Features: November 2006

Biography of Eugene Carson Blake by Theodore Gill

Eugene Carson Blake’s Social Creed: Leadership and Content by Christian Iosso

A Letter to Presbyterians by General Council, Presbyterian Church in the United States of America

A New Social Creed for the 21st Century Background and questionnaire

Presbyterian and Undocumented by Gustavo Vasquez

Presbiteriano e Indocumentado by Gustavo Vasquez

Called to the One Hope: A New Ecumenical Epoch Forward by Philip Potter Introduction by Samuel Kobia

Past Issues

OGA Main Page

Items marked with are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. For best results, right-click the link (or click and hold for Macintosh), select "save target as" and save the document to your desktop for viewing and printing.

Los archivos marcados con este icono pueden ser descargados en el formato publicable de Adobe Acrobat. Este archivo requiere obtener el programa Acrobat Reader que es gratis. Para mejores resultados haz clic sobre el enlace con el botón derecho del ratón (o haz clic y mantén el ratón para las Macintosh), selecciona "save target as" y guarda el documento en el tope de tu ordenador para poder verlo e imprimirlo.

Called to the One Hope: A New Ecumenical Epoch

Forward by Philip Potter
Introduction by Samuel Kobia

Foreword

When the World Student Christian Movement of the previous century tried to understand what it meant to live the faith according to the Prophets and the Gospel, we were told to go out into the world with the Bible in one hand and the newspapers in the other. How were we to bring the Sermon on the Mount, for example, into the world and make it real for people if we did not know the agenda of the world? The ecumenical movement, I believe, does that best when it is not just being critical of the world, but also when it is being analytical through an engagement with reality.

I think there is no doubt that the 20th century was the ecumenical century. It was a time when there were good thinkers asking tough questions, pushing us to deepen our analysis so that we could become more forward-looking. We were weakest when we lost sight of that vision of the movement being in and for the world, especially after the [iron] curtain came down. Our vision was to hold up biblical justice and call the global structures of the world to be rooted in that justice. If there is no justice, there is no peace.

This simple but profound ethical and biblical imperative needs recovery as the ecumenical movement faces the third millennium which poses different problems, shifting loyalties, changing structures, reorientation and a new awareness of the calling of the churches. But, to do that we must ask what are we doing ourselves and in our churches to make this happen? There is no point in trying to transform the world if we are not willing to look at the movement and its member churches and see if they are willing to understand the world from a biblical and analytical perspective.

The same applies to the older mainline churches which have held privileged and sometimes immovable positions in the ecumenical movement. They also need transformation in a spirit of new development from the age of ecumenism in the 20th century whose basic stance was to hold high the banner of social justice. Now, in the 21st century, people must ask what did the age of ecumenism leave behind for the leaders of the third millennium and what will the 21st century do with it?

Personally, I am concerned that so little is being written of any depth, either theologically or philosophically, about God’s will for the world. People are not asking hard questions. We are not hearing the voices of youth and of women challenging us to seek answers to their questions about where we are today and what we should do.

My colleague and friend, Sam Kobia, has written such a book as one of his immediate tasks following the last assembly. He has reviewed the assembly and raises the issues that must be faced following Porto Alegre. He also develops questions about what the ecumenical movement must face in today’s world in language that is understandable and communicable. As he rightly says, we are moving into a new epoch of Christianity and the Council must move forward in terms of doing theology in a rapidly changing world and discern the areas of engagement that help to shape the future.

For all those Christians who are committed to the transformation of the world, in God’s grace, this book, Called to the One Hope, fills me with inspiration and hope for the future of the ecumenical movement and the witness of the churches.

Philip Potter, Third General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (1972-84)

Introduction

My friends will know that I am partial to the wisdom shared with me over the years by African elders. Often we would hear someone sum up a complex discussion or problem with a proverb. One of my favourites: “If you want to walk fast, walk alone. But if you want to go far, walk together with others.”

When I became general secretary of the World Council of Churches in 2003, the planning and theme for the ninth assembly were already under way. It struck me that this huge meeting to be held in less than three years—the first ever in Latin America, the first ever with an African general secretary, the first of the third millennium—was similar in some ways to the first assembly in 1948, but also vastly different in style and circumstance. Christianity, the world, the churches and the ecumenical movement had changed in less than 60 years beyond anything our founders could have imagined in their wildest dreams.

Konrad Raiser, my predecessor, I knew well had spent 10 years trying to push a reluctant institution to face the many changes demanding the attention of the churches in the world. It is a scary world out there: huge insecurity amidst obscene affluence in some parts of the world; massive poverty, disease and violence for billions of others. Globalization and a single superpower have revived the imperial agenda in post-modern garb. People are insecure, frightened, uncertain and the traditional institutional churches cannot seem to meet these needs. I felt this in my own continent where poverty and disease and war have left people filled with anxiety and fear. But, I also sensed the insecurity amidst plenty in Europe where I now live in one of the most affluent countries in the world.

