By approving the expanded Basis of membership proposed last summer at St. Andrews, the New Delhi Assembly gave greater ecumenical centrality to the doctrine of the Trinity and to the role of the Bible. Hailed both by Evangelical and by Eastern Orthodox leaders, the step avoided reduction of the ecumenical witness to “a dull and uninteresting gray.” It gave promise of new virility in matching a theological counterattack to “the acceleration of history” in a revolutionary age, to the resurgence of non-Christian religions, to the aggression of evolutionary atheism, to the dazzling spell of scientific technology, and to the grip of secular materialism.
Although almost one in ten of the delegates voting on the issue opposed approval of the trinitarian basis, including some liberal leaders who thought the action would launch the World Council along the pathway of creed-making, the St. Andrews proposal swept through the General Assembly by a 383–36 vote. Its immediate effect was to disqualify Unitarians from WCC membership.
Amsterdam to Delhi
When WCC came into being in Amsterdam in 1948, it adopted the bare Basis that: “The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches who accept Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.” (This statement was stronger than that of the National Council of Churches.) Norwegian evangelicals sought in Evanston in 1954 to amend the Basis to read … who, according to Holy Scriptures, confess Jesus as God and Saviour,” but their proposal was sidetracked. Eastern Orthodox theologians later reinforced this move, urging additional reference to the Trinity and to church tradition. At St. Andrews last summer, the WCC Central Committee agreed to submit the altered form adopted by the Delhi Assembly after nearly two hours of debate: “The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of Churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour, according to the Scriptures, and therefore seek to fulfill their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Some liberal Protestant churchmen, both in the United States and Europe, had sharply opposed the expansion. Friends Journal (Sept. 15 issue) deplored it as “restrictive and exclusive” and added that “the assurance formerly given that we could interpret the membership formula as liberally as we saw fit can hardly apply any longer to this much more rigid test.… We can only regret that a sizeable group among our church leaders still insists on considering Christian beliefs to be primarily a system of thought.” But some conservatives, like Dr. L. D. McBain (American Baptist) opposed the expansion as a risky precedent. Russian Orthodox Archbishop Nikodim in his first speech to the Assembly urged expansion, as did Dr. C. G. Baeta of Ghana, former secretary of the old IMC.
At the same time it was clear that the Delhi Assembly’s theological pronouncements had little in common with affirmations of the great ecumenical councils of the first centuries. The early ecumenical councils defined and condemned the heresies to which they opposed their theological affirmations. But Delhi, like Amsterdam and Evanston, was preoccupied with unity and had little interest in combatting heresy. As a result the “victory” for trinitarianism and the Bible is far from precise and may, in fact, accommodate views of the divine Trinity and of the Scriptures which would have been abhorrent to Christian faith in earlier Christian centuries. While the move from the older liberal emphasis on theocentrism to trinitarianism is widely hailed as an evangelical victory, the fact remains that Christocentrism has also sheltered liberal theories, and that the Delhi affirmations are not inconsistent with grossly objectionable views both of divine trinity and scriptural authority.
The Role of Theology
Yet Delhi witnessed some pointed pleas for greater theological earnestness as indispensable to the realization of ecumenical unity. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. A. M. Ramsay, deplored what he called a “hand theology” spirit in the West which says in effect “do not go deep into theology; we need just a few simple facts and principles in order to get unity.” He warned that unity will not be found in such “twentieth century simplifications,” and added that “those who talk thus commonly make large theological assumptions which they do not pause to examine.” “If we will be patient,” he continued, “true theology, good theology, is something which unites. But it will not be true unless it keeps itself and us near to the Cross whence the call to holiness comes.”
Eastern Orthodox churches reinforced the periodic call for more theological depth. In a statement for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abuna Theophilos noted that “a really fruitful line of work towards unity would be a closer study of the traditional doctrines with a view to evolving clearer and less inadequate verbal definitions.”
But the theological thrust had alien interests to contend with also. Among these were the Burma Baptist U Ba Hmyin’s plea for universal synthetic theology unrestricted to biblical structures, and neo-orthodox hostility toward revealed truths and an intellectual faith.
