Montreal: Faith and Order

The World Council of Churches’ Commission on Faith and Order meets in Montreal for its fourth world Conference on Faith and Order from July 12 to 26. The discussions will indicate what new doctrinal guidelines ecumenical scholars influential in the four international theological commissions are proposing, and the resultant decisions may influence the ecumenical strategy for church unity during the remainder of this decade.

The conference sends its conclusions to member churches “for study.” Prevalent theological positions often supply the presuppositions of the denominational press, and sometimes become swiftly determinative for denominational commitments at the hierarchical level. But more often they are wholly ignored by ecclesiastical machinists who wish to “get on with the real business of merger.” A standing indictment of the World Council, now voiced even by some of its earlier enthusiasts, is that merger more than mission, or more than message, has come to absorb some of the movement’s main energies. The political cadre regards doctrinal considerations as marginal if not disruptive, and even uses its favored position to advocate controversial policies in international affairs quite outside the Church’s competence and mandate.

A look at the agenda of the Montreal conference indicates the overwhelming task before the delegates, who cannot hope to arrive at truly definitive positions in two weeks of discussion. The sessions can give a barometer reading of the theological climate in 1963. Ministers wanting to keep abreast of the times or to set the modern mood in the framework of post-Reformation dialogue will be satisfied with this.

But some confessional churches voice increasing demand for more earnest doctrinal discussion, for less programmatic and more systematic theology, and for a more definitive theological commitment by the World Council itself. They are distressed to see even some ecumenically active bishops calling for fuller confessional emphasis while they show little indignation over heresy, fail to watch over the doctrinal fidelity of their communions, and even fete and honor churchmen who are radical opponents of biblical theology. This they cannot excuse on the ground that many of these church leaders themselves had extreme liberal teachers. Nor do they understand why ecclesiastical leaders who speak of the rediscovery of the Church’s confession, or of the doctrine of the Reformation, or of the Bible as the Word of God, should at the same time allow the influence of religious philosophers like Bultmann and Tillich to run rampant in the seminaries and life of the churches. Why, for example, do Bultmannians occupy so many German pulpits? In New Delhi, WCC adopted a “trinitarian basis,” but it does not on that account exclude churches tolerant of unitarian views.

If the tragedy of many Protestant churches is not only their loss of the sola scriptura, sola fide, and sola gratia, but the loss as well of other basic doctrinal elements of New Testament Christianity, perhaps Montreal will indicate whether this has also become the continuing tragedy of WCC, and if so what is to be done about it. Is there any heresy within member churches of which the World Council is intolerant? Much more is at stake in the matter of doctrinal purity than the Church’s inner health and peace. For whenever the line between Christian truth and heresy is blurred, the borderline between Christianity and the non-Christian religions soon becomes indistinct, also.

The Lutheran World Federation’s theological quarterly Lutheran World suggested recently that the Faith and Order movement might better achieve its purposes if it were not so closely linked to the World Council. In part such a proposal arises as a reaction to the danger of propagating and superimposing positions which really lack rootage in the uniting churches. But it also reflects a protest against disproportionate attention being given the “younger churches,” and the consequent breakdown of sixteenth-century Reformed emphases. At any rate the ecumenical movement’s weak confessional basis is a source of widespread dissatisfaction among those who insist that the Church cannot be the Church if it is not evangelical and biblical.

An equally insistent problem facing Faith and Order is the precise definition of the World Council’s ecclesiological significance. The confusion and contradiction on this point among WCC constituents is so extensive as to be either ludicrous or tragic. Twentieth-century churchmen have conceived in the World Council a species of ecumenical reality over whose essential character they increasingly differ. Unaffiliated evangelicals—who are being urged to identify themselves—tend more and more to regard such invitations in the “pig in a poke” category while WCC’s “church status” remains obscure.

