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WCC's Fifth Assembly to Meet in Nairobi

Diocesan Press Service. October 14, 1975 [75350]

NEW YORK, N.Y. -- The Rt. Rev. John M. Allin, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, heads that Church's eight-member delegation to the World Council of Churches' Fifth Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, November 23 to December 10.

Other members of the Episcopal delegation are the Rev. William G. Burrill, Davis, Calif.; John T. Fisher, Memphis, Tenn.; Mrs. John S. Jackson, Jr., Lake Oswego, Ore.; David E. Johnson, New York, N.Y.; Mrs. Harold Kelleran, Alexandria, Va.; John E. Kitagawa, Washington, D.C.; and Suffragan Bishop John T. Walker of the Diocese of Washington (D.C.).

The Assembly, convening every seven years, will bring together 2,300 persons -- 747 voting delegates from the Council's 271 Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican member churches, plus fraternal delegates, observers, guests, stewards, and staff.

The keynote address on the Fifth Assembly's theme, "Jesus Christ Frees and Unites, " will be delivered by Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, a United Presbyterian theologian from Stanford University in California.

A great deal of the 18-day Assembly will be spent in 80 to 100 working groups that will examine the theme through discussion, Bible study and other means. Plenary sessions will be considerably shorter than at the Fourth Assembly.

The WCC's six presidents and three officers of the policy-making Central Committee will preside over the plenary sessions.

The WCC presidents are Dr. Koyoko Takeda of Japan ; Patriarch German of the Serbia Orthodox Church; Lutheran Bishop Hans Lilje of Hannover; Dr. Ernest A. Payne, a British Baptist; Dr. John Coventry Smith, a retired United Presbyterian official; and retired Anglican Bishop Alphaeus Hamilton Zulu of Zululand in South Africa.

Central Committee officers who will preside are Dr. M. M. Thomas of India, chairman, and a layman of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar; Miss Pauline Webb, vice chairman, a British Methodist; and Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon, vice chairman of the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (Istanbul).

Major reports will be given by Dr. Thomas and Dr. Philip A. Potter, WCC general secretary, who is a Methodist from the West Indies.

Of the 747 delegates, 155 will be women, an 11 percent increase over the Fourth Assembly in 1968. Delegates under 30 years of age will number 75, and 300 (40 percent) will be laity.

Delegates will come from 100 countries: 155 from Western Europe, the largest number; followed by North America, 153; Africa, 116; Eastern Europe, 109; Asia, 106; Australasia and the Pacific, 45; Middle East, 30; Latin America, 24; and Caribbean, 11.

The combined delegation of Reformed/Presbyterian churches will be the largest, followed in order by Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, United Churches, Methodist, Anglican, Oriental Orthodox, and Baptist.

Some 120 advisers, including 10 Roman Catholics and 10 representatives of conservative evangelical churches, will be present. Sixteen Roman Catholics will be among the expected 90 observers. Pope Paul VI's representative to the WCC Assembly will be a Belgian, Joseph J. Spae, CICM, a 62-year-old Flemish priest and general secretary of the Joint Commission on Society, Development and Peace (SODEPAX), a WCC agency, and the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace.

In addition, 60 guests will represent non-Christian religions, including Buddhist, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism.

Hosts for the Assembly will be the five WCC member churches in Kenya -- Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Salvation Army, and Greek Orthodox, in cooperation with the Kenyan National Council of Churches.

Previous Assemblies were held in Amsterdam, 1948; Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A., 1954; New Delhi, India, 1961; and Uppsala, Sweden, 1968.

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