On the Fringe

Facing a thatchwood wall in a mod African conference hall, a gathering of key Protestant and Eastern Orthodox leaders from six continents and four races last week sang and clapped to the accompaniment of a jazz combo, recited the Lord's Prayer simultaneously in a Pentecost of languages, then paraded out into the Nairobi night for an informal session of Christmas caroling.

Despite those exuberant closing moments, however, the fifth septennial assembly of the World Council of Churches was a hesitant gathering at an uneasy time. Just before it opened, Founding Father W.A. Visser 't Hooft remarked: "If the meeting does not produce a new sense of purpose and dynamism, the council will be in trouble. It is time the churches stop looking at the council as a sort of fringe phenomenon." Last week, as the assembly ended, TIME's Religion Editor Richard Ostling cabled from Nairobi that the World Council is in as much danger as ever of being on the fringe. Ostling's report:

The council's potential clout comes from its base of more than 500 million non-Roman Catholic Christians round the world, but the ecumenical elite that runs it has only the loosest links with that increasingly restive constituency. Moreover, the council has been accused of "selective indignation," flogging capitalists in general and the U.S. in particular while ignoring evils elsewhere.

The problem has intensified ever since 1961, when the Russian Orthodox Church joined the council. There was a tacit agreement to spare the delegates from Moscow any embarrassment, and Soviet sins have gone unnoticed. One Nairobi delegate, Scottish Episcopal Priest Richard Holloway, has called the attitude a "conspiracy of silence."

Smuggled Plea. The 18-day Nairobi assembly, the first held in Africa, presented an ideal opportunity to end that conspiracy. As the 2,300 churchmen poured into Nairobi, arms from the Soviet Union and the troops of its allies were pouring into Angola. But when the assembly came to making a statement against meddling in Angola, it pointed a finger of blame only at South Africa.

Similarly, the council criticized attacks on human rights in Asian and Latin American nations but failed to attack repression of liberties in either the Soviet Union or several nations of Black Africa. In fact, the delegates were forced to face the question of Soviet repression principally by a gutsy Nairobi-based Christian newspaper, Target, which printed a smuggled plea to the World Council from Moscow Priest Gleb Yakunin and Layman Lev Regelson. The pair complained that the council had made no protest when "the Russian Orthodox Church was half destroyed" in the early 1960s, and pleaded for a crusade against persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union.

For two weeks, assembly leaders kept a move to criticize the Soviet Union from getting to the floor. But then in the final days an innocuous resolution praising the Helsinki Agreement of last August rekindled the issue. Jacques Rossel of the Swiss Protestant Church Federation proposed an amendment expressing concern over religious repression, "especially in the U.S.S.R.," and asking that country to honor its Helsinki pledges of freedom of conscience.

Tactical Tea. Suddenly the assembly came alive. Black robes swirled in the Russian delegation as the assembly came to the brink of passing the amendment. But a parliamentary snarl and a tactical tea break gave the opposition a chance to shunt the issue to a committee. An eventual compromise blandly urged further investigation of repression of human rights--without criticizing the U.S.S.R. by name. Even so, it was the first time the council had dared discuss Soviet religious persecution.

The only other flurry of excitement at Nairobi came with a report on "Confessing Christ." For the average churchgoer, there is nothing remarkable in the document, but to council watchers it marked a significant return to religious traditionalism. The fervent call for evangelism betrayed an understandable nervousness about the challenge from last year's conservative congress of Evangelical Protestants in Lausanne, Switzerland (TIME, Aug. 5, 1974). It also represented a response to Orthodox members who have long been calling for a greater emphasis on spiritual matters.

For the most part, the record numbers of Third World delegates at Nairobi--about 40% of the total--left the speeches and behind-the-scenes power plays to the Western liberals who have generally controlled the organization. Contrary to a story carried by United Press International, there were no important black-white clashes. The much debated Program to Combat Racism came through unaltered: the assembly reaffirmed the council's practice of supplying money to nonmilitary programs of guerrilla movements, overwhelmingly defeating a motion to withhold grants from any groups likely to cause "serious injury or the taking of life."

That vote was all the more daring because three-fourths of the Council's income comes from the U.S. and the tax-engorged federated church of West Germany. To date, however, Western resistance to guerrilla aid has not hurt the council as much as fluctuating exchange rates and inflation have. General Secretary Philip Potter is facing at least two years of financial crisis, staff firings and program retrenchments.

But the World Council cannot live by bread alone, and the seven years until the next assembly will be crucial for other reasons. In approving the document on "Confessing Christ," the 1975 assembly expressed its view that spirituality and evangelism should again become as important as political issues. But the assembly was vague in its directives to the council's leaders, who are thus left to figure out just what sort of theology and programs to promote. Those same leaders must also develop an active and evenhanded program against repression of religion if the World Council is to be taken seriously.

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