(5 of 6)
"The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Holy Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
Last week's most ticklish problem for the General Secretary was steering the Nominations Committee through the final nominations for the 100-member policy-making Central Committee and the six presidents. The result: a Central Committee still dominated by North Americans (21) and West Europeans (26) but with 18 Orthodox members and 28 Asians and Africans. The new presidents: the Most Rev. Arthur Michael Ramsey,- Archbishop of Canterbury; Pastor Martin Niemoeller, World War I submarine hero, president of the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church in Hesse-Nassau, Germany; Presbyterian Layman Sir Francis Ibiam, Governor General of the Eastern Provinces of Nigeria; Archbishop lakovos of New York, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America; Methodist Layman Charles C. Parlin of Englewood, N.J.; and the Rev. Dr. David G. Moses, Principal of Hislop College, Nagpur. India, and a member of the United Church of Northern India.
Taking a Stand. The sum of the Council's deliberations, this week, will be reports positioning the organization in three major areas of thought and action. At week's end, the general trends were clear. The section on Unity seemed to agree that church union will eventually entail nothing less than the death and rebirth of many of the various churches' forms and practices. The section on Witness felt that evangelism should begin to stress dialogue techniques in spreading the Gospel (even "dialogue sermons'') rather than straight preaching. This report also pointed out that churches will have to count on laymen for a bigger share in expanding Christianity. The section on Service agreed on two important points:
>Christians must take an all-out, unambiguous stand for racial equality, exorcising prejudice from all churches and identifying with ''oppressed races."
>Governments—the report shied away from naming the Communists—must be limited in power; political structures must allow for nonviolent changes in governments; freedom of choice and conscience must be permitted.
Cosmic Christology. Perhaps the most original and challenging address given at the Assembly came from Lutheran Dr. Joseph Sittler, professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Before he left for New Delhi, Sittler told a Chicago friend what he had in mind. Christians, he felt, were too much inclined to dismiss Communist ideology as "barren materialism." But Communism "succeeds because it is not materialism. All things are given value and purpose and drawn into a huge vision for the totality of man and the world." In contrast, Christianity has shrunk until it has become little more than "a support to our weakness, companion to our loneliness, counselor to our neuroticisms, and heavenly confirmer of our national purpose." What is needed is an all-encompassing Christian vision—"truer, vaster and tougher than the Marxist vision," with a core of spirituality illuminating "economics, politics, and all other areas of human affairs."