That the World Council of Churches Central Committee meeting went on as scheduled in Heraklion, Crete, last month despite the coup in Greece was a triumph for the new regime and a setback for left-wing elements within the WCC itself. A considerable amount of lobbying and ecumenical backstairs discussion had followed the April 21 military takeover, but so keen was the junta to welcome this assembly that it agreed readily to two conditions: no restriction on visas for those from Communist countries, and no censorship on reports emanating from the meeting.
Then came a bonanza for the government when influential Orthodox sources brilliantly contrived to turn the Heraklion meeting even more to advantage. They approached the young King Constantine, obtained his consent, and, so far as can be ascertained, presented the Central Committee with un fait accompli: Constantine, they said, had graciously agreed to appear at the opening. New luster was thus added to the colonels’ day. After the WCC appearance he left for his visit to the U.S. and Canada.
On the first appearance of a Greek monarch in Crete for many years, Constantine got a terrific welcome from the people—though, ironically, some were applauding the king under the impression that they were thereby heckling the government in the only way left to them. Nevertheless, it was game, set, and match in favor of the junta, which combines sporadic shrewdness with incredible naiveté.
Toward its own religious constituency the government displays more of the iron hand. It may have abandoned its initial absurdities about compulsory churchgoing, but there is still a weighty element in the cabinet that tends toward strict Orthodoxy. One of the slogans of the new regime is professed adherence to “Greco-Christian civilization.” Although this somewhat wispy concept is never spelled out, there is reason to think it refers to Orthodox-Byzantine tradition.
The corollary of this is a strong line against nonconformists, who are identified on this view with an alien religion. An Orthodox newspaper in Salonika recently came out strongly against heretics (i.e., Protestants) and their proselytizing ways. You’re right, approved the official government press, and we’re studying the measures to be taken on this very problem. It might be salutary if they realized that evangelicals abroad are also keeping an eye on developments.
The junta has not so far interfered with freedom of worship, but it has stipulated that evangelical publications should not go out with the perfectly acceptable Greek word for “evangelical” but should instead have the foreign word “Protestant”—with all its suspect associations for the Orthodox.
A Christian newspaper in Britain whose Greek correspondent outlined some of these restrictions was last month stridently denounced by the Greek government in Athens newspapers as having “slandered” the Orthodox Church. The WCC was immediately at pains to dissociate itself from the London publication, whose editor has visited Greece and satisfied himself of the accuracy of this material.
There are further disquieting features here. An exception to the suspicion of foreign religion is the Greek bishops’ attitude toward dialogue with Rome. This constitutes a change from the known views of the former primate, Archbishop Chrysostomos, who went on record as saying there would be rapprochement with Rome “over my dead body.” Those of the fifty-two Greek bishops who still oppose such dialogue are keeping quiet about it, for they would be going against the policy of the new government and its appointed primate, Ieronymos, who is a key figure in the present situation.
It seems clear that Ieronymos does not express the views of the rank-and-file Greek clergy, among whom the incidence of semi-literacy is high. Some, indeed, have been brought up to regard Roman Catholics in much the same way as Communists regard Trotskyites.
Ieronymos is in a strong position. The junta badly needs the support of the general public, and this can best be influenced from the pulpit, even in a land whose capital sees only some 2 per cent in its churches on an average Sunday. The new primate has the confidence of both king and government. His position was recognized in mid-August by the Patriarchate of Moscow, after some hesitation. As a member of the WCC Central Committee, he is even in a position to muzzle the council over Greek affairs (see box, next page).
The king, for his part, is in a difficult situation. Should he abdicate, the junta’s hold on the country is strong enough to do without him—and he might never recover the throne of a country traditionally capricious in its attitude toward monarchy. Paradoxically, the new government has sent his popularity rocketing, especially in the rural areas, possibly because he is identified as a stable feature in all the bewildering chances and changes of modern Greek life.
A reliable source in Athens regards him as the prisoner of the junta and compares his position to that of King Victor Emmanuel in Mussolini’s Italy. Whatever the truth of this, the 27-year-old monarch might feel that a waiting role is the only one possible to him at this time, with discreet pressure exerted whenever feasible toward the gradual re-establishment of a more democratic form of government.
When this will be is anyone’s guess. Asked how long political prisoners would be detained if they refused to sign a declaration renouncing Communism, Brigadier Patakos, minister of the interior, replied, “Three, five, or 100 years.… Their release depends on themselves.”
A British observer who recently returned from Greece holds that democracy will not be restored by the junta till the Greeks are transformed into paragons of virtue. This seems just another example of the favorite phenomenon of avrio (tomorrow), the day that never comes. Meanwhile, the present regime is in danger of slipping into authoritarian permanency with a lamentable habit of regarding all forms of protest as evidence of “Communism.”
The visitor who knows Greece will find at present little surface evidence of the iron grip on this land traditionally regarded as the cradle of democracy. But he who digs deeper will soon discover a new spirit of fearful apprehension and wariness toward strangers usually associated with Greece’s northern neighbors.
