Voices from the Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches
Episcopal News Service. March 21, 1991 [91085]
A keynote address on the assembly theme ("Come Holy Spirit, Renew the Whole Creation") by Prof. Chung Hyun-Kyung, a young feminist theologian from South Korea, stirred strong reaction from participants. In a dramatic presentation that brought the plenary to its feet in a standing ovation, Chung said:
"In order to feel the Holy Spirit, we have to turn ourselves to the direction of the wind of life, the direction the Holy Spirit blows. Which direction is she blowing? It is the direction leading to creating, liberating, and sustaining life in its most concrete, tangible, and mundane forms. The Holy Spirit empowers us to move in this direction in our struggle for wholeness....
"I envision three most urgent changes we should actualize if we are to have a chance to survive on this dying planet. The first is the change from anthropocentrism to life centrism. One of the most crucial agendas for our generation is to learn how to live with the earth, promoting harmony, sustainability, and diversity. Traditional Christian creation theology and Western thinking put the human -- especially men -- at the center of the created world, and men have had the power to control and dominate the creation. Modern science and development models are based on this assumption. We should remember, however, that this kind of thinking is alien to many Asian people and the indigenous people of the world. For us, the earth is the source of life, and nature is sacred, purposeful, and full of meaning. Human beings are a very small part of nature, not above it....
"In the theological world, liberation theologies express the yearning for human wholeness. They echo voices from many oppressed people such as the poor, black, women, indigenous people. They reread the Bible and re-interpret Christian tradition and theology from their experience of oppression and liberation. This must be the time we have to reread the Bible from the perspective of birds, water, air, trees, and mountains, the most wretched of the earth in our time. Learning to think like a mountain, changing our center from human beings to all living beings, has become our responsibility in order to survive.
"The second major change required is the change from the habit of dualism to the habit of interconnection. In many parts of the world, the ways of human life are organized by the assumption of dualism. Our body and spirit, our emotion and our mind, our world and God, immanence and transcendence, women and men, the black and white, the poor and rich, the endless list of division in polarity forced us into split culture [that] breeds people of split personality. In this culture we are divided against ourselves. We forget that we all come from the same source of life -- God, and all the webs of our lives are interconnected.... God's yearning for relationship with cosmos created the whole universe. When God created the universe, God liked it and felt it was beautiful. It was beautiful because it was in right relationship -- no exploitation, no division. It had its own integrity; all beings in the universe danced with the rhythm of God, not against it....
"In traditional northeast Asian thinking we call life energy ki. For us, ki is the breath and the wind of life. Ki thrives in the harmonious interconnections among sky, earth, and people. When there is any division or separation, ki (life energy) cannot flow, and this leads to the destruction and illness of all living beings. Therefore, for us, renewal means to break the wall of separation and division so that ki can breathe and flow in harmony. If we are to survive, we must learn to live with, not dividing dualism, but integrating interconnectedness of all beings.
"The third change I envision is change from the culture of death to the culture of life.... No cause can justify the innocent shedding of blood in a war. Who goes to the war and sheds their blood anyway? They are mostly young people from poor families. Many of them are people of color. Why do they go to war? For the economic and political interest of the few in power, who are mostly older people... Throughout human history, women have been crying over the death in war of their beloved brothers, husbands, and sons. Women know that patriarchy means death. When their men shed blood, women shed tears. Their powerful tears have been the redemptive, life-giving energy for the tearless men's history. Only when we have an ability to suffer with others (compassion) can we transform the culture of death to the culture of life....
Prime Minister Bob Hawke of Australia welcomed delegates to the nation and its capital city, stressing the diverse nature of its culture and its religious tolerance and freedom. He said:
"It has been your challenge to formulate and to voice your views on issues of global importance. And though what you have said may have been uncomfortable at times for many people -- including for many governments -- it has also, where you have spoken with relevance and wisdom, been of great value to your constituent church members and to people of good will everywhere....
"For all the significance of previous assemblies, I venture to say that none has been held at a more historic moment in the unfolding of world events than this assembly in Canberra. And never has there been a time at which you, as members of the assembly, are so richly vindicated for your principled activity as you are now vindicated by events in Southern Africa.
"The World Council of Churches has taken a leading role in the international campaign against apartheid. With its moral authority, the WCC has laid bare the ethical bankruptcy of South Africa's racist ideology. The WCC has also given much-needed practical support for the struggle inside South Africa, where churches have been prominent in bringing to light and opposing human rights abuses, and where church men and women have borne part of the suffering that apartheid has inflicted....
"But apartheid is not yet dead. We look for and expect to see further change -- the most important of which is, of course, free and open elections in which all South Africans can participate with confidence and trust. In order to encourage this change, we envisage sanctions on South Africa being lifted in phases, matching the actual achievement of promised and prospective reform.
