Whither the WCC?
January 22, 1999
On a street near the University of Zimbabwe, a billboard advertises instant connections to the World-Wide Web. Beside it, a Zimbabwean woman roasts maize on the coals of a makeshift fire.
Zimbabweans are caught in a time warp between First- and Third-World realities. Having seen what modern technology can do, they want to be part of it. But few realize what that involves. One cannot be a First-World farmer, for example, while clinging to Third-World methodologies. An entire way of thinking must shift.
Culture clash
The World Council of Churches faces similar dichotomies, for members of the organization are juggling incompatible visions of its nature and purpose. Some identify with the council’s founding vision: a worldwide association of Christians who are passionate to proclaim Jesus Christ in every land. Others see the council as a socio-political entity, a non-governmental organization whose powers transcend any single nation-state and impact the policies of them all.
For three decades, the latter vision has been in vogue. “Our people need a conversion experience,” said William Phipps, Moderator of the United Church of Canada, at the WCC Assembly. “Conversion has to do with economic relationships,” he said. “Economic relationships are central to our understanding of the faith.”
‘Global governance’
The anthropology promoted by current WCC leaders calls human beings (especially if they are “indigenous”) intrinsically good. It is only the imposition of socioeconomic structures that turns their lives toward evil. Thus the mission of the church is politics. Jesus is the great liberator who inspires his followers to topple governments deemed unjust and control corporations by means of “global governance.”
This vision of WCC leaders led them to bankroll guerrilla warfare in Africa, support Castro’s regime in Cuba, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, rebel forces in El Salvador, and Soviet-inspired destabilization throughout the Third World. Peace can only come, declared the WCC, where a managed economy is imposed.
To the WCC’s embarrassment, every socialist scheme that it supported has failed. No government lauded by the WCC has been able to feed its own people. The Sandinistas were thrown out in internationally-monitored, free elections. The Soviet Union crumbled. Yet with unabashed zeal, it continues to call for more of the same. Third World debt issues, income redistribution, and the imposition of “global governance” on transnational corporations took center stage in the WCC’s Harare meeting.
A different vision
But in Harare there were also signs of hope. Moderator Aram I admitted in his opening address that the WCC can claim to be only “an” ecumenical movement, and that unless it addresses the causes of its decline, a greater ecumenism will pass it by.
Another sign of hope is a growing emphasis on missions, particularly among the rapidly growing African and Asian communions. In the Assembly’s plenary session, Presbyterian leader Marian McClure expressed thanks to the delegates for having included a strong missions statement in the WCC’s priorities for the next seven years.
Some WCC leaders, following former Presbyterian staff member Mary Ann Lundy’s lead, had wanted the WCC to include non-Christian groups with compatible socioeconomic goals. That move was rejected when the Assembly stated that it will limit its partnerships to those who affirm Trinitarian faith.
The Presbyterian influence
Presbyterians bear grave responsibility for the WCC’s misguided policies, for that is the direction that many of our representatives have advocated. Perusing Presbyterian delegations over the past three decades, one discovers many of our most liberal personalities, the very persons who have led our own denomination into severe decline.
Many Presbyterians who appeared in Harare this December represented a who’s who of ReImagining God personalities, Voices of Sophia supporters, Social Witness Policy advocates, and radical feminists. In no sense could one say that this group as a whole represented the rank and file membership of our denomination, yet theirs was the image that we projected to the world church.
Where do we go from here?
If we didn’t have a World Council of Churches, we would surely have to create one. Christians throughout the world need some organization that facilitates our getting together and sharing the gospel as it is proclaimed and lived in our cultures. The mechanisms of a World Council of Churches are also important when churches respond to the needs of fellow Christians in areas where war or disaster strike. As the stated clerk notes in his column, the WCC gives Presbyterians an opportunity to work, as Jesus commanded, for a biblically-based unity in Christ.
The problem of the WCC is not that it exists, but that its controlling vision for the past thirty years – a vision heavily influenced by Presbyterian representatives – has been fatally flawed. Thus, while we believe that our denomination’s financial contribution to the WCC should be reduced to a level comparable to that given by other USA denominations, we do not advocate abandoning the WCC. Instead, we call on the Presbyterian evangelical community – members who care about proclaiming the gospel to the ends of the earth – to take a renewed interest in this ecumenical organization, to stand for election as Presbyterian Church (USA) representatives, and to reclaim the great missionary vision that gave the WCC its birth.