The WCC at Nairobi: Twenty-Seven Years Later

The World Council of Churches launched the good ship Oikoumene at Amsterdam in 1948. Now, twenty-seven years later, the passengers will hold their fifth docking at Nairobi in November.

We have studied the Ecumenical Review and the material prepared and sent to the delegates to evaluate the ship’s seaworthiness and to determine its course for the next decade. We pray that a new unity of purpose and objectives based on Scripture will be developed. The WCC should explain clearly where it stands on some basic issues. For example, will the World Council answer questions raised by the International Congress on World Evangelization that convened in Lausanne, Switzerland, a year ago? We thought the WCC intended to discuss the Lausanne Covenant, but the preliminary literature includes nothing substantive.

A year ago The Ecumenical Review, which is edited by Philip Potter, the general secretary of the WCC, devoted its July issue to the forthcoming assembly. Paul Verghese, former staff member and now a member of the Central Committee, wrote on the main theme of the assembly: “Does Jesus Christ Free and Unite?” In his article he clearly stated the basic issue:

Where, for example, do we locate the powers of darkness from which we seek liberation? If the primary positive element is personal belief in God and Christ, then the primary evidence for locating the enemy is the non-profession or denial of Christian faith. Thus communists, atheists, adherents of other religions, liberal Christians, secular humanists, and all others who refuse to confess Jesus Christ as personal saviour constitute the army against which the fight is carried on.

On the other hand, for those who regard socio-economic liberation as the primary positive element in the Gospel, the major enemy would be the oppressive and exploitative establishment at the world and national levels: the military-industrial complex, the multinational corporations, the capitalist system, the white racist domination of the world, along with those institutional churches which are linked and identified with the establishment [p. 369, 370].

The WCC must seriously consider what Verghese has said. We want to know who the real enemy is according to the WCC’s understanding. What we do is determined by what we believe about the identity of the enemy. If we follow Verghese’s first option it means evangelizing the world with the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The acceptance of the second option presented by Verghese validates what was done by the WCC at Uppsala, and said at Bangkok: “Salvation is the peace of the people in Vietnam, independence in Angola, justice and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, and release from the captivity of power in the North Atlantic community.…” Then we can follow the reasoning of Michael Knoch who wrote in the same issue of The Ecumenical Review:

Marxism regards the middle class as the bourgeoisie, an exploiting class which must be deprived of its role of leadership.… What the Church believes cannot be fixed once and for all … None of us can abolish socialism, Marxism or even atheism, as if they were phases which could be eliminated or reversed.… Perhaps we must revert from an explicit Christology to an implicit Christology, back to the historical Jesus of Nazareth, in order to build up a new form of Church based on Jesus’ life among the outcasts. Such a Church would include traditionalists and people with no religion, Christians and atheists.… The unity between religious people and atheists in a Church of this kind certainly cannot be fixed in the traditional statements of faith [pp. 439ff].

Verghese and those who wrote the delegates’ material assume that capitalism is the enemy and socialism the answer to man’s needs. Thus, for example, the document, Section V, Number One, speaks of the internationalization of the arms business “making the U. S. Government the biggest supplier in the world. Arms transfers by the superpowers are concentrated today upon a few areas such as the Near East and Indochina. Black Africa, Latin America, large parts of Asia and smaller European countries experience a heavy influx of military armaments produced in France, Britain or West Germany.” Number Two, Section V states:

Coordinated actions should be taken against exploitation by Japanese, American and European companies in Asian countries, and against national policies that induce exploitation and dehumanization.… The objective of people’s organization is the realization of people’s power.… This objective necessarily implies a transfer of power from the ruling classes to the masses.

Apart from one isolated reference there is no evidence that the leaders of the WCC find anything wrong with Communism. There is no mention of the people in slave labor camps in Siberia or of the multiplied millions of people who were murdered during the Chinese revolution.