"President de Klerk has told us something of how he proposes to dismantle apartheid. But we know little of the new South Africa that will be built in its place. The centerpiece must be a new nonracial constitution, enshrining freedom and democratic rights for all South Africans, ...
"These exciting developments in South Africa illustrate how dramatically, in the seven years since your last meeting, the shape of the world has changed, offering new challenges, opportunities, and threats. I refer to the easing of superpower tension; the replacement of the nuclear arms race, with its attendant specter of global holocaust, with a newly constructive approach to disarmament; the resolution of regional conflict; the programs of glasnost and perestroika within the Soviet Union -- sadly, now apparently under threat; the overthrow of the tyrannies of eastern Europe and the emergence there of democracy; and not least, in this momentous chronicle, the reemergence of the United Nations as a revitalized force for collective security and individual sovereignty.
"Many of these developments represent the achievement of goals and the entrenchment of values that the World Council of Churches has supported for years. You deserve credit for your role in bringing these developments about. But I know that, at your first assembly in what we can call the post-Cold War era, you will want to turn your attention to the new opportunities and challenges that this new era brings...."
Parthenios, Patriarch of Alexandria (later elected one of eight presidents of the WCC), was prevented by the war in the Persian Gulf from attending the assembly and giving a keynote address on the theme, but his paper on the Holy Spirit was read by a colleague. After observing that it is the first WCC Assembly that has gathered around a theme dedicated to the third person of the Holy Trinity, he turned his attention to those gathered at the assembly:
"Let us confess, let us bear each other's hardships with Christ, whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light, united as brothers and sisters, we children of God who seek the union of the churches and the unity of humanity.
"Without fear or passion may we take the way of truth, may we confess our errors and our sins; may we forgive one another. May we not continually rehearse the same old cliches, reckoning that we are the carriers and bearers, each one separately and all together, of our own history and tradition, which is 'of this world,' with all our habits and practices, which have solid worth and excellence but are also overlaid with errors and, above all, with sins. Would that we might forget the ugly and evil things. May we not repeat them nor mention them again. Let us blot them out.
"May we realize the pain of our separation. It wounds Christ. We hinder the Holy Spirit's action and prevent his working with us. In the struggle for union, there is room for neither neutrality nor standing aside. Let there be no refusal. May we learn to have confidence in one another, to deepen our love and understanding of one another....
"May our striving for unity continue, so that we may fulfill God's will, in accordance with Christ's prayer, 'that they all may be one.' Let our prayer be addressed to the Holy Spirit, that he may lead us to the unity that is our council's main concern.
"May we remain ever faithful on our road to unity. Unity is not a vision yet unseen, nor just an unrealizable dream. It exists in God the Father, God the Christ, and God the Holy Spirit. It exists invisibly in the Holy Trinity and in the church. Our search is for visible unity. It is a holy task. It is the daily striving of the churches. When unity will be accomplished is of no importance. What is important is faithfulness to the endeavor, ministry and witness for unity. Full unity will be accomplished in the fullness of God's own time....
"The Orthodox Church has been in the WCC from the beginning. It will always remain a member of it. The membership of the council is increasing more and more. This working together for unity on the part of us all -- ancient, more recent, and younger churches -- takes much love, and it must always be fraternal cooperation.
"This unity is not one of those matters that can be settled by votes and counting heads. Each member has its own history, some going back over many centuries, some only just of yesterday. May one member help another and respect him; may we learn to be humble, for unity demands much humility, forgiveness, and repentance. It requires boldness and confidence, but good sense as well....
"We are all united on this march. Our council rightly defined this journey as for all people, so that it may promote both the union of the churches and the unity of the world and the wholeness of creation. Certainly we have to confess that our council often procrastinates and hesitates, and sometimes is lacking in boldness. We have to tell the truth. I want to stress that we should never procrastinate or hesitate on the subject of freedom of religion, freedom of the church, and freedom of humanity...."
Sir Paul Reeves, former primate of the Anglican Church of the Province of New Zealand and most recently governor-general of New Zealand, preached at the opening worship service, reminding his congregation several times that he spoke as a person of the Pacific, in fact a Maori, descended from the original inhabitants of New Zealand.
"Who are we gathered in this assembly? We are people of hope who are part of God's creation, which still contains promise even though it lacks peace. It is wrong to portray the natural world as beautiful only when it is empty of people. A Maori viewpoint from New Zealand is that the land is Papa-tuanuku, our earth mother. We love her as a mother is loved. When someone says 'land is my mother,' it means that, as they work the land, they are taking part in the sacred act of bringing life to birth. To rob people who believe this about land is to rob them of life....
