Who'll Be Head Man?

A great ecclesiastical manhunt has been under way for a successor to the Rev. Willem Visser 't Hooft, the first and only General Secretary of the World Council of Churches. Tempers have become slightly frayed during the search --as was demonstrated last week when the Christian Century published a letter from 16 ecumenists protesting the way that the Rev. Patrick C. Rodger, 43, was nominated for the job by the World Council's 14-man executive committee.

Tempest in a Chalice. On the surface, the demure public battle over the nomination appeared to be a tempest in a chalice. The Century letter charged that the executive committee had made its choice public before consulting the council's 209 member churches, and that news releases made it seem as if there were to be no rival nominations to Rodger's, who will probably be accepted for the job by the 100-member central committee at its annual meeting next January in Enugu, Nigeria.

World Council officials argued that other nominations can still be made at the central committee meeting, but that Rodger, a scholarly priest of Scotland's Episcopal Church who has been the executive secretary of the council's Faith and Order Department since 1961, was a plausible choice. A theologically minded German would have been anathema to the Orthodox churches. A representative of the "younger churches," such as Bishop Lesslie Newbigin of the Church of South India, might be too identified with mission problems to please more established denominations. Many veteran ecumenists--U.S. Lutheran Frank lin Clark Fry, for example--have reached the age when they could serve only as interim secretary, are busy running their own churches, or have made too many enemies as well as friends in the course of building the council.

Theological Issue. The search for Visser 't Hooft's successor involves large theological questions as well as personalities. Within the ranks of professional ecumenists, there is considerable argument about whether the World Council is to be simply an administrative servant of the member churches or has "ecclesiological significance" as a budding superchurch. Within recent years, council membership has been expanded to include churches, such as the Orthodox and Pentecostals, that are jealous of their independence and theological traditions, and some are wary of seeing another forceful secretary replace Visser 't Hooft when he retires.

The opposing argument is that ecumenism will dissipate its spiritual energies unless the council adopts a strong permanent executive. So far, there is no clear-cut alternative to Rodger. But Rodger's opponents feel that the executive committee's selection of a man relatively new to the council, whose main merit seems to be a lack of potential opposition, commits the council to a weakened secretariat--and to a theological position that has not yet been resolved by the member churches.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.