieri today heads a constituency half the size of the U.S.
BISHOP LESSLIE NEWBIGIN, 44, a Newcastle shipowner's son who went to India as a Church of Scotland missionary 17 years ago, became one of the first bishops of the new Church of South India. In his diocese most people are still so poor that ministers cannot live on their salaries, have to find other work. Says the bishop: "Ours may largely be a tentmaking ministry, in the sense that St. Paul supported himself as a tentmaker." At Evanston brilliant, hard-driving Bishop Newbigin is head of the committee charged with drafting the assembly's final message.
CANON OLIVER S. TOMKINS, 46, of Lincoln, England is the theological brain of Evanston. A member of the "Faith and Order Department," he drafted dozens of working papers. Born in China, the son of a clergyman, Tomkins knew the dangers of missionary work from childhood. Says he calmly: "I reckon I'm the last man to have had an uncle eaten by cannibals."
Freedom & Capitalism. Late last week the debate at Evanston reached perhaps its most significant topic: "The Responsible Society." At Amsterdam six years ago, the Council had published a report that condemned in the same breath both Communism and "laissez-faire capitalism." At Evanston last week, the Council made a sharp and heartening about-face. One of the men most responsible for the change was Delegate Charles Taft, who set up his own committee soon after Amsterdam to draft a more constructive message. Similar discussions were held in Britain, France and The Netherlands. The report: