(2 of 6)
Retreat & Rebirth. This new Christian cohesiveness is no sudden upsurge of agape in the hearts of men. As old enemies huddle together for warmth and protection in a raging storm, so the once proud and self-sufficient churches are being driven together by cold and whistling winds in a turbulent world.
On the one hand, many of the sectarian dicta and dogmas that once stirred great debates in Protestantism are dead letters. In America the ethnic loyalties and local ties that once buttressed such sectarian doctrines have almost dissolved in the comings and goings of the most restlessly transient population in the world. In Europe the state churches—both Protestant and Catholic—that once were part of the fiber of society, stand cold with empty pews and silent with declining vocations.
Even the once touted, now tapering off. religious revival in the postwar U.S. turns out—especially in the eyes of theologians —to have been largely a specialized boom in suburban churches, which folks joined to meet other folks and get into the community swim, and which served up a kind of Christianity as bland and homogenized as if it came out of a suburban kitchen blender. All too often, "the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed'' anything more Christian than a discussion group or a softball team or an every-member canvass.
The uncertainty at the center has been matched by the pressure from outside. The march of Marxism, the idolatry of science, the determinism of Freud, the stigma of being a "white man's religion," the resurgence, with the rise of the new nations, of the "national"' religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism and Islam—all are helping herd the scattered Christians into one corral. This is not true Christian unity, but it is producing a sense of unity and a growing recognition of an urgent common need—to rethink fundamentals and to change traditional ways. And the recognition of this urgency and this need is the fruitful prerequisite for changing defensive retrenchment into creation and rebirth.
The sense of urgency and change was abundantly evident at New Delhi. The new importance of the Orthodox communions served notice on old-line ecumenists that the predominantly Protestant flavor of the World Council would be considerably modified; it also indicated that theology and "spirituality" would begin to loom larger in Council considerations. But by far the most clamorous new voices in the Assembly were those of the "younger churches" of Asia and Africa. For the ecumenical reformation began in the missionary movement, where the scandal of interchurch bickering—before the wondering eyes of their converts—was especially uncomfortable.
The Four Ds. Leaders of these onetime mission churches spoke out with a vehemence and conviction never heard before at an ecumenical gathering. For one thing, they were on their home ground. For another, they are the most rapidly growing element in the ecumenical movement; there are 45 Asian and 26 African churches—more than twice as many as were members of the World Council when it began 13 years ago at Amsterdam.