Many ecumenical spokesmen insist that the World Council has no significance whatever as church. The Toronto document declares that WCC is a “fellowship of churches,” and hence implies that the council has no church-status of its own. With the sentiments of Bishop Dibelius (interviewed elsewhere in this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY) many ecumenical leaders concur, some for reasons quite different from Dr. Dibelius’. The Russian and Greek Orthodox Churches emphasize with the Roman Catholic Church that apart from apostolic succession and the hierarchy there is no true church. Many Protestant churchmen, on the other hand, simply deplore the prospect of any dynamic merger wherein a single super-structure (particularly if hierarchical and sacerdotal) swallows up all plurality of order.

FAITH AND ORDER AGENDA

The major study documents of the Montreal conference will be the reports of four international theological commissions which have been at work for the past decade. These reports, which have been issued to participants for advance study, deal with Christ and the Church, Tradition and Traditions, Worship, and Institutionalism.

Study at the conference itself will be organized in five sections: The Church in the Purpose of God; Scripture, Tradition, and Traditions; the Redemptive Work of Christ and the Ministry; Worship and the Oneness of Christ’s Church; and All in Each Place: The Process of Growing Together.

A review of these five sections issued in advance to participants suggests that some of the contemporary ecumenical problems to be discussed by the conference will include the following:

What is the nature and task of the Church? What is the extent of the churches’ agreement on the attributes of the Church: its oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity? What are the chief points of development and tension in the view of the Church among the main traditions of Christendom? And what is the significance of such diverse new forms of Christian community as councils of churches and movements which reject the need for ecclesiastical institutions?

What is the theological meaning of revelation, Scripture, and tradition and their relation to one another? How can this relationship be stated in new forms to avoid use of conventional descriptions? What are the particular problems when church traditions are transplanted from one region to another and how can tension between “daughter” and “mother” churches be resolved?

What is the relation of Christ’s ministry to the Church’s ministry and what is the status and function of the ordained ministry? What current doctrines and practices impede or enhance the ministry?

What is the place of the diaconate in the ministry and what is the attitude of the churches towards the ordination of women to the ministry? (One of the background papers in this section will be a new WCC survey of women in the ministry.)

What are the basic patterns of Christian worship and how can these best reflect the catholicity and apostolicity of the Church? How are recent moves toward liturgical renewal coping with the estrangement of modern man from the transcendent realm? What new guidelines are required for the “indigenization” of worship in both old and new culture? What are the implications for unity of the recognition of one Baptism for all Christians, the character of the Eucharist, the question of intercommunion, and the celebration of the Eucharist at ecumenical conferences.

What are the chief obstacles for advance toward unity “in each place”? What institutional factors impede or advance this unity and what are the racial and ethnic factors which create division? How does the disunity of the Church affect popular concepts of personal and social morality, national politics and international affairs, and even population mobility? What are the “responsible risks” churches should take in seeking unity? How can the great bulk of church members who yearn for unity but who are generally inarticulate in expressing themselves on the issues be educated to become a more potent and intelligent force in moving towards unity?

But if WCC’s “self-understanding” involves a denial of all ecclesiological significance for the movement, there are many signs of impatience and of aspiration toward church-status, particularly on the part of some of the ecumenical hierarchy and salaried staff. More than one observer has complained about the “church politics” of Geneva. There assurances that no super-church is envisaged go hand in glove with ecclesiastical claims made in Lucas Vischer’s article in the Ecumenical Review (1962), that WCC “fulfills some functions of a church which are not fulfilled by the separate churches. For instance, it expresses their universality.… It bears a common witness.…” Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, retiring president of Union Theological Seminary, insists that WCC has at least as much right to be called a church as any of the historical denominations. To this point councils of churches have not normally had creeds, nor have they directly determined theological issues, nor administered sacraments or ordination. Dr. Van Dusen’s proposal would change all that. If the World Council is assigned ecclesiological significance, that same moment other councils of churches—national, state, regional, local—will assert a churchly character.

Currently there is before the General Board of the National Council of Churches a general policy statement on its nature and structure affirming that “the Council is not a church.” The NCC study commission is expected to register in Montreal the present view of its present majority that “councils of churches are not and should not claim to be churches.” Such a claim, it is contended, would not further the cause of Christian unity, but merely add a new denomination or denominations to the spectrum.

