WCC leader challenges churches to be agents of reconciliation
By Parker T. Williamson, The Layman Online, December 13, 1999
ATLANTA – Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, delivered a major address on reconciliation to his organization’s United States Committee at the Atlanta Airport Marriot Hotel.
Reminding his audience that reconciliation was once primarily the Church’s word, Raiser said that today it is widely used by secular leaders who hope to establish peace in war-torn communities. As it is popularly employed, he said, the word is often misunderstood.
If we look at the Bible, said Raiser, we discover that reconciliation is not something that human beings do naturally. It is a self-limiting act, an act of self denial, and this is unnatural for human beings. This exceptional character of reconciliation is presented in Scripture as, first of all, an act of God. It is God who has overcome, through Christ, the fundamental disruption and distortion of relationships.
Raiser said that as the churches try to bring about reconciliation in today’s world, they face three challenges: justice, truth, and forgiveness. These categories represent three dimensions of reconciliation that often surface in tension with one another.
Reconciliation and justice
Raiser recalled that in recent decades, the ecumenical movement focused on justice for the oppressed. But there is an inherent tension between justice and reconciliation, he said. To pursue justice exclusively will not result in reconciliation. The application of the law alone is insufficient to bring about right relationships. In such an approach, the victim and the victor simply trade places, and the conflict continues.
We are learning, said Raiser, that there may be a time to struggle for justice, and a time to work for reconciliation. But it is not easy and evident how to discern those times. They do not simply follow each other in a linear fashion, but must be pursued simultaneously. Maintaining the complementary relationship between justice and reconciliation and discerning when it is time for the work of justice and when for the ministry of reconciliation is one of the basic challenges to the churches in their reconciling role in today’s world.
Reconciliation and truth
A second challenge to the church, observed Raiser, is to recognize that uncovering the truth is an essential precondition for both reconciliation and justice, because it establishes the responsibility of both the victim and the perpetrator.
We must be aware that uncovering the truth can be dangerous, he warned, because it reopens wounds and can reinforce division. It must be accomplished with a reconciling spirit. Reconciling memories would mean that the parties revisit the divided past together and share in collective feelings of hurt and shame. Only then can they reconstruct a new present and shape a common future.
Reconciliation and forgiveness
Raiser said that there can be no reconciliation without the act of forgiveness, which is always an expression of free grace. Forgiveness can imply that those in the position of power be expected to cancel their rightful claims for the sake of reconciliation. Forgiveness can also mean that the victims forego their rightful claim to restitution and compensation.
Raiser warned that amnesty is not forgiveness. A generalized amnesty simply adds to injuries already done to the victims of oppression. Amnesty is a legalized form of forgetting. Amnesty does not cancel a debt; it denies the existence of the debt. It erases, in political terms, the wrongful acts and ignores the responsibility of wrongdoers.
Raiser contrasted amnesty with forgiveness, which he identified as the cancellation of a debt in which the debt is identified and recognized by the debtor. Going beyond the law, forgiveness is an act of liberation, freeing both the person being forgiven and the victim who forgives. The capacity to forgive is a gift. For Christians, the source of forgiveness and of the human being’s capacity to forgive are found in the loving, forgiving God in whom we believe.
South Africa is example
Raiser concluded that true reconciliation must recognize justice, truth and forgiveness as three essential dimensions of the process. They do not constitute a linear sequence but rather a circular process which continues until the genuine transformation of relationships occurs.
Raiser pointed to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a prime example of applying these Christian principles to community restoration. On a continent that has been ripped apart in the aftermath of colonialism and intertribal conflict, South Africa is attempting a bold experiment. Its Truth and Reconciliation Commission offers persons who administered and enforced policies of apartheid an opportunity to confess their complicity with a sin that has caused incalculable human suffering. Their confession must be specific, and it often occurs in the presence of persons whose families suffered directly as a consequence of that sin. The intended result of this process is restoration rather than retribution.
Raiser said that while the commission has not been exempt from criticism for its efforts, it has offered a ray of hope that a peaceful transition to the new South Africa can occur. When contrasted with other post-colonial regimes that are plagued with widespread genocide and tribal warfare, the experiment has won worldwide commendation.
The general secretary’s words formed a prelude to a platform presentation by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu at Ebenezer Baptist Church on the following evening. Tutu has served as chairman of his country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.