05262
May 16, 2005   

Churches urged to face today’s
‘multifaith reality’ 

‘Our world is in serious need
of a moral compass,” WCC chief says

by Stephen Brown
Ecumenical News International 

ATHENS — A global gathering of church leaders representing divergent traditions, including Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Protestants, Orthodox and Roman Catholics, has ended with calls to respond to Christianity’s rapid growth in Africa and Asia and to engage in dialogue with other believers. 

     The May 9‑16 World Council of Churches’ meeting that concluded on May 16 also heard calls for churches to deal with other challenges, including the world’s HIV/AIDS pandemic and what was described as a global system that concentrates economic power in fewer hands. 

     “At a time of economic globalization, money has been elevated to the level of an idol,” the WCC general secretary, the Rev. Samuel Kobia, said during a Sunday evening service at the Areopagus in Athens, where in the first century St. Paul is said to have preached Christianity to skeptical Greek philosophers. 

     “Our world today is in serious need of a moral compass,” Kobia said in his address at the conclusion of the WCC‑organized Conference on World Mission and Evangelism. The gathering was the latest in meetings going back to 1910, but the first held in a country where most people belong to the Orthodox church. 

     Greek Orthodox leaders acknowledged that they faced criticism from some of their faithful for inviting the WCC to Greece. As the closing event was taking place, critics, some of whom saw the gathering as heretical, were gatherign for a meeting in the city’s War Museum. 

     Still, it was the first such conference to which the Roman Catholic Church and Evangelical and Pentecostal churches and networks were represented by full delegates, alongside the mostly Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox denominations that belong to the Geneva‑based WCC.  

     “That itself is a huge step forward,” said Catholic Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. During the meeting, Farrell announced plans to restart an official dialogue between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches that had stalled in recent years.  

     Pentecostal leaders, too, welcomed the opportunity to meet their colleagues from other denominations at the conference, whose theme was “Come, Holy Spirit, Heal and Reconcile.” 

     “The Orthodox have a very strong spiritual tradition, which is also strong in Pentecostalism,” said the Rev. Opoku Onyinah, of the Church of Pentecost, Ghana. “We think this is a link where the Pentecostal church can have dialogue with Orthodox.” 

     Onyinah’s denomination claims to be Ghana’s second-largest, after the Catholic Church.

     Wonsuk Ma, a Korean Pentecostal missionary to the Philippines since 1979, noted that the role of Pentecostal and Charismatic churches will become increasingly important in the future.

     “Particularly significant will be the role of the non‑Western churches, which I represent, with their explosive growth and increasing challenges,” he said. 

     Such a shift in global dynamics, “though often providing healing, joy and comfort, may also create tensions and disunity,” Kobia said in his keynote address.

     Warning against “religiously‑fueled racism, culture wars and the clash of civilizations,” Kobia said many exponents of particular religions intentionally discount people of different beliefs and encourage aggressive behavior towards them. 

     “What I would expect as we go about our work on mission and evangelization in the 21st century is that we recognize the diversity of the multifaith reality of the world today,” he said, noting that interfaith dialogue will be a priority in the future for the WCC. 

     One challenge different religions need to face together is HIV/AIDS, said Johannes Petrus Heath, a South African Anglican priest who coordinates a network of African religious leaders who have tested positive for the HIV virus.