In an article in Christianity and Crisis (March 4, 1963), Dr. Truman B. Douglas, a member of the General Board, asks nonetheless whether “councils of churches must forever be discouraged … from recognizing and taking up their churchly responsibilities.” Dr. Douglas grants that councils of churches “are not the Holy Catholic Church in its wholeness and universality.” Moreover, he lampoons the “artificially generated bugaboo” of a “super-church.” But he finds in the councils a transcendent “super-denominational conscience” and a function far exceeding their original consultative nature. Dr. Douglas asks whether councils of churches may not be a real manifestation of the Church’s unity, a new mode or form of the Church, and he answers affirmatively: “It is my contention that the councils of churches have become new forms of the Church. Obviously they are not the Church; nor is any denomination the Church. But the councils, like the denominations, partake of the nature of the Church, and in some respects do so more fully than any denomination. They can do this because in some areas they are the Church relieved of its insupportable burden and apostasy of dividedness.”

It is probably too much to ask that Montreal tell us what WCC believes—and how it overcomes the apostasy of inclusiveness. But is it too much to expect that Montreal state unambiguously what WCC is—church or non-church, or some entity intelligible (or unintelligible) only in terms of paradox?

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Compulsory Devotions Banned; Bible Retains Classroom Value

Since pagan influences increasingly shape American institutions, it is noteworthy that the Supreme Court set its prohibition of compulsory devotional exercises in the context not of irreligion but of the nation’s religious heritage. The court banned legislated Bible reading and prayer in public schools, and its logic likewise would ban legislated irreligion. Neither majority nor minority should use the machinery of government to implement religious beliefs or unbelief.

The decision did not explicitly cover a principal’s or local teacher’s individual classroom use of Bible reading or prayer, but was somewhat indeterminate. Among students of diverse faiths corporate devotional exercises remain a delicate problem whose solution touches both on free exercise and on church-state separation. Required devotions, sectarian or non-sectarian, however, seem an imprudent and controversial public school activity. Yet atheistic forces are not to exploit the Court ruling. Some group acts of theistic affirmation remain congruent with the nation’s historic political documents.

More important, the ruling allows a role for the Bible and its religious teaching in the instructional program. To prevent the court’s interpretation from encouraging godless education and a secular state—which in its public life always acts as if there were no God—America’s devout masses must now insist that the Bible and our Christian convictions be reflected accurately in the instructional program of our public schools. The classroom is no place to evangelize, whether for atheism or theism. But a student unfamiliar with the Bible remains an outsider to the best ingredients in the American heritage and purpose.

The decision multiplies the responsibility of American parents and churchmen to promote spiritual decision not through the machinery of the state but through voluntary agencies.

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THE FORTUNES OF CHRISTIANITY IN LATIN AMERICA

Interest in Latin America has been generated by the crisis in Cuba and the threat that the Communist take-over will spread. CHRISTIANITY TODAY will devote its July 19 issue to an up-to-the-minute analysis and evaluation of contemporary Christianity south of the United States border.

The phenomenal growth of the evangelical movement (at a rate five times that of the population explosion), the paradoxical relations between Catholics and Protestants, the wild fire spread of Pentecostalism—these and many other significant and timely themes will be treated in a series of area essays by outstanding national and missionary leaders.

Contributing editors will also scrutinize the basic social problems of Latin America from a Protestant perspective. They will point out strengths, weaknesses, and potential of the evangelical movement in lands on their way to becoming the world’s most important secondary power bloc today.

It would be difficult to overstate the contemporary significance of Latin America in either the political or the religious scene. We may be witnessing a new Protestant Reformation.

