Dollars and Diplomacy

The All Africa Conference tries to recoup and regroup

The 300 delegates who gathered in Nairobi last week for the fourth General Assembly of the All Africa Conference of Churches were shunted away from the organization's fancy new headquarters on Waiyaki Way. Instead, they met in an unpretentious teachers' college outside the Kenyan capital. A conference hall and chapel, intended to serve as an imposing centerpiece for Africa's largest ecumenical body, is still unfinished for lack of funds.

It was only the most visible reminder of difficulties facing representatives of 118 non-Catholic churches in 33 countries and their troubled young organization. Christianity is growing faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world--at a rate of more than 16,000 new converts a day. But the A.A.C.C. is plagued by internal dissension and faced with dramatic deficits.

The conference was founded in 1958 to help Christians cooperate in spreading faith and furthering social justice in Africa. Under its previous general secretary, the Rev. Canon Burgess Carr, a forceful Anglican from Liberia, the fledgling ecumenical group won considerable prestige. Among other things, Carr helped bring an end to Sudan's 17-year civil war.

But he committed the group to a grandiose building (estimated cost: $2 million), and his authoritarian style and outspoken emphasis on politics irritated not only conference conservatives but many local governments. After a dispute with Kenyan authorities, he resigned.

Hoping to recoup and regroup, the A.A.C.C. last January turned to the Rev.

Maxime Victory Rafransoa, 46, a native of Madagascar with impeccably ecumenical credentials: he was baptized a Congregationalist, raised a Presbyterian and confirmed a Lutheran. More important, in contrast to his flamboyant predecessor, Rafransoa is soft-spoken and diplomatic.

Past conferences have chosen politically grandiloquent themes such as nation building, development and liberation.

This year's slogan went back to basics: following the light of Jesus Christ. The emphasis throughout was on reconciliation.

Overemphasis might be a more apt description; sessions were conducted behind closed doors and dissenting voices were sometimes ignored in an effort to create an impression of unity. Even so, the question of developing a consistent political role for the church could not be avoided. The most forceful call for change came from South African Colored Dutch Reformed Minister Allan Boesak. After condemning repressive regimes with no respect for human rights, he singled out his homeland, where oppression is "carried out by Christians in the name of Christ."

That situation dramatizes A.A.C.C. difficulties in trying to unite in a heterogeneous Christian community. Though they represent 100 million members, the Nairobi delegates worried about future erosion in their ranks--to conservative evangelical churches and homegrown "independent" denominations. They urged leaders to make more "encounter journeys" to grass-roots churches.

In the past the A.A.C.C. has tried to shake off the stigma of having "missionary" ties by calling for an end to aid from Western churches. Facing fiscal woes, the Nairobi conference quietly reversed that position. Expressing the hope that the A.A.C.C. would develop into a "mature partner" of Western churches, Rafransoa said: "Please do not put conditions on us. The African church should be African."

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