Nairobi: Crisis in Credibility

Sunny skies punctuated by slowly drifting fleecy clouds covered Nairobi and the Kenyatta Center as the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches ended its deliberations with an act of worship. It left behind the usual assortment of assembly papers as attendees began the laborious job of evaluating what happened over a period of eighteen days.

From my perspective, Nairobi was a substantial improvement over Uppsala. The radical cast of the 1968 assembly had yielded to a more centrist approach, a better balance, and the rediscovery of evangelism as an important part of the mission of the Church. Undoubtedly the International Congress on World Evangelization in 1974 with its Lausanne Covenant had something to do with the mood that prevailed.

One of the finest of the speeches was given by Professor Charles Birch of the University of Sydney, Australia. Under the title “Creation, Technology, and Human Survival,” Birch painted a realistic picture of the human predicament, which he thinks now threatens the survival of man. He specified five areas that led him to his pessimistic conclusion: the population explosion, food scarcity, scarcity of non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels, environmental deterioration, and war. He adduced specific evidence to show that time is short, the threat to survival is real, and the need for the churches to get involved in changing matters is urgent. His theologizing left much to be desired, but apart from that, his portrait was accurate. He intimated that there was not much hope for a solution that was not imposed by some form of authoritarianism.

At this point evangelicals have something to learn from the WCC. While it has been overweighted on the side of socio-political involvement in the past, yet it can be praised for attempting to do something about the problems it sees in the world. The Nairobi assembly approved a number of concrete proposals calling for justice and observance of human rights.

In its resolution pertaining to the Middle East the assembly ran into a snag, although the statement in general was evenhanded. The snag had to do with the Palestinian Liberation Organization: whether the Israelis should sit down at the negotiating table with them and whether the PLO people should have the right to return to Palestine. There are no easy solutions to these thorny problems, especially since the PLO has called for the total elimination of Israel from Palestine. How Israel can then negotiate from this announced intention and how it could repatriate the PLO without endangering its own existence remains unanswered.

A resolution was adopted asking for what can only be construed as some kind of internationalizing of Jerusalem to preserve the religious aspirations of Jews, Christians, and Muslims to the holy places. The resolution was weakened by being extended to other holy sites beyond the borders of the holy city. The cause of women was endorsed as well and sexism castigated. The request to say something about the use of grains for the production of alcoholic beverages got some attention and approval. But nothing was done about the pollution problem related to tobacco consumption. Indeed, the Kenyatta Center was in a state of continuous pollution from the noxious fumes of cigarettes.

Evangelicals can happily join the WCC in approval of many of these resolutions and commend it for its deep concern for human betterment. It was in connection with the Helsinki matter that the most dramatic confrontation developed. And it may be that the way the conflict was settled will leave the WCC with the charge of losing its credibility and forsaking its prophetic function. What happened was this: in the consideration of the Helsinki declaration an amendment was moved from the floor to name the U.S.S.R. as a specific violator of the human-rights provision, especially in the area of religious freedom. M. M. Thomas, who was presiding at the time, took a vote on the amendment. The delegates voted overwhelmingly in favor of it. Then American delegate Robert Moss rose to challenge the nature of the vote, claiming that it should have been a call for the previous question, not a vote on the amendment. Rightly or wrongly the chairman had taken a vote on the amendment and delegates had voted favorably. Thomas then reversed himself and took a new vote on whether the question was called for. That vote (requiring a 2/3 majority) was lost.

A coffee break was called, and the politicking began. Two key Soviet delegates rushed to the platform to talk to the officials. When the coffee break was over, WCC president Payne of Britain jumped into the fray. He said that the matter was too serious for a quick or frivolous decision, and that it should be referred back to committee or to the new Central Committee. After a hassle it was referred back to the committee.

The following day the committee presented a new report that effectively nullified the intention of the original amendment, calling for the matter to be referred to the Central Committee, deleting the name of the U.S.S.R., and asking for a report on the matter at the first meeting of the Central Committee next August. This amendment was finally adopted, but one speaker rose to declare that the credibility of the WCC was at stake since the original vote indicated the sense of the assembly whereas the new action was a grievous betrayal of that vote. The delegates from the U.S.S.R. abstained from voting, even against the watered-down amendment, and one of them rose to charge the assembly with a lack of love.