"You can't own what you are a part of. The earth is provider rather than property. To their profound dissatisfaction, Maori see that economy has come to mean money economy. They see success and even goodness equated with monetary profit. Their instinct is to judge economic health by what we are doing for each other and what we are doing with the land and sea given to us in trust. They say, 'Food is the source of a person's bodily strength; the land is the source of their spiritual strength.'
"Who are we in this assembly? Undoubtedly we are people subjected to the brutal contrasts of life and death in God's creation. Presumably we have decided that love, concern, and sacrifice are worth more than being spared from pain. For us Jesus represents that persuasive and optimistic love that sometimes goes under but always rises to new life. We will discover that we have to make alliances between the empty parts of ourselves and the confused pain of the poor and needy. Inevitably our inner world of experience is confronted by the tangible other, outer world that is powerful, menacing, and strong. We can only hope that whatever integrity and compassion we have will present an attractive picture of God and the Good News of Jesus Christ....
"I speak as an indigenous person from New Zealand. In Maori terms I am tangata whenua, a person of the land. In the nineteenth century we felt the blowtorch of colonialism and today we wrestle with what sovereignty and government mean or do not mean in our country. We are trying to free ourselves from historians who would make us into a comment or a footnote to someone else's history. We have a life that is independent of contact with the majority group, a life that has expressed itself for centuries in our land. We want past wrongs put right, and we want the descendants of the more recent European settlers to move beyond guilt and confusion to mature and responsible action. We want them to trust us. The fundamental issues are spiritual, not political...."
A highlight of any meeting of the World Council of Churches is the report of General Secretary Emilio Castro. In providing a broad overview of the work of the WCC and its continuing agenda, he had some pointed comments on the role of the Holy Spirit in the world -- and some frustrating aspects of the search for church unity:
"The Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see the injustice of the world and strengthens our spirits to confront it. The Spirit helps us to recognize the sinful nature of oppression. Our struggle, as the letter to the Ephesians says, is against principalities and powers....
"Many Christian groups are prisoners of individualistic interpretations of the Gospel and have difficulties to understand the structural dynamics in the life of human society. We easily sacralize ideologies that deify economic success. A fundamental ecumenical task is to challenge each other, to learn from each other's experience, to overcome provincialism, to create solidarity that expresses our common belonging to the dynamic of the Spirit....
"Every church is called to discern the manifestation of the renewing Spirit in the life of their nations. The ecumenical family provides a forum for reciprocal inspiration and correction. The interaction between the local and the global is essential to keep our discernment of the Spirit both relevant and responsible....
"Are we really looking for something new, something different, in our quest for unity, or shall we continue in the routine of discussion without reaching fundamental decisions?
"Do we expect a real breakthrough in the search for the unity of the church as a response given by God to our prayer for the Spirit, a spirit of unity and renewal? Here the search for unity of the church is a real test of the seriousness of our prayer. Unless we expect something to happen in this domain, where we have a specific responsibility, it will be difficult to dream of renewal of the whole creation; it will be difficult to carry credibility....
"Although cooperation between the churches is increasing, the processes of unity are slowing down. The relationship between Rome and the WCC has reached a level of mutual acceptance of differences in nature and structures and a mutual appreciation of the constraints on each. The question of the Roman Catholic Church's inclusion in a world ecumenical structure -- whether the present WCC or whatever new body would be created to facilitate this integration -- is no longer a pressing issue.... It is not, however, just a question of this loss of enthusiasm for unity between ecclesiastical centers. The problem is more serious. It looks as though, with the growth of the means of communication and an increasingly conscious option for plurality, our division is more and more accepted as an inevitable fact of life....
"Not that there is any lack of good will for church unity. But there is a lack of ardor and impatience. It is taken for granted that we cannot get beyond our confessional divisions. Thank God there is no dearth of groups living in Christian obedience who recognize themselves as members of the church of Jesus Christ and dare to proclaim and live out a unity that the authorities of their churches are not yet ready to recognize. Thank God we have a growing number of confessionally mixed marriages that are proving to be ecumenically significant. As the World Council of Churches, we need to call for the presence of the Spirit, shaking our confessional complacency and awakening in us the zeal for the full manifestation of the unity of the body of Christ....
"Convergence towards doctrinal unity does not necessarily imply corresponding progress in the field of unity. Particularly through faith and order and bilateral dialogues, the contemporary ecumenical movement has worked systematically on the doctrinal differences that developed in the course of history. But doctrinal unity does not seem to succeed in overcoming the divisions of history. Thus the reconciliation of our histories -- of the interpretations of our common history -- is indispensable for the unity of the church. Over the centuries we have emphasized so much the heresies of others that when we are called to express solidarity we have to conquer images of separation that have no place in an ecumenical age....