Disturbing stories are heard about middle-of-the-night arrests, of education that is as much political as scholastic, of a man summoned before a court-martial for giving hospitality to his daughter and her husband without registering them with the local police, of a national press reduced to government servitude or the passive protest of non-appearance. The Athens Union of Journalists has lost the right to decide who shall represent it abroad, and has said that seventeen of its members were detained on an island prison.
Even ecclesiastical occasions are reported exclusively by government officials. The Heraklion WCC meeting was described with such wild inaccuracy that General Secretary Blake lodged a protest. In response an official from the board of censorship came speedily from Athens to ensure that a potentially valuable ally be suitably placated.
There is more than a little of the farcical in the situation. A 25-year-old Athenian was arrested in a cinema and sent for trial by court-martial because he made “insulting comments about the traffic policy” during a film that showed a clumsy traffic policeman. Small wonder that they tell of a dog that swam from the Greek island of Corfu to Brindisi on the Italian mainland. “Why on earth did you do that?” asked an Italian dog. “Oh,” said the other, “I wanted the chance to bark just once.”
Yet there is hope in the government’s sensitivity to world opinion. Because a Swiss government official dropped a word on how to win international friends, an evangelical church in Salonika got the okay on building plans tied up by red tape for four years. The dropping of the five-year sentence on former Foreign Minister Averoff was due to the adverse effect it would have outside Greece. With the junta so sensitive to international protest, and the WCC so sensitive to violations of human rights, it will be interesting to see how the latter body continues to wield its ecumenical leverage.
J. D. DOUGLAS
W.C.C.: Dull In The Sunlight
Perhaps the sun on Crete had an enervating effect. Last month’s World Council of Churches Central Committee meeting in Heraklion was stupendously dull. It might have been worse but for a zany opening service, some unguarded remarks by the general secretary, and further evidence of the familiar policy of let’s-not-be-beastly-to-the-Orthodox (see adjoining box).
The opening service in St. Minas’ Cathedral was bedlam. It was not clear whether the noise was a normal accompaniment to public worship or whether the presence of King Constantine had whipped up enthusiasm. Contributing to the deafening tumult were fitful microphones and the startling interventions of some cheerleader offstage with a loudspeaker. Foreign visitors, crammed together in a sweltering mass of misery during the liturgy, could grasp only that something meaningful was happening just out of earshot. The liturgy over, Constantine sauntered over to chat with a nearby archbishop and thus kept Central Committee Chairman Franklin Clark Fry, who was poised to give a seven-minute Bible reading, waiting.
Selective Critique
In his international-affairs report to the World Council of Churches meeting (story above), Frederick Nolde’s plain speaking about other troubled areas was followed by the statement that the WCC was “not unaware of the political difficulties” in Greece recently. He said WCC officers had “received several representations of dissent and criticism.”
Then came this cloudy sentence: “In a manner appropriate within the ecumenical fellowship, these concerns have been made known and reassurance given in the course of lengthy conversations in which various members of the Central Committee have participated.”
That was all. Nolde then tapered off with an expression of thanks that the Heraklion meetings had been “conducted in complete freedom.” It was reliably reported, however, that certain West European members had earlier pressed privately for specific criticism of Greece’s military regime but that this was stymied when Archbishop Ieronymos threatened to take his church out of the WCC. As it was, even the diluted statement above suffered a sad sea change in the hands of Greek censors and emerged as a mere thank-you for hospitality.
The report had a single unhelpful sentence about another Orthodox stronghold: “Restrictions of various kinds in the Soviet Union continue to be reported to us.”
No such inhibited brevity or ecclesiastical diplomacy characterized references to Viet Nam. There was the usual complaint by the same minority, with their usual objection to a reasonable statement, and their usual failure to convince their colleagues. The final statement called for the United States to stop bombing, North Viet Nam to start negotiating, and South Viet Nam to move toward discussion with the Viet Cong.
It seemed ironic to recall that Blake had said earlier that if the WCC “acts timidly and by compromise rather than courageously and by principle,” many Christians would look elsewhere “for the dynamism and the faithfulness that the ecumenical movement requires.”
Later in St. Mark’s church hall, where the meetings were held, Fry told king and committee that the king’s appearance was “the memorable event of this meeting” and described him as a “devoted follower of Jesus Christ.” The king replied to the greetings in a voice of impeccable English, but it was not just an icon-boosting section that suggested the hand was undoubtedly that of Archbishop Ieronymos, 62, the former royal chaplain who was inserted in office as Primate of All Greece this year by the military junta.
Eugene Carson Blake was taken to task somewhat after his first report as general secretary for giving much space to, and some loose discussion of, the word “transcendence,” and for tending to say what should need no saying. “God is strictly nonsense in the popular mind today,” said Blake. “… It is this widespread modern agreement that there is no transcendent God which threatens most deeply the ecumenical movement.… I believe it to be highly important that we do not give reason to anyone to suppose that we as a World Council of Churches are calling into question the being of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.… If we are unable just now to articulate our faith in the transcendent God to the satisfaction of our own theologians … let us nevertheless continue in faith to worship together.…”
The address, which reportedly had caused advance misgivings among the executives, was criticized by the meticulous Professor Berkhof from Holland, who took exception to Blake’s distinction between the WCC and its scholars. One committee member privately suggested that, trying to emulate his predecessor, who had walked dryshod over the Red Sea, Blake had finished up an Egyptian with wet feet.
