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When the World Council was first planned more than a decade ago, Britain's late great Archbishop William Temple observed: "It is not by contrivance and adjustment that we can unite the Church of God. It is only by coming closer to Him that we come nearer to one another." Amsterdam aimed only for contrivance and adjustment. By those means, it was able to form a World Council which may bring the churches into a continuous relationship and start them up the steep path toward becoming The Church. Amsterdam did not accomplish the union of Protestantism; it did set up a loose federation of the Christian churches, Protestant and Orthodox branch.
The talk at Amsterdam was. mostly on the comparatively low level of diplomacy. What the world heard was very like a U.N. session. Of the assembly's major message, Czech Theologian Joseph Hromadka said: "It won't embarrass me at all in returning to Prague. Of course, it's pretty negative and doesn't offer much in the way of action."
On this level, however, Amsterdam did accomplish all that any conference except an inspired one can do: 1) it put into verbal form the agreements its delegates reached; 2) it put into organizational form the purposes its member churches had undertaken.
Vacant Seats. The Council will have its headquarters in Geneva, and other offices around the world. The six co-presidents are Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher of Canterbury (for the Anglican Communion); Pastor Marc Boegner, president of the French Protestant Federation (for the Reformed churches) ; Bishop Oxnam (for the Free churches); Archbishop Germanos of Thyateira (for the Orthodox churches); Archbishop Erling Eidem of Upsala, Sweden (for the Lutherans); and Dr. Chao Tse-chen, dean of the School of Religion at China's Yenching University (for the "younger," i.e., missionary, churches).
The full World Council will meet every five years. Between sessions, things will be run by a 90-member Central Committee (on which the U.S has 20 seats) and a smaller executive committee. The 1949 council budget is $539,660, 85% of it temporarily from U.S. sources. Eight seats were left vacant among the 90, in hopes that the Russian Orthodox and other churches in the Soviet sphere would soon join. Delegates from six countries behind the Iron Curtain were at Amsterdam.
Bishop Oxnam, a master of organization, headed the planning committee. Verbally, Amsterdam was earsplitting. "This is the greatest gabfest I ever heard any place or any time," cabled Frank Stewart, religion editor of the Cleveland Press and a veteran listener to ecclesiastical brekeke-kex koäx. Committee discussions were an eight-ring circus; plenary sessions were a politer Babel in the three official tongues (French, English and German), simultaneously translated over headphone sets, in the U.N. manner.* All the discussions were sober and thorough. Said Swiss Theologian Karl Barth: "I like solid work, and here there has been work."