"Allow me to refer to a particular concern close to our heart. The main aim of the ecumenical movement is to promote the unity of the churches in one 'eucharistic fellowship.' It is more and more frustrating that this has not been realized. We are able to be together in confronting the most divisive problems of humankind, but we are not able to heal our own history and to recognize each other within our common tradition. This came very painfully to my mind when praying for peace in the [Persian] Gulf region. We participated in services of Eucharist where half of the Christians present could only be passive participants. How can we expect to overcome divisions of life and death in the world when we are not even able to offer together the sacrifice of the Lord for the salvation of the world?....The one church is and should be a parable and a reality anticipating the one humanity. We still have much doctrinal work to do, but we also need to keep alive this nostalgia for the table of the Lord. This should be the last assembly with a divided Eucharist! It is not only a passionate cri de coeur, it is also the awareness of our real spiritual danger to prolong an ecumenism without openness to the surprises of the Spirit. Our common pilgrimage will not exist too long without the holy anticipation of the kingdom.
"Ardently seeking unity in those places of conflict between Christians, we shall recover something of the moral authority to proclaim unity to the people of the world. The church is called to be a sign and instrument of the reconciliation of all of humankind...."
In reflecting on the seven years he has served as moderator of the WCC, Dr. Heinz-Joachim Held of the Evangelical Church in Germany acknowledged that a challenge from the last assembly in Vancouver to press for a "vital and coherent theology" had barely been addressed:
"The last assembly voiced a clear disquiet about the lack of concentrated theological work in the whole field of the programs of the WCC: 'The theological diversity among the units and subunits of the council is perceived by some as a sign of vitality, by others as a sign of too little integration and too much division.'
"It is true that in the World Council many different theological traditions jostle with each other and need to be heard. It is also true that there are new theological approaches and unfamiliar modes of biblical exegesis that have emerged in another cultural environment or on the basis of specific experiences and questionings. And we are also discovering that our traditional theological paradigms are still not yielding any convincing answers to new challenges nor enabling us to make progress. So in the World Council one cannot wonder at finding a diversified theological picture that is often really very confusing. But the Vancouver assembly did not want the various theological traditions and experimental thinking to remain an incoherent jumble. It was concerned that 'the many theological views should work together.' In this way we should end up by developing a 'vital and coherent theology.' At the end of the road from Vancouver to Canberra it must be said that, despite all the efforts so far made, the task we were set still remains ahead of us.
"Admittedly it has been hard to agree about what was meant by a 'vital and coherent theology' and how these terms could be turned into our many working languages. If my understanding is correct, what the assembly meant was that the relation between theology and life, between the scholarly discussion of questions of faith and the actual experience of conflict that people have in the world of today, must be more strongly stated. Literally, 'for some there is still too great a distance between the daily struggles and anguish of human life and the technical theological discussion of traditional doctrinal questions.' Of course it was at once added that 'others fear the disruption of careful theological deliberation precisely because of the introduction of these struggles into the deliberation process.'
"The two then expressed are not unjustified; they are repeatedly voiced from both sides; and they are still with us. In my view the question of our success in taking the one concern into account without neglecting the other is an exacting test of our capacity for fellowship. So we are talking about theological thinking that is related to the actual life of our churches and that, on the one hand, will help us to become one; and that, on the other hand, promotes their common action and mutual solidarity in the struggle for justice, peace, and the integrity of creation....
"However much we have to listen on the one hand to the new approaches and insights of contextual theology, it is equally necessary on the other hand to stay within the overall theological tradition of the church since its beginnings. Throughout the ages it has been legitimate in the preaching of the church to adopt theological insights and answers that relate to changed historical situations, cultural contexts, or spiritual or intellectual challenges. But this history of the transmission of the faith embraces also at the same time critical testing to see whether what is new stands in a living relationship to the original Gospel as that has been transmitted to us by the apostles...."
Statement on "The Unity of the Church as Koinonia" adopted by the Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches
"The challenge at this moment in the ecumenical movement as a reconciling and renewing movement towards full visible unity is for the Seventh Assembly of the WCC to call all churches:
- to recognize each other's baptism on the basis of the BEM document;
- to move towards the recognition of the apostolic faith as expressed through the Nicene/Constantinopolitan Creed in the life and witness of one another;
- on the basis of convergence in faith in baptism, Eucharist, and the ministry to consider, wherever appropriate, forms of eucharistic hospitality; we gladly acknowledge that some who do not observe these rites share in the spiritual experience of life in Christ;
- to move towards a mutual recognition of ministries;
- to endeavor in word and deed to give common witness to the Gospel as a whole;
- to recommit themselves to work for justice, peace, and the integrity of creation, linking more closely the search for the sacramental communion of the church with the struggles for justice and peace;
- to help parishes and communities express in appropriate ways locally, the degree of communion that already exists."