The Curious Politics of Ecumenism

By Richard N. Ostling

To the World Council of Churches, the Soviets are sinless

To many conservative Christians in Western Europe and the U.S., the World Council of Churches, an umbrella organization for 301 Protestant and Orthodox denominations with more than 400 million members, appears to be an ecclesiastical clone of the United Nations. Responsive to the growing influence of churches in the Third World, the council has seemingly evolved into a forum for relentless denunciations of the sins of American policy and capitalism. Meanwhile, the W.C.C. has what some critics call a see-no-evil policy toward Communist regimes. At the U.N., there is at least a Jeane Kirkpatrick on hand to answer the charges; at World Council meetings, Western church delegates generally remain mute, or cheer on the earnest moral pronouncements.

The W.C.C.'s sixth assembly at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, which was attended by 838 delegates from 100 countries as well as thousands of visitors, did nothing to dispel the suspicions of anti-Western bias. For example, a committee headed by William P. Thompson, one of the two top leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.), was responsible for drafting last week's formal statement on Afghanistan. Working closely with delegates from Soviet churches, the committee produced a muted document that asked for withdrawal of Soviet troops as part of an overall political settlement; that was one of the few times the U.S.S.R. has been named specifically in a political declaration by the W.C.C. But the statement also said in effect that Soviet troops should be allowed to stay in Afghanistan until such a settlement is reached, and recommended that aid to the anti-Communist Afghan rebels be cut off. Thompson's committee also produced a harshly worded attack on U.S. Central American policy. The document praised "the life-affirming achievements" of the Nicaraguan government; Cuba was mentioned not at all.

Bishop Alexander Malik of the Church of Pakistan, a union of Anglican and Protestant bodies, demanded that the Afghanistan statement be sent back to committee for a suitable injection of candor: "If any Western nation were involved, I am sure we would have jumped on it with the strongest language available in the dictionary. The U.S.S.R. has committed a great aggression upon a neighbor, and it must be condemned." Malik's recommendation was rejected after Russian Orthodox Archbishop Kirill warned that any stronger statement would present "terrible difficulties" for his church and would be a "challenge to our loyalty to the ecumenical movement."

This was vintage W.C.C. politics. The council is willing to risk further damage to its image, not only because many Western church leaders agree with the attacks on the policies of the U.S. and its allies, but also because silence is supposedly the price that must be paid to keep Soviet bloc churches in the council. This pragmatic--some would say shortsighted--approach also prevents the W.C.C. from addressing the plight of religious believers in the Soviet Union. The most dramatic event of the last assembly, in Nairobi eight years ago, was the publication of an open letter from two Soviet dissidents, Father Gleb Yakunin and Lev Regelson, claiming that the council had been silent when "the Russian Orthodox Church was half destroyed" in the early 1960s, and pleading for action against Soviet persecution.

Despite veiled threats of a Soviet pullout, the Nairobi assembly voted to step up its scrutiny of religious liberty, but without mentioning the U.S.S.R. by name. Since then, the W.C.C. has sponsored a low-key human rights program, cooperating with Soviet churches' requests for discretion and contending that behind-the-scenes diplomacy works better than open confrontation.

At Vancouver, W.C.C. General Secretary Philip Potter received two more dissident appeals, one from a human rights committee founded by Yakunin (who is now in a prison camp in the Urals) and the other from Russian Orthodox Deacon Vladimir Rusak. The council delegates were told little about the appeals, and W.C.C. spokesmen blandly explained that any action by the assembly would have amounted to intervention in the "internal affairs" of a member church.

Another favorite Third World cause, the W.C.C. Program to Combat Racism, provoked a fire storm of Western protest in 1978, when it gave modest grants to guerrilla groups that later toppled the white-run government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The W.C.C. is now funding the SWAPO guerrillas, who want to end South African rule over Namibia, and the African National Congress, which is fighting to end Pretoria's apartheid rule. The W.C.C. notes that its no-strings grants are intended for nonmilitary purposes and come from designated gifts rather than general church revenues. Still, some Western churchgoers feel that even token funding of revolution, with its implied moral approval of political violence, is not a suitable goal for world ecumenism. W.C.C. supporters dismiss such criticism as motivated by hypocrisy if not white racism, and at Vancouver scarcely a whisper of protest was heard about the SWAPO and ANC grants.

There was a flurry of excitement at the assembly involving a nonpolitical document titled "Witnessing in a Divided World." Bishop Per Lonning of the Church of Norway (Lutheran) called it a "dangerous setback," because it showed a "lack of missionary urgency" and did not emphasize the uniqueness of Christianity. Agreeing, the delegates voted nearly unanimously for a revision, but in dealing with a bushel of political statements on everything from nuclear arms (yes to a freeze) to Palestinian rights (an emphatic endorsement), they never had a chance to act on the rewritten statement. Nonetheless, the delegates were enthusiastic about the increased emphasis on prayer and multicultural worship at the assembly. They were also hopeful that a joint statement produced last year by the council's theology commission might provide the eventual basis for intercommunion.

Vancouver was the last assembly run by Potter, 62, a Methodist minister from Dominica whose special concern is poverty and oppression in the Third World. He is expected to retire in 1985, after 13 years in office. His replacement will be chosen by the 145-member central committee elected last week, with the Rev. Heinz Joachim Held of West Germany, 55, as its new presiding officer. For Held and Potter's successor, the council's delicate balancing act will undoubtedly continue without letup. --By Richard N. Ostling This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.