Doctrinal differences among the Delhi delegates limited their full fellowship except as they downgraded the importance of doctrinal truth and fell back on the Basis as the sufficient touchstone of Christian commitment. Despite the dissent of one-tenth of the delegates, spokesmen confidently referred to the Basis as “the fixed stratum of unity” alongside which the ecumenical movement continues its “search for a unity” which does not yet exist. By this “common faith” the member churches were pledged to stand together despite frightfully deep and divisive differences. The Delhi mood was still to “obey Christ’s command” (to find unity) and to work out “details of doctrine” later. Faced by a time of greater challenge to Christianity than that posed by the Renaissance, by an age more demanding than any since apostolic times, they felt oneness more than truth to be their highest calling. Disturbed by the unedifying spectacle of Christian disunity, they cheered the word of WCC General Secretary W. A. Visser’t Hooft that “desire for Christian unity is no longer the concern of the few but the preoccupation of the many,” and they welcomed every evidence of a general ecumenical mobilization.
Dr. Visser’t Hooft noted that the WCC had become with “one very important exception” (Roman Catholicism) a body in which all major Christian confessions are strongly represented, and that it now embraces “a greater variety of expressions of the Christian faith than have ever been brought together in one movement.” The presence of five Roman Catholic observers authorized by the Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity cheered ecumenical leaders, although Father Edward Duff did not hesitate to indicate in a television interview that Roman Catholicism already has the unity to which non-Roman ecumenism aspires.
Special emphasis fell on a large-scale Communion service arranged by the Anglican Church of India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon, open to “all baptized communicant members of their churches,” as another first step toward unity. An Eastern Orthodox spokesman indicated to the press that Communion is “the summit of unity, and not a way of achieving it,” but said delegates from his church would be present to support the ecumenical movement. In the Orthodox view, said Dr. Nikos Nissiotis, assistant director of the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, Church union is not “a ‘spiritualized,’ sentimental, humanistic expression of good will, but is an absolute reality preestablished by God.… The Church does not move towards unity through the comparison of conceptions of unity, but lives out of the union between God and man realized in the communion of the Church.… We are not here to create but to recapture it.…”
Common Faith, Diverse Theologies
It was clear that a variety of conceptions of unity entered into the ecumenical dialogue, and that the achievement of any carefully-defined unity was still a long way off for WCC affiliates. Dr. Joseph Sittler of Chicago summed up some of the tensions as disagreement over “whether the way to unity is a common faith, or a closer fellowship in confidence that the fellowship itself will lead to a common faith; whether the churches must enter into intercommunion to advance unity or have a larger unity in order to enter into intercommunion; whether unity is to be found in a common faith, or in a common order equally.” Sittler’s view is that the unity of the Church depends not on a common theology but on a common faith (it is noteworthy that nonsupematuralist John Dewey promulgated the thesis a generation ago in the interest of humanism). He deplored “the idolatry of putting theology in the center.” Explaining theologies as intellectual functions of the differences in cultures, he said “there is not and will not be a common theology.” When newspaper reporters asked Sittler whether any movement exists outside the United States similar to the Blake-Pike emphasis on organic unity as the only worthy ecumenical goal, he noted the Union of South India, the Ceylon scheme, and the North India scheme as somewhat similar.
The earlier feeling that the ecumenical world assemblies represent a kairos, a divinely-appointed time at which church unity would be achieved by listening to the voice of the Spirit, seemed at Delhi to have worn somewhat thin. While there was little searching of the biblical doctrine of the Church, representatives of nearly all confessions at Delhi declared their traditional formulation of ecclesiology inadequate to grip today’s ecumenical realities. One or another speaker, in order to deflate the absolute claims of rival ecclesiastical traditions, invoked the thesis that the Church is historically conditioned and exposed to corruption, but the speakers were more hesitant to apply the thesis to their own communions, and seemed wholly reluctant to apply it to the ecumenical development. Delhi championed a “more explicit and definite” position with regard to church unity through its emphasis on mission (integration of IMC into WCC) and through its expanded Basis, and it trusted these developments to hold together in the member churches.
Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft acknowledged candidly that “though it is in God’s grace sometimes given to us to render a common witness, we cannot claim that in the important matters of faith, of life, of church order, we speak with one voice.” With death gradually overtaking one after another of the ecumenical movement’s surviving pioneers, Visser’t Hooft’s importance has grown. In two respects he differs somewhat from the earlier men; he is largely alien to their pietistic-evangelistic emphasis, and he is actively interested in the enlistment of Rome. But he reiterates the longstanding ecumenical emphasis that no external reunion will be forced upon member churches “who are not ready for this and do not desire it.… Those who would attempt to create union by force or coercion would meet with the determined opposition of our member churches.” With a look at present ecumenical achievement, Visser’t Hooft added: “Cooperation is not the same as unity, but it can and should be a mighty stimulant to unity.”
A major document of 9,000 words, approved in the closing days of the Delhi Assembly, further delineated the complex WCC notion of unity. Instead of a single ecclesiastical organization of all Christians, WCC pledged itself to work for a system of interlocking church communities on the local, national and international level, with mutual recognition of ministries, members, and joint participation in the Lord’s Supper. The document emphasized that “unity does not imply simple uniformity of organization, rite or expression.” But it affirmed also that it “will involve nothing less than a death and rebirth of many forms of church life as we have known them. We believe that nothing less costly can finally suffice.”
Machinery and the Kingdom
Ecclesiastical machinery functioned actively through all phases of the Delhi Assembly; the mechanism of resolutions and program enjoyed special prominence. This growing preoccupation with organization rather than with mission has periodically troubled leaders distressed over ecumenical programming—the endless series of conferences, consultations, commissions, and committees apparently substitute a passion for dialogue for the passion to witness. And the disposition to limit democratic processes within ecumenical gatherings at times irked the press. In New Delhi no floor debate was permitted, for example, on the question of admission of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the various section meetings the press was prohibited from continuous coverage (even by substitutes or alternates). Whatever the intention of such limitation, it had the effect of concealing from the press what day-to-day sectional emphases were eliminated or revised by the editorial committee in the final sectional draft—a device by which ecumenical leaders have sometimes promoted special objectives.
The cost of the Delhi Assembly, including travel, has been estimated at half a million dollars. Delegates had been informed it would be best not to seek reservations in the city’s best hotels; when they arrived, they found ecumenical staff already ensconced in the Janpath, most modern hostelry in the city, while arrangements for many of the participants were substandard. Yet delegates tend to be awed by the staggering size and complexity of ecumenical institutions, and by the stature of inclusivist leaders heading the movement.
The World Council has developed both a strong central staff and a formidable structure of divisional and departmental committees, whereas the International Missionary Council had neither. The ecumenical movement has been given or assured virtually all of the needed $2,500,000 for a new 250-office headquarters building in Geneva, to be ready for occupancy in mid-1963. The design allows for additional offices if required later. The Ecumenical Church Loan Fund provides funds to assist ecumenically-minded mission-founded churches. At Delhi the leadership proposed a 47 per cent increase of $218,000 in the WCC budget, the $751,200 total to include provision for larger staff salaries. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake emphasized that the principle of support thus far has been to raise funds from member churches on the basis of their ability to give, but that those making larger contributions are not to dictate the program. He noted that some churches already regard the WCC budget as outsize, while others, in view of modern government spending, consider the annual budget ridiculously low. Others are reluctant to approve a greatly-increased budget because of its super-church potential. Yet WCC leaders continually stress how much more could be achieved for the ecumenical cause were additional money and staff available.
The Six and the One Hundred
The 100-member central committee elected at New Delhi gives 17 posts to Orthodox churchmen; 16 to Lutherans; 15 to Presbyterian and Reformed groups; 12 to Anglicans; 11 to Methodists; 10 to United churches; 5 to Baptists; 4 to Congregationalists; and 1 or 2 to other groups. At the helm of the WCC’s 198 church bodies representing more than 350 million members will be the six-man presidium: The Most Rev. Arthur M. Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury; Sir Francis Ibiam, a Presbyterian and Governor General of Eastern Nigeria; Archbishop Iakovos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America; the Rev. Dr. David G. Moses, the United Church of Northern India; the Rev. Dr. Martin Niemöeller, a German Lutheran; and Charles Parlin, a Methodist lay leader from New York City.
