AMSTERDAM uber BERLIN?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 478, 20 August 1948, Page 8

AMSTERDAM uber BERLIN?

/SATEVER happens during the. next few weeks in Berlin there are many people who think that what will happen next week at Amsterdam is more important in the long run. In this article, our contributor, A.M.R., gives his reasons for agreeing with them.

ROM August 22 to September 4 the first Assembly of the World Council of Churches will méet in Amsterdam. Delegations will be present from every country in the world except the U.S.S.R. All major churches (148 in all) wil be represented, except for the Orthodox Churches of Russia and Bulgaria, and except that the Roman Catholics present will attend purely as observers and are committed against membership. Fourteen hundred persons will be present, packing out the Niew Kerk (first built 1414!) and the municipal Concertgebouw. Delegates, by using earphones, will hear all speakers in their own tongue by means of simultaneous translations. Their first task will be to constitute the World Council of Churches and draft a constitution. Their second will be to consider, in sectional groups, various "concerns" submitted by member churches. Thirdly, the same "sections" will discuss four book-length

reports, the ‘work’ of over two hundred theologians ‘and other experts, upon "The Universal Church in God’s Design" (i.e., the nature of organised Christianity in concrete practice), "God's Design and Man’s Witness". (i.e., evangelism, or the current outreach of Christianity), "The Church and the Disorder of Society," and "The Church and International Disorder." ‘That is the bare bones of the event. Now-let me try to justify calling it the event of this year. First, although the World Council does not yet technically exist it has already done the most outstanding job in post-war reconstruction. UNRRA, having the wealth of governments behind it, of course distributed far more actual relief goods. But the World Council’s hastily improvised Reconstruction Department not only quickly left standing all existing -voluntary re‘ief bodies in sheer quantity of_help given, but gathered and distributed it without public appeals or hullabaloo, worked on the tiniest fraction of organising

expenses, and gained the greatest response of self-help from the recipients. However the Reconstruction Department is only one out of 13 departments of the "World Council of Churches in Process of Formation"-as its letterpaper has so far had to be headed. Other departments have helped to repatriate prisoners-of-war, ‘settle-in immigrants. advise UNESCO and the UN’s social --

and welfare committees, or spread information and evolve more united Christian opinions on current problems. There is social conscience here, individual and massed goodwill, and the beginning of organisation to make it effectiveorganisation which no government or party can capture and divert to its own ends. Vital Force Secondly, for ‘all their impotence in the face of many pressing problems, for all their muddleheadedness towards many others, and for all their incomplete acclimatisation in a science-dominated age, the practising Christians of the world remain its largest single vital force. In Germany the Unions and the Universities} guardians of welfare and freedom, capitulated to Hitler; only the churches never did. And, long on the defensive against "the motiern mood," they begin to-day to resume the intellectual initiative against current society: poets and thinkers who were Marxist or nihilist in the nineteentwenties and ’thirties become Christian or Christian-facing in the ‘forties. Drastically pruned in its ancient centres (the ‘churches of Hungary and Russian-zone Germany are reported the livest in Europe) Christianity has taken root in the last hundred years through"out the whole world in what often are small but nearly always truly indigenous churches. In the last 50 years "the younger churches,’ as they are now called, have increased their membership 600 per cent. and the number under their pastors’ instruction thirteenfold. When an already world-wide and very (continued on next page) — a etal

(continued from previous page) active movement .tarts organising on a world basis something important for a divided humanity is happening. Thirdly, the Amsterdam delegates represent a cross-section of attitudes and policies upon practically every matter under heaven-combined with complete agreement that truth and love must be sought in all matters because, in a different sense, all is. under Heaven. This variety of viewpoint is what causes, of course, the very obvious "failure of the churches" to influence political and economic events directly. But should they direct events? Does not a church provide a far greater community service by enabling men of all views to meet on a common ground of humility, affection, and recognition of responsibility? That, at any rate, is what the Amsterdam Assembly and the many National Councils of Churches are doing upon national and world scales. Active Leaders The list of speakers at the Plenary Sessions reveal the sharing of viewpoints and the attempt to see secular policies in divine perspective which will run through all levels and activities of the gathering. Thus John Foster Dulles who will direct America’s foreign policy if Dewey becomes President, is to speak on one occasion with Professor Hromadka, of Jan Huss University, who is a supporter of the February revolution in Czechoslovakia; a British Labour ex-Minister speaks: with a Greek Bishop; Martin Niemoeller of conservative theology with an Indian ultraliberal; Bishop Berggrav, the real leader of the Norwegian "Resistance," with Dr Leimena a youthful member of the Indonesian cabinet whose "resistance" is against the country on whose territory the conference is held. And this sort of contiguity has not been engineered to "provide balance." Nor have the men mentioned been chosen to speak because they are big names. All are active ecumenical leaders who believe that no political, educational, or. econo, mic "solution" is as important to-day as getting a World Church formed. Well, there it officially begins at Amsterdam. It is not a super churchmerely a linkage of existing ones. It is minus the Roman Catholic Church (for theological reasons) and minus the Russian section of the Orthodox Church

(for political reasons). It can be no stronger than its constituent members. And its utterances will carry no authority beyond their inherent wisdom and the moral weight of those responsible for them. ' But those who go to Amsterdam, and those who follow them in thought and prayer, even though they represent only ‘a minority, have it in their power to do something very concrete and real to, wards creating the spiritual groundwork of world community. And if they do not do it; it will not be done. For there is literally no other group in existence who can do it. ,