The delegates from the Soviet Union clearly implied that they could do without the WCC if necessary. It was a veiled threat, but it was effective. Unfortunately, the way things went the WCC was faced with the possible loss of U.S.S.R. Orthodox participation or the loss of credibility for itself. It risked the latter. But it did so against a backdrop of persistent criticism of its perennial choice of other nations it wished to arraign without ever spotlighting the U.S.S.R., which is among the most flagrant violators of human rights. Lurking in the background is the continued silence of the Geneva secretariat or any assembly to assert the claims of freedom for the oppressed peoples of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Ukraine, Poland, East Berlin, and Lithuania, to mention a few. The positive and appropriate resolution of the Nairobi assembly calling on Indonesia to withdraw its military presence from East Timor and to allow the people there to decide their own destiny was quite at odds with its failure to come to the aid of the European countries under the iron heel of the Soviet dictatorship.

Some good came from the fact that this was the first time the Soviets were openly subjected to criticism by any assembly. Now the further credibility and the good faith of the WCC will be seen when and if the Central Committee treats the U.S.S.R. the same way it has treated South Africa when it meets next August.

One of the significant plusses of the assembly was its new stance on evangelism and evangelization. The delegates showed a great interest in this subject. Approximately one-third of them asked to be assigned to Section I, “Confessing Christ Today.” In connection with evangelism, it was particularly appropriate that the assembly went on record opposing syncretism. Before this statement was approved, it encountered strong resistance from J. R. Chandran, a south Indian who is president of United Theological College in Bangalore. Moreover, M. M. Thomas in his moderator’s report for the Central Committee left behind the same impression by his use of the term “Christ-centered syncretism.” This served to highlight the obvious fact that the WCC is theologically pluralistic, as are its member churches, which have in them theological viewpoints ranging from the extreme left to the right.

The WCC program committee chose Bishop Mortimer Arias to be its spokesman on behalf of evangelism. (He was not a delegate, since his church is not a full member of the WCC.) A reply to his paper was made by John R. Stott, chosen by the WCC as a representative of the conservative evangelicals. Bishop Arias said that “staying together” (the basis of the WCC) “is secondary to the indispensable task of the Church of Christ: the evangelization of the world.” He identified evangelism as an essential priority, essential for the Church and its permanent task as well. Arias was somewhat openended in his assertion that he and others who had been proclaiming the new man had “met him among those people, who spent their day digging like moles below the mountains of Bolivia and who did not consider themselves members of the Church. All that was missing was the naming of the Name. And we had to recognize that perhaps these people had more of Christ in them than we who spoke in his name.”

Stott, in his response, said, “Would it be unfair to say that the bishop’s address is not typical of recent ecumenical utterances?” He went on to say that he wished to speak positively “of what the World Council needs to recover.” He mentioned five things: (1) A recognition of the lostness of man; (2) confidence in the Gospel of God; (3) a conviction about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ; (4) a sense of urgency about evangelism; and (5) a personal experience of Jesus Christ. He argued that “if justice means the securing of people’s rights, is not one of their most fundamental rights the right to hear the Gospel?” “If love seeks to serve men’s highest welfare, can we leave them alone in their spiritual lostness and still claim to love them?”

Section I devoted itself to this matter and brought back a report that was considerably better than anything coming out of Mexico City, Uppsala, or Bangkok. It called for the proclamation of the whole Gospel to the whole world by the whole Church. “We are called to preach Christ crucified” and risen again, it said. Proclamation includes “the announcement of God’s Kingdom and love through Jesus Christ, the offer of grace and forgiveness of sins, the invitation to repentance and faith in Him, the summons to fellowship in God’s Church.”

Regrettably, the thrust of this statement was blunted somewhat by the inclusion of the assertion that the Gospel “always includes” “the responsibility to participate in the struggle for justice and human dignity, the obligation to denounce all that hinders human wholeness.” These things are not an intrinsic part of the Gospel; they are a part of the total mission of the Christian’s witness and should neither be obscured nor overlooked. The essence of the Gospel lies in its vertical dimension, in which man is made righteous in the eyes of God, which is followed by a new horizontal perspective, in which man is made right with his fellow man. The struggle for justice and human wholeness is the logical and irresistible outgrowth of the new birth.