On the keynote theme of evangelism, the Rev. Philip Potter read some splendid quotations from past ecumenical utterances in arguing that evangelism was not, as many thought, “a neglected vocation in the life and activities” of the WCC. It was, moreover, “not the task of specialists or of a few but of the whole Christian community.” Potter’s paper, more an academic dissertation than an urgent call to action, had one feature that fell strangely on some ears. He explained that the WCC “cannot organize evangelistic campaigns or sponsor what has been called ‘ecumenical evangelism’ unless specifically asked to do so.”
Rising out of Potter’s address were some unexpected remarks from Professor J. L. Hromadka of Prague. “The real problem in socialist countries,” said the erstwhile Princeton theologian, “is not whether the churches will survive [but] whether we Christians believe what we confess [and] witness to this belief in such an urgent, dynamic way that even those who deny our right to exist would be urged to listen to us.” He pleaded also for dialogue with evangelical non-member churches.
The past five or six years had seen a new situation in his own country, continued the Czech. Marxists were now acknowledging that a changed society does not produce a changed man. He urged discussion between the 100-percenters on each side. “Half-Marxists and half-Christians don’t do much,” he explained. At the meeting, plans were announced for a five-day Christian-Marxist confrontation in West Europe next spring, one of several projects in which the WCC is cooperating with the Roman Catholic Church.
Strong opposition came from one quarter when the committee discussed the Middle East situation. What seemed a balanced policy statement roused Soviet members to a flurry of anti-Israel amendments. A filibuster might have developed, had not Fry earlier persuaded the committee to agree to vote on the subject by the normal adjournment time. The Soviet endeavors, which had the support of a solitary Hungarian, came to naught. The statement held, among other things, that national boundaries should rest on international agreements freely reached between those concerned; that the political independence and territorial integrity of all nations in the area should be secured by international guarantees; and that nothing significant could be done unless the problem of Arab refugees, old and new, was resolved.
In a policy statement on the racial issue, the committee urged Christians and churches everywhere “to oppose, openly and actively, the perpetuation of the myth of racial superiority found in “social conditions and human behavior as well as in laws and social structures.”
Accepted into WCC membership were eleven churches, ranging from the 400,000-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania to the Methodist Church in Sierra Leone, which has not quite 18,000. Total acquisition: 1.1 million.
J. D. DOUGLAS
Nigeria: Will Missions Survive?
Civil war has raged in Nigeria, and already thousands have died; yet British, American, and other missionaries continue to work both in Nigeria and in the newly formed rebel state, Biafra. Some missionaries have witnessed dreadful massacres, mostly against the Ibo tribe. Although it is nearly impossible to get reliable information, so far no action appears to have been taken against the missionaries. The seventeen Southern Baptists working in Biafra have been evacuated.
Nigerians’ future policy toward missions may depend largely on British government policy and politics in general. If Britain recognizes Biafra, federal Nigerians might retaliate against Britons. If Britain continues to send arms to federal troops, Biafra may well turn against Britons on its soil.
The Church Missionary Society has twenty missionaries in Biafra and as of late August was unable to obtain news about them, since Biafra was completely cut off from the outside world. There was no alarm at the society’s London headquarters, however, since missionaries are well instructed on what to do in such emergencies.
Philippine Catholic Zealots
Two years ago Ferdinand Marcos won the presidency of the Philippines by a margin of 600,000 votes, roughly the size of the voting bloc of the Iglesia Ni Cristo (“Church of Christ”—a nationalistic cult with Protestant roots), which supported him. In the upcoming campaign for mayor of Manila, Marcos and his Nationalists may have to choose between men from intensely feuding religious groups: Congressman Felicisimo Ocampo, backed by the Iglesia, and ex-Congressman Ramon Bagatsing, supported by the new Cursillistas.
The Cursillistas are a group of militant Catholics generally considered a political counterforce to the Iglesia. Newspaper columnists say the Roman Catholic Church must have gotten tired of seeing Filipino leaders troop like vassals from the heathen provinces to Iglesia headquarters to pay tribute to the sect’s leader on his birthday. Although Marcos and most other leaders are Catholic, the Iglesia votes in a bloc for the hierarchy’s choices, while Catholics seldom vote as a body.
Previous attempts to form a Catholic political movement have failed. But the Cursillistas are at a new high in popularity. Their zeal and fanaticism are formidable, as everyone who has been exposed to them knows well. They represent a new dimension of Philippine Catholicism: they are aggressive, articulate, militant, and sure of themselves, and they brook no word of doubt or dissent from anyone.
EUSTAQUIO RAMIENTOS, JR.