Assisting in the preparation of the July 19 issue is the Rev. W. Dayton Roberts, assistant general director of the Latin America Mission. He counts over twenty years of intimate acquaintance with the progress of the Gospel in the Ibero-American world. A second-generation missionary, he has authored articles on Communism, Romanism, and the Latin American scene. Other contributors include Dr. Benjamin Moraes, Presbyterian minister and professor of criminal law in Brazil; Dr. Herbert Money, New Zealand-born executive secretary of the Evangelical Council of Peru; Argentine evangelist Fernando Vangioni, of the Billy Graham team; Dr. Hector Valencia, headmaster of a large secondary school in Colombia; Dr. R. Kenneth Strachan, general director of the Latin America Mission; Dr. Gonzalo Baez-Camargo, distinguished Mexican educator; Dr. Wilton M. Nelson, rector of the Latin American Bible Seminary in San José, Costa Rica; and the Rev. Rubén Lores, pastor of the Templo Biblico Church of the same city.

The special Latin America issue represents the continuation of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S series of analytical studies of the state of Christianity overseas.

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Evers’ Murder Signals Eventual Burial Of Segregation

Medgar Evers’ murder marked a turn in the civil rights struggle. Southern spokesmen openly deplored the NAACP leader’s snipe-murder, rightly refused to blend the States’ rights cause with a murder mentality, and stressed the South’s traditional hospitality toward the Negro. They noted too that political leftist approval of mob pressure against law inevitably implies a wave of counter-lawlessness.

The sneak gunshot that silenced Evers discloses an anti-Negro tide running deeper than States’ rights currents. States’ rightists have shown a weak sense of duty to national law alongside their legitimate protest against mounting federal power. Obstructing constitutionally guaranteed rights supplies no durable assist to States’ rights but makes them an excuse for irresponsibility. In respect to civic rights a state goes either color-blind or constitution-blind. States’ rightists have much to deplore about integrationists’ methods of advancing the Negro cause, and equally much to regret about their ambiguous objectives. They resent mob demonstrations that flout local statutes, the Washington political approval of mob clamor, the promotion of coercive formulas in the absence of supportive community con science. They long warned integrationists that lawless ness breeds lawlessness, and pleaded for juridical procedures rather than revolutionary techniques.

Nonetheless Evers’ murder haunts the conscience of more and more Americans with the conviction that the midnight hour has struck in the clamor for full Negro rights. President Kennedy’s direct personal appeal to voluntary interests has come late, after complicating and divisive political pressures, but mistakes in theory and technique must not be made a ground of inaction. More is at stake than Negro rights (there are no “Negro” rights) and Christian virtue (justice is another’s due as a man, not as a Christian only). Human integrity is at a judgment bar on the American scene. And the Christian citizen had better consider himself doubly obliged to protest injustice and promote justice, or a sharp cutting edge of his religion will rust away.

Regrettably, liberal propagandists clouded the air by their ambiguous cliché of full integration (including “total equality” and racial intermarriage). Although extremists continue to foment discontent, wise Negro leaders espouse more sensible objectives: equal opportunities in public affairs, public education, public employment, public housing, and use of public facilities, especially. No Southern city has desegregated schools, parks, theaters, restaurants, hotels, and swimming pools as swiftly as has Washington, D. C., yet some Negro spokesmen warn of impending pro-integration violence in the nation’s capital. Washington is now a symbol of large American cities whose balance may shift from the white race. Negroes constitute 56 per cent of the population and have opportunity to demonstrate whether they can carry the responsibility for public safety and rise above race discrimination.

President Kennedy now emphasizes that race solutions are moral more than legislative. Yet in the peculiar political idiom of the times he trumpets that violence is the only alternative to the legislation he advocates. Pressures to force all businessmen to serve all persons promise to carry the debate beyond States’ rights to private property issues. Senator Richard B. Russell emphasizes: “The outstanding distinction between a government of free men and a socialistic or communistic state is the fact that free men can own and control property, whereas statism denies property rights.”

May God grant community leaders facing the problem of neighbor-rights understanding and courage. What the Negro needs now is not more laws—indispensable as these may be—but more room in the white man’s heart. That need is “as old as the Scriptures.” And it is uncomplicated by coercion of private property whose political overtones are highly debatable.

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