Where, I kept asking myself, is the hope? Why are so many people feeling such malaise about their future? It is not just the current misnamed war on terrorism or globalized poverty and disease, or the planet’s tragic environmental devastation. It is a loss of faith, of belief. What can the ecumenical movement do to bring hope to a hopeless world, not the false hope of denial or the vapid spirituality that escapes reality but the flame of hope that is willing to accept the challenges of the 21st century?

I recalled the ecumenical movement’s history and its passion for unity. Its offer of the hope that so many were yearning for after the horrors of World War II. The dynamism and energy that sent us into active humanitarian relief during the mass starvation of Biafra and the optimism and passion that we showed during the long days of apartheid in South Africa.

Shortly before I became general secretary, I wrote a book about Africa and the calling of

a new vision for the church there. It is entitled, The Courage to Hope. Now, I was preparing for a new job, a critical assembly and there was that word, again—Hope. How could we, in the ecumenical movement, find the courage to hope in the midst of such a bleak world?

Why not find out, I thought, as I pondered the future. So, in those early months as general secretary, I made a critical decision to visit all the regions in the world wherever Christians were wrestling with change. This would be my priority above all other priorities. It was an exhausting journey and an exhaustive plan, which was only completed in 2005. I spoke quite often to concerned people but I also listened intently everywhere I went. I began with Africa in 2004 where churches joined with the people of Rwanda in confessing our failure to act fearlessly 10 years previously during the genocide of almost a million people.

As an African ecumenist for much of my life, I tried to be culturally sensitive wherever I went and find the courage to tell the churches that a status quo ecumenical movement and Council were no longer an option. Each time I came back to my Geneva office, it was almost as a visitor from afar. People around the globe helped reinforce my sense that alienation and a loss of identity made fertile ground for the fear and malaise that were gripping societies and which the ecumenical movement seemed unable to challenge. As traditional Protestantism in the West was being weakened by secularism, the centre of ecumenism had shifted to the South.

Formation became a crucial point in visit after visit. Traditional youth and lay training centres supported by Protestants in Europe had been the training ground for the early ecumenical movement. Now the evangelical and Pentecostal youth movements are alive with energy and dynamism but they were not with us. Where, I wondered, are our future ecumenical leaders to be formed? Even though I found everywhere a hunger for spirituality, the gnawing and difficult question arose: have we in the WCC become too institutionalized and too bureaucratized, to respond in 21 st-century terms to this yearning for healing and wholeness?

Movements are thriving while institutions are languishing. These have a vitality and openness lacking in our structures. We are over-cautious, we are afraid of offending.

I also visited the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, and the new Pope, Benedict XVI, who are essential to the quest for visible unity. The heads of these ancient and holy churches reiterated each their commitment to the one ecumenical movement and I encouraged them to do even more by increasing their support, including financially, for the endeavours of the World Council of Churches. The new volatile and dynamic churches of the Global South are challenged to become more involved in the ecumenical movement. The evangelicals and Pentecostals remain outside in most cases.

More questions. To what extent is the Global Christian Forum really meeting the objective of the broadening of the fellowship? A serious evaluation must be carried out following the Forum’s second global meeting in 2007. Are we willing to make the costly and painful compromises entailed in creating something new? Behold I make all things new, said Jesus, but he was willing to make the sacrifices. Are we willing to give up, for example, our rigid concept of membership? Our insistence that all assistance must be made on the basis of need alone? These structures of security we have erected—are they of God, or are they of the corporate world where professionalism, competition, internal politics, promotions and status are the motivation?

So many questions. So little time. Can it all be sustained? Global confessional and denominational bodies and ecumenical institutions have always been able to find support but the time is nigh when these institutionalized structures cannot be sustained. Churches may well be forced to make choices: denominationalism or ecumenism? Who knows, but we need to decide. All these questions—and many others—are central to discerning the future of ecumenism in the 21st century.

This book, Called to the One Hope, comes at a critical time of change in the ecumenical movement and the world. It follows quickly after our Porto Alegre assembly. Its genesis began during my two years of travels and from listening to people from many different backgrounds, cultures and churches. Stories of their yearnings and their questions about how the ecumenical vision can be made real in this third millennium, in this new epoch of humanity are reflected. The church can be the church again, the ecumenical movement can rekindle the flame of hope, it can if it is willing to accept the challenge of change.

As the book describes, the future anxieties are at least as great as those faced by the first assembly of the WCC. That is why I say in St Paul’s words that we are called to the one hope (Eph. 4:4). It is a different world, a different movement and the work for transformation is daunting. We can face the future directly and honestly or we can turn further inwards and fail in our mission to offer hope.

Copyright Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). All Rights Reserved.