Speaking that Costly Word

Designating this as International Year for Human Rights was a splendid idea. Freedom of religion and civil liberty, it is said, are like Hippocrates’ twins: they weep or laugh, live or die together. Since effective influence is usually exerted through collective action, it was fitting that the World Council of Churches a few months ago issued a statement on the subject. This said in part: “Disturbances in many countries and regions arise when human dignity is not recognized and human rights are not observed. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights warns that, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse as a last resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, human rights should be protected by the rule of law.” The statement called for prompt and concerted action at the national and international level.

This is altogether laudable. So too is a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Mrs. Helen Joseph, whom the South African government recently placed under a second five-year confinement to her home every evening, weekend, and public holiday. Dr. Ramsey was “distressed beyond words at the injustice with which you have been treated and at the hardship and frustration which you are facing.”

These are the sort of words one expects from the WCC and from one of its presidents. Some evangelicals whose concern for human rights is no less keen than that found in Geneva or Lambeth would heartily concur with these expressions. There are others, however, whose sweeping condemnation of the WCC and its works extends to compassionate projects where doctrinal orthodoxy is utterly irrelevant.

Yet though we regret this shortsightedness in evangelical circles, some of us who cover major ecumenical occasions do become vexed at times by the selectiveness of the WCC’s public indignation. The big stick is brought out (often rightly) for South Africa and Viet Nam, while the big silence is maintained over, say, Cuba, Greece, and Cyprus. Outspoken critics over the former become embarrassed diplomats over the latter.

But why? The question of human rights knows no racial or national frontiers, a fact implicit in the proceedings of the WCC’s Hague Consultation last April. The consultation urged that in speaking out on international affairs the Church should be prepared to say a “costly word,” declaring the truth even when “men will not dare to utter it.”

Four days after that Hague meeting ended, there was a coup in Greece. Whatever the merits of the case, it has resulted in the violation of human rights. Men and women are detained on remote islands, under wretched conditions, untried and even uncharged. A recent report on Greece by Amnesty International, with its appalling account of the use of torture techniques, should elicit as much compassion and indignation as a comparable report on South Africa would. The junta, moreover, slapped a ruthless censorship on all expression of opinion; many reporters were arrested.

Those of us who belong to WCC member churches might here ask certain questions. Have the WCC’s pronouncements on human rights been directed toward Athens? There was no sign that this had been done until the executive committee met in February; then a press release suggested that the council was at last taking a stand on Greece. Three points were made. (1) “Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, director of the CCIA, reported that a letter had been sent on November 17 to the Prime Minister of Greece, Mr. Constantine Kollias, protesting the mistreatment of political prisoners.” No details of the letter were given. Kollias is no longer premier. (2) “On the basis of recently published reports by Amnesty International citing specific cases of torture, Dr. Nolde said a second protest would be forthcoming.” No details were given. (3) “The Executive Committee … agreed that it would be desirable for its General Secretary … to take advantage of an early opportunity to visit Greece in order to confer with ecclesiastical and government authorities.” No terms of reference were given, no great urgency suggested.

These formal—if imprecise—gestures were enough to trigger reaction in Athens. Archbishop Ieronymos and the Holy Synod espied “flagrant intervention” in Greece’s internal affairs, and promptly announced the Greek church would boycott the upcoming Uppsala assembly of the WCC.

The technique was familiar. Even before the 1967 Central Committee meeting in Crete, Ieronymos muzzled potential protest by threatening to take the Church of Greece out of the WCC if adverse comment were made on the Greek situation.

Archbishop Iakovos, primate of America’s Greek Orthodox and a WCC president, hoped “constructive steps” would be taken to win back the favor of Athens, since the purposes of Uppsala “should transcend all other considerations.” WCC General Secretary Blake said the WCC was working for a change in attitude. Then Ieronymos released correspondence with Blake welcoming him to visit—so long as he did not try to interfere in Greek affairs.

In some cases the WCC policy seems to involve the buying of silence by hints of delicate negotiations behind the scenes that must not be jeopardized. This seems totally reasonable unless one is tiresome enough to follow up some of the issues—as I did in visiting Cyprus, Cuba, and Greece. In Cyprus, both church and state are led by a man whose murderous anti-British (EOKA) campaign was financed by his church’s money, and who speaks of a task uncompleted until the last Turk has been driven off the island. After visiting a refugee camp outside Nicosia in which 3,000 Turkish Cypriot victims of the troubles existed in miserable conditions, I asked at the WCC’s Geneva headquarters if any official protest or statement had been made about Christian atrocities against the Muslim. Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft courteously produced a reply he had made to a similar query from a group of Swiss pastors. The gist of it was contained in one sentence: “It is not the task of the World Council of Churches to judge the acts of the member churches.”

I find that most revealing, for neither South Africa nor Viet Nam has a national church in WCC membership likely to be offended by any pronouncement on its affairs. Where Greece and Cyprus are concerned, here surely is a challenge for the WCC to speak that “costly word” during this International Year for Human Rights. Let it prove loyal to its own more thoughtful and less diplomatic self, remembering a section of its own report from the Hague last spring: “This costly word may create a tension not only between the Church and the society of which it forms a part, but also between those who speak and some of their fellow Christians.… They may at times have a duty to speak in warning or counsel to one or more member churches.” Until this is truly implemented without fear or favor, many can still complain that it is the WCC’s silences that are the most eloquent today.

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