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And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.
—Acts 2: 7-11
In Amsterdam's great white-plastered Wester Kerk the light is religious but not dim. Through its many plain-glass windows floods a clear, Vermeer-like light. Last week, at the closing service of the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches, this revealing light showed every detail: ruff-collared Scandinavians; bearded, black-veiled Orthodox dignitaries; purple-cassocked Old Catholics; saffron-stoled representatives of the Church of South India; U.S. pastors in business suits and glittering spectacles. For the past fortnight, delegates from 147 churches in 44 countries—every major branch of Christianity except Roman Catholicism and the Russian Orthodox Church—had been working, planning and praying together.
The light shed by the assembly itself was equally revealing. This greatest church meeting since the Reformation could not even agree on a definition of the word "church."
The watching Protestant world had hoped, in its dim and sentimental way, for something better. It had perhaps even hoped for another Pentecost. At Pentecost, there were tongues of fire from heaven, and human beings like ready lamps, waiting to be lit. At Amsterdam, there were committees, agenda, resolutions, debates, and trilingual earphones. The men of Amsterdam did not expect and did not receive flames from heaven. They had not met to be inspired but to "get something done." They were moved, not by tongues of fire, but by reasonable anxiety, cautious good will, Protestant practicality.
The world wanted to be saved—but, like the rich young man, it wanted to save its possessions too. In their more informed, more professional way, the delegates at Amsterdam represented that ambiguous desire.
Grand Strategy. Had Amsterdam actually accomplished anything? Had the long, slow, painful struggle toward church unity been worth all the effort and all the talk? Christians around the globe applauded the words of one of Amsterdam's leaders, New York's Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam: "The need for unity is urgent . . . Our disunity is a denial of our Lord . . . We cannot win the world for Christ with the tactics of guerrilla warfare . . . This calls for general staff, grand strategy, and army. And this means union."