In seeking to fulfill the mandate from the assembly, Geneva will be caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Right now it is suffering from an ominous financial crunch. It is faced with the need to cut back considerably if it is to balance its budget. If evangelism receives adequate attention, it will do so at the expense of other programs now funded by the WCC. The only alternative is to increase the WCC’s funding so that it can support a new evangelistic thrust without cutting back on other programs. The hope of this latter possibility has been seriously compromised by another aspect of Nairobi, one that endangers not only the hope for a new evangelistic outreach but the already existing programs of the WCC. To this side of Nairobi I devote my attention in the final part of this overview.

Robert McAfee Brown of Stanford University and the Honorable Michael Manley, prime minister of Jamaica, both presented major papers. It is hardly likely that their viewpoints were unknown to the program committee. If what they said was representative of the WCC as an ecclesiastical body, that is one thing; if it wasn’t, then choosing them to speak was a grave mistake.

Professor Brown wallowed in the depths of guilt. He replayed the role of critic he had played at Uppsala, when the United States was still involved in Viet Nam. He qualified his love for the United States by professing to be ashamed of it. He introduced the bizarre notion of linguistic imperialism and made his point by giving the second half of his speech in third-rate Spanish to deliver himself from the sense of guilt attached to his speaking English. He fulminated against racism, sexism, classism, and imperialism. He begged to be freed from his security in his witness, his maleness, his class situation, and his United States citizenship.

Father Sergio Torres, a Chilean Roman Catholic priest, one of the founders of “Christians for Socialism,” was the executive secretary of the Detroit Conference on “Theology in the Americas—75” held last August. In response to a question put to him by the editors of Target, the Nairobi assembly’s daily paper, he said:

The Detroit meeting attempted to clarify for the 200 North American participants … the meaning of liberation theology in the North American context.

Despite the plurality of the oppressive experiences shared during the meeting, the use of marxist analysis [my italics] produced a working hypothesis that there are four basic kinds of oppressive reality in the U.S.A., namely: imperialism, class domination, race and sexual discrimination. You will obviously recognize these categories as the framework of Dr. Robert M. Brown’s paper [my italics].

Consistent with this viewpoint, Professor Brown went on record against capitalism, now indicted under the title of imperialism.

Brown’s paper was warmly applauded for almost a minute. The ovation was to be exceeded only by that accorded to Prime Minister Manley of Jamaica. Manley delivered a carefully thought through paper with charismatic vigor and specific partisanship. He said he was “a humanist by instinct, an egalitarian in social philosophy, a democratic socialist by political commitment … and a member and spokesman of the Third World by force of circumstance and by active involvement.”

Manley went on to assert the truth of the Marxist formulation that “modern imperialism and colonialism represent the later development of capitalism in the metropolitan countries.” He denounced capitalism and accused it of being responsible for just about all the ills of mankind.

Later Dr. William Keesecker, moderator of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., said that Manley’s speech against capitalism would make it difficult to raise support for the WCC in his country. A spokesman (unnamed) for the WCC defended the presence and the speech of Manley against those who asked why there was no presentation in favor of capitalism. The WCC is not a forum, he declared, but he left unanswered the question why the WCC chose to surface Brown and Manley, both of whom were calling for the demise of capitalism. This made the platform at Nairobi one-sided in favor or socialism. Not all the delegates favored socialism, of course. But any objections were muted, and no substantive proposals and no identifiable group rose to challenge the presentations of Brown and Manley.

More than three-quarters of the financial undergirding of the WCC comes in approximately equal amounts from two capitalist countries: West Germany and the United States. A case remains to be made why Christians in these countries should support the WCC financially unless it makes it clear that it is not anti-capitalistic. Why should church people who are able to give precisely because of capitalism fund an agency, a program, or a platform that calls for the demise of the system that makes their gifts possible?

Nairobi is over. But the questions, problems, and hopes that spring from it remain. The S. S. Oikoumene has some turbulent waters to sail through in the years ahead. And the possibility that it could founder on the rock of socialism-versus-capitalism can’t be ruled out.

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