Ambiguity remained as to whether WCC expresses the world-wide Christian judgment of its members, or whether it determines that judgment. On one hand it is stressed that WCC cannot legislate for member churches, but is merely an instrument for expressing their common witness and service, the Assembly On which all member churches are represented) being viewed as their main voice. Yet the Central Committee often speaks out between assemblies on many issues, sometimes so provocatively that members have withdrawn from WCC.
Faith and order were not the only paths to unity explored at Delhi. Some delegates thought the world would be most impressed by ecumenical agreement on social and political problems. Some Greek Orthodox spokesmen, however, emphasized that agreed social positions are no criterion of unity but rather the result of unity. They challenged the social activism of American churchmen who involve themselves in political affairs more as a secular activity than as a church act. But the American tendency had won a following. Days before Delhi, the East Asia Christian Conference had met in Bangalore to discuss political issues that cause tensions among Asian countries. While Dr. D. T. Niles was thoroughly enthusiastic about its achievements, some European churchmen thought the best thing that could be said about the conference was that it was now over. The Bangalore conference was marked by a concerted drive for United Nations’ recognition of Red China. Korean and Formosan delegates demurred. At Delhi a whole colony of spokesmen pushed the weighty thesis that Christian relationship with government must not be just a private affair, and ended with a plea for a resolution, for direct pressure upon government, for a Christian policy to be implemented by government, as if this procedure were the historic Christian dynamism for transforming the social order. The contemporary alternative to Christianity, which more than any other surging force threatens to sweep our children’s children into the orbit of state absolutism, was seldom confronted and addressed as a foe; many delegates felt that the Christian thesis concerning the axis and goal of history and the ultimate meaning of life had not been expounded at Delhi with the precision and consistency that characterizes Marxian propaganda.
The large press services and news magazines, aware from the history of the ecumenical movement that politico-economic issues would loom as large as the religious, assigned their political editors to cover Delhi as readily as their religion editors. Whenever the world mission of the Church was defined in distinction from evangelism, the secular journalists seemed fully at home in the spirit of Delhi. At Sunday dinner at the home of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur with Time-Life’s Henry Luce and evangelist Billy Graham, I remarked to Mr. Luce: “The Life series superbly exposed the dynamism on which communism relies for world revolution. Why doesn’t Life give us a great series on the dynamic on which Christianity relies?” Mr. Luce replied: “I think that is why I came to Delhi.” It was, in fact, why most actual delegates had come. But many left confused over the manner in which Jesus Christ is the world’s light. Not even ecumenical self-gratification that “seldom had there gathered a greater selection of outstanding Christian leaders and personalities” had removed their indecision. To stress the difference between an ecumenical meeting and a political meeting, Visser’t Hooft urged the press not to judge the Vigyan Bhavan Assembly by the norms and categories of the U.N. He noted the common Christian basis of the delegates, and indicated that their primary obsession is not with the modern East-West tension, but with overcoming the East-West cleavage that divided the Church 1000 years ago. But in the realm of international affairs ecumenical spokesmen took quite another course; they expressed delight that their convictions in international relations are already being applied by some Christian statesmen at the precise moment when grave world decisions are being made.
Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, director of WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, located the Church’s “duty to speak to the nations for peace and justice” in a protest against nuclear weapons testing and arms competition, and in a plea for disarmament. It seemed not to occur to Dr. Nolde, nor to his associates, that a rebuke to the Communist agitation of class hatred and class warfare might equally serve the cause of peace and justice, and that such rebuke might equally fall within the Church’s duty.
“The trouble with the ecumenical movement,” remarked retiring president Franklin Clarke Fry, “is that it is so diverse that it takes a long time for us to agree.” Few observers were likely to question this comment. Delhi made visible to the world what unity—and what diversity and disunity—characterizes Christianity in the twentieth century. Some of this diversity was concealed because many delegates seemed unaware of the preciousness of their own traditions, and were therefore prone to search for the richness of the Christian religion in flat uniformity. But the diversity in the midst of Delhi’s togetherness lent new importance to the comment of an American churchman, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake: “Ecumenism is nothing if it is not local.”
C. F. F. H.