We do not deny that sinful men prostitute capitalism and that certain wrongs need to be righted. But, as The Gulag Archipelago graphically informs us, Communism, too, is culpable. How can a theologian like Jürgen Moltmann say that “In, with and under capitalism, dictatorship (i.e. of the right), racism, sexism and nihilism men suffer finally from that deep-set primal anxiety which makes them so inhumane and aggressive.” Will the WCC be prophetic enough to hear and heed men like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov? Bring Solzhenitsyn to Nairobi. Let him tell the Church what oppression, slave labor, and loss of freedom of speech and religion really mean in the Soviet Union. The WCC cannot obtain a fully rounded picture of the world without providing a platform for the suffering critics of communism.

The Religious News Service reports:

A group of American Eastern Orthodox theologians have accused the World Council of Churches’ leaders of “conscious” onesidedness in selecting evils to be condemned in study papers for the Council’s Fifth Assembly.… The Orthodox Theological Society of America claims that the Assembly advance documents “severely” and “relentlessly” expose the evils of Western societies but ignore Marxist repression and political excesses in the so-called Third World.… We consider it to be a conscious policy of the leaders of the World Council of Churches to be selective in their choice of evils for criticism and condemnation.… We reject forthrightly this policy as prejudiced, dangerous, divisive, and supportive of human slavery.

The American Eastern Orthodox theologians are correct. But they are not alone. J. Andrew Kirk, theology teacher in Buenos Aires, writing in an Anglican journal says of the Nairobi documents: “Each dossier is almost totally predictable to anyone who has followed the increasing shift to the left on the part of the WCC executive elite.” The editor of the Churchman said that the WCC shows the tendency of modern theology “to be too man-centered, to concentrate too much on nature and too little on grace.” If the imbalance remains, he prophesied that the WCC “will be seen increasingly as an expensive irrelevance.”

We want to hear the WCC speak up about Marxism and about captive nations like Tibet, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. But if the WCC really believes that capitalism as practiced in America, Japan, and Western Europe is the enemy, and that the centralized, freedom-limiting nations are to be welcomed as the wave of the future let it say so loudly and clearly.

Verghese’s second option is important here: all men will be saved and all men, knowingly or unknowingly, are already in Christ. Indeed it was Verghese who in 1962 when he was Associate General Secretary of the WCC [see Ecumenical Review, Vol. XV, No. 1, Oct. 1962] wrote:

Will the unbaptized man be saved? God wills that all men be saved. And He wills as He ought to will. And His will is: “When the hour of destiny strikes, to gather together into one the whole Universe in Him” (Eph. 1:10). Can that will be thwarted? No, for His will is commensurate with His power. But how is His will to be fulfilled? That is a cosmic question. Our task is to learn the answer slowly, by the tragic method, by laying down our lives for the life of the world.

If all men are saved at last, then baptism no longer has crucial significance, which contradicts Syrian Orthodox theology and that of other churches that insist upon water baptism as an essential part of the salvatory process. So we also ask the WCC to tell us: will everyone be saved at last? Is there a hell? If all people are already saved spiritually, then Christians can and ought to spend their times and energies correcting economic and political oppression. But if all people are not saved, then we return to the priority of preaching the Gospel, which demands that believers exert redeemed energies to help heal social injustices; we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

At Nairobi the churches through their elected representatives can tell the WCC what it ought to be and how it ought to act. But if the bureaucrats continue the course they established at Uppsala in 1968, the ship Oikoumene may sail from Nairobi without a clear destination and without a steady hand at the helm. It’s time for the Christian masses to speak and for the elite to listen. In communist phraseology, the time has come for the “proletarians” in the pews to seize the helm, steer the ship, and make their masters obey some better commands.

Learning Fair Play

Third World churches have much to teach their “mother churches” in Europe and North America, but until now most of the lessons were thought to be in the area of evangelization. As unlikely as it may seem to some affluent Christians, churches in underdeveloped areas can also teach something about stewardship.

Some of the poorest people of Latin America have been organized into congregations of only ten families. And each of those congregations supports a pastor from the tithes of its members. Many North American congregations could take note of their faithfulness, even if the pattern could not be applied in all its details. Imagine what could be done for Christ’s kingdom if every church family tithed!

