Evangelicals Seek to Refocus WCC

Evangelicals Seek to Refocus WCC

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has strayed far from its historical roots and needs to reaffirm unity in Jesus Christ as the basis for ecumenism, according to a group of evangelicals from North American mainline churches.

The WCC is about to chart its future, and evangelicals’ voices must be heard, says Thomas Oden, chair of Project EC-Z (Evangelical Challenge—Zimbabwe) of the Association of Church Renewal (ACR), representing 4.5 million evangelical mainliners. ACR is issuing its appeal at the WCC’s Jubilee Assembly in Harare, Zimbabwe, December 3-14.

“We want to announce our presence and seek to bring the WCC into far greater accountability to the one body of Christ,” says Oden, a United Methodist theologian. Evangelicals are a significant part of the WCC, but their views have been overshadowed by the liberal minority in control, he says.

The Zimbabwe declaration is in response to a WCC document that aspires to “macroecumenism,” which would allow non-Christian faiths to join.

The declaration calls for churches in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe to lead the WCC renewal movement. The 50 million-member Russian Orthodox Church, the largest of the WCC’s 330 members, is demanding a “total reconstruction” of the organization. Evangelicals see parallels with the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops, where liberal North American bishops were outnumbered by conservative Two-Thirds World bishops (CT, Sept. 7, 1998, p. 32).

Parker Williamson, editor of the Presbyterian Layman and member of the Project EC-Z steering committee, says North American mainline denominations are showing signs of a declining membership and “watered-down gospel.” North American Christians need to shed their cultural bias and see the gospel through the eyes of Christians in the Two-Thirds World, many of them products of North American missionary efforts, Williamson says. “We need their vision to correct our accommodation of the gospel. It’s sort of a reverse thrust,” he says.

Along with the Zimbabwe declaration, ACR is releasing seven position papers on topics including homosexuality, syncretism, and feminism.

Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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