"Rejoice in Hope"

We give thanks for all that we have accomplished together and learned in our fellowship; for prejudices overcome, misunderstandings removed, sympathies enlarged, insight deepened, and for all advance that has been made toward a common mind.

We thank thee, O God.

We acknowledge that our understanding of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, the Hope of the World, has been limited by our pride, willfulness and narrowness of mind, and that our witness to the world is weakened by our divisions.

Lord have mercy upon us.

So prayed the new honorary president of the World Council of Churches, Britain's Bishop George Kennedy Allen Bell of Chichester, at the closing service of the Evanston assembly. It was well that he did, for the member churches of the World Council, though closer together than ever before, were still a long way from true unity.

When it came to adopting the assembly's message on Faith and Order, with its confession of "sinful division," the Orthodox churches refused to go along. Said Greek Orthodox Archbishop Michael: "We cannot speak of the repentance of the church, which is intrinsically holy and unerring . . . We believe that the return of the communions to ... the pure, unchanged and common heritage of the forefathers . . . shall alone produce the desired reunion . . . The Holy Orthodox Church alone has preserved in full and intact 'the faith once delivered to the saints.' " But no one thought that this generally foreseen dissent changed the picture. Norway's Bishop Eivind Berggrav, ruffed like a Holbein portrait in starchy white, pointed his sermon at the "ecumaniacs" who looked for some kind of nonpapal Rome to be built in a day. "There are people," he said, "who simply get angry . . . because the churches are not prepared to unite now and on the spot. The answer to sentimental impatience has to be that the growth is up to God and will be completed in His time."

The assembly wound up its 17 days with some notable pieces of business. The delegates re-elected Dr. Willem A. Visser 't Hooft as general secretary of the World Council, elected Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, president of the United Lutheran Church in America, as chairman of the powerful, 90-man Central Committee, which will carry on the Council's business between assemblies, and decided to meet again in 1960. Of the final statements approved, the most noteworthy were:

The Message on the Laity, which pointed out that the church and laymen "need each other." The old form of community has begun to disappear with industrialization, and many people "do little more than sleep in their 'parish' . . . The real battles of the faith today are being fought in factories, shops, offices and farms, in political parties and government agencies ... It is said that the church should go into these spheres, but the fact is that the church is already [there] in the persons of its laity . . . The Christian who for example, throws himself into the social and political struggle should be actively encouraged and considered a gain, not a loss, to the church. There is need to change the [church] atmosphere ... of an oldfashioned, middle-class culture . .. A tendency to choose the lay leadership of a congregation from among white-collar workers often prevents others, especially young industrial workers, from feeling at home in the church . . . Our world is characterized by unprecedented technical, organizational and scientific achievements and at the same time by disillusionments. cynicism and fear The church must not become an escape for those who do not dare to look such a world in the face."

The Concluding Message, which was designed to be read in every congregation the member churches. It asked some deeply searching questions of the churches themselves: "Is your church seriously considering its relation to other churches in the light of Our Lord's prayer that we may be sanctified in the truth and that we may all be one? ... Great masses of people in many parts of the world are hungry for bread, and are compelled to live in conditions which mock their human worth. Does your church speak and act against such injustice? . . . Does your congregation live for itself, or for the world around it and beyond it? ... Do you forgive one another as Christ forgave you? Is your congregation a true family of God where every man can find a home?" The message ended: "We do not know what is coming to us.

But we know who is coming. It is He who meets us every day and who will meet us at the end--Jesus Christ. Our Lord. Therefore, we say to you: rejoice in hope."

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