In how many of the “mission sending” congregations does the pastor’s salary equal the average income of his parishioners? A New York pastor wrote the other day that inflation has caused his family to give up most meat, restaurant meals, book clubs, and ball games. While these alterations in life style might not seem to be much of a sacrifice, they do show that his congregation has not adjusted his pay to keep up with the rate of inflation. And one wonders whether similar belt-tightening had been practiced by those parishioners who would stoutly defend Jesus’ assertion that “the laborer deserves his wages” (Luke 10:7).

Many churches should take a leaf from the book of some of their fellow believers in the Third World: return to the biblical principle of giving the tenth to the Lord, and the church will be able to meet all its obligations. Adequate pay for the preacher is one of those obligations.

Beware Of Tm

Especially because Transcendental Meditation claims not to be a religion, Christians need to be extremely wary of this increasingly popular movement, founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Two best-selling books promoting the movement—The TM Book by Peter McWilliams, and TM: Discovering Inner Energy and Overcoming Stress by Harold Bloomfield, Michael Cain, and Dennis Jaffe—attest to increasing interest.

TM is not taught in these books; one must go to (and pay) one of the authorized centers for the short instruction course. The emphasis is upon a technique that supposedly can be used no matter what the meditator’s religious beliefs. But TM is permeated with the Hindu life and world view. Although it does not call for the robes and the vegetarian diet of other Hindu imports, in the crucial concepts of God, man, sin, and fellowship between God and man and among men, TM is thoroughly Hinduistic.

For a thorough, readable, and accurate comparison of the differences between Christian and Hindu teaching on such matters, see What Everyone Should Know About Transcendental Meditation by Gordon Lewis (Regal Books, 92 pp., $1.45 pb). We hope that a mass-market paperback house will publish an edition, too.

Christians need to understand what TM really is so that they are prepared to challenge the infiltration of this religious movement into schools, government agencies, businesses, and even sports teams. TM proponents have the right to promote their beliefs in North America, just as Christianity has been proclaimed in India. They should, however, cease to pretend that it is not a religiously based movement. And Christians should take the offense against Hindu deceptions.

Haile Selassie

Few will deny that Haile Selassie showed statesmanlike qualities for most of his eighty-three years. He will perhaps be remembered most for the uncommon courage with which he stood up to Mussolini. But his leadership in Ethiopia was even more significant. He transformed the country and brought it to a place of order and stability.

Toward the close of his life Selassie lost considerable respect. Like many another monarch, he did not adequately prepare for succession. Stagnation and oppression characterized his country, and even Pentecostal believers were being oppressed. The best thing that can be said is that he stayed in power too long.

His Christian role was unique. Selassie traced his royal line to the union of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church for which Selassie served as “protector” is traditionally thought to have originated with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. Selassie made some efforts, especially in later years, to identify with Christians elsewhere. Most notable was his 1966 appearance at the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin, where he was warmly welcomed despite the sharp theological disagreements evangelicals have with the Ethiopian Orthodox. “This age above all ages,” he said then, “is a period in history when it should be our prime duty to preach the Gospel of Grace to all our fellow men and women.” He added that “however wise or however mighty a person may be, he is like a ship without a rudder if he is without God.”

Gutenberg’S Useful Beauty

When Johann Gutenberg printed his Bibles, about two hundred in all, he had more in mind than utility.

Of course, he wanted to make very usable Bibles of enduring quality. The discovery of the forty-eighth extant Gutenberg Bible (see News, page 67), missing only seven leaves and undamaged except for a few small work holes, shows that his Bibles have indeed lasted for five hundred years. But his Bibles also show that Gutenberg thought utility, or function, should be melded with beauty. As was done with hand-lettered manuscripts, most of the capital letters in this Bible were colored red or blue by artists. His use of the gothic typestyle is evidence that Gutenberg wanted to retain the beauty found in hand-lettered pages.

The vision of creating useful objects that are also beautiful is one we all need, whether we print books or cook and care for our families. Our lives and work, as with Gutenberg, should reflect the glory, the beauty, of God.

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